human
The words received some grumbled answer. Ben wandered away disconsolate to perch on a mooring-post and argue that there was no reason at all why he shouldn't go aboard. The last of the sunlight dissolved in a thickening of cloud-wrack on the horizon; a small southerly breeze was shifting to the eastern quarter when an ancient tricorne hat appeared over the side--Mr. Shawn about to step ashore, frowning a moment at sight of Ben, but relaxing at once and smiling, coming to sink in an easy squat by the mooring-post, careless of the old green coat that settled around his feet.
gpt
I'm after passing the time with the watchman, wishing I could make the man talk of something but fish. O to listen to the long Gloucester face of him, and he with scarce a sight of Gloucester the twenty years past by his own telling! Shawn's knife gouged a splinter from the planking and went to whittling under big knowing hands.
human
Will it be a truce to studies, Mr. Cory?
gpt
A short one, sir. Mr. Hibbs gave me the afternoon.
human
Boy--look at that bowsprit line. Mother of God, will your mind's eye see her under a fair wind?--a following wind, say, to belly that fores'l, to make her lean toward the faraway like the goddess she is, man? Do you see it?
gpt
I think I do. I've never been under sail, Mr. Shawn.
human
You will, one day.
gpt
It seems not to be my great-uncle's wish.
human
Then maybe not till it's you with the full years of a man, but you'll be going. Shawn frowned at the shape growing under his fingers as if he faced a strong light but would not turn away.
gpt
Maybe it'll destroy you, maybe not, but whatever time you'll be going, and you that young, why, Beneen--may I call you so?--you'll see places I'll never live to see at all, now that's no lie.
human
May I ask, have you spoken to Mr. Jenks, about that matter you mentioned to my great-uncle?
gpt
Faith, I've not had opportunity. Shawn smiled at his sliver, where now grew a rounded head and the suggestion of a face, and his knife defined deep curves of female waist and hips.
human
Indisposed he hath been, and not receiving visitors. Shawn drooped an eyelid.
gpt
From the little black wench I understood the condition might continue to prevail.
human
Uncle John told me the Captain never drinks at sea.
gpt
I meant no disparagement. May I ask what years you have itself?
human
I am seventeen, sir--last February.
gpt
And I thinking you nearer twenty. Shawn whittled with tiny careful strokes.
human
Parents not living?
gpt
They were both killed in the French attack on Deerfield.
human
Forgive my blundering! I remember hearing about Deerfield, in London. 1704 surely, and I navigator of a Dutch brig in the spring of that year, homeward bound out of the Moluccas for Amsterdam, where I left her and so to London, and was the long time cooling my heels waiting a passage for these colonies, with a thought of settling here--a'n't it the laughable way of a man never to know himself at all? I'll never settle, nowhere. In less than a month I was hunting another berth, and do be still hunting. I'll never settle anywhere till I die, and won't that be under the salt water where nothing marks the place a man's vanity ended?... Killed by the savages?
gpt
My mother was. It was a French officer shot my father.
human
And such is war, said Shawn; the mermaid sagged in his hand.
gpt
Wars, wars, and all the time the world scarce explored! War was never no profit to a living soul, Beneen, unless it might be a king or a priest.