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Rh wrinkles, by every feature a Yankee among Canadians. His big, brown, cramped hands, tattooed with a blue five-spot at the fork of either thumb, whittled busily at a peg.

"Harbor-master sayed so, too," the old man with the forked beard was declaring, from his perch on the mainboom. "Sayed, ain't no vessel o' tonnage worth countun' ever clearrs out o' this porrt nowadays, or enterrs. An' it lies right in my own memory when they used to come in, brigs an' ships an' all, crowdud: carrgoes an' settlerrs!" The speaker waved his hand slowly, as in admiration of a broad picture. "An' the Loodianah would be sailun' from Liverrpool, bang up again this w'arf as ever was, a-landin' swarrms; an' Danny Eustis had a barr an' lodgun's right on ut, there where the timberr's sunk in. Times has changed." He sighed, and letting his head sink, spread out the white flanges of his beard across his chest.

The youth who straddled the rail turned his freckled face toward the company, grinning malignly, as one adept in putting his finger on the main trouble.