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With The Entrees
by
“I deserted the ship at Liverpool in consequence of my ill-treatment by the second mate,–a man selected for his position by reason of his superior physical strength and recognized brutality. I have been since told that he graduated from the state prison. On the second day out I saw him strike a man senseless with a belaying pin for some trifling breach of discipline. I saw him repeatedly beat and kick sick men–“
“Did you ever read Dana’s ‘Two Years before the Mast’?” asked Lightbody, our heavy literary man, turning to HIS neighbor, in a distinctly audible whisper. “Ah! there’s a book! Got all this sort of thing in it. Dev’lishly well written, too.”
The Patagonian (alive for information): “What ess this Dana, eh?”
His left hand neighbor (shortly): “Oh, that man!”
His right hand neighbor (curtly): “The fellah who wrote the Encyclopaedia and edits ‘The Sun’? that was put up in Boston for the English mission and didn’t get it.”
The Patagonian (making a mental diplomatic note of the fact that the severe discipline of the editor of “The Sun,” one of America’s profoundest scholars, while acting from patriotic motives, as the second mate of an American “bottom,” had unfitted him for diplomatic service abroad): “Ah, ciel!”
“I wandered on the quays for a day or two, until I was picked up by a Portuguese sailor, who, interesting himself in my story, offered to procure me a passage to Fayal and Lisbon, where, he assured me, I could find more comfortable and profitable means of returning to my own land. Let me say here that this man, although I knew him afterward as one of the most unscrupulous and heartless of pirates,–in fact the typical buccaneer of the books,–was to me always kind, considerate, and, at times, even tender. He was a capital seaman. I give this evidence in favor of a much ridiculed race, who have been able seamen for centuries.”
“Did you ever read that Portuguese Guide-book?” asked Lightbody of his neighbor; “it’s the most exquisitely ridiculous thing–“
“Will the great American pirate kindly go on, or resume his original functions,” said Miss Jones, over the table, with a significant look in the direction of Lightbody. But her anxiety was instantly misinterpreted by the polite and fair-play loving Englishman: “I say, now, don’t you know that the fact is these Portuguese fellahs are always ahead of us in the discovery business? Why, you know–“
“I shipped with him on a brig, ostensibly bound to St. Kitts and a market. We had scarcely left port before I discovered the true character of the vessel. I will not terrify you with useless details. Enough that all that tradition and romance has given you of the pirate’s life was ours. Happily, through the kindness of my Portuguese friend, I was kept from being an active participant in scenes of which I was an unwilling witness. But I must always bear my testimony to one fact. Our discipline, our esprit de corps, if I may so term it, was perfect. No benevolent society, no moral organization, was ever so personally self-sacrificing, so honestly loyal to one virtuous purpose, as we were to our one vice. The individual was always merged in the purpose. When our captain blew out the brains of our quartermaster, one day–“
“That reminds me–DID you read of that Georgia murder?” began Lightbody; “it was in all the papers I think. Oh, I beg pardon–“
“For simply interrupting him in a conversation with our second officer,” continued our host, quietly. “The act, although harsh and perhaps unnecessarily final, was, I think, indorsed by the crew. James, pass the champagne to Mr. Lightbody.”
He paused a moment for the usual casual interruption, but even the active Legrande was silent.
Alas! from the other end of the table came the voice of the Bonanza man:–
“The rope was around her neck. Well, gentlemen, that Mexican woman standing there, with that crowd around her, eager for her blood, dern my skin! if she didn’t call out to the sheriff to hold on a minit. And what fer? Ye can’t guess! Why, one of them long braids she wore was under the noose, and kinder in the way. I remember her raising her hand to her neck and givin’ a spiteful sort of jerk to the braid that fetched it outside the slip-knot, and then saying to the sheriff: ‘There, d–n ye, go on.’ There was a sort o’ thoughtfulness in the act, a kind o’ keerless, easy way, that jist fetched the boys–even them thet hed the rope in their hands, and they–” (suddenly recognizing the silence): “Oh, beg pardon, old man; didn’t know I’d chipped into your yarn–heave ahead; don’t mind me.”