ear across the
ship, as if threatening our lives; and all the time the creaking of the
masts, the roaring of the wind through the rigging, and the lashing of
the seas, filled my ears with such awful sounds that I was in the
greatest terror, and I thought that every moment would certainly be my
last. Then, as if still further to add to my fears, one of the sailors
told me, right in the midst of the storm, that we were bound for the
Northern seas, to catch whales and seals. So now, what little scrap of
courage I had left took instant flight, and I fell at once to praying
(which I am ashamed to say I had never in my life done before), fully
satisfied as I was that, if this course did not save me, nothing would.
In truth, I believe I should actually have died of fright had not the
storm come soon to an end; and indeed it was many days before I got over
thinking that I should, in one way or another, have a speedy passage
into the next world, and therefore I did not much concern myself with
where we were going in this. Hence I grew to be very unpopular with the
people in the ship, and learned next to nothing. I was always in
somebody's way, was always getting hold of the wrong rope, and was in
truth all the time doing mischief rather than good. So I was set down as
a hopeless idiot, and was considered proper game for everybody. The
sailors tormented me in every possible way.

"One day (knowing how green I was) they set to talking about fixing up a
table in the forecastle, and one of them said, 'What a fine thing it
would be if the mate (who turned out to be the red-faced man I had met
in the street, and who took me to the shipping-office) would only let us
have the keelson.' So this being agreed to in a very serious manner
(which I hadn't wit enough to see was all put on), I was sent to carry
their petition. Seeing the mate on the quarter-deck, I approached, and
in a very respectful manner thus addressed him: 'If you please, sir, I
come to ask if you will let us have the keelson for a table?' Whereupon
the mate turned fiercely upon me, and, to my great astonishment, roared
out at the very top of his voice, 'What! what's that you say? Say that
again, will you?' So I repeated the question as he had told me
to,--feeling all the while as if I should like the deck to open and
swallow me up. I had scarcely finished before I perceived that the mate
was growing more and more angry; if, indeed, anything could possibly
exceed the passi