Chapter 2

THE MONEY

"The stairs are very narrow, sir," said Alfred Raybrock to Captain
Jorgan.

"Like my cabin-stairs," returned the captain, "on many a voyage."

"And they are rather inconvenient for the head."

"If my head can't take care of itself by this time, after all the
knocking about the world it has had," replied the captain, as
unconcernedly as if he had no connection with it, "it's not worth looking
after."

Thus they came into the young fisherman's bedroom, which was as perfectly
neat and clean as the shop and parlour below; though it was but a little
place, with a sliding window, and a phrenological ceiling expressive of
all the peculiarities of the house-roof. Here the captain sat down on
the foot of the bed, and glancing at a dreadful libel on Kitty which
ornamented the wall,--the production of some wandering limner, whom the
captain secretly admired as having studied portraiture from the figure-
heads of ships,--motioned to the young man to take the rush-chair on the
other side of the small round table. That done, the captain put his hand
in the deep breast-pocket of his long-skirted blue coat, and took out of
it a strong square case-bottle,--not a large bottle, but such as may be
seen in any ordinary ship's medicine-chest. Setting this bottle on the
table without removing his hand from it, Captain Jorgan then spake as
follows:--

"In my last voyage homeward-bound," said the captain, "and that's the
voyage off of which I now come straight, I encountered such weather off
the Horn as is not very often met with, even there. I have rounded that
stormy Cape pretty often, and I believe I first beat about there in the
identical storms that blew the Devil's horns and tail off, and led to the
horns being worked up into tooth-picks for the plantation overseers in my
country, who may be seen (if you travel down South, or away West, fur
enough) picking their teeth with 'em, while the whips, made of the tail,
flog hard. In this last voyage, homeward-bound for Liverpool from South
America, I say to you, my young friend, it blew. Whole measures! No
half measures, nor making believe to blow; it blew! Now I warn't blown
clean out of the water into the sky,--though I expected to be even
that,--but I was blown clean out of my course; and when at last it fell
calm, it fell dead calm, and a strong current set one way, day and night,
night and day, and I drifted--drifted--drifted--out of all the ordinary
tracks and courses of ships, and drifted yet, and yet drifted. It
behooves a man who takes charge of fellow-critturs' lives, never to rest
from making himself master of his calling. I never did rest, and
consequently I