iron boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying body towed
overboard in the ship's wake, while the cruel wounds in it do 'the
multitudinous seas incarnadine'?

Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig
Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the
damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise
from both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the
sweet little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on
the markets that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a
winged sword, have that gallant officer's organ of destructiveness
out of his head in the space of a flash of lightning?

If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men, for
I believe it with all my soul.

This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool,
keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas for me! I have long
outgrown the state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and
there Mercantile Jack was, and very busy he was, and very cold he
was: the snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the
north-east winds snipping off the tops of the little waves in the
Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones to pelt him with.
Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather: as he mostly
is in all weathers, poor Jack. He was girded to ships' masts and
funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping and
painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to
beat him off; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant
cobwebs, reefing and splicing; he was faintly audible down in
holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round