6 miles an hour through the
China Sea, and you know it's good and deep there. And now"--he rolled
flat on his back, balanced his neck on the head-rest under the bulkhead
light, and his fat book on his chest--"now I'm not advising anybody, and
particularly not you, Fatty, but that's the way a competent yeoman, with
a little advice from a couple of old shipmates, laid that hose-pipe
ghost of other days. But mind, I'm not telling you to go and do anything
like that."
"No, of course not," says our captain's yeoman, and rubs his fat chin.
"Of course not."
"But if you do," says Dalton, and sets his head sideways to see how
Reginald was taking it--"if you do, you'd make a hit with your skipper,
you betcher--only he'd never tell you."
"Why wouldn't he, if he liked it?"
"Why? 'Twouldn't be regulations. And now, you fellows, beat it. Seven
bells gone and the Old Man is due aboard at twelve o'clock. And
sometimes he takes a notion to go cruising around the cabin country
before he turns in. Besides, I want a chance to peruse a little
improving literature before I turn in myself. So beat it, all of you."
And out into the passageways and up the hatchways we beat it; all but
our captain's fat yeoman, who went back to his office at a grave
thoughtful pace.
The Seizure of the "Aurora Borealis"
I had no notion in the beginning of going anywhere near Newfoundland
that winter, but the word was passed to me from old John Rose of Folly
Cove that if I thought of running down for a load of herrin', then he'd
ought to have a couple o' thousand barrels, by the looks o' things, fine
and fat in pickle, against Christmas Day, and old John Rose being a
great friend of mine, and the market away up, I kissed the wife and baby
good-by and put out for Placentia Bay in the _Aurora_.
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