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Updated: May 24, 2025
The men looked jaded and wan, lethargic and lazy; and many an old mariner, with hand upon abdomen, called upon the Flag-staff to witness that there were more hot coppers in the Neversink than those in the ship's galley. Such are the lamentable effects of suddenly and completely releasing "the people" of a man-of-war from arbitrary discipline.
Quoin, the quarter-gunner, was the representative of a class on board the Neversink, altogether too remarkable to be left astern, without further notice, in the rapid wake of these chapters. As has been seen, Quoin was full of unaccountable whimsies; he was, withal, a very cross, bitter, ill-natured, inflammable old man.
"Aloft, topmen! lay out! furl!" cried the First Lieutenant of the Neversink. At the word the men sprang into the rigging, and on all three masts were soon climbing about the yards, in reckless haste, to execute their orders. Now, in furling top-sails or courses, the point of honour, and the hardest work, is in the bunt, or middle of the yard; this post belongs to the first captain of the top.
On the 21st, made the highland of Neversink; at 2 P. M. took a pilot on board, but owing to fogs and calms, did not arrive to the port of destination till 1 P. M. next day, when we anchored opposite the West Battery, with a thankful heart that I was once more within the United States.
As it was then after two o'clock, and as the distance was six or eight of these terrible hunters' miles, we concluded to take a whole day to it, and wait till next morning. The Beaverkill flowed west, the Neversink south, and I had a mortal dread of getting entangled amid the mountains and valleys that lie in either angle.
White-Jacket was then in the top; and it was glorious to look down and see our black hull butting the white sea with its broad bows like a ram. "We must beat them with such a breeze, dear Jack," said I to our noble Captain of the Top. "But the same breeze blows for John Bull, remember," replied Jack, who, being a Briton, perhaps favoured the Englishman more than the Neversink.
In the same nest of mountains from which they start are born the Neversink and the Beaverkill, streams of wondrous beauty that flow south and west into the Delaware.
Besides, I was glad of another and final opportunity to pay my respects to the finny tribes of the Neversink. At this point it was one of the finest trout streams I had ever beheld. It was so sparkling, its bed so free from sediment or impurities of any kind, that it had a new look, as if it had just come from the hand of its Creator.
Not to make an example of him, nor to gratify any personal feeling, but to furnish one certain illustration of what is here asserted, I honestly declare that Captain Claret, of the Neversink, repeatedly violated this law in his own proper person.
Let those who will, chant in heroic verse the renown of Amazon and Mississippi and Niagara, but my prose shall flow or straggle along at such a pace as the prosaic muse may grant me to attain in praise of Beaverkill and Neversink and Swiftwater, of Saranac and Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and Aroostook and Moose River.
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