There was a church pulpit aboard that they were taking down to Mazatlan for some chapel or other, and this here pulpit was lashed on deck aft.

Well, Billy had been most kinds of a fool in his life, and among others a play-actor; called himself Gaston Maundeville, and was clean daft on his knowledge of Shakespeare and his own power of interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines.

I ain't never going to forgit the day he gave us Portia's speech.

We were just under the tropic, and the day was a scorcher.
There was mostly men folk aboard, and we lay around the deck in our pajamas, while Billy--Gaston Maundeville, dressed in striped red and white pajamas--clum up in that bally pulpit, with the ship's Shakespeare in his hands, an' let us have--'The quality o' mercy isn't strained; it droppeth as the genteel dew from heavun.' Laugh, I tell you I was sore with it.

Lord, how we guyed him! An' the more we guyed and the more we laughed, the more serious he got and the madder he grew.