CHAP. II. ZABRA.

Zabra had not been many days on board, before he became a source of wonder to the whole crew. A spirit flashed from his dark lustrous eyes, that kept off every thing approaching the shape of sociality among the persons by whom he was surrounded. He rarely spoke, except when attending upon Oriel Porphyry; and then the proud expression of his looks that made curiosity stand aloof, was changed into a glowing animation, and the tongue which had seemed to disdain all converse became eloquent with a resistless endeavour to delight. He had all the external appearance of a graceful youth of sixteen, with a form tall, elegant, and buoyant, whose heart had just received the invigorating warmth of the first dawn of manly sentiments; but when the voice sent its soft music to the ear, breathing the rich poetry of an ardent imagination, the splendour of the language, its power and meaning, and the energy with which it was supported, gave evidence of a mind much nearer approaching the maturity of a masculine intellect, than the age that has been mentioned could have possessed. He seemed as if he existed only for the purpose for which he had been sent—as if he knew that his occupation was watching over the safety of him to whom he had been committed; and he appeared to enter into the service with a heart and soul devoted to the object. His looks searched the inmost thoughts of those upon whom they fell, as if to discover whether any sinister intention against his lord and master was there harboured, and before their piercing sight it was scarcely possible to stand unmoved; and there was a mystery in his actions, when removed from the apparent source of his solicitude, that still more made the wonderers marvel. He sought a place where no one could intrude upon his privacy, and with a harp, with which on these occasions he never failed to be accompanied, so filled the air with unknown melodies, and unheard-of songs, that the superstitious seamen, as they listened, imagined he was in communication with beings of another world,—there was something so aërial, so soft, and so sweet in the music he created.

“Scrunch me if I can make it out at all!” exclaimed Climberkin to a group of sailors in the forecastle. “He ar’n’t got a word to throw away upon a dog; but if he looks at one, one doesn’t feel at all inclined to be ’quisitive. He was wand’rin’ about the main deck as it was getting duskish yesterday—and I, not keeping a good look out ahead, run foul o’ him afore I knowed who it was. As soon as I diskivered the craft, I was just beginning a bit of a ’pology, when he fixes on me a look as cut through me like a nor-wester, waves his arm in a most mysterus manner, and glides away as softly as if he trod upon butter.”

“As true as a fish swims, I’ve got the only prime notion of this here mystery,” said Boggle, with an air of considerable importance.

“No!” cried several voices incredulously.

“Ah! but I have though, or I’m the spawn of a toad-fish!” replied Boggle. “And I’ll tell you how I gripped it. You see I ar’n’t a bit afeard o’ any ’dividual as is aboveboard in what he’s arter; and I’m not the chap likely to be flabbergasted in a fair fight;—so seeing as how you were all in no little mystification about this youngster, I thought to myself, says I, when he steers his course into your whereabouts, ’spose you show a civil flag at the mast-head, and ax arter his mother and all the family; he nat’rally sees you knows manners, and ’mediately returns the compliment. From this to that, and from that to t’other, is as easy as catching sharks wi’ pickled pork, when two civil fellows lets go their jawing tackle; so you’ll tell him your ’miniscences quite confidential, and he’ll be obligated to tell you his’n; and then having overhauled his log-book pretty smartish, you can return to your mates with the ’telligence. Well, I was walking along jest afore dinner, when I seed master Zabra leaning against a mast, wi’ folded arms, eyes looking straight up to the clouds as was fleecing over the sky in all sorts o’ figurations, and his mahogany face seemin’ quite fair by the side o’ the rollin’ jet black curls as fell on each cheek down to his shoulder. I seed in a moment he was no common sort o’ cretur. If he ar’n’t a Indian prince, thinks I, I’ve no notion o’ things in general. Well, I was determined to know the rights on’t, and was just about recomembring the bit of a speech I was going to say about his mother and the rest o’ the family, when, as I came right afore him, he looks me full in the face; and though I seed nothin’ but the flash o’ his two eyes afore he flitted away to the other end o’ the ship, they seemed so ’stonishingly curious that they held me to the ground as if I was nailed to the deck, and the words I was going to say stuck in my throat like lumps o’ old Cucumber-Shin’s puddin’.”

“Kukumshin!” shouted the black cook, a very fat old negro, indignantly thrusting his woolly poll in the middle of the group. “Dare to call me Kukumshin! Me, Roly Poly Cook in ship Albatross, and free gennleman o’ colour—me Kukumshin! Pretty kettle o’ fish!—Puddin’ berry much too good for sich a fellar. Stick in him troat too! Him nebber hab no time, acause him bolt him like smoke, a fellar! Call me Kukumshin indeed!”

