"Why, ma'am, in coorse I do," replied Buzzby, vehemently; "for why, if
they don't, they're the first that ever, went out o' this port in my day
as didn't. They've a good ship and lots o' grub, and it's like to be a
good season; and Captain Ellice has, for the most part, good luck; and
they've started with a fair wind, and kep' clear of a Friday, and what
more could ye wish? I only wish as I was aboard along with them, that's
all."

Buzzby delivered himself of this oration with the left eye shut and
screwed up, and the right one open. Having concluded, he shut and
screwed up the right eye, and opened the left--he reversed the engine,
so to speak, as if he wished to back out from the scene of his triumph
and leave the course clear for others to speak. But his words were
thrown away on Mrs. Bright, who was emphatically a weak-minded woman,
and never exercised her reason at all, except in a spasmodic, galvanic
sort of way, when she sought to defend or to advocate some unreasonable
conclusion of some sort, at which her own weak mind had arrived somehow.
So she shook her head, and sobbed good-bye to Buzzby, as she ascended
the sloping avenue that led to her pretty cottage on the green hill that
overlooked the harbour and the sea beyond.

As for John Buzzby, having been absent from home full half-an-hour
beyond his usual dinner-hour, he felt that, for a man who had lashed his
helm amid-ships, he was yawing alarmingly out of his course; so he
spread all the canvas he could carry, and steered right before the wind
towards the village, where, in a little whitewashed, low-roofed,
one-doored, and two little-windowed cottage, his spouse (and dinner)
awaited him.

To make a long story short, three years passed away, but the _Pole Star_