as Wink_ made our harbor, the
first of all the traders, Tumm, the clerk, was short-handed for a
cook, having lost young Billy Rudd overboard, in a great sea, beating
up in stress of weather to the impoverished settlement at Diamond Run.
'Twas Moses, the choice of necessity, he shipped in the berth of that
merry, tow-headed lad of tender voice, whose songs, poor boy! would
never again be lifted, o' black nights in harbor, in the forecastle of
the _Quick as Wink_. "Ay, Dannie," says Moses, "you'd never think it,
maybe, but I'm shipped along o' Tumm for the French shore an' the
Labrador ports. I've heared tell a wonderful lot about Mother Burke,
but I've never seed the ol' rock; an' I've heared tell a wonderful lot
about Coachman's Cove an' Conch an' Lancy Loop an' the harbors o' the
straits shores, but I've never seed un with my own eyes, an' I'm sort
o' wantin' t' know how they shapes up alongside o' Twist Tickle. I
'low," says he, "you don't find many harbors in the world like Twist
Tickle. Since I been travellin' t' Jimmie Tick's Cove with the mail,"
he continued, with a stammer and flush, like a man misled from an
austere path by the flesh-pots of earth, "I've cotched a sinful
hankerin' t' see the world."

I wished he had not.

"But mother," he added, quickly, in self-defence, "always 'lowed a man
_ought_ t' see the world. So," says he, "I'm shipped along o' Tumm,
for better or for worse, an' I'm bound down north in the _Quick as
Wink_ with the spring supplies."

'Twas a far journey for that sensitive soul.

"Dannie," he asked, in quick alarm, a fear so sudden and unexpected
that I was persuaded of the propriety of my premonition, "what you
thinkin' about? Eh, Dannie?" he cried. "What you lookin' that way
for?"

I would not tell him that I knew the skipper of the _Quick as Wink_,
whose butt the fool must be.

"You isn't 'lowin'," Moses began, "that mother--"

"Not at all, Moses!" says I.

'Twas instant and complete relief he got from this denial. "We sails,"
says he, with all a traveller's importance, "at dawn o' to-morrow.
I'll be gone from Twist Tickle by break o' day. I'll be gone t' new
places--t' harbors I've heared tell of but never seed with my own
eyes. I'm not quite knowin'," says he, doubtfully, "how I'll get along
with the cookin'. Mother always 'lowed," he continued, with a greater
measure of hope, "that I was more'n fair on cookin' a cup o' tea.
'Moses,' says she, 'you can brew a cup o' tea so