Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/237

 For an instant Varge stared in astonishment, then he laughed—the old fisherman's diagnosis was evidently not very far wrong.

"What you laughin' at?" demanded the skipper of the Mary K. Jones; then: "Oh, you got it done, eh? Reckoned I could roll it fur's the rail, but that all-fired pendyceetus has took it out of me considerable. I'm much obleeged"—and before Varge could get a chance to say anything, Captain Sully had hopped from the rail to the deck and vanished into the cabin, or "house." Varge's laugh died, and though humour still lingered in his expression, perplexity played the greater part. He was dealing with men and conditions that were entirely new and foreign to him, and it was like groping a little in the dark. The only thing that stood out quite clearly, that he had determined and decided upon, was that when the Mary K. Jones sailed he would sail with her.

A procession of three men, each rolling a cask, now appeared from the storehouse coming along the wharf toward the schooner—the balance of the crew, Varge decided in his own mind. Each was dressed much after the fashion of Jonah Sully, but they were quite a polyglot three. They talked and laughed as they came along. A young giant in physique, with blue eyes and straw-coloured hair, a mop of it, was evidently a Swede; the short, dark-visaged one, with red woollen cap, was unmistakably French; while the nasal twang of the third, an elderly man, quite like the old fisherman in face though still straight and sturdy of form, stamped him instantly beyond peradventure of doubt as a native New Englander.