What Winds Blew,
And How Many Knots We Ran, Are All Noted Down, No Doubt, In The
Ship's Log:
And as for what ships we saw - every one of them with
their gunnage, tonnage, their nation, their direction
Whither they
were bound - were not these all noted down with surprising ingenuity
and precision by the lieutenant, at a family desk at which he sat
every night, before a great paper elegantly and mysteriously ruled
off with his large ruler? I have a regard for every man on board
that ship, from the captain down to the crew - down even to the
cook, with tattooed arms, sweating among the saucepans in the
galley, who used (with a touching affection) to send us locks of
his hair in the soup. And so, while our feelings and recollections
are warm, let us shake hands with this knot of good fellows,
comfortably floating about in their little box of wood and iron,
across Channel, Biscay Bay, and the Atlantic, from Southampton
Water to Gibraltar Straits.
CHAPTER IV: GIBRALTAR
Suppose all the nations of the earth to send fitting ambassadors to
represent them at Wapping or Portsmouth Point, with each, under its
own national signboard and language, its appropriate house of call,
and your imagination may figure the Main Street of Gibraltar:
almost the only part of the town, I believe, which boasts of the
name of street at all, the remaining houserows being modestly
called lanes, such as Bomb Lane, Battery Lane, Fusee Lane, and so
on.
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