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After coursing over the billows at a tremendous rate for a day and a night, the captain appeared on deck, with a face of unusual meaning, and a mind loaded with its own reflections, as was proved by his winking knowingly whenever he delivered himself of a sentiment; a habit that he had most probably contracted, in early youth, at Stunin'tun, for it seemed to be quite as inveterate as it was thoroughbred.
"Here's a dry-dock for you, Sir John!" exclaimed the old sealer, chuckling. "I'll have a patent for this, the moment I put foot ag'in in Stunin'tun." A feeling of security, to which I had been a stranger ever since we entered the ice, was created by the composure of Noah, and by his self-congratulation at what he called his project to get a look at the Walrus's bottom.
This was the way at Stunin'tun, and he believed this was pretty much the way at New York, or he might say with the whole 'arth from pole to pole.
Reasono luckily bethought him of the universal engine of human weakness, and the old sealer, who had resisted money an influence of known efficacy at Stunin'tun ambition, the secret of new sealing grounds, and all the ordinary inducements that might be thought to have weight with men of his class, was, in the end, hooked by his own vanity!
The females have been cunning, but the deuce is in it if we cannot weather upon two women before the matter is well over. In Stunin'tun, when it is thought best to accommodate proposals, why we object and raise a breeze in the beginning, but towards the end we kinder soften and mollify, or else trade would come to a stand. The hardest gale must blow its pipe out.
Some time elapsed before the plenipotentiaries returned, for it appears that, owing to a constitutional peculiarity, or, as he subsequently explained it himself, a "Stunin'tun principle," Captain Poke conceived he was bound, in a bargain, to dispute every proposition which came from the other party. This difficulty would probably have proved insuperable, had not Dr.
The rough old sealer swore some terrible oaths, protesting "that he would not make a monkey of himself, by appearing in this garb, for all the monikin philosophers, or high-born females, that could be stowed in a ship's hold; that he was very liable to take cold; that he once knew a man who undertook to play beast in this manner, and the first thing the poor devil knew, he had great claws and a tail sprouting out of him; a circumstance that he had always attributed to a just judgment for striving to make himself more than Providence had intended him for; that, provided a man's ears were naked, he could hear just as well as if his whole body was naked; that he did not complain of the monkeys going in their skins, and that they ought, in reason, not to meddle with his clothes; that he should be scratching himself the whole time, and thinking what a miserable figure he cut; that he would have no place to keep his tobacco; that he was apt to be deaf when he was cold; that he would be d d if he did any such thing; that human natur' and monkey natur' were not the same, and it was not to be expected that men and monkeys should follow exactly the same fashions; that the meeting would have the appearance of a boxing match, instead of a philosophical lecture; that he never heard of such a thing at Stunin'tun; that he should feel sneaking at seeing his own shins in the presence of ladies; that a ship always made better weather under some canvas than under bare poles; that he might possibly be brought to his shirt and pantaloons, but as for giving up these, he would as soon think of cutting the sheet-anchor off his bows, with the vessel driving on a lee-shore; that flesh and blood were flesh and blood, and they liked their comfort; that he should think the whole time he was about to go in a-swimming, and should be looking about for a good place to dive"; together with a great many more similar objections, that have escaped me in the multitude of things of greater interest which have since occupied my time.
The captain heard me very calmly; then deliberately helping himself to some tobacco, he replied, "Harkee, Sir John. At Stunin'tun, when we catch a ferocious critter', we always put it in a cage. I'm no great mathematician, as I've often told you; if my dog bites me once, I kick him twice, I beat him thrice, I chain him."
Rushing upon Noah like a tiger, I seized him by the throat, and cried, in a voice of despair: "Cannibal! what hast thou done?" "Loosen your grip, Sir John we do not relish these hugs at Stunin'tun." "Wretch! thou hast made me the participator of thy crime! We have eaten Brigadier Downright." "Loosen, Sir John, or human natur' will rebel."
"I dare say, friend Noah, you may have observed some material difference in the usages of Paris, for instance, and those of Stunin'tun." "That I have, Sir John, that I have; and altogether to the advantage of Stunin'tun be they." "We are all addicted to the weakness of believing our own customs best; and it requires that we should travel much, before we are able to decide on points so nice."
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