Perhaps it is
prejudice though, for I believe we sailors are proverbial for that.
But, Slick, recollect it ain't all fair weather sailing like this at
sea. There are times when death stares you wildly in the face."
"Exactly," sais I, "as if he would like to know you the next time he
came for you, so as not to apprehend the wrong one. He often leaves
the rascal and seizes the honest man; my opinion is, he don't see very
well."
"What a droll fellow you are," said he; "it appears to me as if you
couldn't be serious for five minutes at a time. I can tell you, if you
were on a rocky lee-shore, with the wind and waves urging you on, and
you barely holding your own, perhaps losing ground every tack, you
wouldn't talk quite so glibly of death. Was you ever in a real heavy
gale of wind?"
"Warn't I," said I; "the fust time I returned from England it blew
great guns all the voyage, one gale after another, and the last always
wuss than the one before. It carried away our sails as fast as we bent
them."
"That's nothing unusual," said Cutler; "there are worse things than
that at sea."
"Well, I'll tell you," sais I, "what it did; and if that ain't an
uncommon thing, then my name ain't Sam Slick. It blew all the hair off
my dog, except a little tuft atween his ears. It did, upon my soul. I
hope I may never leave--"
"Don't swear to it, Slick," said he, "that's a good fellow.
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