Chapter 11

class="c">PAUL JONES IN A REVERIE.

“‘God helps them that help themselves.’ That’s a clincher. That’s been my experience. But I never saw it in words before. What pamphlet is this? ‘Poor Richard,’ hey!”

Upon entering Israel’s room, Captain Paul, stepping towards the table and spying the open pamphlet there, had taken it up, his eye being immediately attracted to the passage previously marked by our adventurer.

“A rare old gentleman is ‘Poor Richard,’” said Israel in response to Paul’s observations.

“So he seems, so he seems,” answered Paul, his eye still running over the pamphlet again; “why, ‘Poor Richard’ reads very much as Doctor Franklin speaks.”

“He wrote it,” said Israel.

“Aye? Good. So it is, so it is; it’s the wise man all over. I must get me a copy of this and wear it around my neck for a charm. And now about our quarters for the night. I am not going to deprive you of your bed, my man. Do you go to bed and I will doze in the chair here. It’s good dozing in the crosstrees.”

“Why not sleep together?” said Israel; “see, it is a big bed. Or perhaps you don’t fancy your bed-fellow. Captain?”

“When, before the mast, I first sailed out of Whitehaven to Norway,” said Paul, coolly, “I had for hammock-mate a full-blooded Congo. We had a white blanket spread in our hammock. Every time I turned in I found the Congo’s black wool worked in with the white worsted. By the end of the voyage the blanket was of a pepper-and-salt look, like an old man’s turning head. So it’s not because I am notional at all, but because I don’t care to, my lad. Turn in and go to sleep. Let the lamp burn. I’ll see to it. There, go to sleep.”

Complying with what seemed as much a command as a request, Israel, though in bed, could not fall into slumber for thinking of the little circumstance that this strange swarthy man, flaming with wild enterprises, sat in full suit in the chair. He felt an uneasy misgiving sensation, as if he had retired, not only without covering up the fire, but leaving it fiercely burning with spitting fagots of hemlock.