Captain James had barely recovered his outraged dignity when he was met by a quaint figure advancing out of the thickly-packed crowd on the whaler’s quarter-deck. “I’m Cap’n Fish, at yew’re service, sir. We haint over ’n’ above spacious in eour ’commodation, but yew’re all welcome t’ the best we hev’; ’n’ I’ll try ’n’ beat up f’r th’ Cape ’n’ lan’ ye’s quick ’s it kin be did.”
The Englishman had hardly voice to reply; but, recollecting himself, he said, “I’m afraid, Captain Fish, that we shall be sadly in your way for dealing with those whales we saw you secure yesterday.”
“Not much yew wunt,” was the unexpected reply. “We hed t’ make eour ch’ice mighty sudden between them fish ’n’ yew, ’n’, of course, though we’re noways extravagant, they hed t’ go.”
The simple nobility of that homely man, in thus for self and crew passing over the loss of from eight to ten thousand dollars at the first call from his kind, was almost too much for Captain James, who answered unsteadily--
“If I have any voice in the matter, there will be no possibility of the men, who dared the terrors of fire and sea to save me and my charges, being heavily fined for their humanity.”
“Oh, _thet’s_ all right,” said Captain Silas Fish.
There is something in the stress and struggle of tumultuous life in a vast city like London that to me is almost unbearable. Accustomed from a very early age to the illimitable peace of the ocean, to the untainted air of its changeless circle of waves and roofless dome of sky, I have never been able to endure satisfactorily the unceasing roar of traffic in crowded streets, the relentless rush of mankind in the race for life which is the normal condition of our great centres of civilization. Yet, for many years, being condemned by circumstances to abide in the midst of urban strife and noise without a break from one weary year to another, I lived to mourn departed peace, and feed my longing for it on memory alone, without a hope that its enjoyments would ever again be mine. Then came unexpected relief, an opportunity to visit a secluded corner of Wiltshire, that inland division of England which is richer, perhaps, in memorials of our wonderful history than any other part of these little islands, crowded as they are with reminiscences of bygone glorious days.