man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile; the result was an idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn off, the wood was gray and cracked. The Polly's galley was entirely hidden under a deckload of shingles and laths in bunches; the after-house was broad and loomed high above the rail in contrast to the mere cubbies which were provided for the other fore-and-afters in the flotilla which came ratching in toward Saturday Cove.
The Polly, being old enough to be celebrated, had been the subject of a long-coast lyric of seventeen verses, any one of which was capable of producing most horrible profanity from Captain Epps Candage, her master, whenever he heard the ditty echoing over the waves, sung by a satirist aboard another craft.
In that drifting wind there was leisure; a man on board a lime-schooner at a fairly safe distance from the Polly found inclination and lifted his voice:
“Ow-w-w, here comes the Polly with a lopped-down sail, And Rubber-boot Epps, is a-settin' on her rail. How-w-w long will she take to get to Boston town? Can't just tell 'cause she's headin' up and down.”
“You think that kind o' ky-yi is funny, do you, you walnut-nosed, blue-gilled, goggle-eyed son of a dough-faced americaneezus?” bellowed Captain Candage, from his post at the Polly's wheel.
“Father!” remonstrated a girl who stood in the companionway, her elbows propped on the hatch combings. “Such language! You stop it!”
“It ain't half what I can do when I'm fair started,” returned the captain.
“You never say such things on shore.”
“Well, I ain't on shore now, be I? I'm on the high seas, and I'm talking to fit the occasion. Who's running this schooner, you or me?”
She met his testiness with a spirit of her own, “I'm on board here, where I don't want to be, because of your silly notions, father. I have the right to ask you to use decent language, and not shame us both.”
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