 he had felicitated himself so often on the sagacity and foresight
displayed in that arrangement, and had found it so complete and perfect in all
its parts; that to suffer it to go to pieces all at once, and even to assist in
breaking it up, required a great effort of his resolution. The Captain, too,
found it difficult to unload his old ideas upon the subject, and to take a
perfectly new cargo on board, with that rapidity which the circumstances
required, or without jumbling and confounding the two. Consequently, instead of
putting on his coat and waistcoat with anything like the impetuosity that could
alone have kept pace with Walter's mood, he declined to invest himself with
those garments at all at present; and informed Walter that on such a serious
matter, he must be allowed to bite his nails a bit.
    »It's an old habit of mine, Wal'r,« said the Captain, »any time these fifty
year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal'r, then you may know that Ned
Cuttle's aground.«
    Thereupon the Captain put his iron hook between his teeth, as if it were a
hand; and with an air of wisdom and profundity that was the very concentration
and sublimation of all philosophical reflection and grave inquiry, applied
himself to the consideration of the subject in its various branches.
    »There's a friend of mine,« murmured the Captain, in an absent manner, »but
he's at present coasting round to Whitby, that would deliver such an opinion on
this subject, or any other that could be named, as would give Parliament six and
beat 'em. Been knocked overboard, that man,« said the Captain, »twice, and none
the worse for it. Was beat in his apprenticeship, for three weeks (off and on),
about the head with a ringbolt. And yet a clearer-minded man don't walk.«
    In spite of his respect for Captain Cuttle, Walter could not help inwardly
rejoicing at the absence of this sage, and devoutly hoping that his limpid
intellect might not be brought to bear on his difficulties until they were quite
settled.
    »If you was to take and show that man the buoy at the Nore,« said Captain
Cuttle in the same tone, »and ask him his opinion of it, Wal'r, he'd give you an
opinion that was no more like that buoy than your uncle's buttons are. There
ain't a man that walks - certainly not on two
