; you wants the end first,
and the middle of it after; but I bowls along with a hitch and a squirt,
from habit of fo'castle: and the more you crosses hawse, the wider I
shall head about, or down helm and bear off, mayhap. I can hear my Bob
a-singing: what a voice he hath! They tell me it cometh from the timber
of his leg; the same as a old Cremony. He tuned up a many times in
yonder old barge, and shook the brown water, like a frigate's wake. He
would just make our fortin in the Minister, they said, with Black-eyed
Susan and Tom Bowline."

"Truly, he has a magnificent voice: what power, what compass, what a
rich clear tone! In spite of the fog I will have the window up."

Geoffrey Mordacks loved good singing, the grandest of all melody, and,
impatient as he was, he forgot all hurry; while the river, and the
buildings, and the arches of the bridge, were ringing, and echoing, and
sweetly embosoming the mellow delivery of the one-legged tar. And old
Joe was highly pleased, although he would not show it, at such an effect
upon a man so hard and dry.

"Now, your honor, it is overbad of you," he continued, with a softening
grin, "to hasten me so, and then to hear me out o' window, because Bob
hath a sweeter pipe. Ah, he can whistle like a blackbird, too, and gain
a lot of money; but there, what good? He sacrifices it all to the honor
of his heart, first maggot that cometh into it; and he done the very
same with Rickon Goold, the Methody galley-raker. We never was so softy
when I were afloat. But your honor shall hear, and give judgment for
yourself.

"Mother Precious was ready in her mind to run out a double-shotted gun
at Rickon, who liveth down upon the rabbit-warren, to the other side
of Bempton, because he scarcely ever doth come nigh her; and when he
do come, he putteth up both bands, to bless her for hospitality, but
neither of them into his breeches pocket. And being a lone woman, she
doth feel it. Bob and me gave her sailing orders--'twould amaze you,
captain; all was carried out as ship-shape as the battle of the Nile.
There was Rickon Goold at anchor, with a spring upon his cable, having
been converted; and he up and hailed that he would slip, at the very
first bad word we used. My son hath such knowledge of good words that
he, answered, 'Amen, so be it.'

"Well, your honor, we goes on decorous, as our old quartermaster used to
give the word; and we tried him first with the usual tipple, and several
other hand