_A Fragment_.
I was the mate of the morning watch, and, as day dawned, I had amused
myself with other younkers over the side, examining the shot holes and
other injuries sustained from the fire of the frigate, and contrasting
the clean, sharp, well-defined apertures, made by the 24 lb. shot from
the long guns, with the bruised and splintered ones from the 32 lb.
carronades; but the men had begun to wash down the decks, and the
first gush of clotted blood and water from the scuppers fairly turned
me sick. I turned away, when Mr. Kennedy, our gunner, a good steady
old Scotchman, with whom I was a bit of a favourite, came up to
me--"Mr. Cringle, the captain has sent for you; poor Mr. Johnstone
is fast going, he wants to see you."
I knew my young messmate had been wounded, for I had seen him carried
below after the frigate's second broad-side; but the excitement of a
boy, who had never smelled powder fired in anger before, had kept me
on deck the whole night, and it never once occurred to me to ask for
him, until the old gunner spoke.
I hastened down to our small confined berth, and there I saw a sight
that quickly brought me to myself. Poor Johnstone was indeed going; a
grape shot had struck him, and torn his belly open. There he lay in his
bloody hammock on the deck, pale and motionless as if he had already
departed, except a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth, and
a convulsive contraction and distension of his nostrils. His brown
ringlets still clustered over his marble forehead, but they were
drenched in the cold sweat of death. The surgeon could do nothing for
him, and had left him; but our old captain--bless him for it--I little
expected, from his usual crusty bearing, to find him so employed--had
knelt by his side, and, whilst he read from the Prayer Book one of those
beautiful petitions in our church service to Almighty God, for mercy
to the passing soul of one so young, and so early cut off, the tears
trickled down the old man's cheeks, and filled the furrows worn in them
by the washing up of many a salt spray. On the other side of his narrow
bed, fomenting the rigid muscles of his neck and chest, sat Mistress
Connolly, one of three women on board--a rough enough creature, heaven
knows, in common weather; but her stifled sobs showed that the mournful
sight had stirred up all the woman within her. She had opened the bosom
of the poor boy's shirt, and untying the ribbon that fastened a small
gold crucifix round his neck, she placed it in his cold hand. The young
midshipman was of a respectable family in Limerick, her native place,
and a Catholic--another strand of the cord that bound her to him. When
the captain finished reading, he bent over the departing youth, and
kissed his cheek. "Your young messmate just now desired to see you,
Mr. Cringle, but it is too late, he is insensible and dying." Whilst he
spoke, a strong shiver passed through the boy's frame, his face became
slightly convulsed, and all was over! The captain rose, and Connolly,
with a delicacy of feeling which many might not have looked for in her
situation, spread one of our clean mess table-cloths over the body. "And
is it really gone you are, my poor, dear boy!" forgetting all difference
of rank in the fulness of her heart. "Who will tell this to your mother,
and nobody here to wake you but ould Kate Connolly, and no time will
they be giving me, nor whisky--Ochon! ochon!"
But enough and to spare of this piping work. The boatswain's whistle now
called me to the gangway, to superintend the handing up, from a shore
boat alongside, a supply of the grand staples of the island--ducks and
onions. The three 'Mudians in her were characteristic samples of the
inhabitants. Their faces and skins, where exposed, were not tanned,
but absolutely burnt into a fiery-red colour by the sun. They guessed
and drawled like any buckskin from Virginia, superadding to their
accomplishments their insular peculiarity of always shutting one eye
when they spoke to you. They are all Yankees at bottom; and if they
could get their 365 _Islands_--so they call the large stones on which
they live--under weigh, they would not be long in towing them into the
Chesapeake.
The word had been passed to get six of the larboard guns and all the
shot over to the other side, to give the brig a list of a streak or
two a-starboard, so that the stage on which the carpenter and his crew
were at work over the side, stopping the shot holes above the water
line, might swing clear of the wash of the sea. I had jumped from
the nettings, where I was perched, to assist in unbolting one of the
carronade slides, when I slipped and capsized against a peg sticking
out of one of the scuppers. I took it for something else and damned
the ring-bolt incontinently. Caboose, the cook, was passing with his
mate, a Jamaica negro of the name of Johncrow, at the time. "Don't
damn the remains of your fellow-mortals, Master Cringle; that is my
leg." The cook of a man-of-war is no small beer, he is his Majesty's
warrant officer, a much bigger wig than a poor little mid, with whom
it is condescension on his part to jest.
