So I just told him plainly that it would n't do, and that if he 'd a mind to kill himself ashore I 'd no objection, but he should n't do it aboard my schooner.

'I'm e'en just a mind,' says I, 'to pitch your books overboard.

A fishing vessel's no place for 'em; they'll spoil all our luck.

Don't go to making a Jonah of yourself down here in your bunk, but get upon deck, and let your books alone, and go to watching the sea, and the clouds, and the islands, and the fog-banks, and the fishes, and the birds; for Natur,' says I, don't lie nor give hearsays, but is always as true as the Gospels.' "But 't was no use talking.

There he'd lay in his bunk with his books about him, and I had e'en a'most to drag him on deck to snuff the sea- air.