"There's a deal of sly fun in some of those old Quakers," said Captain Upton. "I recollect when I went down to ship in the Poor Richard, as boatsteerer, 'Uncle Peleg' offered me the eightieth lay, but I struck for the seventieth. I knew I could get it in another ship, though I rather preferred to go in this one for the same lay. So I was as independent as a woodsawyer's clerk, and wouldn't budge tack nor sheet. After chaffering for some time, Uncle Peleg began to scratch the sand with his ivory-headed cane, in a meditative way. Said he: "'James I want thee to go in the ship, and I will give thee--' Here he marked a 7 in the sand, and then slowly carried his cane round in a circle, and resting the point of it, looked in my face. "'Yes,' said I, 'I'll go for that.' "But as I spoke, with a slight movement of the wrist he finished the last figure, by swinging a tangent to the circle. As I looked down again, it read 79. "'No,' said I, indignantly, 'I'll see you hanged first!' "'James, James,' said Uncle Peleg, 'don't lose thy temper. Thee shall go in the Poor Richard, and,'--nudging me in the ribs,'we'll have no _tail_ to the matter at all.' "'All right,' I answered. He rubbed it out again with his foot. "'Now,' said he, 'come right up to the store and put thy name down. Thee must go in the ship; but really, James, I didn't think thee would ask me such a lay as that. Thee needn't tell the other boatsteerers what thee gets.'" Father Grafton shook his sides with merriment at this anecdote, and the captain now rose to go below. "Well, Blacksmith," said he, "you are making rather a crooked wake. If you don't keep her straighter, the Pandora will overhaul us. Well, what do you think of these Portuguese?" "I didn't go ashore, sir," answered I. "I only saw the boatmen that came off, and I thought they had all broken out of a lunatic asylum." "I don't wonder at that," he said. "They were all talkers and no listeners. But did you notice any of them with a finger cut off?" "Yes, sir, I saw two, and I thought it a little remarkable; and now I remember, our Antone has lost his, too." "Yes," said he, "about every third man has his forefinger amputated. That's to escape military service, by disabling themselves from pulling a trigger. You see there's a certain proportion of them conscripted every year, and sent off to Portugal to serve in the army." "Do you mean, sir," I asked, "that they cut the forefinger off, or have it cut off, designedly?"