It seems to be a sort of rule, that no old sailor who has not lost a
limb, or an eye at least, shall be eligible to the office; but as the
kind of maiming is so far circumscribed that all cooks must have two
arms, a laughable proportion of them have but one leg. Besides the
honour, the perquisites are good; accordingly, all old quartermasters,
captains of tops, &c., look forward to the cookdom, as the cardinals
look to the popedom; and really there is some analogy between them,
for neither is preferred from any especial fitness for the office.
A cardinal is made pope because he is old, infirm, and imbecile--our
friend Caboose was made cook because he had been Lord Nelson's
coxswain, was a drunken rascal, and had a wooden leg; for, as to his
gastronomical qualifications, he knew no more of the science than just
sufficient to watch the copper where the salt junk and potatoes were
boiling. Having been a little in the wind overnight, he had quartered
himself, in the superabundance of his heroism, at a gun where he
had no business to be, and in running it out, he had jammed his toe
in a scupper hole, so fast that there was no extricating him; and
notwithstanding his piteous entreaty "to be eased out handsomely, as
the leg was made out of a plank of the Victory, and the ring at the
end out of one of her bolts," the captain of the gun finding, after a
stout pull, that the man was like to come "home in his hand _without_
the leg," was forced "to break him short off," as he phrased it, to
get him out of the way, and let the carriage traverse. In the morning
when he sobered, he had quite forgotten where the leg was, and how
he broke it; he therefore got Kelson to splice the stump with the
butt-end of a mop; but in the hurry it had been left three inches too
long, so that he had to jerk himself up to the top of his peg at every
step. The doctor, glad to breathe the fresh air after the horrible
work he had gone through, was leaning over the side, speaking to
Kelson. When I fell, he turned round and drew Cookee's fire on
himself. "Doctor, you have not prescribed for me yet."--"No, Caboose,
I have not; what is wrong?"--"Wrong, sir! why, I have lost my leg, and
the captain's clerk says I am not in the return!--Look here, sir, had
doctor Kelson not coopered me, where should I have been?--Why, doctor,
had I been looked after, amputation might have been unnecessary; a
_fish_ might have done, whereas I have had to be _spliced_." He was
here cut short by the voice of his mate, who had gone forward to slay
a pig for the gunroom mess. "Oh, Lad, oh!--Massa Caboose!--Dem dam
Yankee! De Purser killed, massa!--Dem shoot him troo de head!--Oh,
Oh, Lad!" Captain Deadeye had come on deck. "You, Johncrow, what _is_
wrong with you?"--"Why, de Purser killed, captain, dat all."--"Purser
killed?--Doctor, is Saveall hurt?" Treenail could stand it no longer.
"No, sir, no; it is one of the gunroom pigs that we shipped at
Halifax, three cruises ago; I am sure I don't know how he survived
one, but the seamen took a fancy to him, and nicknamed him the Purser.
You know, sir, they make pets of any thing, and every thing, at a
pinch!"
Here Johncrow drew the carcass from the hog-pen, and sure enough a
shot had cut the poor Purser's head nearly off. Blackee looked at him
with a most whimsical expression; they say no one can fathom a negro's
affection for a pig. "Poor Purser! de people call him Purser, sir,
because him knowing chap; him cabbage all de grub, slush, and stuff in
him own corner, and give only de small bit, and de bad piece, to de
oder pig; so, captain"--Splinter saw the poor fellow was like to get
into a scrape. "That will do, Johncrow--forward with you now, and lend
a hand to cat the anchor.--All hands up anchor!" The boatswain's
hoarse voice repeated the command, and he in turn was re-echoed by his
mates; the capstan was manned, and the crew stamped round to a point
of war most villanously performed by a bad drummer and a worse fifer,
in as high glee as if those who were killed had been snug and well in
their hammocks on the berth-deck, in place of at the bottom of the
sea, with each a shot at his feet. We weighed, and began to work up,
tack and tack, towards the island of Ireland, where the arsenal is,
amongst a perfect labyrinth of shoals, through which the 'Mudian pilot
_cunned_ the ship with great skill, taking his stand, to our no small
wonderment, not at the gangway or poop, as usual, but on the bowsprit
end, so that he might see the rocks under foot, and shun them
accordingly, for they are so steep and numerous, (they look like large
fish in the clear water), and the channel is so intricate, that you
have to go quite close to them. At noon we arrived at the anchorage,
and hauled our moorings on board. _Blackwood's Magazine_.
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