This was a great windfall,
and as all could not read it at once, I, being the scholar of
the company, was appointed reader.
I got a knot of six or eight
about me, and no one could have had a more attentive audience.
Some laughed at the "scholars," and went over the other side
of the forecastle, to work, and spin their yarns; but I carried
the day, and had the cream of the crew for my hearers. Many of
the reflections, and the political parts, I omitted, but all the
narrative they were delighted with; especially the descriptions
of the Puritans, and the sermons and harangues of the Round-head
soldiers. The gallantry of Charles, Dr. Radcliffe's plots,
the knavery of "trusty Tompkins," - in fact, every part seemed to
chain their attention. Many things which, while I was reading,
I had a misgiving about, thinking them above their capacity, I was
surprised to find them enter into completely.
I read nearly all day, until sundown; when, as soon as supper was
over, as I had nearly finished, they got a light from the galley;
and by skipping what was less interesting, I carried them through
to the marriage of Everard, and the restoration of Charles the
Second, before eight o'clock.
The next morning, we took the battens from the hatches, and opened
the ship. A few stifled rats were found; and what bugs, cockroaches,
fleas, and other vermin, there might have been on board, must have
unrove their life-lines before the hatches were opened. The ship
being now ready, we covered the bottom of the hold over, fore and
aft, with dried brush for dunnage, and having levelled everything
away, we were ready to take in our cargo. All the hides that had
been collected since the California left the coast, (a little more
than two years,) amounting to about forty thousand, were cured,
dried, and stowed away in the house, waiting for our good ship
to take them to Boston.
Now began the operation of taking in our cargo, which kept us hard
at work, from the grey of the morning till star-light, for six weeks,
with the exception of Sundays, and of just time to swallow our meals.
To carry the work on quicker, a division of labor was made. Two men
threw the hides down from the piles in the house, two more picked
them up and put them on a long horizontal pole, raised a few feet
from the ground, where they were beaten, by two more, with flails,
somewhat like those used in threshing wheat. When beaten, they were
taken from this pole by two more, and placed upon a platform
of boards; and ten or a dozen men, with their trowsers rolled
up, were constantly going, back and forth, from the platform to
the boat, which was kept off where she would just float, with the
hides upon their heads.
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