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- 10432
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 10364
- text
- hour, according to a Rabbinical tradition, pushed after the ark of old
Noah.
It was a misty, cloudy night; and though at first our look-outs kept
the chase in dim sight, yet at last so thick became the atmosphere,
that no sign of a strange spar was to be seen. But the worst of it was
that, when last discerned, the Frenchman was broad on our weather-bow,
and the Englishman gallantly leading his van.
The breeze blew fresher and fresher; but, with even our main-royal set,
we dashed along through a cream-coloured ocean of illuminated foam.
White-Jacket was then in the top; and it was glorious to look down and
see our black hull butting the white sea with its broad bows like a
ram.
“We must beat them with such a breeze, dear Jack,” said I to our noble
Captain of the Top.
“But the same breeze blows for John Bull, remember,” replied Jack, who,
being a Briton, perhaps favoured the Englishman more than the
Neversink.
“But how we boom through the billows!” cried Jack, gazing over the
top-rail; then, flinging forth his arm, recited,
“‘Aslope, and gliding on the leeward side,
The bounding vessel cuts the roaring tide.’
Camoens! White-Jacket, Camoens! Did you ever read him? The Lusiad, I
mean? It’s the man-of-war epic of the world, my lad. Give me Gama for a
Commodore, say I—Noble Gama! And Mickle, White-Jacket, did you ever
read of him? William Julius Mickle? Camoens’s Translator? A
disappointed man though, White-Jacket. Besides his version of the
Lusiad, he wrote many forgotten things. Did you ever see his ballad of
Cumnor Hall?—No?—Why, it gave Sir Walter Scott the hint of Kenilworth.
My father knew Mickle when he went to sea on board the old Romney
man-of-war. How many great men have been sailors, White-Jacket! They
say Homer himself was once a tar, even as his hero, Ulysses, was both a
sailor and a shipwright. I’ll swear Shakspeare was once a captain of
the forecastle. Do you mind the first scene in _The Tempest_,
White-Jacket? And the world-finder, Christopher Columbus, was a sailor!
and so was Camoens, who went to sea with Gama, else we had never had
the Lusiad, White-Jacket. Yes, I’ve sailed over the very track that
Camoens sailed—round the East Cape into the Indian Ocean. I’ve been in
Don Jose’s garden, too, in Macao, and bathed my feet in the blessed dew
of the walks where Camoens wandered before me. Yes, White-Jacket, and I
have seen and sat in the cave at the end of the flowery, winding way,
where Camoens, according to tradition, composed certain parts of his
Lusiad. Ay, Camoens was a sailor once! Then, there’s Falconer, whose
‘Ship-wreck’ will never founder, though he himself, poor fellow, was
lost at sea in the Aurora frigate. Old Noah was the first sailor. And
St. Paul, too, knew how to box the compass, my lad! mind you that
chapter in Acts? I couldn’t spin the yarn better myself. Were you ever
in Malta? They called it Melita in the Apostle’s day. I have been in
Paul’s cave there, White-Jacket. They say a piece of it is good for a
charm against shipwreck; but I never tried it. There’s Shelley, he was
quite a sailor. Shelley—poor lad! a Percy, too—but they ought to have
let him sleep in his sailor’s grave—he was drowned in the
Mediterranean, you know, near Leghorn—and not burn his body, as they
did, as if he had been a bloody Turk. But many people thought him so,
White-Jacket, because he didn’t go to mass, and because he wrote Queen
Mab. Trelawney was by at the burning; and he was an ocean-rover, too!
Ay, and Byron helped put a piece of a keel on the fire; for it was made
of bits of a wreck, they say; one wreck burning another! And was not
Byron a sailor? an amateur forecastle-man, White-Jacket, so he was;
else how bid the ocean heave and fall in that grand, majestic way? I
say, White-Jacket, d’ye mind me? there never was a very great man yet
who spent all his life inland. A snuff of the sea, my boy, is
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