Watch your asses, now!

An incident from Two Years Before the Mast that I had forgotten:

The night after this event, when I went to the galley to get a light, I found the cook inclined to be talkative, so I sat down on the spars, and gave him an opportunity to hold a yarn. I was the more inclined to do so, as I found that he was full of the superstitions once more common among seamen, and which the recent death had waked up in his mind. He talked about George’s having spoken of his friends, and said he believed few men died without having a warning of it, which he supported by a great many stories of dreams, and the unusual behavior of men before death. From this he went on to other superstitions, the Flying Dutchman, etc., and talked rather mysteriously, having something evidently on his mind. At length he put his head out of the galley and looked carefully about to see if any one was within hearing, and being satisfied on that point, asked me in a low tone- 8
"I say! you know what countryman 'e carpenter be?" 9
"Yes," said I, "he's a German." 10
"What kind of a German?" said the cook. 11
"He belongs to Bremen," said I. 12
"Are you sure o' dat?" said he. 13
I satisfied him on that point by saying that he could speak no language but the German and English. 14
"I'm plaguy glad o' dat," said the cook. "I was mighty 'fraid he was a Fin. I tell you what, I been plaguy civil to that man all the voyage. 15
I asked him the reason of this, and found that he was fully possessed with the notion that Fins are wizards, and especially have power over winds and storms. I tried to reason with him about it, but he had the best of all arguments, that from experience, at hand, and was not to be moved. He had been in a vessel to the Sandwich Islands, in which the sail-maker was a Fin, and could do anything he was of a mind to. This sail-maker kept a junk bottle in his berth, which was always just half full of rum, though he got drunk upon it nearly every day. He had seen him sit for hours together, talking to this bottle, which he stood up before him on the table. The same man cut his throat in his berth, and everybody said he was possessed. 16
He had heard of ships, too, beating up the gulf of Finland against a head wind and having a ship heave in sight astern, overhaul and pass them, with as fair a wind as could blow, and all studding-sails out, and find she was from Finland. 17
"Oh, no!" said he; "I’ve seen too much of them men to want to see 'board a ship. If they can't have their own way, they'll play the d--l with you." 18
As I still doubted, he said he would leave it to John, who was the oldest seaman aboard, and would know, if anybody did. John, to be sure, was the oldest, and at the same time the most ignorant, man in the ship; but I consented to have him called. The cook stated the matter to him, and John, as I anticipated, sided with the cook, and said that he himself had been in a ship where they had a head wind for a fortnight, and the captain found out at last that one of the men, whom he had had some hard words with a short time before, was a Fin, and immediately told him if he didn’t stop the head wind he would shut him down in the fore peak. The Fin would not give in, and the captain shut him down in the fore peak, and would not give him anything to eat. The Fin held out for a day and a half, when he could not stand it any longer, and did something or other which brought the wind round again, and they let him up. 19
"There," said the cook, "what you think o' dat?" 20
I told him I had no doubt it was true, and that it would have been odd if the wind had not changed in fifteen days, Fin or no Fin. 21
"Oh," says he, "go 'way! You think, 'cause you been to college, you know better than anybody. You know better than them as has seen it with their own eyes. You wait till you've been to sea as long as I have, and you'll know."