



Produced by Annie R. McGuire








[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]

Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.

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PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, APRIL 14, 1896. FIVE CENTS A COPY.

VOL. XVII.--NO. 859. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.

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[Illustration]

MOTHER-IN-LAW TO THE CREW.

ONE OF THE OLD SAILOR'S YARNS.

BY W. J. HENDERSON.


It was a beautiful summer morning. There was a light wind from the
southwest, which just tempered to a degree of endurance the blazing heat
of the full-orbed sun. A few wisps of feathery white lay slantwise
across the broad field of deep-toned blue sky, promising a change of
weather within a day's time. The sea was a vast undulating mirror of
blue, as if all the sapphires in the world and in all the other worlds
had been melted and poured into earth's majestic basin. From the rounded
<DW72>s of the broad low swells the rays of the sun danced in a million
flashes of dazzling silver. The swells themselves ran in slow, sinuous
folds to the inner bar, where they reared themselves in curving walls of
translucent green shot with bars of snow, and then with the burst of
far-off thunder fell forward into spurting, writhing acres of yeasty
foam. Softness, warmth, and languorous sparkle lay over the sea.

Far away upon the uncertain horizon loomed the black hull of an ocean
liner, cleaving her way across the polished path at twenty knots an
hour, to make a new record, homeward bound. The tense cordage of her
rigging, the strained squareness of her tapering yards, the horizontal
backward rush of the torrents of smoke from her yawning funnels gave her
the appearance of a true greyhound, with every nerve and muscle strained
in the effort at speed. Nearer the land three schooners, two loaded to
their scuppers, and one flying light, so that she seemed to sail on her
keel, were making a long leg to the southward, close-hauled on the
starboard tack. Further in yet a score of tiny sea skiffs rose and fell
on the bosom of the deep, and now and then the glitter of sunlight on
the scales of a captured fish could be seen.

Henry Hovey and his little brother George--who was not so little as he
used to be--were walking along the ocean road. Often and often they had
gone down to the old wooden pier, and sighed much because it no longer
held their interesting friend, the Old Sailor. They had met other
sailors, but none of them could tell tales of the sea; and, worse than
that, none of them knew anything about the wonderful places the Old
Sailor had seen. So Henry and George contented themselves with telling
the old tales over, and speculating on the causes of the remarkable
events related therein. On this beautiful summer day they unconsciously
wandered down to the pier, and to their surprise there was a man sitting
on the end of it. He looked so much like their old friend that they both
stopped short and gasped. Then they shook their heads sadly and walked
slowly out on the pier. As they drew near the man they saw that his
shoulders were shaking with laughter. George gripped Henry's arm and
said, "Is it a dream?"

"I don't know," answered Henry, in a whisper. "I'm afraid--"

"W'ich the same it are not!" cried a voice they well knew; and the next
instant there was the Old Sailor himself, half laughing and half crying,
dancing on one foot and holding each of the breathless boys by a hand.
"It are not no dream," continued the Old Sailor; "'cos w'y, dreams goes
by contraries, an' this are the werry identical sailor wot it used to
be, an' not no contrary wotsomever."

"Oh! when did you come?" cried George.

"Jes now."

"What?"

"Jes now. I jes come ashore. I were a-sittin' on this 'ere werry
identical pier a-lookin' fur my trunk."

The two boys gazed at their old friend in silent wonder, for they were
sure that behind that trunk there lay some mystery.

"Where is it?" asked Henry at length.

"Down there," answered the Old Sailor, pointing at the water. "Under
hatches, stove in an' sunk. I wouldn't 'a' parted with that trunk fur a
good hogshead o' baccy. 'Cos w'y; I got that there trunk in Noo Yawk the
day I shipped, an' I had her loaded right to her hatches with things to
bring home to ye. Howsumever, it were drownin' or losin' 'em, an' so me
an' the trunk got ashore--leastways I did; an' that's wot."

With these words the Old Sailor once more sat down on the end of the
pier, and the boys sat beside him. He sent one of his long searching
glances around the horizon, indulged in one of his peculiar silent
laughs, and then suddenly said,

"S'pose I was to go fur to ask ye wot kind o' wessel are that out
yonder?"

"It's an ocean liner," answered Henry.

"An' s'posin' I was to say wot are them three yonder?"

"Schooners," said George, "under all plain sail, close-hauled on the
starboard tack."

"My son," said the Old Sailor, solemnly, "you are growin' werry salt.
An' s'posin' I were to ask ye wot are that high-sided one loaded with?"

"Nothin'," said Henry. "She's flying light."

"Werry good too. An' may I be run down an' sunk by a bar'l o' your
mother's hot biscuit ef this here warn't the werry identical way wot it
happened. I shipped in St. Thomas as second mate onto the four-masted
schooner _Raw Tomatters_. She were bound fur Noo Yawk with an assorted
cargo o' cigarettes, pickled pigs' feet, mares' nests, and ice-cream."

"Mares' nests!" exclaimed Henry.

"Ice-cream!" cried George.

"Them's it! The mares' nests is built in the mountains by the wild
mares, an' is imported to this country for political purposes. The
ice-cream made in St. Thomas are werry bad, werry bad indeed; but it
won't melt in this here climate 'cos it are so hot where it are made,
an' so it are imported here in bricks an' sold as ice-cream candy, w'ich
the same you may have eat, but don't do so no more. Howsumever that
'ain't got nothin' to do with this 'ere yarn wot I'm a-tellin' ye. The
_Raw Tomatters_ are a werry big schooner, an' she got under way with a
crew o' twenty men, all told, includin' me, wot were the second mate,
an' the Cap'n's mother, w'ich the same she were the cause o' the whole
bilin'. The Cap'n's name were Janders Blue, an' he were a smallish man
with a turned-up nose, one glass eye, an' a wooden arm, w'ich the same
he got in the whalin' trade. His mother's name were Mehitabel Blue, an'
she stood six feet three, an' could lift a barrel o' salt horse. So
bein', it putty soon come to be knowed that she were not only the
Cap'n's mother, but a mother-in-law to the hull crew. The trouble with
her were that she weren't brought up among seafarin' pussons, but in a
werry respectable country town where there were more churches than
stores. She'd went down to St. Thomas on a steamer fur her health, she
said, an' were now goin' fur to make the v'yidge back with her good son.
I didn't see wot she wanted o' any more health than she had; but I
didn't say nothin', her bein' the Cap'n's mother an' me the second mate,
w'ich the same 'ain't got much to say.

"Waal, the squalls commenced fur to make up jes as soon as ever we
started to git the anchor. The old lady, wearin' a wide-brimmed straw
hat with a long red feather into 't, an' holdin' a white umbreller over
her head, stood aft alongside o' her son. Sez he, 'H'ist the outer jib.'
Sez I, 'Lively there, you swabs.' With that the old woman she shet the
umbreller down with a snap, jumped forrad in about four hops, an' sez
she ter me, sez she,

"'Wot kind o' langwidge are that ter use in the presence of a lady?'

"'Beggin' yer pardon, ma'am,' sez I to she, sez I, 'I weren't aware as
how it were onperlite,' sez I, jes like that.

"'Don't you dast to call no man no sich names ag'in w'ile I'm on this
'ere boat,' sez she; '