Morgan’s Generosity and Ancestry Claim
Having resolved the dispute, Morgan unties his bundle containing three bunches of onions and a large lump of Cheshire cheese. He shares his humble meal of biscuit with the company, declaring brandy is the “best menstruum for onions and sheese.” As his appetite is satisfied, his humor improves. When he learns of the narrator’s good family background, he takes a particular liking and traces his own ancestry to Caractacus, King of the Britons, who was prisoner and later friend of Claudius Caesar. Morgan also presents the narrator with two good ruffled shirts, joining two check shirts from Thompson, enabling him to appear with decency.
Death of the Sick Messmate
The sailor Morgan sent to the doctor returns with a prescription. Morgan asks if the sick man is “dead or alive,” and the sailor reports they have been “yard-arm and yard-arm these three glasses,” with one eye open but “jammed in his head” and the “haulyards of his under jaw” having given way. Morgan exclaims the man is “as pad as one would desire to be” and orders the tar to keep him alive until medicine arrives. The sailor runs to the sick man but returns immediately with a woeful countenance to report his comrade has “struck.” Morgan exclaims in horror and asks why the sailor did not stop him. The sailor explains he hailed several times but the man was too far gone and the enemy had taken his “close quarters.” Morgan accepts this philosophically, saying “we all owe heaven a teath,” and sends the sailor away to take warning and repent.
The Crew’s Banyan Day Meal
The boatswain pipes to dinner, and the mess boy retrieves a wooden platter of boiled peas, crying “Scaldings” as he carries it. The cloth is an old piece of sail, covered with three metal plates and three spoons of the same composition, two shortened in the handles and one in the lip. Morgan adds salt butter scooped from an old gallipot, onions, and pounded pepper. The narrator is not tempted by the appearance but his messmates eat heartily, advising him to follow suit since it is “banyan day” with no meat until the next noon. The narrator learns that Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are meatless days called banyan days, named after a sect of devotees in the East Indies who never taste flesh.
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