On the
way he rescued, with his late drowned ship, a Swedish vessel, and
received salvage. He once fished eighty elephants' tusks out of a craft
foundered in the Firth of Forth, to the disgust of elder Anglo-Saxons
looking on from the shore. These unusual pursuits were varied by a
singular recreation: he played at elevating the African character to
European levels. With this view he had bought Vespasian for eighteen
hundred dollars; whereof anon. America is fertile in mixtures: what do we
not owe her? Sherry cobbler, gin sling, cocktail, mint julep, brandy
smash, sudden death, eye openers. Well, one day she outdid herself, and
mixed Fullalove: Quaker, Nimrod, Archimedes, Philanthropist, decorous Red
Rover, and What Not
The passenger boats cast loose.
"All hands make sail."
The boatswain piped, the light-heeled topsmen sped up the rathines and
lay out the yards, while all on deck looked up as usual to see them work.
Out bellied sail after sail aloft; the ship came curtseying round to the
southward, spread her snowy pinions high and wide, and went like a bird
over the wrinkled sea--homeward bound.
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