For days they
suffered the doleful rigors and retchings of sea-sickness, lurking below
in their berths in squalid state, or emerging now and then like spectres
from the hatchways, in capotes and blankets, with dirty nightcaps,
grizzly beard, lantern visage and unhappy eye, shivering about the deck,
and ever and anon crawling to the sides of the vessel, and offering up
their tributes to the windward, to infinite annoyance of the captain.
His letters to Mr. Astor, wherein he pours forth the bitterness of his
soul, and his seamanlike impatience of what he considers the "lubberly"
character and conduct of those around him, are before us, and are
amusingly characteristic. The honest captain is full of vexation on his
own account, and solicitude on account of Mr. Astor, whose property he
considers at the mercy of a most heterogeneous and wasteful crew.
As to the clerks, he pronounced them mere pretenders, not one of whom
had ever been among the Indians, nor farther to the northwest than
Montreal, nor of higher rank than barkeeper of a tavern or marker of a
billiard-table, excepting one, who had been a school-master, and whom he
emphatically sets down for "as foolish a pedant as ever lived."
Then as to the artisans and laborers who had been brought from Canada
and shipped at such expense, the three most respectable, according
to the captain's account, were culprits, who had fled from Canada on
account of their misdeeds; the rest had figured in Montreal as draymen,
barbers, waiters, and carriole drivers, and were the most helpless,
worthless beings "that ever broke sea-biscuit.
Pages:
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72