a stretch of
dancing waves. "'Twixt here and Numskull Nob you could 'most walk ashore.
Jest keep them out of the Devil's Jaw, that's all."

"The Lord between us and harm!" ejaculated Brother Bart, in pious horror.
"Where is that at all?"

"The stretch of rock yonder," replied Captain Jeb, nodding to the
northeast.

"And isn't that an awful name to give to a Christian shore?" asked Brother
Bart.

"No worse than them ar suck-holes of waves deserves," was the grim answer.
"When the high tide sweeps in thar, it kerries everything with it, and
them caves guzzle it all down, nobody knows whar."

"Ah, God save us!" said Brother Bart. "It's the quare place to choose
aither for life or death. I wonder at the laddie's uncle, and ye too, for
staying all these years. Wouldn't it be better now, at yer time of life,
for ye to be saving yer soul in quiet and peace, away from the winds and
the storms and the roaring seas that are beating around ye here?"

"No," was the gruff answer,--"no, Padre. I couldn't live away from the
winds and the storms and the waves. I couldn't die away from them either.
I'd be like a deep sea-fish washed clean ashore. How them landlubbers live
with everything dead and dull around them, I don't see. I ain't been out
of sight of deep water since I shipped as cabin boy in the 'Lady Jane'
nigh onto sixty years ago. I've been aloft in her rigging with the sea
beating over the deck and the wind whistling so loud ye couldn't hear the
cuss words the old man was a-roaring through his trumpet below. I've held
her wheel through many a black night when no mortal man could tell shore
from sea. I stood by her when she struck on this here reef, ripped open
from stem to stern; and I'm standing by her now, 'cording to the old
Captain's orders, yet."

"Ye may be right," said Brother Bart, reflectively. "It's not for me to
judge ye, Jeroboam." (Brother Bart never shortened that Scriptural title.)
"But I bless the Lord day and night that I was not called to the
sea.--What is it the boys are after now!" he added, with an anxious glance
at the boat in which laddie and Dan had ventured out beyond his call.

"Lobsters," replied Captain Jeb. "Them's Neb's lobster pots bobbing up
thar, and they've got a catch that will give us a dinner fit for a king."

"It's all to your taste," said Brother Bart. "Barrin' fast days, of which
I say nothing, I wouldn't give a good Irish stew for all the fish that
ever swam the seas. But lad