Not that we were so badly off for
socks, but washing 'em reg'lar, and never being able to get 'em really
dry, and putting 'em on again like stones, was a mighty different thing
to getting all our feet into something dry and warm. 'Who was Sal?'
Well, poor Sal was a rum 'un, but she's dead. It's a queer thing, we
only lost one hand, and that was the carpenter, and he died the same day
poor Sal was murdered down Bermondsey way. It's a queer world, this, no
matter where you're cruising! But there's one thing you'll learn if you
live as long as me; a woman's heart and the ocean deep's much about the
same. You can't reckon on 'em, and GOD A'mighty, as made 'em, alone
knows the depths of 'em; but as our doctor used to say (and he was
always fetching things out and putting 'em into bottles), it's the rough
weather brings the best of it up."
This was not a cheerful story, but it was soon driven out of our heads
by others. Fog was the prevailing topic; yarns of the fogs of the
northern seas being varied by "red fogs" off the Cape de Verd Islands;
and not the least dismal of the narratives was told by Alister
Auchterlay, of a fog on Ben Nevis, in which his own grandmother's uncle
perished, chiefly, as it appeared, in consequence of a constitutional
objection to taking advice, or to "going back upon his word," when he
had made up his mind to do something or to go somewhere.
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