the
side. "What asylum did they let His Whiskers out of?"

"Young feller," Salters began, standing up in the fore-rigging, "let me
tell yeou 'fore we go any further that I've--"

The officer on the bridge took off his cap with immense politeness.
"Excuse me," he said, "but I've asked for my reckoning. If the
agricultural person with the hair will kindly shut his head, the
sea-green barnacle with the wall-eye may per-haps condescend to
enlighten us."

"Naow you've made a show o' me, Salters," said Disko, angrily. He could
not stand up to that particular sort of talk, and snapped out the
latitude and longitude without more lectures.

"Well, that's a boat-load of lunatics, sure," said the skipper, as he
rang up the engine-room and tossed a bundle of newspapers into the
schooner.

"Of all the blamed fools, next to you, Salters, him an' his crowd are
abaout the likeliest I've ever seen," said Disko as the _We're Here_
slid away. "I was jest givin' him my jedgment on lullsikin' round these
waters like a lost child, an' you must cut in with your fool farmin'.
Can't ye never keep things sep'rate?"

Harvey, Dan, and the others stood back, winking one to the other and
full of joy; but Disko and Salters wrangled seriously till evening,
Salters arguing that a cattle-boat was practically a barn on blue
water, and Disko insisting that, even if this were the case, decency
and fisher-pride demanded that he should have kept "things sep'rate."
Long Jack stood it in silence for a time,--an angry skipper makes an
unhappy crew,--and then he spoke across the table after supper:

"Fwhat's the good o' bodderin' fwhat they'll say?" said he.

"They'll tell that tale agin us fer years--that's all," said Disko.
"Oil-cake sprinkled!"

"With salt, o' course," said Salters, impenitent, reading the farming
reports from a week-old New York paper.

"It's plumb mortifyin' to all my feelin's," the skipper went on.

"Can't see ut that way," said Long Jack, the peacemaker "Look at here,
Disko! Is there another packet afloat this day in this weather cud ha'
met a tramp an' over an' above givin' her her reckonin',--over an'
above that, I say,--cud ha' discoorsed wid her quite intelligent on the
management av steers an' such at sea? Forgit ut! Av coorse they will
not. 'Twas the most compenjus conversation that iver accrued. Double
game an' twice runnin'--all to us." Dan kicked Harvey under the table,
and Harvey choked in his cup.

"Well," said