"
"If you prefer that sort of sport, you must to the right about for
Yarmouth; there you will find ships that will meet anything that swims,"
said the colonel.
"Perhaps the gentlemen would prefer abandoning the cares and dangers of
the ocean for a life of ease and gayety," said the captain. "The hand
that has long dallied with a marlinspike may be easily made to feel a
trigger, as gracefully as a lady touches the keys of her piano. In
short, there is and there is not a great resemblance between the life of
a sailor and that of a soldier. There are no gales of wind, nor short
allowances, nor reefing topsails, nor shipwrecks, among soldiers; and,
at the same time, there is just as much, or even more, grog-drinking,
jollifying, care-killing fun around a canteen and an open knapsack, than
there is on the end of a mess-chest, with a full can and a Saturday-
night's breeze. I have crossed the ocean several times, and I must own
that a ship, in good weather, is very much the same as a camp or
comfortable barracks; mind, I say only in very good weather."
"We have no doubt that all you say is true, sir," observed the spokesman
of the three; "but what to you may seem a hardship, to us is pleasure.
We have faced too many a gale to mind a capful of wind, and should think
ourselves always in the calm latitudes in one of your barracks, where
there is nothing to do but to eat our grub and to march a little fore
and aft a small piece of green earth.
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