ANOTHER MYSTERY--ALL OVERJOYED BECAUSE THE "EOS" IS UNDER WEIGH; SHE
WORKS WELL--THROUGH THE WATER--HER OFFICERS THROUGH THEIR WINE--RALPH
REFRAINETH, AND SELF-GLORIFIETH--A LONG-SHORE MAN MAKES A SHORT STAY ON
BOARD--BECAUSE HE WON'T GO ON THE WRONG TACK.
But I must now explain why I had become so suddenly a favourite in the
ward-room. The very stout gentleman, who came off with the admiral and
captain, undertook the aquatic excursion on my account. He made every
inquiry as to my equipment, my messmates, and my chance of comfort. Yet
I, the person most concerned, was sent out of the way, lest by accident
I should meet with him. I never knew who he was, nor do I think the
captain did. My shipmates had their conjectures, and I had mine. They
took him to be what is usually called, not a person, but a personage. I
believe that he was nothing more than a personage's fat steward, or some
other menial obesity; for it was very plain that he was ashamed to look
me in the face! and I understand he gave himself many second-hand airs.
And now we are off in earnest. The Nore-light is passed; the pilot is
on the hammock nettings. The breeze takes the sails; the noble frigate
bends to it, as a gallant cavalier gently stoops to receive the kiss of
beauty: the blocks rattle as the ropes fly through them; the sails court
the wind to their embrace, now on one side, now on the other. I stand
on the quarterdeck, in silent admiration at the astonishing effects of
this wonderful seeming confusion. I am pushed here, and ordered there:
I now jump to avoid the eddy of the uncurling ropes as they fly upwards,
but my activity is vain,--a brace now drags across my shins, and now the
bight of a lee-spanker brail salutes me, not lovingly, across the face.
The captain and officers are viewing the gallant vessel with intense
anxiety, and scrutinising every evolution that she is making. How does
she answer her helm? Beautifully. What leeway does she make? Scarce
perceptible. The log is hove repeatedly,--seven, seven-and-a-half,
close-hauled. Stand by, the captain is going to work her himself. She
advances head to the wind bravely, like a British soldier to the
breach--she is about! she has stayed within her own length--she has not
lost her way! "Noble! excellent!" is the scarcely-suppressed cry; and
then arose, in the minds of that gallant band of officers, visions of an
enemy worthy to cope with; of the successful manoeuvre, the repeated
broadsides, the struggle, and the victory: their lives, their honour,
and the fame of their country, they now willingly repose upon her; she
is at once their home, their field of battle, and their arena of glory.
See how well she behaves against that head sea! There is not a man in
that noble fabric who has not adopted her, who has not a love for her;
they refer all their feelings to her, they rest all their hopes upon
her. The Venetian Doge may wed the sea in his gilded gondola, ermined
nobles may stand near, and jewelled beauty around him--religion, too,
may lend her overpowering solemnities; but all this display could never
equal the enthusiasm of that morning, when above three hundred true
hearts wedded themselves to that beauty of the sea, the _Eos_, as she
worked round the North Foreland into the Downs.
The frigate behaved so admirably in all her evolutions, that, when we
dropped anchor in the roadstead, the captain, to certify his admiration
and pleasure, invited all the ward-room officers to dine with him, as
well as three or four midshipmen, myself among the rest.
It was an animated scene, that dinner-party. The war was then raging.
Several French frigates, of our own size and class, and many much
larger, were wandering on the seas. The republican spirit was blazing
forth in their crews, and ardently we longed to get among them. As yet,
no one knew our destination. We had every stimulant to honourable
excitement, and mystery threw over the whole that absorbing charm that
impels us to love and to woo the unknown.
But this meeting, at first so rational, and then so convivial, at length
permitted its conviviality to destroy its rationality. Men who spoke
and thought like heroes one hour, the next spoke what they did not
think, and made me think what I did not speak. No one got drunk except
the purser, who is always a privileged person; yet they were not the
same men as when they began their carouse, nor I the same boy when they
had finished it. On that evening I made a resolution never to touch
ardent spirits, and whilst I was in the navy, that resolution I adhered
to. It is a fact; I am known to too many, to make, on this subject, a
solemn assertion falsely. I did not lay the same restriction on wine;
yet, even that I always avoided, when I could do so without the
appearance of affectation. My reason, such as it was, never in the
slightest degree tottered on her throne, either with a weakness or a
strength not her own. The wine-cup never gladdened or sorrowed me.
