Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II. " Tis Dogged As Does It." THE good fore-and-aft schooner Rippling Wave had made a most successful run to her market, which happened this year to be in the Mediterranean. The fact that she had not left the Labrador coast till late in October was no fault of hers or the skipper's; for if there was one ocean-going skipper on the coast known to be more of a "snapper" than the rest, that man was Elijah Anderson. When the fish-planter saw Old 'Lige clewing down his hatches, and trimming the Rippling Wave for the "tri-across," he felt satisfied that if his catch lost in value by being late, it would not be the fault of a craft whose record "couldn't be beat," or of a master who was afraid to drive her. If all the tales were true, Old 'Lige had been known to clap on his topsails when other men were lacing their reef-earrings, and so he would give them the"go-by." Many a time, by pressing her, he had got clear of one of those cyclonic storms which are the bane of the "roaring forties" in the late fall of the year. But this year easterly winds and the foggy blanket they fling over the coast had hidden the sunshine that the fishermen need to dry their catches of fish, and 'Lige had been jammed in and kept waiting for his load, long after he had hoped to be under the sunny skies of the Mediterranean. But to the Rippling Wave, as to everything else that waits, the great day had come at last. The cargo was all stowed—hatches sealed down—moorings cast off—the parting jollifications held. She had not even to delay for a tow through the narrow gulch between two islands that had served her for a harbor, in order to wait in the roadstead for a wind that would give her slant enough to clear the off- lying shoals and reefs before dark. A spanking nor'wester had sprung up just as Old 'L...