By this time I was lost entirely. What to make of the proceedings was beyond guessing. Boylike, I thought men always acted with some big idea in view, but the next minute Eli and Cap'n Jesse had grabbed holt of one another and was scuffling and giggling around the deck like a pair of kids. Captain Jess was stout about the shoulders; he had Eli waving in the breeze once, but at last Eli gave him a back trip and down they come. Then up they got; each cut off a hunk of chewing and began to talk as if they'd acted perfectly reasonable. Seems that's the way they always come together. The three of us took a look about the boat. She was an able, fine three-master, the pride of Jesse's soul; 'most as big as a ship. Them were the days when most folk built deep and narrer, but Jesse had ideas of his own when he laid down the lines of the _Matilda_, of Boston. She looked bluff and heavy in the bows and her bilges turned hard, but she walked over the water, and don't you forget it. Moreover, she was the kindest boat in a seaway I ever boarded. Old _Matilda_ girl would heel just so far; after that the worst draft that ever whistled wouldn't put her under an inch; she'd part with her sticks first. Handy boat, a schooner, too; sensible and Yankeefied. Lord! what a claw-and-messing on board a square-rigger, compared to it! And taking two men to the schooner's one at that. The _Matilda_ was fitted for passengers. She had eight nice clean cabins, and fine quarters for the crew. In most such boats you can't more 'n stand up, if you stretch between hair and shoe-leather the way I do, but here there was head-room a-plenty. And Uncle Jesse ate the boys well, too. Good old craft and good old boy running her. Soon's you realized that all his spitting and swearing and roaring didn't amount to no more than a hearty sneeze, you got along with Jesse great, if you was fit to get along with anybody. We took aboard four passengers that night, one of 'em being a lady. The next morning at four we pulled out with the ebb-tide. Before we got into the open water, I felt such a joy boiling inside me I had to sing, no matter what the feelings of the rest were. Oh! Oh! The blue, bright sky; and the blue, crinkly, good-smelling water; the quantities of fresh air around, and _Matilda_ picking up her white skirts and skipping for Panama! Neither man nor money will ever give me a feeling like that again. But then,--ah, then! And there's 'most always a then,--when the _Matilda_ tried to spear a gull with her bowsprit, and, shamefaced at the failure above, tried to harpoon some little fishy with the same weapon,--why, I hope I'll never have a feeling like that again, neither. I hung over a bunk like a snarl of rope. Jesse come down and grinned at me. I couldn't even get mad. "Tell mother I died thinking of her," was all I could say.