"Salters, your blame luck holds tighter'n a screw in a keg-head." "I've eyes.

It's Uncle Abishai." "You can't nowise tell fer sure." "The head-king of all Jonahs," groaned Tom Platt.

"Oh, Salters, Salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep ?" "How could I tell ?" said poor Salters, as the schooner swung up.
She might have been the very Flying Dutchman, so foul, draggled, and unkempt was every rope and stick aboard.

Her old-style quarterdeck was some or five feet high, and her rigging flew knotted and tangled like weed at a wharf-end.

She was running before the wind--yawing frightfully--her staysail let down to act as a sort of extra foresail,--"scandalized," they call it,--and her foreboom guyed out over the side.