“I tell ye what it is, my mates,” cried Hearty, inattentive to Roly Poly’s indignation. The group were all attention.

“A fellar!” exclaimed the cook, casting one of his blackest looks upon the offender, and then waddling off to another part of the ship.

“In my time I’ve been many voyages to India and thereabouts,” said the old man; “and I knows it’s the notion o’ them people, that arter a fellow’s dead he comes to life again in another sort of a body. Now if this here rigmarole’s true, which every body there says is as sartain as a stone ’ill sink, seeing that this youngster is more ’cute in his notions than is usual at his time o’ day, and appears a most ’straordinary sort o’ a human, it’s much more nat’ral to ’spose he’s been metamorphorosed from some of those Old Indian flos’phers who ’s up to ev’ry thing in natur’, than that he should be a mere hobbledehoy, as can’t have any more gumption than what ’ll serve him to carry a letter or go on a message. But hush!” exclaimed the speaker as a beautiful symphony full of passionate sentiment was borne upon the air. A soft melodious voice soon mingled with the instrument, and these words were sung with all the expression superior skill could bestow upon them:—

“There! that is music,” observed Climberkin in a whisper; “and it makes my heart leap like a dolphin just taken out o’ his element.”

“All hands to take in sail!” shouted a stentorian voice from the quarter-deck, and in an instant the group were engaged in active duty.

But the song had other listeners than the party just described. Oriel Porphyry, after escaping from a weary lecture from the learned professor Fortyfolios, who seemed laudably anxious to fulfil his duties to his pupil, had been pacing the quarter-deck with long and hasty strides, when he was roused from the ambitious reveries of his ardent imagination by the mellow sounds of a harp at no great distance. In him, the voice, the song, its sentiments, and their expression, recalled to his memory the delicious beauty of her, from the wondrous lustre of whose gaze he had drunk of that intoxicating stream which had bound his senses in a wild and rapturous delirium. The dark eyes, radiant with the light of the impassioned soul that floated in their depths, again raised on him their sunny splendour; and the budding mouth, bearing the odorous spirits of a thousand roses on its lips, once more appeared to teach those smiling lessons that had been to him the fairest pages in the book of knowledge. He listened, and his heart was filled with the sweet influence of a happier time. The dreams of ambition were forgot—the suggestions of pride were unthought of—fame, glory, power, the pomp of greatness, the sway of empire, and the adulation of the governed, were now as things for which he had no sympathy; and he thought only of the time when the noble, gifted, young, and beautiful Eureka, regardless of the loftiness of her exalted station, the opinions of her princely family, or the sentiments of the world, ennobled him with the passionate ecstacies of her enthusiastic nature, and first filled his youthful brain with those heroic dreams which made him yearn after the glorious influence of superiority.

During the continuance of the song he listened with breathless attention, and the rich harmonies of the music kept him spell-bound to the spot on which he stood; but as the last chords of the closing symphony were struck, he stood by the side of the musician.

“I knew not, Zabra, that you were so well skilled in the science of sweet sounds,” said he.

Zabra had appeared so lost in his own meditations, that he had not noticed master Porphyry’s approach. His gaze was fixed; and as he bent over his harp, allowing the long curls of his dark hair to mingle with its strings, no attitude, and no expression of countenance, could more plainly interpret the perfect state of self-abandonment in which he then existed; but when he heard the voice of him by whom he was addressed, in an instant his dark handsome features assumed a different expression, and throwing back the shining tresses that shaded his face, he seemed a creature all smiles, devotion, and enjoyment.

“Music has been to me the food of my existence,” remarked the page: “on its divine essence I was nurtured; and as the perfume forms a part of the breeze on which it is borne, harmony has entered into my nature, and is now my life, my strength, and my felicity.”

“Where did you learn the song I have just heard?” inquired the merchant’s son.

“From the impulses of my own creative spirit,” replied the other. “From sympathies awakened into action by the strong power that creates and controls them. See you the mighty tide that swells up into universal motion, bearing by its own strength the burthen of resistless armaments as if they were but reeds, and when it does put forth its power, assuming such shapes and doing such things as make the marvel of every age; and know you not that it is the operation of its attraction for that fair world of light that dwelleth in the starry heaven, whose glimpses of a glory not to be subdued enter into its innermost depths, and stir its everlasting waves with passionate emotion?”

