He now left it lying before the captain, over
whose shoulder he had been reading it, and dropping into his former seat,
leaned forward on the table and laid his face in his hands.
"What, man," urged the captain, "don't give in! Be up and doing _like_ a
man!"
"It is selfish, I know,--but doing what, doing what?" cried the young
fisherman, in complete despair, and stamping his sea-boot on the ground.
"Doing what?" returned the captain. "Something! I'd go down to the
little breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of the
salt-rusted iron rings there, and either wrench it up by the roots or
wrench my teeth out of my head, sooner than I'd do nothing. Nothing!"
ejaculated the captain. "Any fool or fainting heart can do _that_, and
nothing can come of nothing,--which was pretended to be found out, I
believe, by one of them Latin critters," said the captain with the
deepest disdain; "as if Adam hadn't found it out, afore ever he so much
as named the beasts!"
Yet the captain saw, in spite of his bold words, that there was some
greater reason than he yet understood for the young man's distress.
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