Chapter 26

Containing A Pennyweight Of Philosophy

Still many days passed and the Parki yet floated. The little flying-
fish got used to her familiar, loitering hull; and like swallows
building their nests in quiet old trees, they spawned in the great
green barnacles that clung to her sides.

The calmer the sea, the more the barnacles grow. In the tropical
Pacific, but a few weeks suffice thus to encase your craft in shell
armor. Vast bunches adhere to the very cutwater, and if not stricken
off, much impede the ship's sailing. And, at intervals, this clearing
away of barnacles was one of Annatoo's occupations. For be it known,
that, like most termagants, the dame was tidy at times, though
capriciously; loving cleanliness by fits and starts. Wherefore, these
barnacles oftentimes troubled her; and with a long pole she would go
about, brushing them aside. It beguiled the weary hours, if nothing
more; and then she would return to her beads and her trinkets;
telling them all over again; murmuring forth her devotions, and
marking whether Samoa had been pilfering from her store.

Now, the escape from the shoal did much once again to heal the
differences of the good lady and her spouse. And keeping house, as
they did, all alone by themselves, in that lonely craft, a marvel it
is, that they should ever have quarreled. And then to divorce, and
yet dwell in the same tenement, was only aggravating the evil. So
Belisarius and Antonina again came together. But now, grown wise by
experience, they neither loved over-keenly, nor hated; but
took things as they were; found themselves joined, without hope of a
sundering, and did what they could to make a match of the mate.
Annatoo concluded that Samoa was not wholly to be enslaved; and Samoa
thought best to wink at Annatoo's foibles, and let her purloin when
she pleased.

But as in many cases, all this philosophy about wedlock is not proof
against the perpetual contact of the parties concerned; and as it is
far better to revive the old days of courtship, when men's mouths are
honey-combs: and, to make them still sweeter, the ladies the bees
which there store their sweets; when fathomless raptures glimmer far
down in the lover's fond eye; and best of all, when visits are
alternated by absence: so, like my dignified lord duke and his
duchess, Samoa and Annatoo, man and wife, dwelling in the same house,
still kept up their separate quarters. Marlborough visiting Sarah;
and Sarah, Marlborough, whenever the humor suggested.