The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-05-26

and give a pull on the weather topsul
sheet!" And while he was aft executing
the orders of the officer of the deck Walker
would take up the story, which he knew
was only the offspring of Fishers fertile
brain, and carry it forward in a way well
worthy of the wonderful Imagination of
the narrator then browsing down. the
topsail sheet.
yes, Fisher and me were working in
in" forgetting the name and casting
about for some locality sin Humboldt
that's the place-Sax's off in his bearings.
and we had to rig jeerfalls and der
rick them out by the roots. Why,
that's nothing to what them land-lubber
grangers do. They are in fact better sailor
men than half the beachbirds in this
hooker. Up in Colusa, where the Sacra-
mento River always runs dry in summer
time, they shift the steamers into field
machines and cut, thrash and grind their
grain all in one blessed job. When the
fall freshets come they caulk up the open
seams of their mbined harvesters, launch
them in the river and go to market. They
sometimes cut their wheat with gagget
called header craft that runs on two
side paddle-wheels and is steered with a
little wheel in the stern. When you
port your helm and haul in on the star
board mules headgear. After bit the
brutes themselves can navigate the whole
business by backing or filling of their own
accord whenever the tiller is put up or
down, and on the southern deserts the
sectionmen rig their handcars with slid
lng-gunter sails and just howl before the
twelve-knot sandstorms that blow in that
locality. L tell you, shipmates, the sea is
going ashore and the sailor is more at
home herding. calves than hauling on a
weatherbrace"
Now it must not be understood that all
drank deep at the Pierian spring of pas
toral lore, for one in that ships company
held aloof from the forecastle audience
and walked his plank in gloomy medita-
ton. He was never drawn within the
charmed circle that Walker woye around
himself. He took no stock in country
Joys, he didn't believe there was any, or in
fact any pleasure away from the ship He
didn't believe in a shore life nor in the
existence OF a shore life. He never con-
tradlcted Walker and his able coad tutor,
Fisher; he was Indifferent to their ''buz-
zing," as he called it, as he was to the
breeze that blew down the tube of the
wlndsall into the wardroom. He wouldn't
exchange his solitary plank in the spar
deck for $50 acres OF land in Paradise.
And the watch on deck sitting on the
hatch-combings and in the coils of gear
hanging to the fife-rail pins saw in lively
fancy steamboat launching itself out in
the harvest field, the intelligent mule box
ing. the, compass, fatcar close-hauled
under close-reefed jib and spanker ratch-
ing for the distant depot and the sand
waves rafting against her weather-trucks
or battering the ears off the brakeman on
the lookout. When their own craft labored
under the weighty bearing down of the
wild tempest and the taut weather shrouds
hummed like harpstrings in a demons
dirge to the touch of the midnight storm,
they thought of the pastoral on the sweet,
green hills, where the polished pillow turned
up the rich mold, and where the
ex-sailorman led the mild young bovines
through the flowery meads, eternal as the
deathless bloom amid the unwithering
bowers of Amaranth. When the soft tropic
winds were grooming low in the white hol-
lows of the spreading sail, and the great
ship heaved to the rounded slope of a sum-
mer sea, when all life stood in bright peri
helion and the blend of the blue of the
sky and the blue of the wave dimmed the
far horizons line, they saw the sheaves of
wheat lying like golden mamma on the