They had both met with
some queer ones in their travels, and they compared notes: but they
always came back to this superlative old fraud. After long wise and
disconnected talk about the set of the wind, or the rates of pay on
various lines, or stowage, or freights, or rigs, or currents, or the
characters of various skippers and mates, or the liveliness or
sulkiness or homeliness or fickleness of this or that kind of cargo,
they would revert extra-professionally to Uncle Tibe: of whom the old
stories would be repeated over and over, with long pauses, chuckles,
slow appreciations--'Ay, Tibe! . . . He was a none-such, if you
like!'
"Will you believe me that, in the end, these two honest fellows
murdered each other over this more-than-half-mythical Tibe? No, you
can't guess what it's like, towards the finish. They sat side by
side on the mid-thwart, fishing over either gunwale--or leaning over,
pretending. They were almost too weak to haul in a fish over four
pounds had they caught one, and for two days their throats had been
parched so that speech came with difficulty.
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