Leach; at the same time, I wish from my heart that two-lugged rascal
would go about his business."
The ship tacked slowly but gracefully, for she was in what her master
termed "racing trim;" and as her bows fell off to the eastward, it became
pretty evident to all who understood the subject, that the two little
lug-sails that were "eating into the wind," as the sailors express it,
would weather upon her track ere she could stretch over to the other
shoal. Even the landsmen had some feverish suspicions of the truth, and
the steerage passengers were already holding a secret conference on the
possibility of hiding the pursued in some of the recesses of the ship.
"Such things were often done," one whispered to another, "and it was as
easy to perform it now as at any other time."
But Captain Truck viewed the matter differently: his vocation called him
three times a year into the roads at Portsmouth, and he felt little
disposition to embarrass his future intercourse with the place by setting
its authorities at a too open defiance. He deliberated a good deal on the
propriety of throwing his ship up into the wind, as she slowly advanced
towards the boat, and of inviting those in the latter to board him.
Opposed to this was the pride of profession, and Jack Truck was not a man
to overlook or to forget the "yarns" that were spun among his fellows at
the New England Coffee-house, or among those farming hamlets on the banks
of the Connecticut, whence all the packet-men are derived, and whither
they repair for a shelter when their careers are run, as regularly as the
fruit decays where it falleth, or the grass that has not been harvested or
cropped withers on its native stalk.
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