WHITE-JACKET.



CHAPTER I.

THE JACKET.


It was not a _very_ white jacket, but white enough, in all conscience,
as the sequel will show.

The way I came by it was this.

When our frigate lay in Callao, on the coast of Peru--her last
harbour in the Pacific--I found myself without a _grego_, or
sailor's surtout; and as, toward the end of a three years' cruise,
no pea-jackets could be had from the purser's steward: and being
bound for Cape Horn, some sort of a substitute was indispensable;
I employed myself, for several days, in manufacturing an outlandish
garment of my own devising, to shelter me from the boisterous weather
we were so soon to encounter.

It was nothing more than a white duck frock, or rather shirt:
which, laying on deck, I folded double at the bosom, and by then