The Tavern of the Seas

Now, Mister Macliver, you knows him quite well,
He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell;
It's damn your eyes there and it's damn your eyes here,
And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer.
--La Pique "Come-all-ye."

Into Saturday Cove, all during that late afternoon, they came
surging--spars and tackle limned against the on-sweeping pall of the
gray fog--those wayfarers of the open main.

First to roll in past the ledgy portals of the haven were the venerable
sea-wagons--the coasters known as the "Apple-treers." Their weatherwise
skippers, old sea-dogs who could smell weather as bloodhounds sniff
trails, had their noses in the air in good season that day, and knew
that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One
after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging
rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling
down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging.

A 'long-coast shanty explains the nickname, "Apple-treers": O, what's the use of compass or a quadrant or a log?
Keep her loafin' on her mudhook in a norther or a fog.
But as soon's the chance is better, then well ratch her off once more,
Keepin' clost enough for bearings from the apple-trees ashore.

Therefore, the topsail schooners, the fore-and-afters, the Bluenose
blunt-prows, came in early before the fog smooched out the loom of
the trees and before it became necessary to guess at what the old card
compasses had to reveal on the subject of courses.