d Jack, who,
being a Briton, perhaps favoured the Englishman more than the Neversink.

"But how we boom through the billows!" cried Jack, gazing over the
top-rail; then, flinging forth his arm, recited,

"'Aslope, and gliding on the leeward side,
The bounding vessel cuts the roaring tide.'

Camoens! White-Jacket, Camoens! Did you ever read him? The Lusiad, I
mean? It's the man-of-war epic of the world, my lad. Give me Gama for a
Commodore, say I--Noble Gama! And Mickle, White-Jacket, did you ever
read of him? William Julius Mickle? Camoens's Translator? A
disappointed man though, White-Jacket. Besides his version of the
Lusiad, he wrote many forgotten things. Did you ever see his ballad of
Cumnor Hall?--No?--Why, it gave Sir Walter Scott the hint of
Kenilworth. My father knew Mickle when he went to sea on board the old
Romney man-of-war. How many great men have been sailors, White-Jacket!
They say Homer himself was once a tar, even as his hero, Ulysses, was
both a sailor and a shipwright. I'll swear Shakspeare was once a
captain of the forecastle. Do you mind the first scene in _The
Tempest_, White-Jacket? And the world-finder, Christopher Columbus, was
a sailor! and so was Camoens, who went to sea with Gama, else we had
never had the Lusiad, White-Jacket. Yes, I've sailed over the very
track that Camoens sailed--round the East Cape into the Indian Ocean.
I've been in Don Jose's garden, too, in Macao, and bathed my feet in
the blessed dew of the walks where Camoens wandered before me. Yes,
White-Jacket, and I have seen and sat in the cave at the end of the
flowery, winding way, where Camoens, according to tradition, composed
certain parts of his Lusiad. Ay, Camoens was a sailor once! Then,
there's Falconer, whose 'Ship-wreck' will never founder, though he
himself, poor fellow, was lost at sea in the Aurora frigate. Old Noah
was the first sailor. And St. Paul, too, knew how to box the compass,
my lad! mind you that chapter in Acts? I couldn't spin the yarn better
myself. Were you ever in Malta? They called it Melita in the Apostle's
day. I have been in Paul's cave there, White-Jacket. They say a piece
of it is good for a charm against shipwreck; but I never tried it.
There's Shelley, he was quite a sailor. Shelley--poor lad! a Percy,
too--but they ought to have let him sleep in his sailor's grave--he was
drowned in the Mediterranean, you know, near Leghorn--and not burn his
body, as they did, as if he had been a