-five were spent at sea.
He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all
climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows
nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the
world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and
that blurred and distorted by the unfocussed lenses of an untrained
mind. Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old
Hurricane Jones was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his
spirit was in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his
wrath was up he was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely
descriptive. He was formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build
and dauntless courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures
and mottoes tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one
voyage when he got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was
around his left ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with
his ankle bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out
from a clouding of India ink: 'Virtue is its own R'd.' (There was a
lack of room.) He was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a
fish-woman. He considered swearing blameless, because sailors would
not understand an order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical
scholar--that is, he thought he was. He believed everything in the
Bible, but he had his own methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was
of the 'advanced' school of thinkers, and applied natural laws to the
interpretation of all miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people
who make the six days of creation six geological epochs, and so forth.
Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satirist on modern
scientific religionists. Such a man as I have been describing is rabidly
fond of disquisition and argument; one knows that without being told it.

One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was
a clergyman, since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a
great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal:
told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove
a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was
refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated
speech. One day the captain said, 'Peters, do you ever read the Bible?'

'Well--yes.'

'I judge it ain't often, by the way you s