At night the descent of Hansen to supper was a welcome diversion to his lonely thoughts. The old sailor seated himself at the table:--
"I've lost all my appetite, and got a horse's. Here, steward, you nigger, where be yer? Fetch along that beefsteak. What do you call this here? Well, never mind what you call it, here goes into it, any how."
A silent and destructive onslaught upon the dish before him followed. Then, laying down his knife and fork for a moment,--
"I've knowed the time when I could have ate up the doctor there,"--pointing to the steward,--"bones and all, and couldn't get a mouthful, no way you could fix it." Then, resuming his labors, "Tell you what, squire, this here agrees with me. Come out of that berth now, and sit down here alongside o' me. Just walk into that beefsteak, like I do. That 'ere beats physicking all holler."
Thus discoursing, partly to himself and partly to Vinal, and, by turns, berating the grinning steward in a jocular strain, Mr. Hansen continued his repast. When, at last, he left the cabin, Vinal found the solitude too dreary for endurance; and, to break its monotony, he also went on deck.
The vessel still scoured wildly along; and as she plunged through the angry seas, so the moon was sailing among stormy clouds, now eclipsed and lost, now shining brightly out, silvering the seething foam, and casting the shadows of spars and rigging on the glistening deck. Vinal bent over the bulwark and looked down on the bubbles, as they fled past, flashing in the moon.
His thoughts flew backward with them, and dwelt on the hated home from which he was escaping.
"What an outcry! what gapes of wonder, and eyes turned up to heaven! Gulled, befooled, hoodwinked! and now, at last, you have found it out, and make earth and heaven ring with your virtuous spite. I knew you all, and played you as I would play the pieces on a chess board. The game was a good one in the main, but with some blunders, and for those I pay the price. If I had had that villain's brute strength, and the brute nerve that goes with it, there would have been a different story to tell. Before this, I would have found a way to grind him to the earth, and set my foot on his neck. They think him virtuous. He thinks himself so. The shallow-witted idiots! Their eyes can only see skin-deep. They love to be cheated. They swallow fallacies as a child swallows sweetmeats. The tinsel dazzles them, and they take it for gold. Virtue! a delusion of self-interest--self-interest, the spring, lever, and fulcrum of the world. It is for my interest, for every body's interest, that his neighbors should be honest, candid, open, forgiving, charitable, continent, sober, and what not. Therefore, by the general consent of mankind,--the inevitable instinct of self-interest,--such qualities are exalted into sanctity; christened with the name of virtues; draped in white, and crowned with halos; rewarded with praises here and paradise hereafter. Drape the skeleton as you will, the bare skeleton is still there. Paint as thick as you will, the bare skull grins under it,--to all who have the eyes to see, and the hardihood to use them. How many among mankind have courage to face the naked truth? Not one in a thousand. Cannot the fools draw reason out of the analogy of things? Can they not see that, as their bodies will be melted and merged into the bodily substance of the world, so their minds will be merged in the great universal mind,--the _animus mundi_,--out of which they sprang, like bubbles on the water, and into which they will sink again, like bubbles when they burst? Immortality! They may please themselves with the name; but of what worth is an immortality where individuality is lost, and each conscious atom drowned in the vast immensity? What a howling and screeching the wind makes in the rigging! If I were given to superstition, I could fancy that a legion from the nether world were bestriding the ropes, yelping in grand jubilation at the sight of----"