"No. I haven't done that."
"Humph!" was the rejoinder. "You're just as much afeared on him as the
rest on us. You take it from me, Miss Lou, he's been a hard man on his
own quarter-deck. He ain't no more like Cap'n Abe than buttermilk's
like tartaric acid.
"Cap'n Abe warn't no seafarin' man," pursued Betty, "though he had the
lingo on his tongue and 'peared as salt as a dried pollock. It's in my
mind that he wouldn't never re'lly go to sea--'nless he was egged on to
it."
Here it was again! That same doubt as expressed by Washy Gallup--the
suggestion that Cap'n Abe Silt possessed an inborn fear of the sea that
he had never openly confessed.
"Why do you say that, Betty?" Louise hesitatingly asked the old woman.
"'Cause I've knowed Cap'n Abe for more'n twenty year, and in all that
endurin' time he's stuck as close to shore as a fiddler. With all his
bold talk about ships and sailin', I tell you he warn't a seafarin'
man."
"But what has Uncle Amazon to do with the mystery of his brother's
absence?" demanded Louise.
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