xt
man to keel up."

"Gunner's mate!" said Jack Chase, helping himself to a slice of beef,
and sandwiching it between two large biscuits--"Gunner's mate!
White-Jacket there is my particular friend, and I would take it as a
particular favour if you would _knock off_ blasting him. It's in bad
taste, rude, and unworthy a gentleman."

"Take your back away from that 'ere gun-carriage, will ye now, Jack
Chase?" cried Priming, in reply, just then Jack happening to lean up
against it. "Must I be all the time cleaning after you fellows? Blast
ye! I spent an hour on that 'ere gun-carriage this very mornin'. But it
all comes of White-Jacket there. If it warn't for having one too many,
there wouldn't be any crowding and jamming in the mess. I'm blessed if
we ar'n't about chock a' block here! Move further up there, I'm sitting
on my leg!"

"For God's sake, gunner's mate," cried I, "if it will content you, I
and my jacket will leave the mess."

"I wish you would, and be ---- to you!" he replied.

"And if he does, you will mess alone, gunner's mate," said Jack Chase.

"That you will," cried all.

"And I wish to the Lord you'd let me!" growled Priming, irritably
rubbing his head with the handle of his sheath-knife.

"You are an old bear, gunner's mate," said Jack Chase.

"I am an old Turk," he replied, drawing the flat blade of his knife
between his teeth, thereby producing a whetting, grating sound.

"Let him alone, let him alone, men," said Jack Chase. "Only keep off
the tail of a rattlesnake, and he'll not rattle."

"Look out he don't bite, though," said Priming, snapping his teeth; and
with that he rolled off, growling as he went.

Though I did my best to carry off my vexation with an air of
indifference, need I say how I cursed my jacket, that it thus seemed
the means of fastening on me the murder of one of my shipmates, and the
probable murder of two more. For, had it not been for my jacket,
doubtless, I had yet been a member of my old mess, and so have escaped
making the luckless odd number among my present companions.

All I could say in private to Priming had no effect; though I often
took him aside, to convince him of the philosophical impossibility of
my having been accessary to the misfortunes of Baldy, the buried sailor
in Rio, and Shenly. But Priming knew better; nothing could move him;
and he ever afterward eyed me as virtuous citizens do some notorious
underhand villain going unhung of justice.

Jacket