Chapter 19 - Page 2

of our party, and at four we shall be ready to
accompany you; until then I am contracted to a gossip with Mrs.
Bloomfield in her dressing-room."

We shall now leave the party on the land, and follow those who have
already taken boat, or the fishermen. The beginning of the
intercourse between the salt-water navigator and his fresh-water
companion was again a little constrained and critical. Their
professional terms agreed as ill as possible, for when the Captain
used the expression 'ship the oars,' the commodore understood just
the reverse of what it had been intended to express; and, once, when
he told his companion to 'give way,' the latter took the hint so
literally as actually to cease rowing. All these professional
niceties induced the worthy ship-master to undervalue his companion,
who, in the main, was very skilful in his particular pursuit, though
it was a skill that he exerted after the fashions of his own lake,
and not after the fashions of the ocean. Owing to several contre-tems
of this nature, by the time they reached the fishing-ground the
Captain began to entertain a feeling for the commodore, that ill
comported with the deference due to his titular rank.

"I have come out with you, commodore," said Captain Truck, when they
had got to their station, and laying a peculiar emphasis on the
appellation he used, "in order to _enjoy_ myself, and you will confer
an especial favour on me by not using such phrases as 'cable-rope,'
'casting anchor,' and 'titivating.' As for the two first, no seaman
ever uses them; and I never heard suchna word on board a ship, as the
last, D----e, sir, if I believe it is to be found in the dictionary,
even."

"You amaze me, sir! 'Casting anchor,' and 'cable-rope' are both Bible
phrases, and they must be right."

"That follows by no means, commodore, as I have some reason to know;
for my father having been a parson, and I being a seaman, we may be
said to have the whole subject, as it were, in the family. St. Paul--
you have heard of such a man as St. Paul, commodore?--"

"I know him almost by heart, Captain Truck; but St. Peter and St.
Andrew were the men, most after my heart. Ours is an ancient calling,
sir, and in those two instances you see to what a fisherman can rise.
I do not remember to have ever heard of a sea-captain who was
converted into a saint."

"Ay, ay, there is always too much to do on board ship to have time to
be much more than a beginner in religion. There was my mate, v'y'ge
before last, Tom Leach, who is now master of a ship of his own, had
he been brought up to it properly, he would have made as
conscientious a parson as did his grandfather before him. Such a