But not so. Taking three turns on the deck, he placed his hand
on the wheel, and said, "Right or wrong, my lad, go with us you must.
Putting you ashore is now out of the question. I make no port till
this ship is full to the combings of her hatchways. However, you may
leave her if you can." And so saying he entered his cabin, like
Julius Caesar into his tent.

He may have meant little by it, but that last sentence rung in my ear
like a bravado. It savored of the turnkey's compliments to the
prisoner in Newgate, when he shoots to the bolt on him.

"Leave the ship if I can!" Leave the ship when neither sail nor shore
was in sight! Ay, my fine captain, stranger things have been done.
For on board that very craft, the old Arcturion, were four tall
fellows, whom two years previous our skipper himself had picked up in
an open boat, far from the farthest shoal. To be sure, they spun a
long yarn about being the only survivors of an Indiaman burnt down to
the water's edge. But who credited their tale? Like many others, they
were keepers of a secret: had doubtless contracted a disgust for some
ugly craft still afloat and hearty, and stolen away from her, off
soundings. Among seamen in the Pacific such adventures not seldom
occur. Nor are they accounted great wonders. They are but incidents,
not events, in the career of the brethren of the order of South Sea
rovers. For what matters it, though hundreds of miles from land, if a
good whale-boat be under foot, the Trades behind, and mild, warm seas
before? And herein lies the difference between the Atlantic and
Pacific:--that once within the Tropics, the bold sailor who has a
mind to quit his ship round Cape Horn, waits not for port. He regards
that ocean as one mighty harbor.