“Scrunch me, if this ar’n’t the most miserable sort o’ life, I ever knowed,” remarked the latter, as he rested his chin upon his hands and supported himself upon his elbows.
“Sad!” responded Log, who thinking that to speak much would lessen his consequence, seldom allowed any thing beyond a monosyllable to escape him, to which by repetitions and some slight additions he attempted to give as much importance as if they contained volumes of meaning. “Sad, sad, very sad, very sad upon my word, Mister Scrumpydike.”
“There’s nothin’ doin’,” continued the other. “I feel as queer as a dog wi’ his tail cut off, cause there’s no ’portunity to do nothin’.”
“Nothing, nothing, decidedly, actually, positively nothing, Mister Scrumpydike,” replied the little man.
“It’s a tarnation hard case that a fellow’s obligated to be honest against his will,” remarked the sailor despondingly.
“Hard, hard, very hard, very hard indeed, uncommonly hard, Mister Scrumpydike,” said the other, appearing to sympathise exceedingly in so extraordinary a cause of complaint.
“But what’s most cruel in this here unnat’ral state o’ things is, that there’s sich lots o’ beautiful prigging for any chap as is a mind to make his-self handy,” added his companion in the same pathetic tone.
“Cruel, cruel, most cruel, most unjustly, most unnaturally, most deplorably cruel, Mister Scrumpydike,” responded Log.
“Well, I only knows I shan’t be able to stand this here molloncolly sort o’ fun much longer. May I be bolted by a shark if I ar’n’t a getting into the most ’bominable reg’lar habits as can be. You wouldn’t s’pose it possible, but I ar’n’t ’propriated nothin’ o’ nobodies since I’ve been aboard this here craft. I ar’n’t the same sort o’ cretur I was afore. I ar’n’t, indeed. I resists temptation, and commits lots o’ other ’straordinary impossibilities. I does without divarsion:—I ar’n’t killed a fellow cretur for ever so long. And worser nor all, some o’ the bugaboos here act’ly thinks I ar’n’t no greater a villain than themselves, ar’n’t it horrid?”