On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
tresses . So now , in the passionate grief and horror which I exhibited , as I fell back from my glance into that dismal den , this sympathy came to my relief . A mulatto man accosted me . ' What ' s the matter , boy V I looked a meaning which I had no voice to speak—I glanced toward the grating and leaned my forehead against the mainmast , while I sobbed hysterically ; i Don ' t be frightened , ' said he , 4 you are not to go down there ; ' and the kind-hearted fellow led me away , and showed me and my companion how to descend to our apartmentberth he called it . This was better than the other place : but , what a lodging !—furnished with a few greasy chests—a tar bucket and two or three other buckets which were used for washing decks—ends of
old ropes—and pieces of junk ; and a cable , coiled like an enormous boa-constrictor , diffused its tarry perfumes through the gloom and up the hatchway . But I was elastic in thought , as well as in habitsany description of the latter would fit me—will fit me in a few days . I was not long burthened with apprehensions , or twisted with inconveniencies as to wants and appliances . There was the excitementof novelty in every thing , and it rushed to my relief . ? How to dispose of my day ' s allowance of ship biscuits ( a baked coagulum of flint and sawdust ) and grog—was an occupation to my inquisitorial faculties ; and I was not a little amused by the aptness of my scholarship in taking lessons in the art of cracking biscuits , by laying each in the palm of one hand and hammering it with the opposite elbow ; the process of mastication was somewhat slower . But the grog ! the sailor ' s boasted elixir !—pah ! how nauseous ! Is this the stuff which I have heard so extolled
^ m in claptrap sea songs , and flummeryised nautical ta ] es ? Though I could not touch it , others had mastered the difficulty—and my grog did not go a begging : there was my hammock to be slung ; and a volunteer for my pint , spliced a pair of grummetts , and twisted a number of tarred ^ yarns into what he called nettles , for clews to my hammock , and tied it up to the ceiling , triced it to the battens was his phrase , and there was my bed , ready rigged for turning in . Difficult of access and loathsome as such a bed was at first , I learned , ere long , to prefer it to any I had ever slept in before , or have ever slept in since—and the grog too—how affection grows upon companionship and use ! though , indeed , my tenderness for grog never became so great as to prefer it to > every other beverage : the nausea soon wore away .
I was among sailors—men whose lives had passed in adventureswho had become familiar in the encounter with perils of storm , battle , and wreck ; and , what to me was more promiseful of delight than all else , they could tell me of those far countries , and climes , and people , and trees , and animals , of which I had read so much—in which I had revelled as 1 read . But , what a woful disappointment ! They either knew nothing of these matters , or deemed them unworthy notice ; and when they did allude to some far , far off cape , or bay , or port , they exhibited pictures of them so very unlike any thing which reading had drawn on my mental retina , that I received them as wilful falsehoods , or I regarded them as jests . No , they were giving me the forms of their own impressions ; and I afterwards found there was Borne truth and likelihood in their descriptions , but I had to borrow
Untitled Article
692 Autobiography tfPel . Verjuice .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 692, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/32/
-