sou’wester hats, all with something rough and rugged round the
throat; all, dripping salt water where they stand; all pelted by
weather, besmeared with grease, and blackened by the sooty rigging.
Each man’s knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for dinner.
As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches the filling
of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to be
prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses the contents into
himself, and passes the empty chalice and passes on, so the second
man with an anticipatory wipe of his mouth on sleeve or
handkerchief, bides his turn, and drinks and hands and passes on,
in whom, and in each as his turn approaches, beams a knowingly
kindled eye, a brighter temper, and a suddenly awakened tendency to
be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do I even observe that the man
in charge of the ship’s lamps, who in right of his office has a
double allowance of poisoned chalices, seems thereby vastly
degraded, even though he empties the chalices into himself, one
after the other, much as if he were delivering their contents at
some absorbent establishment in which he had no personal interest.
But vastly comforted, I note them all to be, on deck presently,
even to the circulation of redder blood in their cold blue
knuckles; and when I look up at them lying out on the yards, and
holding on for life among the beating sails, I cannot for MY life
see the justice of visiting on them – or on me – the drunken crimes
of any number of criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes.
Abetting myself in my idle humour, I closed my eyes, and recalled
life on board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay, part of that
day, in the Bay of New York, O! The regular life began – mine
always did, for I never got to sleep afterwards – with the rigging
of the pump while it was yet dark, and washing down of decks. Any
enormous giant at a prodigious hydropathic establishment,
conscientiously undergoing the water-cure in all its departments,
and extremely particular about cleaning his teeth, would make those
noises. Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash,
splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash, splash, bubble, rub. Then the
day would break, and, descending from my berth by a graceful ladder
composed of half-opened drawers beneath it, I would reopen my outer
dead-light and my inner sliding window (closed by a watchman during
the water-cure), and would look out at the long-rolling, lead-
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
coloured, white topped waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter
morning, cast a level, lonely glance, and through which the ship
fought her melancholy way at a terrific rate. And now, lying down
again, awaiting the season for broiled ham and tea, I would be
compelled to listen to the voice of conscience, – the screw.
It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of stomach; but
I called it in my fancy by the higher name. Because it seemed to
me that we were all of us, all day long, endeavouring to stifle the
voice. Because it was under everybody’s pillow, everybody’s plate,
everybody’s camp-stool, everybody’s book, everybody’s occupation.
Because we pretended not to hear it, especially at meal-times,
evening whist, and morning conversation on deck; but it was always
among us in an under monotone, not to be drowned in pea-soup, not
to be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to be
knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away from. It was
smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest cocktail;
it was conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay there in
their wrappers until the stars shone; it waited at table with the
stewards; nobody could put it out with the lights. It was
considered (as on shore) ill-bred to acknowledge the voice of
conscience. It was not polite to mention it. One squally day an
amiable gentleman in love gave much offence to a surrounding
circle, including the object of his attachment, by saying of it,