- end_line
- 2090
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2040
- text
- since he brushed right by them. However, they lay in their bunks
smoking, and kept talking on some time in this strain, and advising me
as soon as ever I got home to pin my ears back, so as not to hold the
wind, and sail straight away into the interior of the country, and
never stop until deep in the bush, far off from the least running
brook, never mind how shallow, and out of sight of even the smallest
puddle of rainwater.
This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true
and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
hardships of a sailor’s life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew
that I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of
it. And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in
me, but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They
asked me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the
bread out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman’s
place; and asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since
I was a gentleman with white hands; and if I ever _should_ be, they
would like nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a
mutiny. And one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a
good deal more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him
ever after, for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he
would be the death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging
near _him,_ he would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he
swore too, with an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was
so unforeseen; and then I could not believe that they meant what they
said, or that they could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I
help seeing, that the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless
boy, on the very first night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of
almost any enormity. I loathed, detested, and hated them with all that
was left of my bursting heart and soul, and I thought myself the most
forlorn and miserable wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man,
thought I, if to be a boy is to be such a wretch. And I wailed and
wept, and my heart cracked within me, but all the time I defied them
through my teeth, and dared them to do their worst.
At last they ceased talking and fell fast asleep, leaving me awake,
seated on a chest with my face bent over my knees between my hands. And
there I sat, till at length the dull beating against the ship’s bows,
and the silence around soothed me down, and I fell asleep as I sat.
- title
- Chunk 2