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Dear Sir, I received your note and bill for supplying some of my household with some rotten cheese-cloth out of your store, which you have the infernal impertinence to call muslin; also, five bottles of stinking bilge-water, labelled musk.
They suffered a double portion of misery compared with the sailors, to whom the rolling of the ship in a gale of wind, and the stench of bilge-water, were matters of no grievance; but were serious evils to these landsmen, who were constantly treading upon, or running against, and tumbling over each other.
Respect a gentleman and a Christian, though he be in rags and smell of bilge-water." Filled with astonishment at these words, which came from over a massive wall, enclosing what seemed an open parade-space, Israel pressed forward, and soon came to a black archway, leading far within, underneath, to a grassy tract, through a tower.
No, Sir! There was a great raft built about two thousand years ago, call it an ark, rather, the world's great ark! big enough to hold all mankind, and made to be launched right out into the open waves of life, and here it has been lying, one end on the shore and one end bobbing up and down in the water, men fighting all the time as to who should be captain and who should have the state-rooms, and throwing each other over the side because they could not agree about the points of compass, but the great vessel never gelling afloat with its freight of nations and their rulers; and now, Sir, there is and has been for this long time a fleet of "heretic" lighters sailing out of Boston Bay, and they have been saying, and they say now, and they mean to keep saying, "Pump out your bilge-water, shovel over your loads of idle ballast, get out your old rotten cargo, and we will carry it out into deep waters and sink it where it will never be seen again; so shall the ark of the world's hope float on the ocean, instead of sticking in the dock-mud where it is lying!"
"No, sir, I do not," retorted the captain, with offended dignity. "Mr Simple, will you take a glass of wine?" I thought that this little brouillerie would have checked the captain; it did so, but only for a few minutes, when he again commenced. The first lieutenant observed that it would be necessary to let water into the ship every morning, and pump it out, to avoid the smell of the bilge-water.
When he awoke, so deep had been his slumber that he could not recall for a moment where he was. The tiller was unmanned, the stars shone in the cabin hatchway, a cold bilge-water draft blew through the old hulk, and, as he dragged himself up the steps, he saw tall woods near by, and heard the voice of solemn pines.
Indeed, so much was he taken up with this pump that he could not be prevailed on to return on shore, but sent a canoe to fetch his favourite stool, on which he seated himself, and spent the remainder of the day in pumping the bilge-water out of the ship!
"Upon my word of honor, sir, they are. Some a little weaker, some with more bilge-water in it, or a trifle of a dash from the midden. The main of it, however, in the very same condition as a' bubbleth out of what they call the spawses.
Why! loads of people at present seem to think that the miseries, and hideous vices, and sodden immorality, and utter heathenism, which are found down amongst the foundations of every civic community are as indispensable to progress as the noise of the wheels of a train is to its advancement, or as the bilge-water in a wooden ship is to keep its seams tight.
In the smell of bilge-water, tar, and the foetid atmosphere generally his clouded brain awoke to the fact that he was on board ship, but resolutely declined to inform him how he got there.
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