“Surely one so young cannot have felt the power of Love?” asked the elder of the two, in a tone that betrayed the influence of which it spoke.

“Who shall say when it shall come or when it shall depart?” said Zabra, as the dusky hue of his cheek gave evidence of the warm blood that filled his veins. “It is a presence that appeareth at all times when the soul is fit to receive it. It cometh not at this time, nor at that—it dwelleth not here, nor there; it filleth eternity of time, and infinity of space. Look around you, over the vast circumference of boundless nature—wherever there is life, wherever there is motion—wherever there is an object that hath beauty in its form and fitness for its purpose, it hath all its energies swayed by the thrilling impulses of that almighty passion. The flower that liveth but a few days, trembles in the warm embraces of the southern breeze; and the planet that smiled upon the infancy of the world, in the unconquerable maturity of a thousand ages, still enamoured, drinks in the beauty of the mountain stream. The heart is ever young, as mine is; and as the mellowing sunbeam calls into activity the principle of life in the insect’s egg, the sunshine in which I have basked, hath stirred the vital seed implanted within my breast, and given it restless hopes and fond desires, and properties and motives to an end, that are the wings with which it flutters in its shell. The only thing in which I differ from the rest is that my Spring hath preceded theirs. All have their seasons, but till the sun comes the winter endures; and in me the frost hath been broken up, and the current, freed from its icy chains, rushes through its channels in the soft light of its first bright day, and makes a world of its own, full of music and flowers.”

“But how can you bear to be parted from the object with which your sympathies are so closely united?” asked master Porphyry.

“We are inseparable,” replied Zabra, as he fixed his eyes on the inquirer, eloquent with animation. “Think you, you can part the melody from the voice by which it is sung? The two cannot be severed; neither can the spirit to which mine is linked be other than a part of myself. I breathe its atmosphere—I enjoy its presence—I share in its delights. Our bodies may be set asunder by a plank; but you may pile mountains upon mountains, and worlds upon worlds between us, and yet our souls will remain one and indivisible.”

“How much your voice and gestures remind me of Eureka!” remarked the merchant’s son, regarding with increasing interest the romantic enthusiasm of his companion.

“For what purpose than this was I sent?” asked the youth, as he turned away from the gaze as if to examine some of the strings of his instrument: then continued—“If you loved her with the same intense devotion with which she regards you, you would not require to be reminded; but, save in the color of our complexions, there is so perfect a resemblance both in our appearance and in our natures, that I might recall her image to any one who has seen her and seems likely to forget her.”

“You wrong me, Zabra!” cried the other vehemently, “if you imagine it possible that I can forget her. It is she who hath filled these veins with a quenchless fire that makes my whole frame glow with a desire for lofty enterprise, to attain a renown, and acquire a greatness worthy of the love with which I have been honoured. Since that proud day when I first beheld in her lustrous eyes the light that created a new splendour over the horizon of my happiness, I have been shaking the chains that bound me to the world, and, while yearning to emancipate myself from its oppressive thraldoms, have sought how I could best subdue it to my own ambitious purposes. I worship the nobility of her nature, and would have her behold in mine something worthy of its intimate association. I would not have her descend from the lofty pedestal on which she is placed; therefore am I eager to win my way to a like elevation—ay, and ascend higher, if a loftier step there be—and there acknowledge the greatness I have worshipped, and everlastingly unite it to my own.”

“How little you know of her character, if you think she values any thing except the spirit to which she is attached,” observed the page. “Did she care for the accidental difference of birth that distinguishes you from her, you would never have known of her affection, because it could never have existed. They who love the idle vanities of rank, set their hearts upon a garment, a feather, a shining stone that is made to adorn the person who possesses it; but it was not such artificial worth that could attract Eureka. That she would feel proud of any distinction you might by the force of your own merit acquire, is probable; but knowing the qualities of your disposition, she holds them at their full value, which could not be increased in the slightest degree by all the honours you might gain. It was her observation of a tendency in you to seek after the unattainable, that made her fearful it would lead you into danger; and when she pressed me into this service, she bade me warn you of the different perils it would produce. I warn you now. Take heed of indulging in these ambitious dreams. You have the elements of greatness in your character; they ought to content you; and what you desire are but the shadows of what you have. There is another danger which is equally imminent; and if you are as truly devoted to Eureka as she hath ever been to you, you will pause before it reaches you.—Your feverish pursuit after renown, or power, or whatever delusive meteor it may be that dazzles your eyes, only tends to make you lose sight of that one true, steady, and brilliant light that should be a glory in your pathway.”

