In their sports they could be energetic
enough. I do not know of any more delightful sight than to watch
them bathing in the tremendous surf, simply intoxicated with the
joy of living, as unconscious of danger as if swinging in a
hammock while riding triumphantly upon the foaming summit of an
incoming breaker twenty feet high, or plunging with a cataract
over the dizzy edge of its cliff, swallowed up in the hissing
vortex below, only to reappear with a scream of riotous laughter
in the quiet eddy beyond.
As far as I could judge, they were the happiest of people,
literally taking no thought for the morrow, and content with the
barest necessaries of life, so long as they were free and the sun
shone brightly. We had many opportunities of cultivating their
acquaintance, for the captain allowed us much liberty, quite one-
half of the crew and officers being ashore most of the time. Of
course, the majority spent all their spare time in the purlieus
of the town, which, like all such places anywhere, were foul and
filthy enough; but that was their own faults. I have often
wondered much to see men, who on board ship were the pink of
cleanliness and neatness, fastidious to a fault in all they did,
come ashore and huddle in the most horrible of kennels, among the
very dregs and greaves of the 'long-shore district.
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