"It ain't bein' a crowned head, but it's honer'ble," pleaded the sick
man, continuing the conversation.

His eager gaze found only gloominess in his nephew's countenance.

"One way you look at it, Uncle Jed," said the Cap'n, "it's a come-down
swifter'n a slide from the foretop the whole length of the boomstay.
I've been master since I was twenty-four, and I'm goin' onto
fifty-six now. I've licked every kind in the sailorman line, from
a nigger up to Six-fingered Jack the Portugee. If it wa'n't for--ow,
Josephus Henry!--for this rheumatiz, I'd be aboard the _Benn_ this
minute with a marlinespike in my hand, and op'nin' a fresh package
of language."

"But you ain't fit for the sea no longer," mumbled One-arm Jerry
through one corner of the mouth that paralysis had drawn awry.

"That's what I told the owners of the _Benn_ when I fit 'em off'm
me and resigned," agreed the Cap'n. "I tell ye, good skippers ain't
born ev'ry minute--and they knowed it. I've been turnin' 'em in ten
per cent. on her, and that's good property. I've got an eighth into
her myself, and with a man as good as I am to run her, I shouldn't
need to worry about doin' anything else all my life--me a single man
with no one dependent. I reckon I'll sell. Shipmasters ain't what
they used to be."

"Better leave it where it is," counselled Jerry, his cautious thrift
dominating even in that hour of death. "Land-sharks is allus lookin'
out sharp for sailormen that git on shore."