ll you?' he says. He always was
comical, jest as comical as he could be. 'Get down there and look at her
snout,' he said to me. 'Find out which of us is going to sink.' That was
Fred all over--one of these fellows, all bluster, where it's a bucket of
wind against a thimbleful of go-ahead."

"I know him," interposed another member of the Tall Stove Club. "I knew
the whole family. He never amounted to nothing till he got to going to
sea."

"Well, I down off the bridge," went on Elmer, "and I up on the fo'c'stle
head, and there I see the schooner leaning over sort of faintish, jest
the way a man will when he's sick to his stomach, and I says to myself,
'That ship's going the way of the wicked.' I sung out to Fred to keep
the _Alfred_ going slow ahead, so as to give the crew a chance to come
aboard, and it warn't no time before they was swarming up into our
chains like so many ants out of a hill that has been knocked
galley-west. I see we was all wrinkled up forward ourselves--the
_Alfred_ was a tin ship--and it warn't to be wondered at when you come
to consider that the _Susie Oliver_ was jest as full as she could hold
of paving stones.

"And the next thing I knew there was Jed Tyler, right out of the blue
sky, standing side of me in his shirt sleeves, and looking down,
mournful enough. 'Where's Hat?' I sung out to him. 'Drowned,' he says.
'Drowned, am I?' Hat sung out. 'I guess that's just another case of the
thought being father to the wish, that's what I guess!'

"So I leaned down, and my stars, there was Hat Tyler! She'd come up jest
as she was--there she was sitting on the fluke of the starboard anchor.
And warn't she immense! I down over the ship's side with a rope, and s'
I, 'Heave and away, my girl!' and I got a grip of her, and away she come
over the rail, mad as a wet hen, and jest as wet, too, with her hair
stringing down, and her dander up, if ever I see a woman with her dander
up."

"I hear she leads Tyler a life," said a member.

"Well, I laughed; I couldn't help it," continued Elmer, moving his ears
at the recollection of it.

"'Hat,' I says, 'you never was caught out this way before in all your
born days,' I says. She was fit to be tied. 'Laugh!' she says. 'You
great booby!' 'Hat,' I says, 'I shall give up, I know I shall.' 'It's
jest your ignorance,' she says. 'I know it,' I says, 'but I couldn't
help it no more than if you had slid a knife into me.' And I out with
another. 'Come down into my cabi