Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/137

Rh We have no record of any of the conversations between them; but it is plain that sometimes (when they got away from yarns and marine shop) they quarrelled about the respective merits of the Cocornut tree and the Plantain. Dampier, as a West Indian sailor, extolled the plantain, with (apparently) "all the art of Rhetoricke and Logicke." Knox, as an East Indian sailor, got extremely hot and prickly whenever a plantain tree was mentioned. "It is," he says, "no more propper to call them trees than it is to Call a Cabbage a tree ... whare as the Cocornut tree Contineweth flourishing aboute 100 yeares." Knox had neither Rhetoricke nor Logicke, only a passion "to doe the Cocornut tree justice" and a kind of native wildness in his spelling.

They were remarkable-looking men, as remarkable men invariably are. Dampier, probably the taller of the two, was of a black, forbidding beauty, with a clear skin, showing scarlet under tan. Knox, a stumpier figure, had the battered, triumphant look of one who, after a long struggle for salvation, has found his calling and election sure. His weather-beaten, manful old face is