Joe was not in my dormitory, or I should certainly
have bedded with him.
Above everything else, I think, the wretched food made us unhappy.
If a man be but well fed he can endure much hardship and trouble,
and I had never wanted in this respect. The prison food was bad,
ill cooked, and meagre; and though Joe, for one, might have
procured better if he had chosen to employ himself in his old trade
of coopering, he refused to do so after making one barrel, the
price of which, after the soldiers' commission had been deducted,
was something less than a fourth of what it would have been in
England.
"'Noint my block!" he cried, when the pitiful sum was placed in his
hand. "Dost think a Shrewsbury man 'll be done out of his dues by a
codger of a Frenchman what he don't vally no more than pork slush
or a stinking dogfish? Split my binnacle if I be!"
And he flung the money at the amazed Frenchman, and kept his word
to work at his old trade no more.
I think this sturdiness of his raised him somewhat in the
estimation of our jailers, and in spite of the opprobrious epithets
he applied to them (which to be sure they did not understand) he
was soon as popular with them as Vetch was the reverse. Joe was
blessed with a great fund of good humor, which withstood all
privation and restraint. He growled and groaned at being compelled
to take his turn in scouring the floors and other menial tasks, but
after emitting a stream of hot language, which ever appears to flow
very freely from the lips of sailor men, he went his way with great
cheerfulness.
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