BEING THE SHORE LOG OF CAP’N AARON SPROUL

BY HOLMAN DAY

Author of
“The RAMRODDERS”
“King Spruce” Etc.

ILLUSTRATED

New York and London
Harper & Brothers publishers
MCMXI

BOOKS BY HOLMAN DAY

The skipper and the skipped. Post 8vo . . $1.50
The RAMRODDERS.  Post 8vo  . . . . . . . . $1.50
King Spruce.  Ill’d.  Post 8vo  . . . . . . $1.50
The eagle’s badge.  Ill’d.  Post 8vo  . . . $1.25

Harper & Brothers, publishers, N.Y.

Copyright, 1911.  By Harper & Brothers
printed in the united states of America
published February, 1911

THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED

I

Cap’n Aaron Sproul, late skipper of the Jefferson P. Benn, sat by the bedside of his uncle, “One-arm” Jerry, and gazed into the latter’s dimming eyes.

“It ain’t bein’ a crowned head, but it’s honer’ble,” pleaded the sick man, continuing the conversation.

His eager gaze found only gloominess in his nephew’s countenance.

“One way you look at it, Uncle Jed,” said the Cap’n, “it’s a come-down swifter’n a slide from the foretop the whole length of the boomstay.  I’ve been master since I was twenty-four, and I’m goin’ onto fifty-six now.  I’ve licked every kind in the sailorman line, from a nigger up to Six-fingered Jack the Portugee.  If it wa’n’t for—­ow, Josephus Henry!—­for this rheumatiz, I’d be aboard the Benn this minute with a marlinespike in my hand, and op’nin’ a fresh package of language.”

“But you ain’t fit for the sea no longer,” mumbled One-arm Jerry through one corner of the mouth that paralysis had drawn awry.

“That’s what I told the owners of the Benn when I fit ’em off’m me and resigned,” agreed the Cap’n.  “I tell ye, good skippers ain’t born ev’ry minute—­and they knowed it.  I’ve been turnin’ ’em in ten per cent. on her, and that’s good property.  I’ve got an eighth into her myself, and with a man as good as I am to run her, I shouldn’t need to worry about doin’ anything else all my life—­me a single man with no one dependent.  I reckon I’ll sell.  Shipmasters ain’t what they used to be.”

“Better leave it where it is,” counselled Jerry, his cautious thrift dominating even in that hour of death.  “Land-sharks is allus lookin’ out sharp for sailormen that git on shore.”

“It’s why I don’t dast to go into business—­me that’s follered the sea so long,” returned the skipper, nursing his aching leg.