I Did Not Go
To Dinner; I Stayed Away From Supper Until Everybody Else Had Finished.
I Did Not Feel So Much Like A Member Of The Boat's Family Now As Before.
However, My Spirits Returned, In Installments, As We Pursued Our Way
Down The River.
I was sorry I hated the mate so, because it was not in
(young) human nature not to admire him.
He was huge and muscular, his
face was bearded and whiskered all over; he had a red woman and a blue
woman tattooed on his right arm, - one on each side of a blue anchor with
a red rope to it; and in the matter of profanity he was sublime. When
he was getting out cargo at a landing, I was always where I could see
and hear. He felt all the majesty of his great position, and made the
world feel it, too. When he gave even the simplest order, he discharged
it like a blast of lightning, and sent a long, reverberating peal of
profanity thundering after it. I could not help contrasting the way in
which the average landsman would give an order, with the mate's way of
doing it. If the landsman should wish the gang-plank moved a foot
farther forward, he would probably say: 'James, or William, one of you
push that plank forward, please;' but put the mate in his place and he
would roar out: 'Here, now, start that gang-plank for'ard! Lively, now!
WHAT're you about! Snatch it! SNATCH it! There! there! Aft again! aft
again! don't you hear me. Dash it to dash! are you going to SLEEP over
it! 'VAST heaving. 'Vast heaving, I tell you! Going to heave it clear
astern? WHERE're you going with that barrel! FOR'ARD with it 'fore I
make you swallow it, you dash-dash-dash-DASHED split between a tired
mud-turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!'
I wished I could talk like that.
When the soreness of my adventure with the mate had somewhat worn off, I
began timidly to make up to the humblest official connected with the
boat - the night watchman. He snubbed my advances at first, but I
presently ventured to offer him a new chalk pipe; and that softened him.
So he allowed me to sit with him by the big bell on the hurricane deck,
and in time he melted into conversation. He could not well have helped
it, I hung with such homage on his words and so plainly showed that I
felt honored by his notice. He told me the names of dim capes and
shadowy islands as we glided by them in the solemnity of the night,
under the winking stars, and by and by got to talking about himself. He
seemed over-sentimental for a man whose salary was six dollars a week -
or rather he might have seemed so to an older person than I. But I drank
in his words hungrily, and with a faith that might have moved mountains
if it had been applied judiciously.
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