chafe--chafe tarrible sometime. Nineteen year those chain ban chafe so.
One time he blow ten day without stop, but" (he removed his big pipe to
laugh aloud)--"but ten day over and she right dere. Good ol' 67, she ban
right dere. I axpect ol' 67, she be here on Yoodgment Day." Old Nelson
put his pipe back, puffed three times, frowned at the checker-board,
scratched his yellow head, let drop his eyelids and pondered. At about
the time Bowen began to think the keeper must be taking a nap, a long
arm swooped down and moved a black checker one square north-easterly.

Now, if Bowen had been riding to anchor in that one spot with old 67 for
nineteen years, perhaps he, too, would have paid small attention to a
gale of wind and a high sea; but he was a shore-going man, and he grew
very, very weary of the jumping and the rolling, and of the everlasting
rattling and chafing of the iron chains in the iron hawse-holes.

Two chains there were, like double-leashes to a whippet's throat. The
heave of the sea would get her and up she would ride, shaking, snapping,
quivering to get her head. Up, up she would go, and as she struggled up,
up, Bowen, watching, would find himself crying out, "By the Lord, she's
parted them." But no--Gr-r--the iron chains would go, Kr-r the iron
hawse-holes would echo, and, suddenly brought to, dead she would stop,
shake herself, and again shake herself to get free; but always the
savage chains would be there to her throat, and down she would fall
trembling; and the white slaver would scatter a cable length from her
jaws as she fell.

Bowen, with an arm hooked into a weather-stay, would stand out and watch
her by the hour; and "Some fine night you'll break loose," he would say
over and over to himself, "and then there'll be the devil to pay around
here," and on returning to the cabin he would tell Nelson about it.