106 
SCENES IN TIIE PACIFIC. 
land is all mud and reefs; everything upon it is dirty; the 
Ladies, God knows I love the Ladies and pity them, can’t 
keep themselves tidy. I’ve seen many a brace of them that 
required a fortnight’s holy-stoning to get down to their natu¬ 
ral color. They are obliged to paint themselves to cover up 
the dirt and keep from looking weather-beaten. I never 
knew a sensible sailor that wasn’t glad to leave the land for 
the glorious old sea. Their ideas, those land lubbers, about 
what is comfortable and beautiful, are not worth a ball of 
spunyarn. They talk to you about the dangers of the sea, 
just as if there was no lee coast to run one’s head and toes 
against on the land; about the shady groves on a May-day, 
just as if there were no May-day shade under the brave old 
canvass of Neptune; and about the purling brooks and the 
music of birds, just as if there were neither water at sea, nor 
any albatross to sail and scream in the sun, nor happy petrels 
to sing in the storm. And about being buried in the sea! 
This they think is a dreadful thing ! They thrust their eyes 
half out of their heads when you tell them it is better to be 
eaten clean up by a decent shark, than to be stuffed away a 
few feet under ground among toads and worms and other 
varmints! And if you tell them that when a fellow dies al 
sea, they sew him up in a strong bit of canvas, and hang a 
weight to his feet, read prayers over him and drop him 
solemnly into the ocean, and he goes down into the clear clear 
water, two or three miles perhaps, and there sleeps high 
above the bottom, high above dirt and worms, the lubber? 
think he is out of the latitude of the resurrection and Heaven 
and all. I am for the sea. I would not mind shipping on 
the quarter-deck a voyage or two, to see how it would seem 
to whistle the boys into the top-gallant stays in a dead north¬ 
easter. But I should want to be before the mast. That’s 
the home for me, boys.” 
“ Haul taut the weather main brace there” ! 
“ Aye, aye, sir and away skipped our Maine boy to his 
duty. 
