It was in the hush of the hot, calm, tropic night, when the “Zangwahee” wallowed in the swell and plomped till the hanging canvas seemed to be drumming to the destiny of the marching stars, that I blessed those aged sailormen. For, as they yarned and yarned, telling of their far-off experiences, my admiration for them became unbounded. They were either the most glorious old liars that ever existed, or had lived in Olympian times when nothing was impossible and only the marvellous occurred. Treasure-troves, typhoons, scented merchandise from the Indies, faithless lovers, dusky beauties on mysterious uncharted isles, and God knows what else, haunted my dreams, as I, at last, fell asleep, with their voices still mumbling in my ears. Old Hans, who smoked a filthy terra-cotta clay pipe and gassed me into insensibility on nights of sad rememberings, took a fancy to me. I became quite interested in the lonesome dog-watches. I’d sit by his bunk, and he’d point to the faded pictures of the foreign women he’d known and shake his head. “When did she die, Hans?” I’d say, as I pointed to one of the faded outlines of his bunk’s photographs.
“She?—why, shipmate, she died ages ago!” Then I’d hear all about the reality of that shadowy outline on the wooden wall. So did I become familiar with the inner dramas of those old sailors’ lives. Sometimes I’d hear things that made a shiver go down my spine, or, rather, down where the remnants of my spinal column remained, for the mate had surely broken it in three places (I had experienced so much in my travels that it did not seem strange that I should go off to sea in search of romance and lose my spine).
“You must be mighty old, Hans, to have experienced such things,” I ventured to say, as he yarned on one night. Then, so that he might see that I wasn’t as green as he appeared to think I was, I added, “Might you have met Abraham or any of the Pharaohs in your time?”
For a moment he puffed his antique pipe, his fingers toiling away as he stitched the fragments of his ancient clothing together; for quite a while longer his chin pressed his white beard against his chest, as he sat in an attitude of deep thought. Then I distinctly observed an amused twinkle shoot into his pale blue eyes, as, solemnly shaking his head, he replied, “No, I’ve never ’eard of them coves; they muster ’ave been born _after_ my time!”