we puts to this night--and I don't know why not, for we're
sailin'--if we gets a turbot I'll pay for it, and he'll have that theer
fish if I swims for it."

"You've always got a good way o' puttin' things, skipper, and I says I
holds 'long o' you."

The patient slumbered blissfully in the dreary cabin, which could only
be likened to a bewitched laundry in which things were always being
washed and never cleaned; the men awaited the Admiral's signal; the snow
thickened into ponderous falling masses;--and the professor jumped on
deck, to be met with a loud boom of gratification by Tom, who had begun
to dread the snow.

I like to think of that young gentleman faring over the treacherous
lulls of sad water amid the sinister eddies of the snowstorm. I wonder
if any other country could produce a gently-nurtured young scholar who
would make a similar journey. It seems doubtful, and more than doubtful.

Tom had been reading to the paralyzed fisherman, and, although his
ordinary tones had too much of the minute-gun about them to suit small
apartments, he could lower his voice to a quiet deep bass which was
anything but unpleasant, and he had completely charmed the poor helpless
one by reading--or rather intoning--"Evangeline." Seafaring folk _will_
have sentiment in their literature and music; humour must be of the most
obvious sort to suit them--in fact they usually care only for the
horseplay of literature--but pathos of any sort they accept at once, and
Tom had tears of pride in his eyes when he told Lewis how the man had
understood the first part of the poem, and how he had talked for a good
half-hour about the eviction of the Acadians, and its resemblance to the
fate of various fishermen's wives who had got behind with their rents.
The evening closed in a troublous horror of great darkness, and the
anxious night began. Ferrier always made up his mind to stay below at
night, and he amused himself either by snatching a chat with the
skipper, or by reading one or two good novels which he had brought. But
imagine the desolation, the sombre surroundings, the risks to be run
every hour--every second--and you will understand that those two English
gentlemen had something in them passing self-interest, passing all that
the world has to offer. Ferrier never dreamed of becoming a nautical
recluse; he was too full of the joy of life for that: but he had a
purpose, and he went right at his mark like a bullet from a rifle. Once
that