s in it,
Purser's Steward?"

"How much for this _jacket_?" reiterated the auctioneer, emphatically.

"_Jacket_, do you call it!" cried a captain of the hold.

"Why not call it a white-washed man-of-war schooner? Look at the
port-holes, to let in the air of cold nights."

"A reg'lar herring-net," chimed in Grummet.

"Gives me the _fever nagur_ to look at it," echoed a mizzen-top-man.

"Silence!" cried the auctioneer. "Start it now--start it, boys;
anything you please, my fine fellows! it _must_ be sold. Come, what
ought I to have on it, now?"

"Why, Purser's Steward," cried a waister, "you ought to have new
sleeves, a new lining, and a new body on it, afore you try to shove it
off on a greenhorn."

"What are you, 'busin' that 'ere garment for?" cried an old
sheet-anchor-man. "Don't you see it's a 'uniform mustering
jacket'--three buttons on one side, and none on t'other?"

"Silence!" again cried the auctioneer. "How much, my sea-fencibles, for
this superior old jacket?"

"Well," said Grummet, "I'll take it for cleaning-rags at one cent."

"Oh, come, give us a bid! say something, Colombians."

"Well, then," said Grummet, all at once bursting into genuine
indignation, "if you want us to say something, then heave that bunch of
old swabs overboard, _say I_, and show us something worth looking at."

"No one will give me a bid, then? Very good; here, shove it aside.
Let's have something else there."

While this scene was going forward, and my white jacket was thus being
abused, how my heart swelled within me! Thrice was I on the point of
rushing out of my hiding-place, and bearing it off from derision; but I
lingered, still flattering myself that all would be well, and the
jacket find a purchaser at last. But no, alas! there was no getting rid
of it, except by rolling a forty-two-pound shot in it, and committing
it to the deep. But though, in my desperation, I had once contemplated
something of that sort, yet I had now become unaccountably averse to
it, from certain involuntary superstitious considerations. If I sink my
jacket, thought I, it will be sure to spread itself into a bed at the
bottom of the sea, upon which I shall sooner or later recline, a dead
man. So, unable to conjure it into the possession of another, and
withheld from burying it out of sight for ever, my jacket stuck to me
like the fatal shirt on Nessus.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

PURSER, PURSER'S STEWARD, AND POSTMASTER IN A MAN-OF-WAR.