scowl; he was almost
repelling in his demeanour. In a word, he seemed desirous of hinting,
that his list of man-of war friends was already made up, complete, and
full; and there was no room for more. But observing that the only man
he ever consorted with was Lemsford, I had too much magnanimity, by
going off in a pique at his coldness, to let him lose forever the
chance of making so capital an acquaintance as myself. Besides, I saw
it in his eye, that the man had been a reader of good books; I would
have staked my life on it, that he seized the right meaning of
Montaigne. I saw that he was an earnest thinker; I more than suspected
that he had been bolted in the mill of adversity. For all these things,
my heart yearned toward him; I determined to know him.

At last I succeeded; it was during a profoundly quiet midnight watch,
when I perceived him walking alone in the waist, while most of the men
were dozing on the carronade-slides.

That night we scoured all the prairies of reading; dived into the
bosoms of authors, and tore out their hearts; and that night
White-Jacket learned more than he has ever done in any single night
since.

The man was a marvel. He amazed me, as much as Coleridge did the
troopers among whom he enlisted. What could have induced such a man to
enter a man-of-war, all my sapience cannot fathom. And how he managed
to preserve his dignity, as he did, among such a rabble rout was
equally a mystery. For he was no sailor; as ignorant of a ship, indeed,
as a man from the sources of the Niger. Yet the officers respected him;
and the men were afraid of him. This much was observable, however, that
he faithfully discharged whatever special duties devolved upon him; and
was so fortunate as never to render himself liable to a reprimand.
Doubtless, he took the same view of the thing that another of the crew
did; and had early resolved, so to conduct himself as never to run the
risk of the scourge. And this it must have been--added to whatever
incommunicable grief which might have been his--that made this Nord
such a wandering recluse, even among our man-of-war mob. Nor could he
have long swung his hammock on board, ere he must have found that, to
insure his exemption from that thing which alone affrighted him, he
must be content for the most part to turn a man-hater, and socially
expatriate himself from many things, which might have rendered his
situation more tolerable. Still more, several events that took p