The effect of such a change was like that which
would have been observed among a flock of heavily fleeced sheep, which,
after gasping for breath beneath trees and hedges, during the time of the
sun's power, are seen scattering over their pastures to feed, or to play
their antics, as a grateful shade succeeds to cool their panting sides.
Baptiste, as is but too apt to be the case with men possessed of brief
authority, during the day had mercilessly played the tyrant with all the
passengers that were beneath the privileged degrees, more than once
threatening to come to extremities with several, who had betrayed
restlessness under the restraint and suffering of their unaccustomed
situation. Perhaps there is no man who feels less for the complaints of
the novice than your weather-beaten and hardened mariner; for,
familiarized to the suffering and confinement of a vessel, and at liberty
himself to seek relief in his duties and avocations, he can scarcely enter
into the privations and embarrassments of those to whom all is so new and
painful. But, in the patron of the Winkelried, there existed a natural in
difference to the grievances of others, and a narrow selfishness of
disposition, in aid of the opinions which had been formed by a life of
hardship and exposure.
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