"Ha!" chuckled the man, as if his eyes had chuckled, so poorly did that
sound represent his lordly stature and look of high spirit--"ha! that's
what brings them all to my neighbor Johnson: a fair quotient!"
"Quotient?" repeated Jimmy.
"Johnson's a great factor hereabout," continued the military-looking
man, bending his handsome eyes on the bay captain, as if there was a
business secret between them, and peering at once mischievously and
nobly; "he makes the quotient to suit. He leaves the suttle large and
never stints the cloff."
"He don't narry a feller down to the cloth he's got, sir?" assented
Jimmy, dubiously.
"Why should he? His equation is simple: I suppose you know what it is."
"Not ezackly," answered Phoebus, pricking up his ears to learn.
"Well, it is force and class sympathy against a dead quantity: laws
which have no consignees, cattle which have no lawyer and no tongue,
rights which have lapsed by their assertion being suspended, till demand
and supply, like a pair of bulldogs, tear what is left to pieces. Armed
with his _ca. sa._, my neighbor Johnson offsets everybody's _fi. fa._,
serves his writ the first, and makes to gentlemen like you a
satisfactory quotient. But he cuts no capers with Isaac and Jacob
Cannon!"
"I expect now that you are Jacob Cannon?" remarked the tawny sailor, not
having understood a word of what preceded. "If that's the case, I'm glad
to know your name, and thank you for givin' me this lift.
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