Excerpt from Salt Seas and Sailormen

The neatly dressed and rather pretty stenographer desisted from her typewriting and listened to the conversation between old John Lovell and Billy Spencer, skipper of the Boston fishing schooner, Alfarata. She couldn't help listening. Outside the glass-partitioned private office the dialogue was audible - too interestingly audible for Miss Comstock to carry on her work.

"Sail carrying don't pay the vessel owner!" Old Johnny was shouting in the fashion he had when excited. "Last trip you tore the jib to ribbons and split your fores'l. This time you've broke the main-boom and split the mains'l. You're rim-racking a fine vessel with your sail-dragging"

"Now, Mr. Lovell, " interrupted a soothing voice, "don't take on so. Sure, if you'd ha' been in my place and saw Jack Macpherson in the Allie Watson warming her home to Boston under four lowers and me jogging home easylike under Bank sail, you'd have said 'Go to it and trim him!'"

"Humph!" A pause. "And did you trim him?"

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