Altogether, we was in that condition
where the doctor might have held out some hopes.
And, in spite of the cold, we was noticing how Phil was sailing that
three-cornered sneak-box--noticing and criticising; at least, I was, and
Cap'n Jonadab, being, as I've said, the best skipper of small craft
from Provincetown to Cohasset Narrows, must have had some ideas on the
subject. Your old chum, Catesby-Stuart, thought he was mast-high
so fur's sailing was concerned, anybody could see that, but he had
something to larn. He wasn't beginning to get out all there was in that
ice-boat. And just then along comes another feller in the same kind of
hooker and gives us a hail. There was two other chaps on the boat with
him.
"Hello, Phil!" he yells, rounding his flat-iron into the wind abreast of
ours and bobbing his night-cap. "I hoped you might be out. Are you game
for a race?"
"Archie," answers our skipper, solemn as a setting hen, "permit me to
introduce to you Cap'n Jonadab Wixon and Admiral Barzilla Wingate, of
Orham, on the Cape."
I wasn't expecting to fly an admiral's pennant quite so quick, but I
managed to shake out through my teeth--they was chattering like a box
of dice--that I was glad to know the feller. Jonadab, he rattled loose
something similar.
"The Cap'n and the Admiral," says Phil, "having sailed the raging
main for lo! these many years, are now favoring me with their advice
concerning the navigation of ice-yachts.
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