making a continuation of the slit there, opened it lengthwise--
much as you would cut a leaf in the last new novel. The gash
being made, a metamorphosis took place, transcending any related
by Ovid. For, presto! the shirt was a coat!--a strange-looking
coat, to be sure; of a Quakerish amplitude about the skirts; with
an infirm, tumble-down collar; and a clumsy fullness about the
wristbands; and white, yea, white as a shroud. And my shroud it
afterward came very near proving, as he who reads further will find.

But, bless me, my friend, what sort of a summer jacket is this,
in which to weather Cape Horn? A very tasty, and beautiful white
linen garment it may have seemed; but then, people almost
universally sport their linen next to their skin.

Very true; and that thought very early occurred to me; for no
idea had I of scudding round Cape Horn in my shirt; for _that_
would have been almost scudding under bare poles, indeed.

So, with many odds and ends of patches--old socks, old trowser-
legs, and the like--I bedarned and bequilted the inside of my
jacket, till it became, all over, stiff and padded, as King
James's cotton-stuffed and dagger-proof doublet; and no buckram
or steel hauberk stood up more stoutly.

So far, very good; but pray, tell me, White-Jacket, how do you
propose keeping out the rain and the wet in this quilted _grego_
of yours? You don't call this wad of old patches a Mackintosh, do
you?----you don't pretend to say that worsted is water-proof?

No, my dear friend; and that was the deuce of it. Waterproof it