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141
LETTERS FROM THE
guese had shaved himself. Most mariners have a custom of needling India-ink figures into their skin. One of ours has his brawny arm purpled over with a flag, an eagle, an anchor, and, what is less characteristic in a son of ocean, a tall tree of knowledge, with an open-lipped serpent coiling down its trunk, and a long haired Eve uplistening under it. I was informed of one of our naval officers, who has a whole line of battle-ships thus tattooed around his body. A passenger mentioned, that Admiral Cochrane, when his war-ship was trending along our coast, had sent to him from England, by a Jady, a haunch of a-la-mode venison preserved, rivalling that sent by Lord Clare to Goldsmith ; and, in the centre, some vials of cordials, and a silver-enchased box with a chain-edged billet-doux in it, and a hope that, when he tasted and perused her compliment, he would not forget the vows of uidd lang syne. Such love has some substance in it. As this story was in telling, at dinner, our ship on tacking suddenly heaved, and careened ; and dance went the eggs as if quilled with quicksilver; and slide went the barricado-table, that is, one having .circular orifices to receive the bases of all the trenchers ; and lo ! the wreck of pullets, and the crash of plates! We daily espied some white spots, like swans with outspread pinions, afar on the dark waters, which were vessels proudly riding over the ocean waves; going to do business on the mighty main. I marvel, that any woman will marry a ship-commander, “whose house is on the
SOUTH AND WEST.	145
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mountain waves, whose home is on the deep thus Jgj>/',so often, and so long, widowing his solicitous wife, jjj^'rlt requires practice, to be able to walk the deck at 3^j|:sea. For myself, the bounding of the surges at first occasioned such incessant ludicrous vacillations from ^i;ia central basis, that I misstepped as one maudled. The ocean boys step wide, and firm, and sway the body to the motion of the ship. All my short ambu-ifeilation has been, first from the cabin-door on one side g#of the quarter-deck to the tiller-rope; then, from £s7sV the cabin-door on the other side of the quarter-deck ^fpito the tiller-rope again ; so that, if I could walk from ^vithe cabin-door on both sides of the de'Ck at once, I sj|%should meet myself at the tiller-rope.
The uniformity on the ocean is tedious even for Ij^one well; we seem to be always in one place. A rich merchant of Boston used to say, that he could ^ynot have an ill wind; he had so many Ophir-men going out, and coming in, that, blow whatever wind might, it was favourable for some one of them. But |S$?-vve, every day, were doomed to beat in an zVzdirect direction ;>or had a breeze that blew a calm ; or a puff of empty air, so ethereal, that it required a spy-glass to see which way it did blow. We reckon ■&$?■ our leagues long or short, according as we have a brisk breeze, or a breathless calm; a short league is ' under the former, a long league is under the latter; |i)£svtirne counted with progress. How often, in such a breathless pause, did I sigh :—shall we ever get any wheres ? 0! sighed I again, 0 for Ulysses’ bag of