and stood watch and watch with him in this howlin' Southern rumpus
they're kickin' up all along the coast, as if she was a man herself.
Well, jes as I hauled up at the wharf at 'Frisco, she comes aboard.

"'You're Cap Bunker?' she says.

"'That's me, ma'am,' I says.

"'You're a Northern man and you go with your kind,' sez she; 'but you're
a white man, and thar's no cur blood in you.' But you ain't listenin',
Mollie; you're dead tired, lass,"--with a commiserating look at her now
whitening face,--"and I'll haul in line and wait. Well, to cut it short,
she wanted me to take her down the coast a bit to where she could
join Marion. She said she'd been shook by his friends, followed by
spies--and, blame my skin, Mollie, ef that proud woman didn't break down
and CRY like a baby. Now, Mollie, what got ME in all this, was that them
Chivalry folks--ez was always jawin' about their 'Southern dames' and
their 'Ladye fairs,' and always runnin' that kind of bilge water outer
their scuppers whenever they careened over on a fair wind--was jes the
kind to throw off on a woman when they didn't want her, and I kinder
thought I'd like HER to see the difference betwixt the latitude o'
Charleston and Cape Cod. So I told her I didn't want the jewelry and
dimons she offered me, but if she would come down to the wharf, after
dark, I'd smuggle her aboard, and I'd allow to the men that she was YOUR
AUNTIE ez I was givin' a free passage to! Lord! dear! think o' me takin'
the name o' Mollie Bunker's aunt in vain for that sort o' woman! Think
o' me," continued Captain Bunker with a tentative chuckle, "sort o'
pretendin' to hand yo'r auntie to Kernel Marion for--for his lady love!
I don't wonder ye's half frighted and half laffin'," he added, as his
wife uttered a hysterical cry; "it WAS awful! But it worked, and I got