As I was
unwilling to lose both my dogs, I was obliged to overlook it, and take
him back to my confidence. A strange story, ain't it, Mr Slick.'
"'Well, it is,' sais I, 'but dogs do certainly beat all natur, that's
a fact.'
"But to get back to the 'Black Hawk:' as soon as we anchored, I
proposed to Cutler that we should go ashore and visit the 'natives.'
While he was engaged giving his orders to the mate, I took the
opportunity of inquiring of the pilot about the inhabitants. This is
always a necessary precaution. If you require light-houses, buoys, and
sailing directions to enter a port, you want similar guides when you
land. The navigation there is difficult also, and it's a great thing
to know who you are going to meet, what sort of stuff they are made
of, and which way to steer, so as to avoid hidden shoals and
sand-bars, for every little community is as full of them as their
harbour. It don't do, you know, to talk tory in the house of a
radical, to name a bishop to a puritan, to let out agin smugglin' to a
man who does a little bit of business that way himself; or, as the
French say, 'to talk of a rope in a house where the squatter has been
hanged.' If you want to please a guest, you must have some of his
favourite dishes at dinner for him; and if you want to talk agreeably
to a man, you must select topics he has a relish for.
"So," sais I, "where had we better go, Pilot, when we land?"
"Do you see that are white one-story house there?" said he.
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