“Now, Orlando, you just hold on a minute—will you?” said the admiral, facing briskly round, with much the same air as an unfeeling dentist who determines to have your tooth out whether you will or not; “now, look here and let’s do things ship-shape. Has our Firefly got anything to do with it?”
“Admiral Havenful, I’m happy to say she has not. I felt pretty badly about Miss Pet, there, one time; but I have got nicely over that. It wasn’t near so dangerous as I expected it would be; but this—this is. The way I feel sometimes, Admiral Havenful, is awful to contemplate. I can’t sleep nor eat, and I don’t take no pleasure even in my new pantaloons with the blue stripe down the side. I often lie awake nights crying now, and I wish I had never been born! I do wish it!” said Mr. Toosypegs, with a sudden howl. “Where’s the good of it, if a fellow’s going to be made miserable this way, I want to know?”
“Orlando Toosypegs,” said the admiral, rising, sternly, “just look here, will you? I’m not going to stand this sort of talk, you know—this flying in the face of Providence”—here the admiral raised his glazed hat, and looked reverently at a blue-bottle fly on the ceiling—“because it’s not proper nor ship-shape, nohow you can fix it. Now, Orlando, I’ve advised you time and again—I’ve been a father to you before you was the size of a tar-bucket—I’ve turned you up and spanked you when you wasn’t big as a well-grown marlin-spike, and I’ve often given you a good kicking when you were older, for your shortcomings; I’ve talked to you, Orlando Toosypegs, for your good till all was blue—I’ve made myself as hoarse as a boatswain splashing showers of good advice on you; and now what’s my return? You say you don’t see no use in being born. Orlando, it grieves me—it makes me feel as bad as if I had drank a pail of bilge-water; but there is no help for it! I give you up to ruin—I’ve lost all faith in human morals—I wash my hands of you altogether!”
Here the admiral looked around for some water to literally fulfill his threat; but, seeing none, he wiped his hands on the table-cloth, and resumed his seat with the air a Spartan father may be supposed to have worn when condemning his own son to death.
So deeply affected was Mr. Toosypegs by this pathetic exhortation that he sobbed away like a hyena in his flaring bandanna, with a great noise and much wiping of eyes and nose, which showed he was not lost to all sense of human feeling.
“Yes, Orlando,” said the admiral, mournfully, “I repeat it, I’m determined to wash my hands of you. The basin ain’t here; but it’s no matter. Your father was a nice man, and I’m sorry his son ever come to this.”
“Admiral Havenful,” said Mr. Toosypegs, hiccoughing violently, “I’m ashamed of myself. I oughtn’t to have said it and I won’t do so no more at any price. I know—I know I oughtn’t mind being wretched, but somehow I do, and I can’t help it. If you’ll only forgive me, and not wash your hands of me, I’ll tell you what’s the matter and promise to try and do better for the time to come.”
“Well, heave ahead!” said the somewhat mollified mariner.
“Admiral Havenful!” exclaimed Mr. Toosypegs, springing to his feet with such startling energy that the old sailor jumped up, too, and brandished his pipe, expecting a violent personal assault and battery—“will you be good enough not to say that? Oh, my gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Toosypegs, in a wildly-distracted tone, “if it ain’t too darned bad. Ugh!”
And with a violent shudder and a sea-green visage, the unhappy young man sat down, with one hand on his mouth and the other on his dinner.