His picturesque appearance had impressed us equally during the day, but
until now we had not met in concert about Christian Garth, for such we
soon found was the name of our polite pilot.
He was a Jerseyman, he told us, of German descent, married to the girl
of his heart, and living on the coast of that adventurous little State,
famous alike for its peaches and wrecks.
"Sall had a stocking full of money," he informed us, "silver, and
copper, and gold, when he married her, for her mother had been a famous
huckster--and never missed her post in the Philadelphia market for
thirty years, and this was her child's inheritance, and with this money
he had fixed up his old hut, till it looked 'e'en a'most inside like a
ship-captain's cabin.'"
And now Sall wanted him to stay at home, he informed us, with her and
the children, but somehow or other he could never tarry long at the
hearth, for the sea pulled him like it was his mother, and the spell of
the tides was on him, and he must foller even if he went to his own
destruction, like them men that liquor lures to loss, or the love of
mermaids.
"All land service is dead when likened to the sea," he said, shaking his
great water-dog head, and looking out lovingly upon his idol. "But ships
a'n't like they oncst was, ladies," he added, "before men put these here
heavy iron ingines to work in 'em--it's like cropping a bird's wing to
make a river-boat of a ship, and a dead, dead shame to shorten sails
till it looks like a young gal dressed in breeches or any other
onnatural thing--for a sailing-ship and a full-flowing petticoat always
rise up in a true man's mind together--God bless them both, I say.
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