When I had finished he
drew his hand slowly down his beard and a thick sound came from behind
his fingers. But he did not speak.
Then I suggested quietly that Phil's dollars could be put to a better use
than for prog and liquor.
He did not reply to this at all; but after a moment's pause, in which he
seemed to be studying the gambols of a squirrel in a pine tree, he rubbed
his chin nervously, and more in soliloquy than conversation said: "I
never had but two pals that was pals through and through. And one was
Phil and the other was Jo--Jo Brackenbury."
Here Roscoe's hand, which had been picking at the bark of a poplar,
twitched suddenly.
The man continued: "Poor Jo went down in the 'Fly Away' when she swung
with her bare ribs flat before the wind, and swamped and tore upon the
bloody reefs at Apia. . . . God, how they gnawed her! And never a rag
holdin' nor a stick standin', and her pretty figger broke like a tin
whistle in a Corliss engine. And Jo Brackenbury, the dandiest rip, the
noisiest pal that ever said 'Here's how!' went out to heaven on a tearing
sea."
"Jo Brackenbury--" Roscoe repeated musingly.
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