he unfocused lenses of an untrained mind.
Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane
Jones was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was
in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he
was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He
was formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless
courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes
tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he
got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his
left ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle
bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a
clouding of India ink: "Virtue is its own R'd." (There was a lack of
room.) He was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fishwoman. He
considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an
order unillumined by it. He was a profound biblical scholar--that is, he
thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own
methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the "advanced" school
of thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all
miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of
creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it,
he was a rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists. Such
a man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and
argument; one knows that without being told it.

One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was
a clergyman, since the passenger-list did not betray the fact. He took
a great liking to this Reverend Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great
deal; told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and
wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that
was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated
speech. One day the captain said, "Peters, do you ever read the Bible?"

"Well--yes."

"I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it
in dead earnest once, and you'll find it 'll pay. Don't you get
discouraged, but hang right on. First, you won't understand it; but by
and by things will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down
to eat."

"Yes, I have heard that said."

"And it's so, too. There ain't a book that begins with it.