trawl-tubs sought her unsavory company, as though impelled by
the inanimate perversity which had sent them drifting. They were sold
in port, or returned to their owners, when paid for. In the early part
of her career she had towed a whistling buoy into Boston and claimed
salvage of the government, showing her logbook to prove that she had
picked it up far at sea. The salvage was paid; but, as her reputation
spread, there were those who declared that she herself had sent the
buoy adrift.

As poets and sailors believe that ships have souls, it may be that she
gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large,
slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental
sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to
respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash
through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard
tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large
craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as
an ordinary mainmast. An outward-bound coasting-schooner, resenting
this lawlessness on one occasion, attempted to assert her rights, and
being on the lawful starboard tack, bore steadily down on the
_Ishmaelite_,--who budged not a quarter-point,--and, losing heart at
the last moment, luffed up, all shaking, in just the position to allow
the ring of her port anchor to catch on the bill of the _Ishmaelite's_
starboard anchor. As her own ring-stopper and shank-painter were weak,
the patent windlass unlocked, and the end of the cable not secured in
the chain-locker, the _Ishmaelite_ walked calmly away with the anchor
and a hundred fathoms of chain, which, at the next port, she sold as
legitimate spoil of the sea.

As her reputation increased, so did the hatred of men, while the number
of ports on the coast which she could safely enter became painfully
small. To avoid conflict with local authority, she had hurried to sea
without clearing at the custom-house from Boston, Bangor, Portland, and
Gloucester. She had carried local authority in the persons of
distressed United States marshals to sea with her from three other
ports, and landed it on some outlying point before the next meal-hour.
With her blunt jib-boom she had prodded a hole in the side of a
lighthouse supply-boat, and sailed away without answering questions.
The government was taking cognizance, and her description was written
on the fly-leaves