poor life,
White-Jacket, and that life I cannot spare. I cannot consent to die for
_you_, but be dyed you must for me. You can dye many times without
injury; but I cannot die without irreparable loss, and running the
eternal risk."

So in the morning, jacket in hand, I repaired to the First Lieutenant,
and related the narrow escape I had had during the night. I enlarged
upon the general perils I ran in being taken for a ghost, and earnestly
besought him to relax his commands for once, and give me an order on
Brush, the captain of the paint-room, for some black paint, that my
jacket might be painted of that colour.

"Just look at it, sir," I added, holding it lip; "did you ever see
anything whiter? Consider how it shines of a night, like a bit of the
Milky Way. A little paint, sir, you cannot refuse."

"The ship has no paint to spare," he said; "you must get along without
it."

"Sir, every rain gives me a soaking; Cape Horn is at hand--six
brushes-full would make it waterproof; and no longer would I be in
peril of my life!"

"Can't help it, sir; depart!"

I fear it will not be well with me in the end; for if my own sins are
to be forgiven only as I forgive that hard-hearted and unimpressible
First Lieutenant, then pardon there is none for me.

What! when but one dab of paint would make a man of a ghost, and it
Mackintosh of a herring-net--to refuse it I am full. I can say no more.

CHAPTER XX.

HOW THEY SLEEP IN A MAN-OF-WAR.

No more of my luckless jacket for a while; let me speak of my hammock,
and the tribulations I endured therefrom.

Give me plenty of room to swing it in; let me swing it between two
date-trees on an Arabian plain; or extend it diagonally from Moorish
pillar to pillar, in the open marble Court of the Lions in Granada's
Alhambra: let me swing it on a high bluff of the Mississippi--one swing
in the pure ether for every swing over the green grass; or let me
oscillate in it beneath the cool dome of St. Peter's; or drop me in it,
as in a balloon, from the zenith, with the whole firmament to rock and
expatiate in; and I would not exchange my coarse canvas hammock for the
grand state-bed, like a stately coach-and-four, in which they tuck in a
king when he passes a night at Blenheim Castle.

When you have the requisite room, you always have "spreaders" in your
hammock; that is, two horizontal sticks, one at each end, which serve
to keep the sides apart, and create a wide vacancy betw