The pride of the partners was immediately in arms. This was an invasion
of their rights and dignities not to be borne. They were on board
of their own ship, and entitled to consult their ease and enjoyment.
M'Dougal was the champion of their cause. He was an active, irritable,
fuming, vainglorious little man, and elevated in his own opinion, by
being the proxy of Mr. Astor. A violent altercation ensued, in the
course of which Thorn threatened to put the partners in irons should
they prove refractory; upon which M'Dougal seized a pistol and swore to
be the death of the captain should he ever offer such an indignity. It
was some time before the irritated parties could be pacified by the more
temperate bystanders.
Such was the captain's outset with the partners. Nor did the clerks
stand much higher in his good graces; indeed, he seems to have regarded
all the landsmen on board his ship as a kind of live lumber, continually
in the way. The poor voyageurs, too, continually irritated his spleen by
their "lubberly" and unseemly habits, so abhorrent to one accustomed
to the cleanliness of a man-of-war. These poor fresh-water sailors, so
vainglorious on shore, and almost amphibious when on lakes and rivers,
lost all heart and stomach the moment they were at sea.
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