For my part,
Nick, I can't see why it is that we keep dodging along shore here, with
less than ten fathoms under us, when, by stretching into the broad
Atlantic, we might fall in with a Jamaicaman every day or two, and have
sugar hogsheads and rum puncheons as plenty aboard us as hard fare is
now."
"It is all owing to that Pilot," returned the other; "for, d'ye see, if
there was no bottom, there would be no pilots. This is dangerous
cruising-ground, where we stretch into five fathoms, and then drop our
lead on a sand-pit or a rock! Besides, they make night-work of it, too!
If we had daylight for fourteen hours instead of seven, a man might
trust to feeling his way for the other ten."
"Now, a'n't ye a couple of old horse-marines!" again interrupted the
young sailor; "don't you see that Congress wants us to cut up Johnny
Bull's coasters, and that old Blow-Hard has found the days too short for
his business, and so he has landed a party to get hold of night. Here we
have him! and when we get off to the ship, we shall put him under
hatches, and then you'll see the face of the sun again! Come, my lilies!
let these two gentlemen look into your cabin windows--what? you won't!
Then I must squeeze your woolen nightcaps for ye!"
The negroes, who had been submitting to his humors with the abject
humility of slavery, now gave certain low intimations that they were
suffering pain, under the rough manipulation of their tormentor.
"What's that!" cried a stern voice, whose boyish tones seemed to mock
the air of authority that was assumed by the speaker--"who's that, I
say, raising that cry among ye?"
The willful young man slowly removed his two hands from the woolly polls
of the slaves, but as he suffered them to fall reluctantly along their
sable temples, he gave the ear of one of the blacks a tweak that caused
him to give vent to another cry, that was uttered with a much greater
confidence of sympathy than before.
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