“Never!” exclaimed his companion with fervour—“never can any ambitious dream of mine lead me from that splendour out of which it was created. My aspirations are a natural result of the lofty source from which they spring. They are but the reflections of her excellence—and the signs of her presence; and loving her, I could no more exist without desiring to be great, than I could bask in the sun’s rays without acquiring warmth.—Besides, had I not this stimulus to exertion, by what means can I hope to make her mine. To the merchant’s son the Lord of Philadelphia would deny his daughter; but with Oriel Porphyry, his equal in dignity and superior in power, the honoured of all and the feared of many, he would gladly seek an alliance.”

“You think not of what Eureka’s ideas may be on this subject?” inquired Zabra.

“I think of them, but they cannot avail,” said the other.

“They will avail!” replied the youth emphatically.

“How?” asked master Porphyry.

“Be assured of this,” said his young companion, while again he seemed more attentive to his harp than to his listener. “If, in a reasonable time, the obstacles that retard your union still exist, she will point out a way by which they may be honourably set aside, or acquiesce in any plan with the same object in view, which you may propose.”

“How know you this?” inquired the other hastily.

“I heard her say it,” said the page.

“But before I return, her father may compel her to enter into other arrangements.”

“Eureka has a will which is not to be compelled—she will readily do that which is right—but no power on earth could bend her inclinations to an unjust purpose.”

“And she may be surrounded by dangers—subject to every kind of suffering, and forced to endure a thousand indignities from which I have no power to rescue her,” continued master Porphyry.

“She is surrounded by dangers,” said the youth with emphasis—“dangers new and terrible to other minds; but of these she will think nothing, and of what she may be obliged to endure she will be equally regardless, as long as she is possessed with the conviction, that he for whom alone she suffers is not unmindful of the sacrifices she has made.”

“There is a strength in your words,” said the merchant, laying his hand upon the shoulder of his companion, “which there is no withstanding; and your looks are even more eloquent than your language. How is it possible that one apparently so young should have acquired that force of expression, and depth of meaning, which breathes in every sentence you express.”

“I was taught early, and well,” replied the other, as his frame trembled slightly under the touch of his companion. “And as for my speech—truth is always the most forcible. My external frame may appear light and boyish; but size is no safe guide for the judgment. The ostrich never leaves the earth along which it glides; but the eagle pierces the unfathomable depths of air with an untiring wing, and floats with eye undimmed within the scorching rays of the eternal sun.”

“Zabra, your nature is superior to the garb you wear,” said the elder, as he kindly took the hand and gazed into the face of his more youthful associate. “I cannot allow you to be thus. You must put away the page, and endeavour to be the friend of Oriel Porphyry.”

“By whatever title Oriel Porphyry can most love Zabra, that title Zabra would most desire to be,” replied the other.

“Then be it so,” said his companion. “From henceforth you shall be my associate—my friend—my brother. Any thing in the ship that can extend your enjoyments shall be at your disposal, and you may command the services of every living creature it contains. We will be together as often as possible, and the greatest delight you can create, or I can indulge in, will be for us to discourse of her in whose affection I exist; that when I hear the magic music of your voice, and meet the deep intelligence of your gaze, the resemblance may make me imagine that the blissful times have again returned, when beneath the shadows of the welcome trees we sat together till the noonday hours ran on unnoticed to the twilight, and the twilight deepened into evening, and still our hands were clasped with the same gentle pressure with which they first met, and still our eyes looked into each other with the same unspeakable meaning that was first created in their mutual glances.”

Perhaps Oriel Porphyry would have said more, but at that moment his companion withdrew his hand, and with looks full of an empassioned tenderness, as he struck an accompaniment of harmonious chords, he sang the following words:—

When the song concluded their hearts seemed filled with a mutual sympathy which neither could express; and Master Porphyry throwing his arm round the young musician, and bringing Zabra’s arm round his own waist, drew him to another part of the vessel without either exchanging a word. In this attitude, the youthful pair would have formed an admirable study for a painter. The tall and manly form of the merchant’s son, his clear complexion and noble countenance creating a perfect contrast to the symmetrical, yet delicate, figure of his companion, and the soft voluptuous character of his more dark but not less beautiful features.

