our coast, for we are a blue-eyed race--and upon occasion
flashed like lightning. So much weight did she carry forward, too, that
I fancied (and still believe) she would have toppled over had she not
long ago learned to outwit nature in the matter of maintaining a
balance. And an odd figure she cut, as you may be sure! For she was
dressed somewhat in the fashion of men, with a cloth cap, rusty
pea-jacket and sea-boots (the last, for some mysterious reason, being
slit up the sides, as a brief skirt disclosed); and her grizzled hair
was cut short, in the manner of men, but yet with some of the coquetry
of women. In truth, as we soon found it was her boast that she was the
equal of men, her complaint that the foolish way of the world (which she
said had gone all askew) would not let her skipper a schooner, which, as
she maintained in a deep bass voice, she was more capable of doing than
most men.

"I make no doubt o' that, mum," said Skipper Tommy Lovejoy, to whom, in
the kitchen, that night, she propounded her strange philosophy; "but you
see, mum, '_tis_ the way o' the world, an' folks just _will_ stick t'
their idees, an', mum," he went on, with a propitiating smile, "as you
is only a woman, why----"

"_Only_ a woman!" she roared, sitting up with a jerk. "Does you say----"

"Why, ay, mum!" Skipper Tommy put in, mildly. "You _isn't_ a man, is
you?"

She sat dumb and transfixed.

"Well, then," said Skipper Tommy, in a mildly argumentative way, "'tis
as I says. You must do as the women does, an' not as a man might want
to----"

"Mm-a-an!" she mocked, in a way that withered the poor skipper. "No, I
isn't a man! Was you hearin' me _say_ I was? Oh, you _wasn't_, wasn't
you? An' is you thinkin' I'd _be_ a man an I could? What!" she roared.
"You isn't _sure_ about that, isn't you? Oh, my! Isn't you! Well, well!
He isn't _sure_," appealing to me, with a shaking under lip. "Oh, my!
There's a man--_he's_ a man for you--there's a _man_--puttin' a poor
woman t' scorn! Oh, my!" she wailed, bursting into tears, as all women
will, when put to the need of it. "Oh, dear!"

Skipper Tommy was vastly concerned for her. "My poor woman," he began,
"don't you be cryin', now. Come, now----"

"Oh, his _poor_ woman," she interrupted, bitingly. "_His_ poor woman!
Oh, my! An' I s'pose you thinks 'tis the poor woman's place t' work in
the splittin' stage an' not on the deck of a fore-an'-after. You does,
does you? Ay, 'tis what I _s'posed_