“You can’t nowise tell fer sure.”
“The head-king of all Jonahs,” groaned Tom Platt. “Oh, Salters, Salters, why wasn’t you abed an’ asleep?”
“How could I tell?” said poor Salters, as the schooner swung up.
She might have been the very Flying Dutchman , so foul, draggled, and unkempt was every rope and stick aboard. Her old-style quarterdeck was some or five feet high, and her rigging flew knotted and tangled like weed at a wharf-end. She was running before the wind—yawing frightfully—her staysail let down to act as a sort of extra foresail—“scandalized,” they call it—and her foreboom guyed out over the side. Her bowsprit cocked up like an old-fashioned frigate’s; her jib-boom had been fished and spliced and nailed and clamped beyond further repair; and as she hove herself forward, and sat down on her broad tail, she looked for all the world like a blouzy, frouzy, bad old woman sneering at a decent girl.
“That’s Abishai,” said Salters. “Full o’ gin an’ Judique men, an’ the judgments o’ Providence layin’ fer him an’ never takin’ good holt He’s run in to bait, Miquelon way.”
“He’ll run her under,” said Long Jack. “That’s no rig fer this weather.”
“Not he, ’r he’d’a done it long ago,” Disko replied. “Looks ’s if he cal’lated to run us under. Ain’t she daown by the head more ’n natural, Tom Platt?”
“Ef it’s his style o’ loadin’ her she ain’t safe,” said the sailor slowly. “Ef she’s spewed her oakum he’d better git to his pumps mighty quick.”
The creature threshed up, wore round with a clatter and raffle, and lay head to wind within earshot.
A graybeard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled something Harvey could not understand. But Disko’s face darkened. “He’d resk