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Updated: June 23, 2025
The vessel seemed to have been waiting for him; hardly had he seated himself upon a narrow bench, among petty traders, manual workers, and women bringing their wares to market, when she cast off. It was a cloudy morning; mist was rolling across the lagoons; there was a smell of bilge-water, damp wood, fish, and fruit.
In the exercise of his functions the consul had opened and shut some jail doors, and otherwise effected the usual sullen and deceitful compromise, and his flag was now flying, on a final visit, from the stern sheets of a smart boat alongside. It was with a feeling of relief at the end of the interview that he at last lifted his head above an atmosphere of perjury and bilge-water and came on deck.
No criticism have I seen since you went away that was worth notice. Poor Lecky is weak as water bilge-water with a drop of formic acid in it: unfortunate Lecky, he is wedded to his Irish idols; let him alone." The reference to Lecky, as unfair as it is amusing, was provoked by a review of Froude in Macmillan's Magazine.
Webster's Plymouth-Rock Oration; but being a part of the daily morning duty of a well-disciplined merchant-vessel, just a few minutes' spell to keep the vessel free and cargo unharmed by bilge-water, it is not a dismal sound at all, but rather a lively one. It was a favorite amusement with us passengers on board the to go forward about pumping-time to the break of the deck and listen.
But when with chisel and saw I had removed a square yard of planking and revealed only the bilge-water that had backed up from the pump well, he brightened. Had the Island Princess not been as tight as you could wish, we should have had a wetter time of it than we had. Our feet were wet as it was, and the man from Boston was sadly drabbled. "There's nothing there?" said Roger, interrogatively.
The hold accumulated filth, for in many ships the ship's refuse was swept on to the ballast, where it bred pestilence, typhus fever and the like. The bilge-water reeked and rotted in the bilges, filling the whole ship with its indescribable stench. These wooden ships were very gloomy abodes, and would have been so no doubt even had they been dry and warm.
I was giddy, but not sick; and the giddiness soon went away, but left a feverishness and want of appetite, which I attributed, in great measure, to the "saeva mephitis" of the bilge-water; and it was certainly not decreased by the exportations from the cabin.
"Obliged to follow a husband, up and down; among freebooters and dishonest traders; in fair weather and foul; hot and cold; wet and dry; bilge-water and salt-water; cramps and nausea; salt-junk and no junk; gales and calms, and all for a hasty judgment formed in sanguine youth."
Lying huddled under the bunk in the bilge-water, which swung from side to side as the vessel rolled, I must admit that I would have presented a sorry spectacle to any one who could have seen me, clad only in the trousers of my pajamas, and suggesting anything but a fighting man.
Pride and bilge-water go well together!" which said he brought me to a dark unlovely hole abaft the mizzen. "'Tis none too clean, Martin," says he, casting the light round the dingy place, "but that shall be remedied and Godby shall bring ye bedding and the like, so although 'tis plaguy dark and wi' rats a-plenty still, despite the stench, you'll lie snug as your pride will permit of.
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