es in the dinghy under the moonlight, waiting to
help the old man aboard when he's drunk; watch the niggers humping
cotton into a tramp at Norfolk; feel the tide-rip snoring up past
Tantramar; reef home trys'ls when she's coming on to blow, with the
Keys to lee'ard; can't I just _feel_ the old _Pawnticket_ romping home
to be in time for Christmas!

Did you hear tell that the sea has feelings--the cryin', the laugh, dumb
sorrow, blazin' wrath, the peace, the weariness, the mother-kindness,
the hush like prayers of something which ain't brute, or human, but
more'n human, so grand and awful you hardly dare to breathe?

Words, only words which don't fit, the misfits which make fun of serious
thoughts. We men is dumb beasts which can't say what we mean, whereas
I've allus reckoned persons like cats and wolves don't feel so much
emotions as they exudes in song.

Seafaring men is sea-wise, sea-kind, only land-foolish, for there's
things no sailorman knows how to say, things even landsmen can't figure
out in dollars and cents.

Seems I'm a point off my course? I'm only saying things the captain
said, times on a serious night when we'd be up some creek for fish, or
layin' low for ducks. If ever he went ashore without me, I'd be like a
lost dog, and he drunk before the sun was over the yard-arm. But away
together it wasn't master and boy, but just father and son. He'd even
named me after himself, and that's why my name's Smith.

I disremember which port--somewheres up the St. Lawrence where we loaded
lumber for the Gulf o' Mexico, but the captain and me was away fishing.
Mother had come from the Labrador to find me, old gray mother. They
dumped her seal-hide trunk on our wharf, so one of the china dogs inside
got split from nose to tail; but mother just sat on a bollard, and
didn't give a damn. She put on her round horn spectacles to smile at the
mate aft, and the second mate forward, the or'nary seaman painting in
the name board, and Bill in his bos'n's chair a-tarring down the
rigging, and the bumboat laundress who'd been tearing the old man's
shirt-fronts. Yes, she'd a smile for every man jack that seemed to warm
their hearts, but nary a word to interfere with work, for she just sat
happy at the sight of the _Pawnticket_, and she surely admired
everything, from Old Glory to Blue Peter--until our nigger cook came and
spilled slops overside. Seems he'd had news of the lady, and came to
grin, but he was back in his galley, l