While these proceedings were going on, a scene of a very different description was being acted in a low, dark, narrow cabin in a secluded part of the ship. By the light of a small lamp that swung from the roof, the diminutive form of Log the captain’s clerk, with his little conceited physiognomy, might be observed perched upon a high stool engaged in writing, while the more burly figure, but not more prepossessing countenance, of Scrumpydike, lay extended on some packages near his feet.

“Scrunch me, if this ar’n’t the most miserable sort o’ life, I ever knowed,” remarked the latter, as he rested his chin upon his hands and supported himself upon his elbows.

“Sad!” responded Log, who thinking that to speak much would lessen his consequence, seldom allowed any thing beyond a monosyllable to escape him, to which by repetitions and some slight additions he attempted to give as much importance as if they contained volumes of meaning. “Sad, sad, very sad, very sad upon my word, Mister Scrumpydike.”

“There’s nothin’ doin’,” continued the other. “I feel as queer as a dog wi’ his tail cut off, cause there’s no ’portunity to do nothin’.”

“Nothing, nothing, decidedly, actually, positively nothing, Mister Scrumpydike,” replied the little man.

“It’s a tarnation hard case that a fellow’s obligated to be honest against his will,” remarked the sailor despondingly.

“Hard, hard, very hard, very hard indeed, uncommonly hard, Mister Scrumpydike,” said the other, appearing to sympathise exceedingly in so extraordinary a cause of complaint.

“But what’s most cruel in this here unnat’ral state o’ things is, that there’s sich lots o’ beautiful prigging for any chap as is a mind to make his-self handy,” added his companion in the same pathetic tone.

“Cruel, cruel, most cruel, most unjustly, most unnaturally, most deplorably cruel, Mister Scrumpydike,” responded Log.

“Well, I only knows I shan’t be able to stand this here molloncolly sort o’ fun much longer. May I be bolted by a shark if I ar’n’t a getting into the most ’bominable reg’lar habits as can be. You wouldn’t s’pose it possible, but I ar’n’t ’propriated nothin’ o’ nobodies since I’ve been aboard this here craft. I ar’n’t the same sort o’ cretur I was afore. I ar’n’t, indeed. I resists temptation, and commits lots o’ other ’straordinary impossibilities. I does without divarsion:—I ar’n’t killed a fellow cretur for ever so long. And worser nor all, some o’ the bugaboos here act’ly thinks I ar’n’t no greater a villain than themselves, ar’n’t it horrid?”

“Terrible, terrible, horribly terrible, upon my word, very horribly terrible, Mister Scrumpydike.”

Here the dialogue was interrupted by a knocking at the door which made Scrumpydike jump upon his legs, and Log twist himself round upon his stool, each looking, in a considerable degree, alarmed and anxious. Presently the door opened cautiously, and Captain Compass entered the cabin. His sallow complexion, high cheek bones, prominent nose, thick lips, and restless grey eyes were surrounded by a thick mass of coarse black hair, that spread from each side of his narrow forehead, down his cheeks and under his chin, in a formidable pair of whiskers. His figure was spare of flesh, but in the gauntness of body, length of arm, and sinewy leg, there was evidently more than ordinary strength. His appearance was not likely to excite for him much regard, but there was a careless freedom in his manner, a frank boldness in his conversation, and a pungent satire in his wit, that had made him an agreeable companion to the merchant’s son.

“All right, Scrumpy?” inquired Compass in a whisper, after closing the door carefully after him.

“All right, cap’ain,” replied Scrumpydike.

“Right, right, very right, perfectly right, right as a trivet, Captain Compass,” added Log.

“Scrunch me, if we shan’t all be served with sauce we don’t like, unless we keep a smart look out ahead,” observed the captain as he flung himself upon a bale of goods.

“Why, what’s in the wind now, cap’ain?” inquired Scrumpydike, with some earnestness, while little Log remained silent with alarm.

“May I be peeled to shreds in a hurricane, if that dark looking son of a savage, who came on board the day we sailed, doesn’t suspect the game we are playing,” continued the captain.

“No!” exclaimed the other, as an expression of anxiety became visible in his hard rough features; and the captain’s clerk trembled on his stool as if he was shaken by an ague.

