I assured him sympathetically that I had never heard—­and he became very doleful.  This meant no good he was sure.  There was something in it which looked like a warning.  But when I remarked that surely another figure of a woman could be procured I found myself being soundly rated for my levity.  The old boy flushed pink under his clear tan as if I had proposed something improper.  One could replace masts, I was told, or a lost rudder—­any working part of a ship; but where was the use of sticking up a new figurehead?  What satisfaction?  How could one care for it?  It was easy to see that I had never been shipmates with a figurehead for over twenty years.

“A new figurehead!” he scolded in unquenchable indignation.  “Why!  I’ve been a widower now for eight-and-twenty years come next May and I would just as soon think of getting a new wife.  You’re as bad as that fellow Jacobus.”

I was highly amused.

“What has Jacobus done?  Did he want you to marry again, Captain?” I inquired in a deferential tone.  But he was launched now and only grinned fiercely.

“Procure—­indeed!  He’s the sort of chap to procure you anything you like for a price.  I hadn’t been moored here for an hour when he got on board and at once offered to sell me a figurehead he happens to have in his yard somewhere.  He got Smith, my mate, to talk to me about it.  ‘Mr. Smith,’ says I, ’don’t you know me better than that?  Am I the sort that would pick up with another man’s cast-off figurehead?’ And after all these years too!  The way some of you young fellows talk—­”

I affected great compunction, and as I stepped into the boat I said soberly: 

“Then I see nothing for it but to fit in a neat fiddlehead—­ perhaps.  You know, carved scrollwork, nicely gilt.”

He became very dejected after his outburst.

“Yes.  Scrollwork.  Maybe.  Jacobus hinted at that too.  He’s never at a loss when there’s any money to be extracted from a sailorman.  He would make me pay through the nose for that carving.  A gilt fiddlehead did you say—­eh?  I dare say it would do for you.  You young fellows don’t seem to have any feeling for what’s proper.”

He made a convulsive gesture with his right arm.

“Never mind.  Nothing can make much difference.  I would just as soon let the old thing go about the world with a bare cutwater,” he cried sadly.  Then as the boat got away from the steps he raised his voice on the edge of the quay with comical animosity: 

“I would!  If only to spite that figurehead-procuring bloodsucker.  I am an old bird here and don’t you forget it.  Come and see me on board some day!”

I spent my first evening in port quietly in my ship’s cuddy; and glad enough was I to think that the shore life which strikes one as so pettily complex, discordant, and so full of new faces on first coming from sea, could be kept off for a few hours longer.  I was however fated to hear the Jacobus note once more before I slept.