nothing.

"Come now," urged Skipper Ed, getting down on his haunches that Jimmy
might look straight into his face, "here we are, you and I, both alone
in the world and both wanting partners. Can't we splice up a
partnership? Share and share alike, you know--you have as much as I, and
I have as much as you, and we'll take the fair winds and the contrary
winds together, and make port together, and sell our cargoes together,
and use the same slop chest. What do you say, lad? Shall we sign on as
partners?"

"Yes, sir," agreed Jimmy.

"Good! Good!" exclaimed Skipper Ed. "Here, shake hands on it, partner.
Now we're friends to each other, whatever falls, good voyages and poor
ones, and there's better luck coming for us both, lad, better luck."

And so Skipper Ed and Jimmy Sanderson formed their partnership, and
Jimmy, with his own and his father's kits, went ashore with Skipper Ed
in Skipper Ed's boat, which he insisted was half Jimmy's, under their
partnership agreement, and the next day the schooner sailed away and
left them. And with the passing weeks, Time, as Skipper Ed had
predicted, and as he always does, healed Jimmy's sorrow, and he came to
look upon Skipper Ed as the finest man and the finest partner in the
world, and they two loved each other very much.

Abel and his wife and Skipper Ed and his partner lived upon terms of
intimacy and good comradeship, as neighbors should. And because they had
no nearer neighbors than Abraham Moses, an Eskimo ten miles to the
southward, and the people of the Moravian Mission and Eskimo settlement