Chapter 29 - Page 2

as to peer under his tarpaulin. "Who are _you_, sir? What's your
name?"

"Find out, Milk-and-Water," was the impertinent rejoinder.

"Blast you! you old rascal; I'll have you licked for that! Tell
me his name, some of you!" turning round to the bystanders.

"Gammon!" cries a voice at a distance.

"Hang me, but I know _you_, sir! and here's at you!" and, so
saying, Mr. Pert drops the impenetrable unknown, and makes into
the crowd after the bodiless voice. But the attempt to find an
owner for that voice is quite as idle as the effort to discover
the contents of the monkey jacket.

And here sorrowful mention must be made of something which,
during this state of affairs, most sorely afflicted me. Most
monkey jackets are of a dark hue; mine, as I have fifty times
repeated, and say again, was white. And thus, in those long, dark
nights, when it was my quarter-watch on deck, and not in the top,
and others went skulking and "sogering" about the decks, secure
from detection--their identity undiscoverable--my own hapless
jacket for ever proclaimed the name of its wearer. It gave me
many a hard job, which otherwise I should have escaped. When an
officer wanted a man for any particular duty--running aloft, say,
to communicate some slight order to the captains of the tops--how
easy, in that mob of incognitoes, to individualise "_that white
jacket_," and dispatch him on the errand. Then, it would never do
for me to hang back when the ropes were being pulled.

Indeed, upon all these occasions, such alacrity and cheerfulness
was I obliged to display, that I was frequently held up as an
illustrious example of activity, which the rest were called upon
to emulate. "Pull--pull! you lazy lubbers! Look at White-Jacket,
there; pull like him!"

Oh! how I execrated my luckless garment; how often I scoured the
deck with it to give it a tawny hue; how often I supplicated the
inexorable Brush, captain of the paint-room, for just one
brushful of his invaluable pigment. Frequently, I meditated
giving it a toss overboard; but I had not the resolution.
Jacketless at sea! Jacketless so near Cape Horn! The thought was
unendurable. And, at least, my garment was a jacket in name, if
not in utility.

At length I essayed a "swap." "Here, Bob," said I, assuming all
possible suavity, and accosting a mess-mate with a sort of
diplomatic assumption of superiority, "suppose I was ready to
part with this 'grego' of mine, and take yours in exchange--what
would you give me to boot?"

"Give you to _boot?_" he exclaimed, with horror; "I wouldn't
take your infernal jacket