ever came from your country." So saying, with an
unparalleled effrontery, he repeated some gibberish, which by the sound
seemed to be Irish, and made it pass for Greek with the captain, who,
looking at me with a contemptuous sneer, exclaimed, "Ah, ah! have you
caught a tartar?" I could not help smiling at the consummate assurance
of this Hibernian, and offered to refer the dispute to anybody on board
who understood the Greek alphabet. Upon which Morgan was brought back,
and, being made acquainted with the affair, took the book, and read a
whole page in English, without hesitation, deciding the controversy in
my favour. The doctor was so far from being out of countenance at this
detection, that he affirmed Morgan was in the secret, and repeated from
his own invention. Oakum said, "Ay, ay, I see they are both in a story;"
and dismissed my fellow-mate to his cockloft, although I proposed that
he and I should read and translate, separately, any chapter or verse in
the Greek Testament in his possession, by which it would appear whether
we or the surgeon spoke truth. Not being endued with eloquence enough
to convince the captain that there could be no juggle nor confederacy
in this expedient, I begged to be examined by some unconcerned person
on board, who understood Greek. Accordingly, the whole ship's company,
officers and all, were called upon deck, among whom it was proclaimed
that, if anyone of them could speak Greek, he or they so qualified
should ascend the quarter-deck immediately. After some pause, two
foremast men came up, and professed their skill in that language, which,
they said, they acquired during several voyages to the Levant, among the
Greeks of the Morea. The captain exulted much in this declaration, and
put my journal book into the hands of one of them, who candidly owned he
could neither read nor write; the other acknowledged the same degree of
ignorance, but pretended to speak the Greek lingo with any man on board;
and, addressing himself to me, pronounced some sentences of a barbarous
corrupted language, which I did not understand. I asserted that the
modern Greek was as different from that spoken and written by the
ancients, as the English used now from the old Saxon spoke in the time
of Hengist: and, as I had only learned the true original tongue, in
which Homer, Pindar, the Evangelists, and other great men of antiquity
wrote, it could not be supposed that I should know anything of an
imperfect Gothic