“‘Mark me well, lad! I’m tellin’ you this for your own good. You won’t get no mercy showed you; so don’t you show mercy t’ nobody else. If it comes t’ your life or the other man’s, you put _him_ out o’ the way afore he has time t’ put _you_. Don’t let un give battle. Hit un so quick as you’re able. It’ll be harder if you waits. You don’t have t’ be _fair_. ’Tisn’t expected. Nobody’s fair. An’—ah, now, Toby!’ says he, puttin’ his arm over the boy’s shoulder, ‘if you feels like givin’ way, an’ lettin’ the other man have your chance, an’ if you _can’t_ think o’ yourself, just you think o’ your mother. Ah, lad,’ says he, ‘she’d go an’ cry her eyes out if anything happened t’ you. Why, Toby—oh, my! now, lad—why, _think_ o’ the way she’d sit in her rockin’-chair, an’ put her pinny to her eyes, an’ cry, an’ cry! You’re the only one she’ve got, an’ she couldn’t, lad, she _couldn’t_ get along ’ithout you! Ah, she’d cry, an’ cry, an’ cry; an’ they wouldn’t be nothin’ in all the world t’ give her comfort! So don’t you go an’ grieve her, Toby,’ says he, ‘by bein’ tender-hearted. Ah, now, Toby!’ says he, ‘don’t you go an’ make your poor mother cry!’
“‘No, sir,’ says the lad. ‘I’ll not, sir!’
“‘That’s a good boy, Toby,’ says Jowl. ‘I ’low you’ll be a man when you grow up, if your mother doesn’t make a parson o’ you.’”
“Well,” he continued, “Tommy Jump kep’ the _Second t’ None_ beatin’ hither an’ yon off the Horse Islands for two days, expectin’ ice with the nor’east wind. ’Twas in the days afore the sealin’ was done in steamships from St. John’s, an’ they was a cloud o’ sail at the selsame thing. An’ we all put into White Bay, in the mornin’ in chase o’ the floe, an’ done a day’s work on the swiles [seals] afore night. But nex’ day we was jammed by the ice—the fleet o’ seventeen schooners, cotched in the bottom o’ the bay, an’ like t’ crack our hulls if the wind held. Whatever, the wind fell, an’ there come a time o’ calm an’ cold, an’ we was all froze in, beyond help, an’ could do nothin’ but wait for the ice t’ drive out an’ go abroad, an’ leave us t’ sink or sail, as might chance. Tommy Jump ’lowed the _Second t’ None_ would sink; said her timbers was sprung, an’ she’d leak like a basket, an’ crush like a eggshell, once the ice begun t’ drive an’ grind an’ rafter—leastwise, he _thunk_ so, admittin’ ’twas open t’ argument; an’ he wouldn’t go so far as t’ pledge the word of a gentleman that she _would_ sink.