is less than yours. I should say though that you had best speak to her
from your heart, in plain sailor language.'

'Aye, aye, she can take it or leave it. Phoebe Dawson it is, the
sister of the blacksmith. Let us work back and have a drop of the right
Nants before we go. I have an anker newly come, which never paid the
King a groat.'

'Nay, you had best leave it alone,' I answered.

'Say you so? Well, mayhap you are right. Throw off your moorings,
then, and clap on sail, for we must go.'

'But I am not concerned,' said I.

'Not concerned! Not--' he was too much overcome to go on, and could but
look at me with a face full of reproach. 'I thought better of you,
Micah. Would you let this crazy old hulk go into action, and not stand
by to fire a broadside?'

'What would you have me do then?'

'Why, I would have you help me as the occasion may arise. If I start to
board her, I would have you work across the bows so as to rake her.
Should I range, up on the larboard quarter, do you lie, on the
starboard. If I get crippled, do you draw her fire until I refit.
What, man, you would not desert me!'

The old seaman's tropes and maritime conceits were not always
intelligible to me, but it was clear that he had set his heart upon my