As for the twilight of which so much was said, it was worse than nothin', being neither one thing nor the other.

For his part, he liked things 'made out of whole cloth.' Then he had sent the ship round to a distant roadstead, in order that there might be no more post-captains and rear-admirals among the people; and here had he been as much as four days on nothing but nuts.

Nuts might do for the philosophy of a monkey, but he found, on trial, that it played the devil with the philosophy of a man.

Things were bad enough as they were.

He pined for a little pork--he cared not who knew it; it might not be very sentimental, he knew, but it was capital sea-food; his natur' was pretty much pork; he believed most men had, in some way or other, more or less pork in their human natur's; nuts might do for monikin natur', but human natur' loved meat; if monikins did not like it, monikins need not eat it; there would be so much the more for those who did like it--he pined for his natural aliment, and as for living nine years in an eclipse, it was quite out of the question.