spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the French, and
battles with his own shipmates, when he and an antagonist used to be
seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down by a spike-nail
through his trousers, and there to fight it out. Sometimes he
expatiated on the delicious flavor of the liagden, a greasy and goose-
like fowl, which the sailors catch with hook and line on the Grand
Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an interminable winter at the Isle of
Sables, where he had gladdened himself, amid polar snows, with the rum
and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner. And
wrathfully did he shake his fist, as he related how a party of Cape
Cod men had robbed him and his companions of their lawful spoil, and
sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving him not a drop to
drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood
who are said to tie lanterns to horses' tails, to mislead the mariner
along the dangerous shores of the Cape.

Even now I seem to see the group of fishermen, with that old salt in
the midst. One fellow sits on the counter, a second bestrides an oil-
barrel, a third lolls at his length on a parcel of new cod-lines, and
another has planted the tarry seat of his trousers on a heap of salt,
which will shortly be sprinkled over a lot of fish. They are a likely
set of men. Some have voyaged to the East Indies or the Pacific, and
most of them have sailed in Marblehead schooners to Newfoundland; a
few have been no farther than the Middle Banks, and one or two have
always fished along the shore; but, as Uncle Parker used to say, they
have all been christened in salt water, and know more than men ever
learn in the bushes. A curious figure, by way of contrast, is a fish-
dealer from farup country, listening with eyes wide open to narratives
that might startle Sindbad the sailor. Be it well with you, my
brethren! Ye are all gone, some to your graves ashore, and others to