And there were, besides, some mildewed and
half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over which
Nares would sometimes sniff and speculate. "Seems to
smell like diarrhaea stuff," he would remark. "I
wish't I knew, and I would try it." But the slop-chest
was indeed represented by the plugs of niggerhead, and
nothing else. Thus paternal laws are made, thus they
are evaded; and the schooner put to sea, like plenty of
her neighbours, liable to a fine of six hundred
dollars.
This characteristic scene, which has delayed me
overlong, was but a moment in that day of exercise and
agitation. To fit out a schooner for sea and improvise
a marriage, between dawn and dusk, involves heroic
effort. All day Jim and I ran and tramped, and laughed
and came near crying, and fell in sudden anxious
consultations, and were sped (with a prepared sarcasm
on our lips) to some fallacious milliner, and made
dashes to the schooner and John Smith's, and at every
second corner were reminded (by our own huge posters)
of our desperate estate. Between-whiles I had found
the time to hover at some half a dozen jewellers'
windows; and my present, thus intemperately chosen, was
graciously accepted.
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