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- 10241
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- on terms of any thing like equality with a person whom he has ordered
about at his pleasure.
Harry then told the mate solemnly, that he might do what he pleased,
but go aloft again he _could_ not, and _would_ not. He would do any
thing else but that.
This affair sealed Harry’s fate on board of the Highlander; the crew
now reckoned him fair play for their worst jibes and jeers, and he led
a miserable life indeed.
Few landsmen can imagine the depressing and self-humiliating effects of
finding one’s self, for the first time, at the beck of illiterate
sea-tyrants, with no opportunity of exhibiting any trait about you, but
your ignorance of every thing connected with the sea-life that you
lead, and the duties you are constantly called upon to perform. In such
a sphere, and under such circumstances, Isaac Newton and Lord Bacon
would be sea-clowns and bumpkins; and Napoleon Bonaparte be cuffed and
kicked without remorse. In more than one instance I have seen the truth
of this; and Harry, poor Harry, proved no exception. And from the
circumstances which exempted me from experiencing the bitterest of
these evils, I only the more felt for one who, from a strange
constitutional nervousness, before unknown even to himself, was become
as a hunted hare to the merciless crew.
But how was it that Harry Bolton, who spite of his effeminacy of
appearance, had evinced, in our London trip, such unmistakable flashes
of a spirit not easily tamed—how was it, that he could now yield
himself up to the almost passive reception of contumely and contempt?
Perhaps his spirit, for the time, had been broken. But I will not
undertake to explain; we are curious creatures, as every one knows; and
there are passages in the lives of all men, so out of keeping with the
common tenor of their ways, and so seemingly contradictory of
themselves, that only He who made us can expound them.
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- Chunk 5