He raved in this fashion for some minutes, the Captain meanwhile eyeing him with his head on one side, as though striving to find out whether he was drunk or mad. He then rushed to the side with an impetuosity that made me fear he meant to spring overboard, and, looking down for a moment, he bellowed forth, shaking his clenched fist at the sea:
'Yes, then she is gone, and 'tain't a dream!'
He fetched his thigh a mighty slap, and, wheeling round, stared at us in the manner of one temporarily bereft of his senses by the apparition of something he finds horrible.
'These Deal boatmen have excitable natures!' said Captain Joppa Bunting, addressing me, fixedly smiling, and passing his fingers through a whisker as he spoke.
'I trust you will bear with the poor fellows,' said I: 'it is a heavy loss to the men, and a death-blow to big expectations.'
'Temper is excusable occasionally at sea,' observed the Captain; 'but language I never permit. Yet that unhappy Christian soul ought to be borne with, as you say, seeing that he is a poor ignorant man very sorely tried. Abraham Vise, come here!' he called.
'His name is Wise,' said I.
'Wise, come here!' he shouted.
Abraham approached us with a slow, rolling gait, and a face in which temper was now somewhat clouded by bewilderment.
'Abraham,' said the Captain, looking from him to Jacob, who leaned, wet through, against the rail with a dogged face and his eyes rooted upon the deck, 'you have met with one of those severe reverses which happen entirely for the good of the sufferer, however he may object to take that view. Depend upon it, my man, that the loss of your lugger is for some wise purpose.'