Three or four years might make me a sailor in every respect, mind
and habits, as well as body, nolens volens, and would put all my
companions so far ahead of me that a college degree and a
profession would be in vain to think of; and I made up my mind
that, feel as I might, a sailor I might have to be, and to command
a merchant vessel might be the limit of my ambition.
Beside the length of the voyage, and the hard and exposed life, we
were in the remote parts of the earth, on an almost desert coast,
in a country where there is neither law nor gospel, and where
sailors are at their captain's mercy, there being no American
consul, or any one to whom a complaint could be made. We lost all
interest in the voyage, cared nothing about the cargo, which we
were only collecting for others, began to patch our clothes, and
felt as though our fate was fixed beyond all hope of change.
In addition to, and perhaps partly as a consequence of, this state
of things, there was trouble brewing on board the vessel. Our mate
(as the first mate is always called, par excellence) was a worthy
man.-- a more honest, upright, and kind-hearted man I never saw,--
but he was too easy and amiable for the mate of a merchantman.
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