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The preceding chapter fitly paves the way for the present, wherein it sadly befalls White-Jacket to chronicle a calamitous event, which filled the Neversink with long lamentations, that echo through all her decks and tops. After dwelling upon our redundant locks and thrice-noble beards, fain would I cease, and let the sequel remain undisclosed, but truth and fidelity forbid.
"Come, White-Jacket, rig yourself in white that's the gig's uniform to-day; you are a gig-man, my boy give ye joy!" This was the first announcement of the fact that I heard; but soon after it was officially ratified.
And by virtue of them it is, White-Jacket, that, without a hearing and without a trial, you may, at a wink from the Captain, be condemned to the scourge. Speak you true? Then let me fly! Nay, White-Jacket, the landless horizon hoops you in. Some tempest, then, surge all the sea against us! hidden reefs and rocks, arise and dash the ships to chips! I was not born a serf, and will not live a slave!
If he does, he can be no brother, and ought to be hanged that's all!" "Don't say that again," said Frank, resentfully; "my brother is a noble-hearted fellow; I love him as I do myself. You don't understand me, White-Jacket; don't you see, that when my brother arrives, he must consort more or less with our chuckle-headed reefers on board here?
The blasted Turks pitched into the old Asia's hull a whole quarry of marble shot, each ball one hundred and fifty pounds. They knocked three port-holes into one. But we gave them better than they sent. 'Up and at them, my bull-dog! said I, patting my gun on the breech; 'tear open hatchways in their Moslem sides! White-Jacket, my lad, you ought to have been there.
They made an effective decoration for the room, all these big, expensive books, with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a reflection of the flames that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace; but Bibbs had an impression that the bookseller who selected them considered them a relief, and that white-jacket considered them a burden of dust, and that nobody else considered them at all.
It was White-Jacket that was taken for an albatross himself, as he flew out on the giddy yard-arm! Having just designated the place where White-Jacket belonged, it must needs be related how White-Jacket came to belong there. Every one knows that in merchantmen the seamen are divided into watches starboard and larboard taking their turn at the ship's duty by night.
Ay, and Byron helped put a piece of a keel on the fire; for it was made of bits of a wreck, they say; one wreck burning another! And was not Byron a sailor? an amateur forecastle-man, White-Jacket, so he was; else how bid the ocean heave and fall in that grand, majestic way? I say, White-Jacket, d'ye mind me? there never was a very great man yet who spent all his life inland.
He was a slender, middle-aged man, of an amiable deportment and irreproachable conversation; but I must say, that his sermons were but ill calculated to benefit the crew. He had drank at the mystic fountain of Plato; his head had been turned by the Germans; and this I will say, that White-Jacket himself saw him with Coleridge's Biographia Literaria in his hand.
Touching my arm, he said, "White-Jacket, this here reminds me of Sing-Sing, when a draft of fellows in darbies, came on from the State Prison at Auburn for a change of scene like, you know!" After taking down four or five names, Mr.
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