News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-04-29
CAPTAIN WEEVIL'S YARN.
BY W. CLARKE RUSSELL,

BY W. CLARKE RUSSELL,
"Good morning, sir. 1 hope 1 see you
pretty middling? Why, thank ye,
can't say as that I'm frst-class. The
rheumatics comes into my leg worse than
If l had got half a dozen of decayed
teeth there, and I tell ye the faces the
pain make me draw at times is as Mrs.
Weevil declares, quite enough to fright
en- donkey off his breakfast. However,
my philosophy is this: What ye can t
help, you'd better tarn to at once and
get resigned to. That's making a virtue
of necessity, as the monkey said when.
having had his tail shot off, he put on
pair of trousers and hat, arguing that.
since accident had convarted him into a
man, he had better dress like one with
out further repinin', and make an end of
his mlshap. [ hope l amt Intruding,
Pm sure. It's a yarn of yours about an
old whaler that's caused me to call. 1t
brought up recollection as 1 thought
perhaps it might interest ye to hear. If
you mean to print it after hearing of it,
and supposing ye consider of it good
enough, why, then, shall have to leave
it to you to color the fancy-work; for
language isn't my forty. Thank We, not
afore dinner, I'm obliged to be very
careful.
"Well, it's tidy long time ago since
had command of little barque named
the Julia, 1t had been a regular round
trading voyage, and was away down off
the coast of New Zealand, making for
the Cape of Good Hope, where intend
ed to touch, and thence straight home to
Hull: On the morning of the day on
which the incident happened that Pm
going to tell We about, the breeze that
had been blowing US along all night
slackened down into light air, with
very smooth sea. There was scarce swell
enough to stir the vessel, and you might
have been sailing up river for all YOU
could have told. What wind there was,
was right dead aft; stunsails were out on
both sides, and the julia being middling
hight, crept along as though a current
had got hold of her, though you would
have known it was genuine sailing by
seeing the water streaking out from her
poWs, and by watching, as l did, when
l first came on deck, some shavings
which the carpenter chucked over the
side veering away aft like a flock of
wlld-fowl, padding as hard as they
could scuttle from out of the way of the
vessel. But another sign of the Julia's
progress was her manner of raising q sail
that had been made out down away on
the port bow at dawn, from the mast
head.
cat breakfast time we had risen her
to her lower yards, and presently got
her fair on to sea, when, on examining
hp 7
was whaler by her boats and the try
works on her deck. There was nothing
In her after the pattern of your whaler
to make me stare. She had clearly been
cruising some time, as was evident from
the griminess and smokiness of her can
vas and masts, due to pretty good long
stretch of blubber- boiling; and there
was the neglect visible in her which is
noticeable in whalers that have been
long on the cruising grounds, where the
men have had other things to do than
attend to the rigging and handle the
Blush or the palnt-pOts. She shifted her
course as if to close us, and shortly after
noon we had sneaked up abreast of her.
No very wonderful performance was
this, considering, as | have said, that
we had stunSails out on both sides;
whereas she was taking it as easy as a
lord mayor, who's got nothing to do but
to give orders to his cook, and see how
many chins he can fatten out of his
throat in year-having nothing set
above a main -tOpgall'nt sail, and the
courses hanging by the clews. AS we
came within hail, chap very strangely
dressed, in coat that looked as if it
was made of leather, and boots as big
as fisherman's, got into the mizzen-rig
ging, and putting a speakin' trumpet to
his mouth, pretty much as he'd pat a
blunderbuss to his shoulder, he wells out
to me to give HIM our latitood and
longitood. This did, and then I found
out that she was the whaler Ironsides.
of Nantucket, ten months out, with five |
hundred and sixty barrels of oil The |
crew that looked over the side at us was |
a motley lot. Some of them were Now
rees, l suspect, and others Kanakas, |
with a sprinkling of white salts. We |
slowly drew ahead of her, and had got
her about mile astern, when the wind
failed US altogether. The sea changed
into the appearance of quicksilver.
There wasn't blurr upon it anywheres,
and there being no clouds in the sky, |
there was not a shadow upon iteeither,
80 that IN all my time don't know that
] ever remember seeing the ocean 50
IKE the top Of burning glass,