"Roumanian Jew, isn't he?" I said.
He nodded darkly and almost forbiddingly.
More would have been too much. The thing was said. But from that time
forth I knew I could depend upon him and that he and I were friends. It
happens I never did have to depend upon him, but that does not affect
our relationship.
Forward the crew lived lives very much after the fashion of ours, more
crowded, more cramped and dirty, wetter, steamier, more verminous. The
coarse food they had was still not so coarse but that they did not think
they were living "like fighting cocks." So far as I could make out
they were all nearly destitute men; hardly any of them had a proper
sea outfit, and what small possessions they had were a source of mutual
distrust. And as we pitched and floundered southward they gambled and
fought, were brutal to one another, argued and wrangled loudly, until we
protested at the uproar.
There's no romance about the sea in a small sailing ship as I saw it.
The romance is in the mind of the landsman dreamer. These brigs and
schooners and brigantines that still stand out from every little port
are relics from an age of petty trade, as rotten and obsolescent as
a Georgian house that has sunken into a slum.
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