with your stupid cackle."

So the indentured apprentices and their knapsacks got on board, while
Sylvanus, _alias_ The Crew, stopped laughing, and put a pound or two
extra on to the halliards. "Wilks," said Coristine, "it'll puzzle the
women to find us out on our ocean home."

Wilkinson saw the captain hauling at the halliards of the after-mainsail
and went to his assistance, while Coristine, doffing his coat, lent a
hand to The Crew, when, by their combined efforts, the sails were all
hoisted and the schooner floated away from the pier. The lawyer walked
over the deck with a nautical air, picking up all loose ends of rope and
coiling them neatly over his left arm. The coils he deposited carefully
about the feet of the masts, to the astonishment of Wilkinson, who
regarded his friend as a born seaman, and to the admiration of the
captain and The Crew. The schoolmaster felt that Wordsworth was not the
thing for the water; he should have brought Falconer or Byron. So he
stuck to the captain, who was a very intelligent man of his class, and
discussed with him the perils and advantages of lake navigation. They
neither of them smoked, nor, said the captain, did he often drink; when
he did, he liked to have it good. Thereupon Wilkinson produced what
remained in his flask, which his commanding officer took down neat at a
gulp, signifying, as he ruefully gazed upon the depleted vessel, that a
man might go long before he'd get such stuff as that. Then the
conversation turned on the prohibitory Scott Act, which opened the vials
of the old man's wrath, for making "the biggest lot of hypocrites and
law-breakers and unlicensed shebeens and drunkards the country had ever
seen." The schoolmaster, as in duty bound, tried to defend the Act, but
all in vain, so he was glad to change the subject and discuss the crops,
politics, and education. This conversation took place at what the