The Republican journal., 1903-10-15
THE STORY OF CRANDALL.
BY w. R. PATTANGALL.

l don know WNeIlcI CdH WAie0 WY
story of Crandall or not. know IL
we'll enough, but it is hard story 10
write and no one could write IL as IL
ought to be written. ~
He was a sailor who lived in little
town way down in Washington county,
Maine. and he started out to be pretty
good fellow.
Like all the boys down there who go
to sea and are poor, he commenced III d
forecastle. forecaStle OF tWO-maSted
schooner. which is just about as large
as a big steamer trunk and fully as
comfortable to live in, except for the
bedbugs. ,.
He was wiry, black, little person,
with the litheness and activity of wild
cat. the nerve of Napoleon, and more
brains than the average. So OF course,
his stay in a schooner's forecastle was
awful short. 1t lasted just long enough
to go to New York, come back home,
and get to New York again.
The second time that he reached New
York, his schooner lay just outside, and
fastened to a China tea clipper, Loading
general cargo for Hong Kong. The con-
trast between the dirty little schooner,
discharging iron from the L. l. Company
and getting ready to load coal back, ana
the great, neat clipper ship with her
roval masts sticking away up into the
sky and her yards and maze OF running
gear attracted him at once. And When
he saw her captain-this was back IN
the seventies, when clipper ship cap
tains owned every port they went into
he regarded him with more awe and
yeneration than in his later days he
would have felt for every President OF
the United States from " aShington to
Roosevelt, if he had seen them all
standing in a row on the White House
steps.
lie stood it three days, which was
long time for Crandall to stand any
thing even in those days, and then he
badgered the captain of the schooner
into paying him off and badgered the
mate of the ship into taking hlm ABOARD
to work for nothing until SAILING tlme,
and then to ship him as hoy, at elght
dollars month, which was hall WhaC
he got on the schooner. But he dldn
care anything about pay, he had made
up his mind to go to sea in ship and
some day to be captain OF one:
He was two years IN that snip, pelole
the mast.
Two years of heart breaking, cease
less, tiresome, mOnotonouS work. but
he didn't mind, for there never was a
moment, waking or sleeping, at the
wheel. on the lookout, on lee yard
arm in gale of wind, loosing royal
in the sunny southeast trades, on deck
or in his bunk, that he did not dream
happy dreams of the time when he
would be captain of a ship like that,
and think of where he would go and
what he would do.
When the two years were up the ship
went into dry-dock to be released,
and he went home.
A new bark was building at his town
and he went to work on her in rigging
crew, and having a quick knack OF max
ing friends, he managed to get acqualnt-
ed with the captain who was to take her,
and by shipping little under wages,
went out second mate III her
She was in the western ocean trade,
and for three years, Cardiff and Liver
pool and Belfast. Genoa, Havre, and
MarSeilles were as familiar to him as
New York or Boston and much more
so than his own town of Penmaquon,
for he visited there but once in that
time.
By this time, lie had begun smoking
and chewing tobacco, but he haQ no
other vices. The captain he was with
was temperance man and mad impress
ed Oh him that the sure and quick way
to get vessel was to keep sober, work
hard and save money enough to buy
share i'll some good employ.
That was what he wanted, to get
vessel. so he worked hard, kept sober,
and saved his money, living a clean, hard
life and still dreaming, waking or sleep
ing, of his ship.
When he was u years old, the firm
built his captain new vessel, first
class, oId-fashioned down east thousand
ton bark, oak built and copper fastened,
good enough bar accidents, to live fifty
years, and when Captain Cowan took
her he put Crandall in as mate.
There never was better man. He
learned navigation, and as for the rest
of it he was what sailors call ''a good
sailor man." in other words, he knew a
vessel from stem to stern and from
truck to keelson. H could be painter,
a carpenter, a sallmaker, a rlgger, a
sparmaker or anything else-in short,
sailor.
He could handle his vessel in fine
weather as lady rider handles
thorough bred mare, and in a storm as
a cowboy handles bucking broncho.
He could take a drunken crew OF
toughs out of sailor boarding house
in New York and before he reached the
latitude Of Bermuda, transform them
into quiet, serviceable, gentlemanly sail
ors. Sometimes he accomplished this
with diplomacy, sometimes-not often
with iron Delaying pins, and old Cap
tain Cowan was in love with him.
They were in the River Platte trade
now, running hard pine out from Pen
sacola and Brunswick and bringing
hides back, or coming in ballast to some
other West Indian port, and the hong
trips of forty, fifty or sixty days with
out seeing land gave him the opportuni-
ty he loved-to keep the bark looking
like a yacht, and dream long, slow,
happy dreams of the ship that was to
be his some day
He made trip home once during
this period of his life and stayed three
months while the bark made West
India trip. 1t was summer and Captain
Cowan did not wish to go to a yellow
fever port and so he went home himself
and took Crandall with him.
That was when he married He met
a little, round, red-cheeked, blue-eyed
Yankee girl, who never had been three
miles from home in her life-a girl with
an honest heart, a clean mind and as
much imagination as duck. He spent
two months telling her abOut strange