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Thus it creates that combination of ready obedience, with intelligence, and promptitude at resource, which is the perfection of a sailor's character.
Yet a sailor's life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with the revolting, the sublime with the commonplace, and the solemn with the ludicrous. Not long after we had returned on board with our sad report, an auction was held of the poor man's effects.
The bitter north-wester was blowing; he tightened his rough sailor's jacket about his chest. It was a good coat, called in ship language a sou-'wester, because that sort of stuff allows little of the south-westerly rain to penetrate. The child, having gained the tableland, stopped, placed his feet firmly on the frozen ground, and looked about him.
He was a rough, honest creature, full of pluck, and just as full of hard-headed simplicity, too. He hated trifling conventionalities "business" was the word, with him. He had all a sailor's vindictiveness against the quips and quirks of the law, and steadfastly believed that the first and last aim and object of the law and lawyers was to defeat justice.
Meanwhile, however, all that we can do at present is to wait patiently for daylight. One point is already declaring itself in our favour; I notice that the fog is lifting." "Is it?" responded the girl, wearily. "I cannot say that I am able to detect any improvement. But, naturally, a sailor's trained eyes would be more quick to see such a change than those of a lands-woman like myself.
So he started swimming, and little by little he neared the land, swimming with a strong stroke until he brought them safely to the beach. You may think he was tired, but not so, for when they got up on their feet, and walked ashore, he simply knocked his heels together and danced a hornpipe and sang: "A sailor's life's the life for me."
"Think over it well," added the captain, noticing the boy's reflective manner. "A sailor's life is by no means easy, yet a bright, active lad can rise. Many a captain began before the mast." Shard was smiling seductively, though his gaze seemed hard and penetrating. He hung over the lad not unlike some bird of prey, waiting for a favorable chance to pounce. "All right," said Ralph at last.
They bore him a grudge on Mushrat, for his silence, because, disn't it seem, this was like a general marriage satisfying all men's souls. It was treasonable. Oh my, it was sailor's mischief to be living on that ledge, and dropping nothing but notes from his greasy flute. These are sweet but they are hard to be turning into language.
Coupled with the loss of the boat, Aleck's first thought was that the man had been indulging in a sailor's weakness and was the worse for rum; but a second glance at the ghastly face below him opened the lad's eyes to the simple truth, and he spoke more gently: "Feel faint, Tom?" "Ay, sir, I s'pose it's that. I feel just as I did after that there cannon ball took off my legs.
That Defoe used Selkirk's story is practically certain; but with his usual duplicity he claimed to have written Crusoe in 1708, a year before Selkirk's return. However that may be, the story itself is real enough to have come straight from a sailor's logbook.
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