yet. Go ahead, Skipper."

"Well, you see," said the Skipper, "this young Wilson comes down here
from Hanover College, in the spring, as lean as a shad in dog-days. He
had studied himself half blind, and all his blood had got into brains.
So the Doctor tried to help him with his poticary stuff, and the women
with their herbs; but all did no good. At last somebody advised him to
try a fishing cruise down East; and so he persuaded me to take him
aboard my schooner. I knew he'd be right in the way, and poor company
at the best, for all his Greek and Latin; for, as a general thing, I've
noticed that your college chaps swop away their common sense for their
larning, and make a mighty poor bargain of it. Well, he brought his
books with him, and stuck to them so close that I was afraid we should
have to slide him off the plank before we got half way to Labrador. So
I just told him plainly that it would n't do, and that if he 'd a mind
to kill himself ashore I 'd no objection, but he should n't do it aboard
my schooner. 'I'm e'en just a mind,' says I, 'to pitch your books
overboard. A fishing vessel's no place for 'em; they'll spoil all our
luck. Don't go to making a Jonah of yourself down here in your bunk,
but get upon deck, and let your books alone, and go to watching the sea,
and the clouds, and the islands, and the fog-banks, and the fishes, and
the birds; for Natur,' says I, don't lie nor give hearsays, but is
always as true as the Gospels.'

"But 't was no use talking. There he'd lay in his bunk with his books
about him, and I had e'en a'most to drag him on deck to snuff the sea-
air. Howsomever, one day,--it was the hottest of the whole season,--
after we left the Magdalenes, and were running down the Gut of Canso, we
hove in sight of the Gannet Rocks. Thinks I to myself, I'll show him
something now that he can't find in his books. So I goes right down