etting his vessel ship-shape
and tidy,--tarring, painting, mending sails, stretching new bunting, and
getting in sea-store; boats were plying on every side, signals flying, guns
firing from the men-of-war, and everything was lively as might be,--all but
me. There I was, like an old water-logged timber ship, never moving a spar,
but looking for all the world as though I were a settling fast to go down
stern foremost: may be as how I had no objection to that same; but that's
neither here nor there. Well, I sat down on the fluke of an anchor, and
began a thinking if it wasn't better to go before the mast than live on
that way. Just before me, where I sat down, there was an old schooner that
lay moored in the same place for as long as I could remember. She was there
when I was a boy, and never looked a bit the fresher nor newer as long as I
recollected; her old bluff bows, her high poop, her round stern, her flush
deck, all Dutch-like, I knew them well, and many a time I delighted to
think what queer kind of a chap he was that first set her on the stocks,
and pondered in what trade she ever could have been. All the sailors about
the port used to call her Noah's Ark, and swear she was the identical craft
that he stowed away all the wild beasts in during the rainy season. Be that
as it might, since I fell into misfortune, I got to feel a liking for the
old schooner; she was like an old friend; she never changed to me, fair
weather or foul; there she was, just the same as thirty years before, when
all the world were forgetting and steering wide away from me. Every morning
I used to go down to the harbor and have a look at her, just to see that
all was right and nothing stirred; and if it blew very hard at night, I'd
get up and go down to look how she weathered it, just as if I was at sea in
her. Now and then I'd get some of the watermen to row me aboard of her, and
leave me there for a few hours; when I used to be quite happy walking the
deck, holding the old worm-eaten wheel, looking out ahead, and going down
below, just as though I was in command of her. Day after day this habit
grew on me, and at last my whole life was spent in watching her and looking
after her,---there was something so much alike in our fortunes, that
I always thought of her. Like myself, she had had her day of life and
activity; we had both braved the storm and the breeze; her shattered
bulwarks and worn cutwater attested that she had, like myself, not escap