iner; for,
familiarized to the suffering and confinement of a vessel, and at liberty
himself to seek relief in his duties and avocations, he can scarcely enter
into the privations and embarrassments of those to whom all is so new and
painful. But, in the patron of the Winkelried, there existed a natural in
difference to the grievances of others, and a narrow selfishness of
disposition, in aid of the opinions which had been formed by a life of
hardship and exposure. He considered the vulgar passenger as so much
troublesome freight, which, while it brought the advantage of a higher
remuneration than the same cubic measurement of inanimate matter, had the
unpleasant drawback of volition and motion. With this general tendency to
bully and intimidate, the wary patron had, however, made a silent
exception in favor of the Italian, who has introduced himself to the
reader by the ill-omened name of Il Maledetto, or the accursed. This
formidable personage had enjoyed a perfect immunity from the effects of
Baptiste's tyranny, which he had been able to establish by a very simple
and quiet process. Instead of cowering at the fierce glance, or recoiling
at the rude remonstrances of the churlish patron, he had chosen his time,
when the latter was in one of his hottest ebullitions of anger, and when
maledictions and menaces flowed out of his mouth in torrents, coolly to
place himself on the very spot that the other had proscribed, where he
maintained his ground with a quietness and composure which it might have
been difficult to say was more to be imputed to extreme ignorance, or to
immeasurable contempt. At least so reasoned the spectators; some thinking
that the stranger meant to bring affairs to a speedy issue by braving the
patron's fury, and others charitably inferring that he knew no better. But
thus did not Baptiste reason himself. He saw by the calm eye and resolute
demeanor of his passenger that he himself, his pretended professional
difficulties, his captiousness, and his threats, were alike despised; and
he shrank from collision with such a spirit, precisely on the principle
that the intimidated among the rest of the travellers shrunk from a
contest with his own. From this moment Il Maledetto, or, as he was called
by Baptiste him self, who it would appear had some knowledge of his
person, Maso, became as completely the master of his own movements, as if
he had been one of the more honored in the stern of the bark, or even her