She will not
always be a bud, however; yet the opening flower has greater charms."
"Bless my stars! boy, are you losing your senses?" asked the astonished
Sampson, as Harry walked the deck in raptures, talking as fast as his
tongue could fly, as it appeared to the old tar, in riddles.
"What's got into your head, boy? I have always taken you to be the most
sensible person aboard, but shiver my topsails, if the fellow don't
talk as if he expected to find old Vineyard Sound turned into a flower
garden, with a fairy made fast to every other blossom!"
As Sampson delivered himself of this ludicrous remark, Harry burst into
a loud fit of laughter, and handing the tar his glass, he sang out
"Sankoty light, ahoy!" which brought all hands on deck in an instant,
rubbing open their eyes, (for it was but the second watch in the
morning,) to catch sight of the first object visible of their homes.
"Three cheers for old Nantucket, and young Grosvenor!" shouted the
captain; and the ready huzza which went up, amid the waving of sundry
flannel shirts, old boots, and forsaken tarpaulins, which had been
caught up by the unshorn tars, as the sound of their near proximity to
home aroused them from the dreamy visions thereof to the vivid
realities, were borne over the waters which separated them from thence,
deceiving the red-combed heralds of the day into the belief of an early
dawn, judging from the signs of recognition which met their approach, as
the first tinge of red lit up the eastern sky.
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