Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in EuropeWillis, Nathaniel Parker
General
Pencillings by the Way: Written During Some Years of Residence and Travel in Europe
Willis, Nathaniel Parker
Europe -- Description and travel
Poor Turk! his philosophy is more severely tried. He has been bred a
gentleman, and is amusingly exclusive. No assiduities can win him to
take the least notice of the crew, and I soon discovered, that, when
the captain and myself were below, he endured many a persecution. In
an evil hour, a night or two since, I suffered his earnest appeals for
freedom to work upon my feelings, and, releasing him from his chain
under the windlass, I gave him the liberty of the cabin. He slept very
quietly on the floor till about midnight, when the wind rose and the
vessel began to roll very uncomfortably. With the first heavy lurch a
couple of chairs went tumbling to leeward, and by the yelp of
distress, Turk was somewhere in the way. He changed his position, and,
with the next roll, the mate's trunk "brought away," and shooting
across the cabin, jammed him with such violence against the captain's
state-room door, that he sprang howling to the deck, where the first
thing that met him was a washing sea, just taken in at midships, that
kept him swimming above the hatches for five minutes. Half-drowned,
and with a gallon of water in his long hair, he took again to the
cabin, and making a desperate leap into the steward's berth, crouched
down beside the sleeping creole with a long whine of satisfaction. The
water soon penetrated however, and with a "_sacré!_" and a blow that
he will remember for the remainder of the voyage, the poor dog was
again driven from the cabin, and I heard no more of him till morning.
His decided preference for me has since touched my vanity, and I have
taken him under my more special protection--a circumstance which costs
me two quarrels a day at least, with the cook and steward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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