n,' I says, 'and I will give you a
little something in a glass.' And down she come, past all them sailors,
in the face and eyes of everybody."

"She didn't lose nothing by what I hear," said Zinie Shadd. "They tell
me the underwriters had just as good as told her that they wouldn't let
the schooner go to sea again."

And now by your leave a word from Hat herself. There are two sides to
every story. She told her tale just across the street from the ship
chandler's, where the Tall Stove Club held its meetings. In Mrs.
Kidder's bake-shop were gathered the henchmen of Hat Tyler.

"Well, I never see your equal for falling on your feet," Lena Kidder
said admiringly. "If I've told my husband once I've told him twenty
times I'd rather have Hat Tyler's luck than a license to steal."

"Everybody has got a right to their own opinion on that point," said Hat
Tyler heavily, sinking her jaws toward the mug of milk which Mrs. Kidder
had set before her.

Hat Tyler was certainly a handful. Her shoulders were wide, as she often
said herself, her cheeks were brick-red, her voice was as deep as the
fattest gold pipe on the church organ, and the palm of her hand rasped
when she took hold of a body. There wasn't a hornier-handed woman in the
county. She wore tarred rope round her girth for a belt, knotted at the
ends with star knots. She was what Margaret Fuller had in mind when she
said to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Let them be sea captains if they will."

"Where was you when she hit, Hat?" asked Mrs. Kidder.

"Asleep," said Mrs. Tyler. "I come up out of my bunk all standing, and
went out on deck just as I was. And lo and behold, I had just time to
get a grip on that anchor when the _Oliver_ give a lurch and over she
went. She didn't shilly-shally, I can tell you, with that load of paving
stones in her belly. Let me have another quart of milk, Lena. Talking's
thirsty business. Well, I thought I'd get my never-get-over, waiting for
those men to get a rig ready for me. And then who should I see but that
fool Elmer Higgins looking down at me. 'Hang on, Hat,' he said, 'while I
think what to do,' 'Think what to do!' I says. 'If you're any part of a
man you'll fling me a rope.' 'Jest half a second,' he says. 'Rome wasn't
built in a day.' 'It was burned up in a night, though,' I says quick as
a flash, and I guess that floored him. 'Can't you lift me up, man?'
'Much as ever I can,' he says. 'And you call yourself an able seaman,' I
said to him. '