t gave his time to the poets. I was well
acquainted with a shipmaster that was all for bees an' beekeepin'; and
if you met him in port and went aboard, he'd sit and talk a terrible
while about their havin' so much information, and the money that could
be made out of keepin' 'em. He was one of the smartest captains that
ever sailed the seas, but they used to call the Newcastle, a great
bark he commanded for many years, Tuttle's beehive. There was old Cap'n
Jameson: he had notions of Solomon's Temple, and made a very handsome
little model of the same, right from the Scripture measurements, same's
other sailors make little ships and design new tricks of rigging and all
that. No, there's nothing to take the place of shipping in a place like
ours. These bicycles offend me dreadfully; they don't afford no real
opportunities of experience such as a man gained on a voyage. No: when
folks left home in the old days they left it to some purpose, and when
they got home they stayed there and had some pride in it. There's no
large-minded way of thinking now: the worst have got to be best and rule
everything; we're all turned upside down and going back year by year."

"Oh no, Captain Littlepage, I hope not," said I, trying to soothe his
feelings.

There was a silence in the schoolhouse, but we could hear the noise of
the water on a beach below. It sounded like the strange warning wave
that gives notice of the turn of the tide. A late golden robin, with the
most joyful and eager of voices, was singing close by in a thicket of
wild roses.

VI. The Waiting Place

"HOW DID YOU manage with the rest of that rough voyage on the Minerva?"
I asked.

"I shall be glad to explain to you," said Captain Littlepage, forgetting
his grievances for the moment. "If I had a map at hand I could explain
better. We were driven to and fro 'way up toward what we used to call
Parry's Discoveries, and lost our bearings. It was thick and foggy,
and at last I lost my ship; she drove on a rock, and we managed to get
ashore on what I took to be a barren island, the few of us that were
left alive. When she first struck, the sea was somewhat calmer than it
had been, and most of the crew, against orders, manned the long-boat and
put off in a hurry, and were never heard of more. Our own boat upset,
but the carpenter kept himself and me above water, and we drifted in.
I had no strength to call upon after my recent fever, and laid down to
die; but he found th