They Were
On Board Of Their Own Ship, And Entitled To Consult Their Ease
And Enjoyment.
M'Dougal was the champion of their cause.
He was
an active, irritable, fuming, vainglorious little man, and
elevated in his own opinion, by being the proxy of Mr. Astor. A
violent altercation ensued, in the course of which Thorn
threatened to put the partners in irons should they prove
refractory; upon which M'Dougal seized a pistol and swore to be
the death of the captain should he ever offer such an indignity.
It was some time before the irritated parties could be pacified
by the more temperate bystanders.
Such was the captain's outset with the partners. Nor did the
clerks stand much higher in his good graces; indeed, he seems to
have regarded all the landsmen on board his ship as a kind of
Iive lumber, continually in the way. The poor voyageurs, too,
continually irritated his spleen by their "lubberly" and unseemly
habits, so abhorrent to one accustomed to the cleanliness of a
man-of-war. These poor fresh-water sailors, so vainglorious on
shore, and almost amphibious when on lakes and rivers, lost all
heart and stomach the moment they were at sea. For days they
suffered the doleful rigors and retchings of sea-sickness,
lurking below in their berths in squalid state, or emerging now
and then like spectres from the hatchways, in capotes and
blankets, with dirty nightcaps, grizzly beard, lantern visage and
unhappy eye, shivering about the deck, and ever and anon crawling
to the sides of the vessel, and offering up their tributes to the
windward, to infinite annoyance of the captain.
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