“I was palavering young Porphyry as smooth as a rat’s tail, after he had been pretty well blown up with the long-winded sentences of that tedious old porpoise Fortyfolios, and was going it at a smacking rate about the pleasure of liberty and the enjoyments of a life of enterprise, the sort of discourse, I have found out, he’ll suck in as a fish drinks water, when happening to turn my daylights a little a starboard, I beheld that black thief Zabra watching me like a snake, and when I met the full stare of his great goggling eyes they seemed to have the power of piercing through and through right into the hold where all my secrets are ballasted, so I, having a sudden fear that he was up to the course I was steering, lost the helm of my discourse, and anchored in shallow water, with a muddy bottom, in no time.”

“Pooh!” responded Scrumpydike: “is that all? Leave him to me, and I’ll thank ye for the job.”

“No, that mustn’t be: we must avoid every thing likely to create the least suspicion,” replied the captain.

“I’ll take care o’ that,” said the other: “I’ll watch my ’portunity when he’s a hanging over the side o’ the ship, as he does o’ nights when there ar’n’t a human near enough to catch a glimpse o’ his ’bominable carcass, and then with my ‘safe and sure’ here,” continued the fellow as he drew a long knife a little way from its concealment in his vest, “I’ll make a sweep into his bread-room, and afore he can ax what it’s for, I’ll heave him into a berth where he’ll lie snug as a wet blanket can make him.”

“It wo’n’t do, I tell you,” remarked his associate.

“Nobody needn’t know nothin’ about it,” added Scrumpydike.

“There is too much risk and not sufficient advantage to be gained by it,” said the captain. “Ah!” he continued, after a pause—“if I only had some of the old hands now, scrunch me, if I wouldn’t put matters to rights, after a fashion the fellows here don’t dream of.”

“Wouldn’t we? Breakers ahead! wouldn’t we?” cried the other with exultation. “But they’ve all cut their cables and gone adrift. There’s nothin’ but misfortunes in this here world. It’s a hard case for a fellow who’s sociably inclined to see his mates, as fine a set o’ villains as ever escaped hanging, partin’ company without cuttin’ each other’s throats or doin’ any thing in a friendly way.” A melancholy pause succeeded this sentence.—“It was an ugly business that at Cape Danger, warn’t it, Mister Log?” at last asked the scoundrel of the little man upon the stool.

“Ugly, ugly, very ugly, I may say uncommonly, deplorably, ferociously ugly, Mister Scrumpydike,” replied the captain’s clerk.

“Well, it’s no use lamenting the catastrophe now,” observed the captain. “All we’ve got to do is to get a new ship and a fresh set of hands. The ship we’ve as good as got, but she can be of no use without a crew of the right sort. To get such a set of fellows together will take some time. We must either pick them up where we can, or try and make the present crew adopt our views. This will be rather a ticklish business, and requires very careful management, for the slightest knowledge of our intentions among those not inclined to join us will wreck the whole concern. Now, Scrumpy, you’ve got jawing tackle that will stand in any weather.”

“Ay, ay, cap’ain,” cried the fellow with a grin: “may I be washed to rags in a waterspout if I couldn’t bamboozle the devil’s grandmother.”

“Well, you must sound these fellows, but do it cautiously—and try if the inducement of plenty of plunder and a free life will be likely to lead them to assist us in our bold undertaking. As for the boy Zabra, although there appears something very mysterious about him, and he looks as sharp as a sword-fish, I don’t think it possible he can find me out. Scorch my body to a cinder! but it would be a hard case if, after having baffled so many big vessels, I should be sunk by such a bit of a craft as that. However, I mus’n’t stay here any longer or my absence may create inquiry,” observed the speaker as he proceeded to the door; then looking at his associates said, “Remember what you have heard, and steer your course accordingly,” and with the same caution with which he entered left the cabin.

“Well, ar’n’t this enough to make a fellow ready to jump down his own throat wi’ vexation?” remarked Scrumpydike to his companion. “Here, I was jest ’gratulating myself that spiflicating that young blackamoor would be a tolerable bit o’ a pastime to cheer up the dulness o’ this here molloncholy life, when he turns round upon me and says it ar’n’t to be at no price! I’d rather live in a whale’s belly up to my nose in blubber than endure this uncomfortable state o’ feeling. Scrunch me if I wouldn’t. Don’t you think now, Master Log, it’s as bad a state o’ existence as is possible for a human to know on?”

“Bad, bad, shocking bad, particularly shocking bad, upon my word very particularly shocking bad, Mister Scrumpydike,” replied the commiserating captain’s clerk; and immediately afterwards the dissatisfied villain walked away to join his unsuspicious messmates.