- end_line
- 1914
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1851
- text
- At last one of them went below and brought up a box of cigars from his
chest, for some sailors always provide little delicacies of that kind,
to break off the first shock of the salt water after laying idle
ashore; and also by way of _tapering off,_ as I mentioned a little
while ago. But I wondered that they never carried any pies and tarts to
sea with them, instead of spirits and cigars.
Ned, for that was the man’s name, split open the box with a blow of his
fist, and then handed it round along the windlass, just like a waiter
at a party, every one helping himself. But I was a member of an
Anti-Smoking Society that had been organized in our village by the
Principal of the Sunday School there, in conjunction with the
Temperance Association. So I did not smoke any then, though I did
afterward upon the voyage, I am sorry to say. Notwithstanding I
declined; with a good deal of unnecessary swearing, Ned assured me that
the cigars were real genuine Havannas; for he had been in Havanna, he
said, and had them made there under his own eye. According to his
account, he was very particular about his cigars and other things, and
never made any importations, for they were unsafe; but always made a
voyage himself direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be
had that he wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama
for his hats, to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to
Calcutta for his cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to
say, no doubt he would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his
halter; the wit of which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that
the Russian hemp is the best; though that is not wit which needs
explaining.
By dint of the spirits which, besides stimulating my fainting strength,
united with the cool air of the sea to give me an appetite for our hard
biscuit; and also by dint of walking briskly up and down the deck
before the windlass, I had now recovered in good part from my sickness,
and finding the sailors all very pleasant and sociable, at least among
themselves, and seated smoking together like old cronies, and nothing
on earth to do but sit the watch out, I began to think that they were a
pretty good set of fellows after all, barring their swearing and
another ugly way of talking they had; and I thought I had misconceived
their true characters; for at the outset I had deemed them such a
parcel of wicked hard-hearted rascals that it would be a severe
affliction to associate with them.
Yes, I now began to look on them with a sort of incipient love; but
more with an eye of pity and compassion, as men of naturally gentle and
kind dispositions, whom only hardships, and neglect, and ill-usage had
made outcasts from good society; and not as villains who loved
wickedness for the sake of it, and would persist in wickedness, even in
Paradise, if they ever got there. And I called to mind a sermon I had
once heard in a church in behalf of sailors, when the preacher called
them strayed lambs from the fold, and compared them to poor lost
children, babes in the wood, orphans without fathers or mothers.
And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors’ Magazine,
with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious
seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor
heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea,
these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the
Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for
their latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good
sailors among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on
deck apart from the rest, I thought to be sure he must be one of them:
so I did not disturb his devotions: but I was afterward shocked at
discovering that he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by
his side.
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