aste."

"If she makes bad weather," says Eleazer, "I'll get out."

They pushed off from the pan. 'Twas falling dusk, by this time. The
wind blowed black. The frost begun to bite. Snow came thick--just as
if, ecod, somebody up aloft was shaking the clouds, like bags, in the
gale! And the rodney was deep and ticklish; had the ice not kept the
water flat in the lanes and pools, either Eleazer would have had to
get out, as he promised, or she would have swamped like a cup. As it
was, handled like dynamite, she done well enough; and she might have
made harbor within the hour had she not been hailed by Pinch-a-Penny
Peter from a small pan of ice midway between.

And there the old codger was squatting, his old face pinched and
woebegone, his bag o' bones wrapped up in his coonskin coat, his pan
near flush with the sea, with little black waves already beginning to
wash over it.

A sad sight, believe me! Poor old Pinch-a-Penny, bound out to sea
without hope on a wee pan of ice!

"Got any room for me?" says he.

They ranged alongside. "Mercy o' God!" says Tom; "she's too deep as it
is."

"Ay," says Peter; "you isn't got room for no more. She'd sink if I put
foot in her."

"Us'll come back," says Tom.

"No use, Tom," says Peter. "You knows that well enough. 'Tis no place
out here for a Gingerbread punt. Afore you could get t' shore an' back
night will be down an' this here gale will be a blizzard. You'd never
be able t' find me."

"I 'low not," says Tom.

"Oh, no," says Peter. "No use, b'y."

"Damme, Skipper Peter," says Tom, "I'm sorry!"

"Ay," says Peter; "'tis a sad death for an ol' man--squattin' out here
all alone on the ice an' shiverin' with the cold until he shakes his
poor damned soul out."

"Not damned!" cries Tom. "Oh, don't say it!"

"Ah, well!" says Peter; "sittin' here all alone, I been thinkin'."

"'Tisn't by any man's wish that you're here, poor man!" says Tom.

"Oh, no," says Peter. "No blame t' nobody. My time's come. That's all.
But I wisht I had a seat in your rodney, Tom."

And then Tom chuckled.

"What you laughin' at?" says Peter.

"I got a comical idea," says Tom.

"Laughin' at me, Tom?"

"Oh, I'm jus' laughin'."

"'Tis neither time nor place, Tom," says Peter, "t' laugh at an old
man."

Tom roared. Ay, he slapped his knee, and he throwed back his head, and
he roared. 'Twas enough almost to swamp the boat.

"For shame!" says Peter. And more than Pinch-a-Penny thought so.