Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/56

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50
THE NAVAL OFFICER.

a shaving-box; the materials within I could not analyze, but my nose convinced me that no part of them came from Smith's, in Bond-street.

Amphitrite followed, on a similar carriage, drawn by six white men, whose costume was like the others. This goddess was personified by an athletic, ugly man, marked with the small-pox, dressed as a female, with a woman's night-cap on his head, ornamented with sprigs of sea-weed; she had a harpoon in her hand, on which was fixed an albicore; and in her lap lay one of the boys of the ship, dressed as a baby, with long clothes and a cap; he held in his hand a marlinspike, which was suspended round his neck with a rope-yarn: this was to assist him in cutting his teeth, as the children on shore use a coral. His nurse attended him with a bucket full of burgoo, or hasty pudding, with which she occasionally fed him out of the cook's iron ladle. Two or three stout men were habited as sea nymphs, to attend on the goddess;