" He gazed at him as at a superior being.
Captain Jim knew that Anne wrote, but he had never
taken that fact very seriously. Captain Jim thought
women were delightful creatures, who ought to have the
vote, and everything else they wanted, bless their
hearts; but he did not believe they could write.
"Jest look at A Mad Love," he would protest. "A woman
wrote that and jest look at it--one hundred and three
chapters when it could all have been told in ten. A
writing woman never knows when to stop; that's the
trouble. The p'int of good writing is to know when to
stop."
"Mr. Ford wants to hear some of your stories, Captain
Jim" said Anne. "Tell him the one about the captain
who went crazy and imagined he was the Flying
Dutchman."
This was Captain Jim's best story. It was a compound
of horror and humor, and though Anne had heard it
several times she laughed as heartily and shivered as
fearsomely over it as Mr. Ford did. Other tales
followed, for Captain Jim had an audience after his own
heart. He told how his vessel had been run down by a
steamer; how he had been boarded by Malay pirates; how
his ship had caught fire; how he helped a political
prisoner escape from a South African republic; how he
had been wrecked one fall on the Magdalens and stranded
there for the winter; how a tiger had broken loose on
board ship; how his crew had mutinied and marooned him
on a barren island--these and many other tales, tragic
or humorous or grotesque, did Captain Jim relate.
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