His hair was
iron-grey, his face hard and of the colour of pump-leather. He shaved
every morning of his life--at six--but once (being caught in a fierce
hurricane eighty miles southwest of Mauritius) he had missed three
consecutive days. He feared naught but an unforgiving God, and wished to
end his days in a little house, with a plot of ground attached--far in
the country--out of sight of the sea.
He, the ruler of that minute world, seldom descended from the Olympian
heights of his poop. Below him--at his feet, so to speak--common mortals
led their busy and insignificant lives. Along the main deck, Mr. Baker
grunted in a manner bloodthirsty and innocuous; and kept all our noses
to the grindstone, being--as he once remarked--paid for doing that very
thing. The men working about the deck were healthy and contented--as
most seamen are, when once well out to sea. The true peace of God begins
at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land; and when He sends
there the messengers of His might it is not in terrible wrath against
crime, presumption, and folly, but paternally, to chasten simple
hearts--ignorant hearts that know nothing of life, and beat undisturbed
by envy or greed.
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