the boisterous weather we were so soon to encounter.

It was nothing more than a white duck frock, or rather shirt: which,
laying on deck, I folded double at the bosom, and by then making a
continuation of the slit there, opened it lengthwise--much as you would
cut a leaf in the last new novel. The gash being made, a metamorphosis
took place, transcending any related by Ovid. For, presto! the shirt
was a coat!--a strange-looking coat, to be sure; of a Quakerish
amplitude about the skirts; with an infirm, tumble-down collar; and a
clumsy fullness about the wristbands; and white, yea, white as a
shroud. And my shroud it afterward came very near proving, as he who
reads further will find.

But, bless me, my friend, what sort of a summer jacket is this, in
which to weather Cape Horn? A very tasty, and beautiful white linen
garment it may have seemed; but then, people almost universally sport
their linen next to their skin.

Very true; and that thought very early occurred to me; for no idea had
I of scudding round Cape Horn in my shirt; for _that_ would have been
almost scudding under bare poles, indeed.

So, with many odds and ends of patches--old socks, old trowser-legs,
and the like--I bedarned and bequilted the inside of my jacket, till it
became, all over, stiff and padded, as King James's cotton-stuffed and
dagger-proof doublet; and no buckram or steel hauberk stood up more
stoutly.

So far, very good; but pray, tell me, White-Jacket, how do you propose
keeping out the rain and the wet in this quilted _grego_ of yours? You
don't call this wad of old patches a Mackintosh, do you?----you don't
pretend to say that worsted is water-proof?

No, my dear friend; and that was the deuce of it. Waterproof it was
not, no more than a sponge. Indeed, with such recklessness had I
bequilted my jacket, that in a rain-storm I became a universal
absorber; swabbing bone-dry the very bulwarks I leaned against. Of a
damp day, my heartless shipmates even used to stand up against me, so
powerful was the capillary attraction between this luckless jacket of
mine and all drops of moisture. I dripped like a turkey a roasting; and
long after the rain storms were over, and the sun showed his face, I
still stalked a Scotch mist; and when it was fair weather with others,
alas! it was foul weather with me.

_Me?_ Ah me! Soaked and heavy, what a burden was that jacket to carry
about, especially when I was sent up aloft; dragging myself up step