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Updated: May 7, 2025
"He must be out of his mind," replied one of them, the sailing-master. "Out of his mind?" rejoined the officer-of-the-deck. "He's out of all reason; out of all men's knowledge and memories! Why, no one knows him; no one has ever seen him before; no imagination, in the wildest flight of a morbid nightmare, has ever so much as dreamed of him. Who are you?" he again added, fierce with amazement.
"Oh, Peggy, those are the initials for 'Clean and Sober, the report the officer-of-the-deck makes when the enlisted men come aboard after being on liberty. If they are intoxicated and untidy they check them up D. and D. which means Drunk and Dirty. You'll never hear the last of Betsy Brindle's caper."
The commotion was now terrific; all discipline seemed gone for ever; the Lieutenants ran in among the men, the Captain darted from his cabin, and the Commodore nervously questioned the armed sentry at his door as to what the deuce the people were about. In the midst of all this, the trumpet of the officer-of-the-deck, commanding the top-gallant sails to be taken in, was almost completely drowned.
"Who the deuce are you?" at last said the officer-of-the-deck, in added bewilderment. "Where did you come from? What's your business? Where are you stationed? What's your name? Who are you, any way? How did you get here? and where are you going?" "Sir," replied Israel very humbly, "I am going to my regular duty, if you will but let me.
Hereupon the officer-of-the-deck, throwing himself into a tragical posture, set forth the entire mystery; much to the captain's astonishment, who at once indignantly turned upon the phantom. "You rascal don't try to deceive me. Who are you? and where did you come from last?"
The reply was, that in a sudden flaw of wind, which came nigh capsizing them, not an hour since, the cutter had lost all four foremost men by the violent jibing of a boom. She wanted help to get back to port. "You shall have one man," said the officer-of-the-deck, morosely. "Let him be a good one then, for heaven's sake," said he in the cutter; "I ought to have at least two."
I keep leading him about because he has no final destination." "Mr. Officer-of-the-deck, what does this mean? Who is this strange man? I don't know that I remember him. Who is he? And what is signified by his being led about?"
One pleasant afternoon, the last of the passage, when the ship was nearing the Lizard, within a few hours' sail of her port, the officer-of-the-deck, happening to glance upwards towards the maintop, descried Israel there, leaning very leisurely over the rail, looking mildly down where the officer stood. "Well, Peter Perkins, you seem to belong to the maintop, after all."
Cursing the necessity of pausing with a strong fair wind at a juncture like this, the officer-of-the-deck shortened sail, and hove to; hailing the cutter, to know what was the matter. As he hailed the small craft from the lofty poop of the bristling seventy-four, this lieutenant seemed standing on the top of Gibraltar, talking to some lowland peasant in a hut.
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