Aboard the Galley

He was cruising in the Southern Seas (was the Ulysses who told me this
tale), when there bore down upon him a marvellous strange fleet, whose
like he had not before seen. For each little craft was a corpse,
stiffly ''marlined,'' or bound about with tarred rope, as mariners do
use to treat plug tobacco: also ballasted, and with a fair mast and
sail stepped through his midriff. These self-sufficing ships knew no
divided authority: no pilot ever took the helm from the captain's
hands; no mutines lay in bilboes, no passengers complained of the
provisions. In a certain island to windward (the native pilot
explained) it was the practice, when a man died, to bury him for the
time being in dry, desiccating sand, till a chief should pass from his
people, when the waiting bodies were brought out and, caulked and
rigged secumdum artem, were launched with the first fair breeze, the
admiral at their head, on their voyage to the Blessed Islands. And if
a chief should die, and the sand should hold no store of corpses for
his escort, this simple practical folk would solve the little
difficulty by knocking some dozen or twenty stout fellows on the head,
that the notable might voyage like a gentleman. Whence this gallant
little company, running before the breeze, stark, happy, and extinct,
all bound for the Isles of Light! 'Twas a sight to shame us sitters at
home, who believe in those Islands, most of us, even as they, yet are
content to trundle City-wards or to Margate, so long as the sorry
breath is in us; and, breathless at last, to Bow or Kensal Green;
without one effort, dead or alive, to reach the far-shining
Hesperides.

''Dans la galère, capitane, nous étions quatre-vingt rameurs!'' sang
the oarsmen in the ballad; and they, though indeed they toiled on the
galley-bench, were free and happy pirates, members of an honoured and
liberal profession. But all we -- pirates, parsons, stockbrokers,
whatever our calling -- are but galley-slaves of the basest sort,
fettered to the oar each for his little spell. A common misery links
us all, like the chain that runs the length of the thwarts. Can
nothing make it worth our while not to quarrel with our fellows? The
menace of the storms is for each one and for all: the master's whip
has a fine impartiality. Crack! the lash that scored my comrade's back
has flicked my withers too; yet neither of us was shirking -- it was
that grinning ruffian in front. Well: to-morrow, God willing, the
evasion shall be ours, while he writhes howling. But why do we never
once combine -- seize on the ship, fling our masters into the sea, and
steer for some pleasant isle far down under the Line, beyond the
still-vexed Bermoothes? When ho for feasting! Hey for tobacco and