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He was seated on a match-tub the skeleton swinging near his head at the foot of the table, in readiness to grasp the limb, as when a plank is being severed by a carpenter and his apprentice. "The sponges, Steward," said Cuticle, for the last time taking out his teeth, and drawing up his shirt sleeves still further.
But habituation to discipline is magical; and ere long an old forecastle-man was discovered elevated upon a match-tub, while, with a malicious grin, his barber a fellow who, from his merciless rasping, was called Blue-Skin seized him by his long beard, and at one fell stroke cut it off and tossed it out of the port-hole behind him.
On the morning following, though it was not a regular shaving day, the gun-deck barbers were observed to have their shops open, their match-tub accommodations in readiness, and their razors displayed. With their brushes, raising a mighty lather in their tin pots, they stood eyeing the passing throng of seamen, silently inviting them to walk in and be served.
They were in different parts of the gun-deck, between the long twenty-four pounders. Their furniture, however, was not very elaborate, hardly equal to the sumptuous appointments of metropolitan barbers. Indeed, it merely consisted of a match-tub, elevated upon a shot-box, as a barber's chair for the patient.
Seating himself mournfully on the match-tub, he looked sideways, and said to the barber, who was slithering his sheep-shears in readiness to begin: "My friend, I trust your scissors are consecrated. Let them not touch this beard if they have yet to be dipped in holy water; beards are sacred things, barber.
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