Now, being fond of natur, I try to take lessons from all created critters. I copy the rat’s travelling knowledge and good points as near as possible, and strive to avoid the bad. I confine myself to the company apartments, and them that’s allotted to me! Havin’ no family, I take nobody with me a-visitin’, keep good hours, and give as little trouble as possible; and as for goin’ to the servant-gall’s room, under pretence of wanting a candle, I’d scorn such an action. Now, as there is lots of good things in this vessel, rat like, I intend to have a good dinner.
“Sorrow, what have you got for us to-day?”
“There is the moose-meat, Massa.”
“Let that hang over the stern, we shall get tired of it.”
“Den, Massa, dar is de Jesuit-priest; by golly, Massa, dat is a funny name. Yah, yah, yah! dis here niggar was took in dat time. Dat ar a fac.”
“Well, the turkey had better hang over too.”
“Sposin’ I git you fish dinner to-day, Massa?”
“What have you got?”
“Some tobacco-pipes, Massa, and some miller’s thumbs.” The rascal expected to take a rise out of me, but I was too wide awake for him. Cutler and the doctor, strange to say, fell into the trap, and required an explanation, which delighted Sorrow amazingly. Cutler, though an old fisherman on the coast, didn’t know these fish at all. And the doctor had some difficulty in recognising them, under names he had never heard of before.
“Let us have them.”