"
Faintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old
negro muttered, "Best cooked 'teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy."
"Cook," said Stubb, squaring himself once more; "do you belong
to the church?"
"Passed one once in Cape-Down," said the old man sullenly.
"And you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town,
where you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his
hearers as his beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook!
And yet you come here, and tell me such a dreadful lie as you did
just now, eh?" said Stubb. "Where do you expect to go to, cook?"
"Go to bed berry soon," he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.
"Avast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It's an awful question.
Now what's your answer?"
"When dis old brack man dies," said the negro slowly,
changing his whole air and demeanor, "he hisself won't go nowhere;
but some bressed angel will come and fetch him."
"Fetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Elijah?
And fetch him where?"
"Up dere," said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head,
and keeping it there very solemnly.
"So, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook,
when you are dead? But don't you know the higher you climb,
the colder it gets? Main-top, eh?"
"Didn't say dat t'all," said Fleece, again in the sulks.
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