developed qualities more attractive. Had we sprung a leak, been
"stove" by a whale, or been blessed with some despot of a captain
against whom to stir up some spirited revolt, these shipmates of mine
might have proved limber lads, and men of mettle. But as it was,
there was naught to strike fire from their steel.

There were other things, also, tending to make my lot on ship-board
very hard to be borne. True, the skipper himself was a trump; stood
upon no quarter-deck dignity; and had a tongue for a sailor. Let me
do him justice, furthermore: he took a sort of fancy for me in
particular; was sociable, nay, loquacious, when I happened to stand
at the helm. But what of that? Could he talk sentiment or philosophy?
Not a bit. His library was eight inches by four: Bowditch, and
Hamilton Moore.

And what to me, thus pining for some one who could page me a
quotation from Burton on Blue Devils; what to me, indeed, were
flat repetitions of long-drawn yams, and the everlasting stanzas
of Black-eyed Susan sung by our full forecastle choir? Staler
than stale ale.

Ay, ay, Arcturion! I say it in no malice, but thou wast exceedingly
dull. Not only at sailing: hard though it was, that I could have
borne; but in every other respect. The days went slowly round and
round, endless and uneventful as cycles in space. Time, and time-
pieces; How many centuries did my hammock tell, as pendulum-like it
swung to the ship's dull roll, and ticked the hours and ages. Sacred
forever be the Areturion's fore-hatch--alas! sea-moss is over it
now--and rusty forever the bolts that held together that old sea
hearth-stone, about which we so often lounged. Nevertheless, ye lost