Even when the tepid, fetid, and animalised water was served out to us in
quantities so minute, that our throats could count it by drops, I never
sought to qualify its nauseous taste, or increase its quantity, by the
addition of spirits, when spirits were more plentiful than the
much-courted water. This trait proves, if it proves nothing else, that
I had a good deal of that inflexibility of character, which we call in
others obstinacy, when we don't like it, firmness, when we do--in
ourselves, always, decision.
I give the incident that I am about to relate, to show in what way,
five-and-twenty years ago, a man-of-war was made the alternative of a
jail; and to prove, generally speaking, of what little use this kind of
recruiting was to the service; and, as it made a great impression on me
at the time, though a little episodical, I shall not hesitate to place
it before my readers.
After remaining at anchor in the Downs during the night, we sailed next
morning down the channel without stopping at Spithead, our ultimate
destination being still a profound secret. As we proceeded, when we
were off a part of the coast, the name of which I do not remember, about
noonday it fell calm, and the tide being against us, we neared the shore
a little, and came to an anchor. We had not remained long in our berth
before we descried a shore-boat pulling off to us, which shortly came
alongside, with a very singular cargo of animals, belonging to the genus
_homo_. In the stern-sheets sat a magistrate's clerk, swelling with
importance. On the after-thwart, and facing the Jack in office, were
placed two constables, built upon the regular Devonshire, chaw-bacon
model, holding, upright between their legs, each an immense staff;
headed by the gilded initials of our sovereign lord the king.
Seated between these imposing pillars of the state, sat, in tribulation
dire, a tall, awkward young man, in an elaborately-worked white
smock-frock, stained with blood in front and upon the shoulders. He was
the personification of rural distress. He blubbered _a pleine voix_,
and lifted up and lowered his handcuffed wrists with a see-saw motion
really quite pathetical. Though the wind had fallen, yet the tide was
running strongly, and there was a good deal of sea, quite enough to make
the motion in the boat very unpleasant. As they held on alongside by
the rope, the parties in the stern-sheets began bobbing at each other,
the staves lost and resumed, and then lost again, their perpendicular--
so much, indeed, as to threaten the head of the clerk, whose countenance
"began to pale its effectual fire." The captain and many of the
officers looking over the gangway, the following dialogue ensued,
commenced by the officer of the watch. "Shore-boat, ho-hoy!"
"In the name of the king," replied the clerk, between many minacious
hiccoughs, and producing a piece of paper, "I have brought you a
_volunteer_, to serve in his Majesty's fleet;" pointing to the blubberer
in the smock-frock.
"Well," said the captain, "knock off his irons, and hand him up."
"Dare not, sir--as much as my life is worth. The most ferocious poacher
in the country. Has nearly beaten in the skull of the squire's head
gamekeeper."
"Just the sort of man we want," said the captain. "But you see he can't
get up the side with his hands fast; and I presume you cannot be in much
danger from the volunteer, whilst you have two such staves, held by two
such constables."
"Yes," said the now seriously-affected clerk; "I do not think that I
incur much danger from the malefactor, since I am under the protection
of the guns of the frigate." So, somewhat reassured by this reflection,
the brigand of the preserves was unmanacled, and the whole party, clerk,
constables, and prisoner, came up the side and made their appearance on
the break of the quarter-deck.
But this was not effected without much difficulty, and some loss,--a
loss that one of the parties must have bewailed to his dying day, if it
did not actually hasten that awful period. One of the constables, in
ascending the side, let fall his staff, his much-loved staff, dear to
him by many a fond recollection of riot repressed, and evildoer
apprehended, and away it went, floating with the tide, far, far astern.
His unmitigated horror at this event was comic in the extreme, and the
keeper of the king's peace could not have evinced more unsophisticated
sorrow than did the late keeper of his conscience at the loss of the
Seals, the more especially as the magistrate's clerk refused to permit
the boat to go in pursuit of it, not wishing the only connecting link
between him and the shore to be so far removed from his control.