I have been looking at the timbers of
the ship. She is built of a material to which I am a stranger. There
is a peculiar character about the wood which strikes me as rendering
it unfit for the purpose to which it has been applied. I mean its
extreme porousness, considered independently by the worm-eaten
condition which is a consequence of navigation in these seas, and
apart from the rottenness attendant upon age. It will appear perhaps
an observation somewhat over-curious, but this wood would have
every, characteristic of Spanish oak, if Spanish oak were distended by
any unnatural means.
In reading the above sentence a curious apothegm of an old
weather-beaten Dutch navigator comes full upon my recollection. "It is
as sure," he was wont to say, when any doubt was entertained of his
veracity, "as sure as there is a sea where the ship itself will grow
in bulk like the living body of the seaman."
About an hour ago, I made bold to thrust myself among a group of the
crew. They paid me no manner of attention, and, although I stood in
the very midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious of my presence.
Like the one I had at first seen in the hold, they all bore about them
the marks of a hoary old age.
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