Calmly disregarding the defection, he went on:--
"I deserted the ship at Liverpool in consequence of my ill-
treatment by the second mate,--a man selected for his position by
reason of his superior physical strength and recognized brutality.
I have been since told that he graduated from the state prison. On
the second day out I saw him strike a man senseless with a belaying
pin for some trifling breach of discipline. I saw him repeatedly
beat and kick sick men--"
"Did you ever read Dana's 'Two Years before the Mast'?" asked
Lightbody, our heavy literary man, turning to HIS neighbor, in a
distinctly audible whisper. "Ah! there's a book! Got all this
sort of thing in it. Dev'lishly well written, too."
The Patagonian (alive for information): "What ess this Dana, eh?"
His left hand neighbor (shortly): "Oh, that man!"
His right hand neighbor (curtly): "The fellah who wrote the
Encyclopaedia and edits 'The Sun'? that was put up in Boston for
the English mission and didn't get it."
The Patagonian (making a mental diplomatic note of the fact that
the severe discipline of the editor of "The Sun," one of America's
profoundest scholars, while acting from patriotic motives, as the
second mate of an American "bottom," had unfitted him for
diplomatic service abroad): "Ah, ciel!"
"I wandered on the quays for a day or two, until I was picked up by
a Portuguese sailor, who, interesting himself in my story, offered
to procure me a passage to Fayal and Lisbon, where, he assured me,
I could find more comfortable and profitable means of returning to
my own land.
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