26. CHAPTER XXVI.
CONTAINING A PENNYWEIGHT OF PHILOSOPHY.
Still many days passed and the Parki yet floated. The
little flying-fish got used to her familiar, loitering hull; and
like swallows building their nests in quiet old trees, they
spawned in the great green barnacles that clung to her
sides.
The calmer the sea, the more the barnacles grow. In
the tropical Pacific, but a few weeks suffice thus to encase
your craft in shell armor. Vast bunches adhere to the very
cutwater, and if not stricken off, much impede the ship's
sailing. And, at intervals, this clearing away of barnacles
was one of Annatoo's occupations. For be it known, that,
like most termagants, the dame was tidy at times, though
capriciously; loving cleanliness by fits and starts. Wherefore,
these barnacles oftentimes troubled her; and with a
long pole she would go about, brushing them aside. It beguiled
the weary hours, if nothing more; and then she would
return to her beads and her trinkets; telling them all over
again; murmuring forth her devotions, and marking whether
Samoa had been pilfering from her store.
Now, the escape from the shoal did much once again to
heal the differences of the good lady and her spouse. And
keeping house, as they did, all alone by themselves, in that
lonely craft, a marvel it is, that they should ever have quarreled.
And then to divorce, and yet dwell in the same
tenement, was only aggravating the evil. So Belisarius and
Antonina again came together. But now, grown wise by
experience, they neither loved over-keenly, nor hated; but
took things as they were; found themselves joined, without
hope of a sundering, and did what they could to make a
match of the mate. Annatoo concluded that Samoa was
not wholly to be enslaved; and Samoa thought best to wink
at Annatoo's foibles, and let her purloin when she pleased.
But as in many cases, all this philosophy about wedlock
is not proof against the perpetual contact of the parties concerned;
and as it is far better to revive the old days of
courtship, when men's mouths are honey-combs: and, to
make them still sweeter, the ladies the bees which there store
their sweets; when fathomless raptures glimmer far down in
the lover's fond eye; and best of all, when visits are alternated
by absence: so, like my dignified lord duke and his
duchess, Samoa and Annatoo, man and wife, dwelling in the
same house, still kept up their separate quarters. Marlborough
visiting Sarah; and Sarah, Marlborough, whenever
the humor suggested.
