Chapter 10 - Page 2

frightened still
plainer, is the fact, that if they had had any presence of mind, they
could have prevented his plunging overboard, since he brushed right by
them. However, they lay in then-bunks smoking, and kept talking on some
time in this strain, and advising me as soon as ever I got home to pin
my ears back, so as not to hold the wind, and sail straight away into
the interior of the country, and never stop until deep in the bush, far
off from the least running brook, never mind how shallow, and out of
sight of even the smallest puddle of rainwater.

This kind of talking brought the tears into my eyes, for it was so true
and real, and the sailors who spoke it seemed so false-hearted and
insincere; but for all that, in spite of the sickness at my heart, it
made me mad, and stung me to the quick, that they should speak of me as
a poor trembling coward, who could never be brought to endure the
hardships of a sailor's life; for I felt myself trembling, and knew that
I was but a coward then, well enough, without their telling me of it.
And they did not say I was cowardly, because they perceived it in me,
but because they merely supposed I must be, judging, no doubt, from
their own secret thoughts about themselves; for I felt sure that the
suicide frightened them very badly. And at last, being provoked to
desperation by their taunts, I told them so to their faces; but I might
better have kept silent; for they now all united to abuse me. They asked
me what business I, a boy like me, had to go to sea, and take the bread
out of the mouth of honest sailors, and fill a good seaman's place; and
asked me whether I ever dreamed of becoming a captain, since I was a
gentleman with white hands; and if I ever should be, they would like
nothing better than to ship aboard my vessel and stir up a mutiny. And
one of them, whose name was Jackson, of whom I shall have a good deal
more to say by-and-by, said, I had better steer clear of him ever after,
for if ever I crossed his path, or got into his way, he would be the
death of me, and if ever I stumbled about in the rigging near him, he
would make nothing of pitching me overboard; and that he swore too, with
an oath. At first, all this nearly stunned me, it was so unforeseen; and
then I could not believe that they meant what they said, or that they
could be so cruel and black-hearted. But how could I help seeing, that
the men who could thus talk to a poor, friendless boy, on the very first
night of his voyage to sea, must be capable of almost any enormity. I
loathed, detested, and hated them with all that was left of my bursting
heart and soul, and I thought myself the most forlorn and miserable
wretch that ever breathed. May I never be a man, thought I, if to be a
boy is to be