--"What are you fashing yourself for? He will be comfortable
enough," assured the sailmaker, cutting the thread after the last
stitch, which came about the middle of Jimmy's forehead. He rolled up
the remaining canvas, put away the needles. "What makes you take on so?"
he asked. Belfast looked down at the long package of grey sailcloth.--"I
pulled him out," he whispered, "and he did not want to go. If I had sat
up with him last night he would have kept alive for me... but something
made me tired." The sailmaker took vigorous draws at his pipe and
mumbled:--"When I... West India Station... In the _Blanche_ frigate...
Yellow Jack... sewed in twenty men a week... Portsmouth-Devon-port
men--townies--knew their fathers, mothers, sisters--the whole boiling of
'em. Thought nothing of it. And these niggers like this one--you don't
know where it comes from. Got nobody. No use to nobody. Who will miss
him?"--"I do--I pulled him out," mourned Belfast dismally.
On two planks nailed together and apparently resigned and still under
the folds of the Union Jack with a white border, James Wait, carried
aft by four men, was deposited slowly, with his feet pointing at an open
port.
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