The Captain's Story

by Mark Twain

There was a good deal of pleasant gossip about old Captain 'Hurricane' Jones, of the Pacific Ocean--peace to his ashes! Two or three of us present had known him; I, particularly well, for I had made four sea-voyages with him. He was a very remarkable man. He was born on a ship; he picked up what little education he had among his ship-mates; he began life in the forecastle, and climbed grade by grade to the captaincy. More than fifty years of his sixty-five were spent at sea. He had sailed all oceans, seen all lands, and borrowed a tint from all climates. When a man has been fifty years at sea, he necessarily knows nothing of men, nothing of the world but its surface, nothing of the world's thought, nothing of the world's learning but it's a B C, and that blurred and distorted by the unfocussed lenses of an untrained mind. Such a man is only a gray and bearded child. That is what old Hurricane Jones was--simply an innocent, lovable old infant. When his spirit was in repose he was as sweet and gentle as a girl; when his wrath was up he was a hurricane that made his nickname seem tamely descriptive. He was formidable in a fight, for he was of powerful build and dauntless courage. He was frescoed from head to heel with pictures and mottoes tattooed in red and blue India ink. I was with him one voyage when he got his last vacant space tattooed; this vacant space was around his left ankle. During three days he stumped about the ship with his ankle bare and swollen, and this legend gleaming red and angry out from a clouding of India ink: 'Virtue is its own R'd.' (There was a lack of room.) He was deeply and sincerely pious, and swore like a fish-woman. He considered swearing blameless, because sailors would not understand an order unillumined by it. He was a profound Biblical scholar--that is, he thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own methods of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the 'advanced' school of thinkers, and applied natural laws to the interpretation of all miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satirist on modern scientific religionists. Such a man as I have been describing is rabidly fond of disquisition and argument; one knows that without being told it.

One trip the captain had a clergyman on board, but did not know he was a clergyman, since the passenger list did not betray the fact. He took a great liking to this Rev. Mr. Peters, and talked with him a great deal: told him yarns, gave him toothsome scraps of personal history, and wove a glittering streak of profanity through his garrulous fabric that was refreshing to a spirit weary of the dull neutralities of undecorated speech. One day the captain said, 'Peters, do you ever read the Bible?'

'Well--yes.'

'I judge it ain't often, by the way you say it. Now, you tackle it in dead earnest once, and you'll find it'll pay. Don't you get discouraged, but hang right on. First you won't understand it; but by-and-by things will begin to clear up, and then you wouldn't lay it down to --ear.'

'Yes, I have heard that said.'

'And it's so too. There ain't a book that begins with it. It lays over 'em all, Peters. There's some pretty tough things in it--there ain't any getting around that--but you stick to them and think them out, and when once you get on the inside everything's plain as day.'

'The miracles, too, captain?'

'Yes, sir! the miracles, too. Every one of them. Now, there's that business with the prophets of Baal; like enough that stumped you?'

'Well, I don't know but--'

'Own up, now; it stumped you. Well, I don't wonder. You hadn't any experience in ravelling such things out, and naturally it was too many for you. Would you like to have me explain that thing to you, and show you how to get at the meat of these matters?'

'Indeed, I would, captain, if you don't mind.'

Then the captain proceeded as follows: 'I'll do it with pleasure. First, you see, I read and read, and thought and thought, till I got to understand what sort of people they were in the old Bible times, and then after that it was clear and easy. Now, this was the way I put it up, concerning Isaac[1] and the prophets of Baal. There was some mighty sharp men amongst the public characters of that old ancient day, and Isaac was one of them. Isaac had his failings--plenty of them, too; it ain't for me to apologise for Isaac; he played a cold deck on the prophets of Baal, and like enough he was justifiable, considering the odds that was against him. No, all I say it, 't' wa'n't any miracle, and that I'll show you so's 't you can see it yourself.

'Well, times had been getting rougher and rougher for prophets--that is, prophets of Isaac's denomination. There were four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal in the community, and only one Presbyterian; that is, if Isaac was a Presbyterian, which I reckon he was, but it don't say. Naturally, the prophets of Baal took all the trade. Isaac was pretty low spirited, I reckon, but he was a good deal of a man, and no doubt he went a-prophesying around, letting on to be doing a land-office business, but 't' wa'n't any use; he couldn't run any opposition to amount to anything. By-and-by things got desperate with him; he sets his head to work and thinks it all out, and then what does he do? Why he begins to throw out hints that the other parties are this and that and t'other,--nothing very definite, may be, but just kind of undermining their reputation in a quiet way. This made talk, of course, and finally got to the King. The King asked Isaac what he meant by his talk. Says Isaac, "Oh, nothing particular; only, can they pray down fire from heaven on an altar? It ain't much, maybe, your majesty, only can they do it? That's the idea." So the King was a good deal disturbed, and he went to the prophets of Baal, and they said, pretty airy, that if he had an altar ready, they were ready; and they intimated he better get it insured, too.

'So next morning all the Children of Israel and their parents and the other people gathered themselves together. Well, here was that great crowd of prophets of Baal packed together on one side, and Isaac walking up and down all alone on the other, putting up his job. When time was called, Isaac let on to be comfortable and indifferent; told the other team to take the first innings. So they went at it, the whole four hundred and fifty, praying around the altar, very hopefully, and doing their level best. They prayed an hour--two hours--three hours--and so on, plumb till noon. It wa'n't any use; they hadn't took a trick. Of course they felt kind of ashamed before all those people, and well they might. Now, what would a magnanimous man do? Keep still, wouldn't he? Of course. What did Isaac do? He graveled the prophets of Baal every way he could think of. Says he, "You don't speak up loud enough; your god's asleep, like enough, or may be he's taking a walk; you want to holler, you know," or words to that effect; I don't recollect the exact language. Mind I don't apologise for Isaac; he had his faults.

'Well, the prophets of Baal prayed along the best they knew how all the afternoon, and never raised a spark. At last, about sundown, they were all tuckered out, and they owned up and quit.

'What does Isaac do, now? He steps up and says to some friends of his, there, "Pour four barrels of water on the altar!" Everybody was astonished; for the other side had prayed at it dry, you know, and got whitewashed. They poured it on. Says he, "Heave on four more barrels." Then he says, "Heave on four more." Twelve barrels, you see, altogether. The water ran all over the altar, and all down the sides, and filled up a trench around it that would hold a couple of hogsheads--"measures," it says: I reckon it means about a hogshead. Some of the people were going to put on their things and go, for they allowed he was crazy. They didn't know Isaac. Isaac knelt down and began to pray: he strung along, and strung along, about the heathen in distant lands, and about the sister churches, and about the state and the country at large, and about those that's in authority in the government, and all the usual programme, you know, till everybody had got tired and gone to thinking about something else, and then, all of a sudden, when nobody was noticing, he outs with a match and rakes it on the under side of his leg, and pff! up the whole thing blazes like a house afire! Twelve barrels of water? Petroleum, sir, PETROLEUM! that's what it was!'

'Petroleum, captain?'

'Yes, sir; the country was full of it. Isaac knew all about that. You read the Bible. Don't you worry about the tough places. They ain't tough when you come to think them out and throw light on them. There ain't a thing in the Bible but what is true; all you want is to go prayerfully to work and cipher out how 'twas done.'

[1] This is the captain's own mistake.