(_Omitted from ‘Billy Budd’_)
A profound portrait-painter like Titian or our famous countryman
Stewart, what such an observer sees in any face he may earnestly study,
that essentially is the man. To disentangle his true history from
contemporary report is superfluous. Not so with us who are scarce
Titians and Stewarts. Occasionally we are struck by some exceptional
aspect instantly awakening our interest. But it is an interest that in
its ignorance is full of commonplace curiosity. We try to ascertain from
somebody the career and experience of the man, or may seek to obtain the
information from himself. But what we hear from others may prove but
unreliable gossip, and he himself, if approached, prove uncommunicative.
In short, in most instances he turns out to be like a meteoric stone in
a field. There it lies. The neighbours have their say about it, and an
odd enough say it may prove. But what is it? Whence did it come? In what
unimaginable sphere did it get that strange, igneous, metallic look, the
kine now cropping the dewy grass about it?
Any attempt to depict such a character as is here suggested must be an
imperfect one. Nevertheless, it is a man of this description who is the
subject of the present essay at a sketch.
A sailor’s name as it appears on a crew-list is not always his real
name, nor in every instance does it indicate his country. This premised,
be it said that by the name at the head of this writing long went an old
man-of-war’s man of whose earlier history it may verily be said that
nobody knew anything but himself; and it was idle to seek it in that
quarter. Conscientious, constantly so, in discharging his duties, the
respect of his officers naturally followed. And for his fellow-sailors,
if none had reason to like one so unlike themselves, none dared to take
the slightest liberties with him. Any approach to it, and his eye was a
tutoring and deterring one. Getting in years at last, he was retired as
captain of a top, and assigned to a lower grade and post, namely, at the
foot of the mainmast, his business there being simply to stand by, to
let go, and make fast. But even this, with the night-watches, ere long
exacted too much from a sailor, a septuagenarian. In brief, he belays
his last halyard, and slips into obscure moorings ashore. Whatever his
disposition may originally have been, there, in his latter cruise at
least, had he been specially noted for his unsociability. Not that he
was gruff like some marine veterans with the lumbago, nor stealthily
taciturn like an Indian; but moody, frequently muttering to himself. And
from such muttered soliloquy he would sometimes start, and with a look
or gesture so uncheerfully peculiar that the Calvinistic imagination of
a certain frigate’s chaplain construed it into remorseful condemnation
of some dark deed in the past.
His features were large, strong, cast as in iron; but the effect of a
cartridge explosion had peppered all below the eyes with dense dottings
of black-blue. When according to custom he as mainmast man used to doff
his hat in less laconic speech with the officer-of-the-deck, his tanned
brow showed like October’s tawny moon revealed in crescent above an
ominous cloud. Along with his moody ways, was it this uncanny physical
aspect, the result of a mere chance, was it this, and this alone, that
had suggested the germ of the rumour among certain afterguardsmen that
in earlier life he had been a bucanier of the Keys and the Gulf, one of
Lafitte’s murderous crew? Certain it is, he had once served on a
letter-of-marque.
In stature, though bowed somewhat in the shoulders, akin to the champion
of Gath. Hands heavy and hard; short nails like withered horn. A
powerful head, and shaggy. An iron-gray beard broad as a commodore’s
pennant, and about the mouth indelibly streaked with the moodily
dribbled tobacco juice of all his cruises. In his day watch-below
silently couched by himself on the gun-deck in a bay between black
cannon, he might have suggested an image of the Great Grizzly of the
California Sierras, his coat the worse for wear, grim in his last den
awaiting the last hour.
In his shore moorings--hard by the waters, not very far from the
docks--what with his all-night-in and easier lot in every particular,
with choice of associates when he desired them, which was not always,
happily he lost most of his gruffness as the old mastiff of the mainmast
exposed to all weathers and with salt-horse for his diet. A stranger
accosting him sunning himself upon some old spar on the strand, and
kindly saluting him there, would receive no surly response, and if more
than mere salutation was exchanged, would probably go away with the
impression that he had been talking with an interesting oddity, a salt
philosopher, not lacking in a sort of grim common-sense.
After being ashore for a period, a singularity in his habits was
remarked. At times, but only when he might think himself quite alone, he
would roll aside the bosom of his darned Guernsey frock and steadfastly
contemplate something on his body. If by chance discovered in this, he
would quickly conceal all and growl his resentment.
