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16 "Didn't know nerve went with them," referring to the first, presumably.

"You didn't! Well, think it over." And the captain, too, closed the barring gate.

But the whimsical wrinkles at the corners of his eyes belied the curtness of his retort. However, at the fifth conch-shell they had quite disappeared, as he ruminated half aloud.

"What was it that wench Portia said—about teaching? If I'd followed mine I wouldn't have lost her mother, and he wouldn't have won her." The whistling stopped altogether. "He didn't know it but he wore her out—killed her. It mustn't happen twice." Then he added a strange yet not illogical non-sequitur, "Poor Hiram! But that was long ago—and—by Jupiter! she lives again in the girl!"

"Cap'n Bluster" was goutily recouched on the porch, his broad back to the gate as a further expression of his resentment. At that slight distance, the two old sea-dogs resembled the twin stone lions that flank the gateways to great estates, or old andirons before a fire. A little nearer—and they seemed like pieces purchased by a short-sighted person in different shops, and which, when brought home, are found not quite to match. Neither did they in figure or temperament, but they were one in their quaint old oaths and their old blue uniforms, and in their love for the Sea and Salthaven and Sally. Over the handling of the first and third there was constant dissension; in fact, the friendship had been cemented by a feud of some fifty years standing, a constant guerilla warfare of repartee, with reasonableness on one side, violent illogic on the other.