"A Holland
galliot would go to pieces, if you should run her in among those
stepping-stones, with this breeze! No honest boatman loves to see a man
stowed in a cruiser's hold, like a thief caged in his prison; but when it
comes to breaking the nose of the Milk-Maid, it is asking too much of her
owner, to stand by and look on."
"There shall not be a dimple of her lovely countenance deranged," answered
his cool passenger. "Now, lower away your sails, and we'll run along the
shore, down to yon wharf. 'Twould be an ungallant act to treat the
dairy-girl with so little ceremony, gentlemen, after the lively foot and
quick evolutions she has shown in our behalf. The best dancer in the
island could not have better played her part, though jigging under the
music of a three-stringed fiddle!"
By this time the sails were lowered, and the periagua was gliding down
towards the place of landing, running always at the distance of some fifty
feet from the shore.
"Every craft has its allotted time, like a mortal," continued the
inexplicable mariner of the India-shawl. "If she is to die a sudden death,
there is your beam-end and stern-way, which takes her into the grave
without funeral service, or parish prayers; your dropsy is being
water-logged; gout and rheumatism kill like a broken back and loose
joints; indigestion is a shifting cargo, with guns adrift; the gallows is
a bottomry-bond, with lawyers' fees; while fire, drowning, death by
religious melancholy, and suicide, are a careless gunner, sunken rocks,
false lights, and a lubberly captain.
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