Omaha daily bee., 1889-10-17
SEA TALK IN NANTUCKET
How Conversation Is Sailed With
Sailor EXoresSionS.


To the stranger many of the cXprcs-
sions he hears in conversation are odd :,
says n Nantucket letter to the Detroit
Free Press, and sometimes are unintel-
lgible, unless the surroundings and
context will help him to fish out the
meaning. | was told the other day that
Il certain man on the island who is in
perpetual trouble IN his affairs was "al-
ways runnin' afoul of himself = (Which
way are you headiug?" was the ques-
tion asked me by old Captain Folgcr.
as he met me in his old box wagon in
the outskirts of the village going to
town. And what is tho town." To
the native it is not Boston or New York,
but the village of Nantucket. The car
penter who framed a house for u
stranger asked him whether he would
have the joists run fore and aft or
'thwartship." For "a stranger | say.
BY a stranger is meant visitor to the
island, but those VINO remain long
enough to get acquainted come to De
known us "off-islanders. "
| went few days since with lady to
Wauwinet lin team a team" on
Nantucket is horse and wagon, and
the wagon is as much a component part
of the team as the horse. The team
was run by Capt. Baxter, long since re-
tired from active service on II whale
ship, and now, at eighty-tive years. he is
still about and during the season carries
parties about town and over the island.
How do | get imp the lady asked
him; "the wagon is too high"
Get in astern,' said the captain.
He pulled out the tail-board and the
lady climbed in as one would in an ON
nibus, but not so easily by any means.
After we had started the captain said
to her:
Miss, won't you shift to the wind
ward littlc?"
She did as requested after learning
where the ''windward' was. But even
then he was not satisfied, for in Il few
minutes he asked her to get up while
he moved her seat"a little farther aft. ="
In dark night a 'Sconset woman,
when driving from the town in IA thick
fog, got off the road into the moors and
it was a full half-hour before she got
back into the travelled way. When re-
lating the circumstance she said that
she had lost her ''reconin' in coming
out"
bought an old Connecticut clock in
the town and the bric IA brac deaier told
me that he had lashed the pendulum
to the side OF the case SO that IL wouldn 3
got adrift."
Inc Othef uily lnefe was II ram lOr u
half-hour, in which there were one or
two inOifensive flashes of lightning fol-
lowed by apolOgetic reverbcrntions of
thunder. Quite a tempest" said ola
Captain Pittman, us | passed by. And
let me say that any thunder storm in
Nantucket, heavy or light, is temp
est" The more binding the lightning
and the louder the peals of thuu-
der the bigger the tempest, and vice
versa. A young woman who had accepted
n position as seamstross, when asked to
do some work in the family, declined,
saying that she ''didn't ship for that
kind of work" The butcher and baker
and gardener do not deliver the COM
modities you have ordered; they ''land"
them at your ''porch;" and on Nan
tucket the porch" is the kitchen,
though sometimes il is called the cook
room" Bring the skein taut," said
a Nantucket girl TO me when wns hold
ing the wOrsted for her to wind in Il
ball.
a fisherman told me that once when
fishing on Tuckernuck shoals he found
a drowned man in the water.
WAS he on the bottom ?"
mo, he WAS tloating on even keel"