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- 4108
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:18.535Z
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- 4056
- text
- derision, and loll out her tongue; accompanying all this by certain
indecorous and exceedingly unladylike gestures, significant of the
profound contempt in which she held him.
Yet, never did Jarl heed her ill-breeding; but patiently overlooked and
forgave it. Inquiring the reason of the dame’s singular conduct, I
learned, that with eye averted, she had very lately crept close to my
Viking, and met with no tender reception.
Doubtless, Jarl, who was much of a philosopher, innocently imagined
that ere long the lady would forgive and forget him. But what knows a
philosopher about women?
Ere long, so outrageous became Annatoo’s detestation of him, that the
honest old tar could stand it no longer, and like most good-natured men
when once fairly roused, he was swept through and through with a
terrible typhoon of passion. He proposed, that forthwith the woman
should be sacked and committed to the deep; he could stand it no
longer.
Murder is catching. At first I almost jumped at the proposition; but as
quickly rejected it. Ah! Annatoo: Woman unendurable: deliver me, ye
gods, from being shut up in a ship with such a hornet again.
But are we yet through with her? Not yet. Hitherto she had continued to
perform the duties of the office assigned her since the commencement of
the voyage: namely, those of the culinary department. From this she was
now deposed. Her skewer was broken. My Viking solemnly averring, that
he would eat nothing more of her concocting, for fear of being
poisoned. For myself, I almost believed, that there was malice enough
in the minx to give us our henbane broth.
But what said Samoa to all this? Passing over the matter of the
cookery, will it be credited, that living right among us as he did, he
was yet blind to the premeditated though unachieved peccadilloes of his
spouse? Yet so it was. And thus blind was Belisarius himself,
concerning the intrigues of Antonina.
Witness that noble dame’s affair with the youth Theodosius; when her
deluded lord charged upon the scandal-mongers with the very horns she
had bestowed upon him.
Upon one occasion, seized with a sudden desire to palliate Annatoo’s
thievings, Samoa proudly intimated, that the lady was the most virtuous
of her sex.
But alas, poor Annatoo, why say more? And bethinking me of the hard
fate that so soon overtook thee, I almost repent what has already and
too faithfully been portrayed.
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