Deephaven by Sarah Orne Jewett — Read

I should consider my account of Deephaven society incomplete if I did / not tell you something of the ancient mariners, who may be found every / pleasant morning sunning themselves like turtles on one of the wharves. / Sometimes there was a considerable group of them, but the less constant / members of the club were older than the rest, and the epidemics of / rheumatism in town were sadly frequent. We found that it was etiquette / to call them each captain, but I think some of the Deephaven men took / the title by brevet upon arriving at a proper age.

They sat close together because so many of them were deaf, and when we / were lucky enough to overhear the conversation, it seemed to concern / their adventures at sea, or the freight carried out by the Sea Duck, the / Ocean Rover, or some other Deephaven ship, -- the particulars of the / voyage and its disasters and successes being as familiar as the / wanderings of the children of Israel to an old parson. There were / sometimes violent altercations when the captains differed as to the / tonnage of some craft that had been a prey to the winds and waves, / dry-rot, or barnacles fifty years before. The old fellows puffed away at / little black pipes with short stems, and otherwise consumed tobacco in / fabulous quantities. It is needless to say that they gave an immense / deal of attention to the weather. We used to wish we could join this / agreeable company, but we found that the appearance of an outsider / caused a disapproving silence, and that the meeting was evidently not to / be interfered with. Once we were impertinent enough to hide ourselves / for a while just round the corner of the warehouse, but we were afraid / or ashamed to try it again, though the conversation was inconceivably / edifying. Captain Isaac Horn, the eldest and wisest of all, was / discoursing upon some cloth he had purchased once in Bristol, which the / shopkeeper delayed sending until just as they were ready to weigh / anchor.