This peculiarity awakening the curiosity of certain idle observers,
lodgers under the same roof with him, and none caring to be so bold as
to question him as to the reason of it, or to ask what it was on his
body, a drug was enlisted as a means of finding out the secret. In
prudent quantities it was slyly slipped into his huge bowl of tea at
supper. Next morning a certain old-clothes-man whispered to his gossips
the result of his sorry intrusion overnight.
Drawing them into a corner, and looking around furtively, ‘Listen,’ said
he, and told them an eerie story, following it up with shuddering
conjectures, vague enough, but dear to the superstitious and ignorant
mind. What he had really discovered was this: a crucifix in indigo and
vermilion tattooed on the chest and on the side of the heart. Slanting
across the crucifix and paling the pigment there ran a whitish scar,
long and thin, such as might ensue from the slash of a cutlass
imperfectly parried or dodged. The cross of the Passion is often
tattooed upon the sailor, upon the forearm generally, sometimes, though
but rarely, on the trunk. As for the scar, the old mastman had in
legitimate naval service known what it was to repel boarders and not
without receiving a sabre mark from them. It may be. The gossips of the
lodging, however, took another view of the discovery, and at last
reported to the landlady that the old sailor was a sort of _man forbid_,
a man branded by the Evil Spirit, and it would be well to get rid of
him, lest the charm in the horse-shoe nailed over the house-door should
be fatally counteracted and be naught. The good woman, however, was a
sensible lady with no belief in the horse-shoe, though she tolerated it,
and as the old mastman was regular in his weekly dues, and never made
noise or gave trouble, she turned a deaf ear to all solicitations
against him.
Since in his presence it was ever prudently concealed, the old mariner
was not then aware of underhand proceedings. At sea it had never come to
his ears that some of his shipmates thought him a bucanier, for there
was a quiet leonine droop about the angles of his mouth that
said--_hands off_. So now he was ignorant of the circumstances that the
same rumour had followed him ashore. Had his habits been social, he
would have socially felt the effect of this and cast about in vain for
the cause; whether having basis or not, some ill-report is in certain
instances like what sailors call a _dry tempest_, during which there is
neither rain nor lightning, though none the less the viewless and
intangible winds make a shipwreck and then ask--who did it?
So Orme pursued his solitary way with not much from without to disturb
him. But Time’s moments still keep descending upon the quietest hour,
and though it were adamant they would wear it. In his retirement the
superannuated giant begins to mellow down into a sort of animal decay.
In hard, rude natures, especially such as have passed their lives among
the elements, farmers or sailors, this animal decay mostly affects the
memory by casting a haze over it; not seldom, it softens the heart as
well, besides more or less, perhaps, drowsing the conscience, innocent
or otherwise.
But let us come to the close of a sketch necessarily imperfect. One fine
Easter Day, following a spell of rheumatic weather, Orme was discovered
alone and dead on a height overlooking the seaward sweep of the great
haven to whose shore, in his retirement from sea, he had moored. It was
an evened terrace, destined for use in war, but in peace neglected and
offering a sanctuary for anybody. Mounted on it was an obsolete battery
of rusty guns. Against one of these he was found leaning, his legs
stretched out before him; his clay pipe broken in twain, the vacant bowl
and no spillings from it, attesting that his pipe had been smoked out to
the last of its contents. He faced the outlet to the ocean. The eyes
were open, still continuing in death the vital glance fixed on the hazy
waters and the dim-seen sails coming and going or at anchor near by.
What had been his last thoughts? If aught of reality lurked in the
rumours concerning him, had remorse, had penitence any place in those
thoughts? Or was there just nothing of either? After all, were his
moodiness and mutterings, his strange freaks, starts, eccentric shrugs
and grimaces, were these but the grotesque additions like the wens and
knobs and distortions of the trunk of an old chance apple-tree in an
inclement upland, not only beaten by many storms, but also obstructed in
its natural development by the chance of its having first sprouted among
hard-packed rock? In short, that fatality, no more encrusting him, made
him what he came to be? Even admitting that there was something dark
that he chose to keep to himself, what then? Such reticence may
sometimes be more for the sake of others than one’s self. No, let us
believe that that animal decay before mentioned still befriended him to
the close, and that he fell asleep recalling through the haze of memory
many a far-off scene of the wide world’s beauty dreamily suggested by
the hazy waters before him.
He lies buried among other sailors, for whom also strangers performed
one last rite in a lonely plot overgrown with wild eglantine uncared for
by man.
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