He delivered
it, and I obeyed.
O dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And here am I,
old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get that argument out of
somebody again.
When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he
keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer always had several
high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and
over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He
played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So
did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you
took it apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not
on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the
breastboard. When the PENNSYLVANIA blew up and became a drifting
rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother
Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably
asleep and never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and
his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank
through the ragged cavern where the hurricane-deck and the boiler-deck
had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one
of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scald and
deadly steam. But not for long.
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