Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VII, December 1850, Vol. IIVarious
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VII, December 1850, Vol. II
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
The above elegant soubriquet he generally favored me with, when, in
Yankee parlance, I had "riled" him and got his "dander up," as was
always the case when he was called Jemmy Caster; he being but too
conscious that his long loose figure and shambling gait bore, at that
time, no small resemblance to those of a waister of that name, though he
afterward became a remarkably fine, handsome man, bearing a striking
resemblance, not without sufficient reason, to King George the Fourth.
In a few minutes I had made arrangements with old Dominique for the safe
custody of my breakfast, and was again pacing the lee side of the
quarter-deck, by the side of my gigantic messmate.
"And now, my dear Careless," said he, with unusual gravity, "if you can
be serious for a few minutes, I will relate to you this infernal dream,
which so preys upon my spirits that I do not feel like myself this
morning, and must unburden my mind. I dreamt, then, that I was on the
second dog-watch, as you know I shall be this evening; it was between
seven and eight bells, the night pitch-dark, with the wind blowing fresh
from the northeast, the ship under double-reefed topsails, and foresail
close hauled on the starboard tack, running at the rate of five knots as
I had found upon heaving the log. Suddenly the sea became like one sheet
of flame; its appearance was awfully grand; the head of every wave, as
it curled over and broke, diffused itself in broad streaks and flashes
of blue and white flame; and I involuntarily repeated to myself the two
lines of that singular, soul-freezing rhapsody, the 'Ancient Mariner,'
which, though descriptive of a very different state of the ocean from
that now presented to my imagination, I felt to be most applicable to
what I saw before me--
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white;
and then, referring to the two preceding lines of the stanzas--
About, about, in reel and rout,
The death-fires danced at night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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