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- tobacco, and mend his jackets and trowsers; and used to watch, and
tend, and nurse him every way. And all the time, he would sit scowling
on them, and found fault with what they did; and I noticed, that those
who did the most for him, and cringed the most before him, were the
very ones he most abused; while two or three who held more aloof, he
treated with a little consideration.
It is not for me to say, what it was that made a whole ship’s company
submit so to the whims of one poor miserable man like Jackson. I only
know that so it was; but I have no doubt, that if he had had a blue eye
in his head, or had had a different face from what he did have, they
would not have stood in such awe of him. And it astonished me, to see
that one of the seamen, a remarkably robust and good-humored young man
from Belfast in Ireland, was a person of no mark or influence among the
crew; but on the contrary was hooted at, and trampled upon, and made a
butt and laughing-stock; and more than all, was continually being
abused and snubbed by Jackson, who seemed to hate him cordially,
because of his great strength and fine person, and particularly because
of his red cheeks.
But then, this Belfast man, although he had shipped for an
_able-seaman,_ was not much of a sailor; and that always lowers a man
in the eyes of a ship’s company; I mean, when he ships for an
_able-seaman,_ but is not able to do the duty of one. For sailors are
of three classes—_able-seaman, ordinary-seaman,_ and _boys;_ and they
receive different wages according to their rank. Generally, a ship’s
company of twelve men will only have five or six able seamen, who if
they prove to understand their duty every way (and that is no small
matter either, as I shall hereafter show, perhaps), are looked up to,
and thought much of by the ordinary-seamen and boys, who reverence
their very pea-jackets, and lay up their sayings in their hearts.
But you must not think from this, that persons called _boys_ aboard
merchant-ships are all youngsters, though to be sure, I myself was
called a _boy,_ and a boy I was. No. In merchant-ships, a _boy_ means a
green-hand, a landsman on his first voyage. And never mind if he is old
enough to be a grandfather, he is still called a _boy;_ and boys’ work
is put upon him.
But I am straying off from what I was going to say about Jackson’s
putting an end to the dispute between the two sailors in the forecastle
after breakfast. After they had been disputing some time about who had
been to sea the longest, Jackson told them to stop talking; and then
bade one of them open his mouth; for, said he, I can tell a sailor’s
age just like a horse’s—by his teeth. So the man laughed, and opened
his mouth; and Jackson made him step out under the scuttle, where the
light came down from deck; and then made him throw his head back, while
he looked into it, and probed a little with his jackknife, like a
baboon peering into a junk-bottle. I trembled for the poor fellow, just
as if I had seen him under the hands of a crazy barber, making signs to
cut his throat, and he all the while sitting stock still, with the
lather on, to be shaved. For I watched Jackson’s eye and saw it
snapping, and a sort of going in and out, very quick, as if it were
something like a forked tongue; and somehow, I felt as if he were
longing to kill the man; but at last he grew more composed, and after
concluding his examination, said, that the first man was the oldest
sailor, for the ends of his teeth were the evenest and most worn down;
which, he said, arose from eating so much hard sea-biscuit; and this
was the reason he could tell a sailor’s age like a horse’s.
At this, every body made merry, and looked at each other, as much as to
_say—come, boys, let’s laugh;_ and they did laugh; and declared it was
a rare joke.
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