n'_ game, what mo' kin
it be great faw what ain't pyo' Babylonian vanity an' Eu-_rope_-ian
stinch?"

The commodore admitted that game was a good thing and that crops were
even better.

"No, sir-ee! Game comes fust! Man makes the craps but Gawd made the
game! It come fust when it fust come an' it comes fust yit! Lawd
A'mighty! who wouldn't drutheh hunt than plough, ef he could hev his
druthehs? But the game ain't what it wuz, not ev'm in this-yeh 'Azoo
country an' not ev'm o' the feathe'd kind. Oh, wile turkey, o' co'se,
they here yit, by thousan's, an' wile goose, an' duck, an' teal, by
hund'eds o' thousan's, an' wile pigeon, clouds of 'em, 'at dahkened the
noonday sun. Reckon you see' 'em do that, ain't you? I see' it this ve'y
season. But, now, take the pelikin! if game is a fah' name fo' him--aw
heh, as the case may be; which that bird--nine foot f'm tip to tip, the
white ones--use' to be as common on this riveh as cuckle-burrs in a
sheep's tail!" The jester laughed, or, more strictly, exhaled his mirth
from the roof of a wide-spread mouth in a long hiss that would have been
more like an angered alligator's if alligators used fine-cut tobacco. It
was addressed to the commodore; for Hugh, his grandfather's conscious
inferior in human charity, had turned the squarest back--for its
height--aboard the _Votaress_, to gaze on a wonderful sight in the
eastern sky. The exhorter resumed:

"Why, I ain't see' a pelikin sence I use' to flatboat down to
Orleans--f'om Honey Islan' an' th' 'Azoo City. 'Pelikin in the
wildeh-_ness_,' says the holy book, but they 'can't stan' the
wildeh-_ness_!' They plumb gone!--vamoost!--down to the Gulf!--what few
ain't been shot!" He grew indignant. "An' whahfo' shot? Faw noth'n'!
Jeemany-crackies! gentle-_men_, it makes my blood bile an' my bile go
sour! Ain't no bounty on pelikins. Dead pelikins ain't useful--naw
awnamental--naw instructive, an' much less they don't tas'e good. No,
suh, they jess shot in pyo' devil-_ment_ by awngawdly damn fools--same
as them on this boat all day 'istiddy a-poppin' they pistols at ev'y
live thing they see'--fo' no damn' reason in the heab'ms above aw the
earth beneath aw the watehs undeh the earth--Lawd! it mighty nigh makes
me swah! An' I feel the heab'mly call--seein' as that-ah tub-shape'
Methodis' bishop _h-ain't_ feel it--fo' to tell you, commodo', you-all
hadn't ought allowed that hell-fi'ud nonsense on Gawd's holy day."

Even to his grandfather's re