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Untitled Article
with regard to the * jolly tars of okl England ! ' Nwerthetess , in order to rectify man ' s crookedness , it is necessary that we should pain our sen&es by looking at him more really . It is with pain and reluctance , not in eager delight , that I permit the dark shadows to break in upon the clear and brilliant , and , to me , heartcheering pictures in the reminiscences of my life at sea . If the reader will look back to the point at which I paused in
my consecutive chapters , ( chap . viii . March , 1834 , ) he will see I laid down my pen with no symptom prophetic of asperity . I shall exhibit asperity only when circumstances arrest and compel me to exhibit it ; when , in fact , its demands are irresistible . At the close of that chapter , he saw the A- moored at the mole of the dockyard , Gibraltar , with nothing but her naked lower-masts and bow *
sprit starting upwards and outward from the immense bulk which she appeared to be , now disembowelled of her stores , provisions , water , shot , even her iron ballast was taken out , for she was emptied to the keel for a thorough overhauling and repair , A gangway of planks communicated from the deck to the wharf > with an interval of only about four feet or less between me and the solid earth , which for nine months my foot had not tasted ; and
how I longed now to feel the pressure ! but I dared not step across those planks till I was ordered to do so ; and in this state of defeated longing I lived for six days , when at length I heard ihyBelf called to go with a party to the dock-yard . This , to me , was a splendid holiday of new life , and I felt the blessedness of existence the instant the last inch of plank was passed , and my foot had solid ground beneath it . How pleasant it was ! I
was ignorant till that moment—how often does accident enlighten us !—I was ignorant till then that there was charming music in the sound from the grinding and craunching of pebbly gravel and rough sand under one ' s feet—and how I enioved it ! as I kept up a scraping , and kicking , and pirouetting , my companions laugh * - ing at me as mad—the sea and all Andalusia before me , and stone Walls blocking up everything within a few feet behind me : in
then my pleasure was increased ^ as we moved on straggling order toward the dock-yard ; with curiosity to see and examine and move about everywhere , and make the most , of the joyous Opportunity . But , alack ! my soul was his Majesty ' s property ; my thoughts , eyes , and limbs were at the bidding of his officers ; « nd the snatchy wanderings of my curious gaze , the fitful leapings
of my elastic thoughts , were encountered and crushed by the Argus andunsouledeyes , and authoritative lungs , and merciless threats of those who could see nothing in my abstractions but the evidences of an idle and skulking lubber , and misery was with me fegain . Yet I was on shore in a novel world i and the sight of it , captive and slave a « I was , was refreshing . I will not conduct the reader through the fumes of pitch and tar ; the horribly discordance of calkers * niallots and ships' decks
Untitled Article
418 Ai ^ iwtyky 6 f P& r ** fak * Y
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1835, page 418, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2646/page/54/
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