Chapter 78 - Page 2

ar'n't about chock a'
block here! Move further up there, I'm sitting on my leg!"

"For God's sake, gunner's mate," cried I, "if it will content
you, I and my jacket will leave the mess."

"I wish you would, and be ------ to you!" he replied.

"And if he does, you will mess alone, gunner's mate," said Jack
Chase.

"That you will," cried all.

"And I wish to the Lord you'd let me!" growled Priming,
irritably rubbing his head with the handle of his sheath-knife.

"You are an old bear, gunner's mate," said Jack Chase.

"I am an old Turk," he replied, drawing the flat blade of his knife
between his teeth, thereby producing a whetting, grating sound.

"Let him alone, let him alone, men," said Jack Chase. "Only keep
off the tail of a rattlesnake, and he'll not rattle."

"Look out he don't bite, though," said Priming, snapping his
teeth; and with that he rolled off, growling as he went.

Though I did my best to carry off my vexation with an air of
indifference, need I say how I cursed my jacket, that it thus
seemed the means of fastening on me the murder of one of my
shipmates, and the probable murder of two more. For, had it not
been for my jacket, doubtless, I had yet been a member of my old
mess, and so have escaped making the luckless odd number among
my present companions.

All I could say in private to Priming had no effect; though I
often took him aside, to convince him of the philosophical
impossibility of my having been accessary to the misfortunes of
Baldy, the buried sailor in Rio, and Shenly. But Priming knew
better; nothing could move him; and he ever afterward eyed me as
virtuous citizens do some notorious underhand villain going
unhung of justice.

Jacket! jacket! thou hast much to answer for, jacket!