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- having put his bucket away, and returning to it again, and finding
nothing but a little water, he accused the by-standers of stealing his
precious stones.
This suggests another story concerning him. The first time he was given
a piece of “duff” to eat, he was observed to pick out very carefully
every raisin, and throw it away, with a gesture indicative of the
highest disgust. It turned out that he had taken the raisins for bugs.
In our man-of-war, this semi-savage, wandering about the gun-deck in
his barbaric robe, seemed a being from some other sphere. His tastes
were our abominations: ours his. Our creed he rejected: his we. We
thought him a loon: he fancied us fools. Had the case been reversed;
had we been Polynesians and he an American, our mutual opinion of each
other would still have remained the same. A fact proving that neither
was wrong, but both right.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE NIGHT-WATCHES.
Though leaving the Cape behind us, the severe cold still continued, and
one of its worst consequences was the almost incurable drowsiness
induced thereby during the long night-watches. All along the decks,
huddled between the guns, stretched out on the carronade slides, and in
every accessible nook and corner, you would see the sailors wrapped in
their monkey jackets, in a state of half-conscious torpidity, lying
still and freezing alive, without the power to rise and shake
themselves.
“Up—up, you lazy dogs!” our good-natured Third Lieutenant, a Virginian,
would cry, rapping them with his speaking trumpet. “Get up, and stir
about.”
But in vain. They would rise for an instant, and as soon as his back
was turned, down they would drop, as if shot through the heart.
Often I have lain thus when the fact, that if I laid much longer I
would actually freeze to death, would come over me with such
overpowering force as to break the icy spell, and starting to my feet,
I would endeavour to go through the combined manual and pedal exercise
to restore the circulation. The first fling of my benumbed arm
generally struck me in the face, instead of smiting my chest, its true
destination. But in these cases one’s muscles have their own way.
In exercising my other extremities, I was obliged to hold on to
something, and leap with both feet; for my limbs seemed as destitute of
joints as a pair of canvas pants spread to dry, and frozen stiff.
When an order was given to haul the braces—which required the strength
of the entire watch, some two hundred men—a spectator would have
supposed that all hands had received a stroke of the palsy. Roused from
their state of enchantment, they came halting and limping across the
decks, falling against each other, and, for a few moments, almost
unable to handle the ropes. The slightest exertion seemed intolerable;
and frequently a body of eighty or a hundred men summoned to brace the
main-yard, would hang over the rope for several minutes, waiting for
some active fellow to pick it up and put it into their hands. Even
then, it was some time before they were able to do anything. They made
all the motions usual in hauling a rope, but it was a long time before
the yard budged an inch. It was to no purpose that the officers swore
at them, or sent the midshipmen among them to find out who those
“_horse-marines_” and “_sogers_” were. The sailors were so enveloped in
monkey jackets, that in the dark night there was no telling one from
the other.
“Here, _you_, sir!” cries little Mr. Pert eagerly catching hold of the
skirts of an old sea-dog, and trying to turn him round, so as to peer
under his tarpaulin. “Who are _you_, sir? What’s your name?”
“Find out, Milk-and-Water,” was the impertinent rejoinder.
“Blast you! you old rascal; I’ll have you licked for that! Tell me his
name, some of you!” turning round to the bystanders.
“Gammon!” cries a voice at a distance.
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