HOW THEY SLEEP IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
No more of my luckless jacket for a while; let me speak of my hammock,
and the tribulations I endured therefrom.
Give me plenty of room to swing it in; let me swing it between two
date-trees on an Arabian plain; or extend it diagonally from Moorish
pillar to pillar, in the open marble Court of the Lions in Granada’s
Alhambra: let me swing it on a high bluff of the Mississippi—one swing
in the pure ether for every swing over the green grass; or let me
oscillate in it beneath the cool dome of St. Peter’s; or drop me in it,
as in a balloon, from the zenith, with the whole firmament to rock and
expatiate in; and I would not exchange my coarse canvas hammock for the
grand state-bed, like a stately coach-and-four, in which they tuck in a
king when he passes a night at Blenheim Castle.
When you have the requisite room, you always have “spreaders” in your
hammock; that is, two horizontal sticks, one at each end, which serve
to keep the sides apart, and create a wide vacancy between, wherein you
can turn over and over—lay on this side or that; on your back, if you
please; stretch out your legs; in short, take your ease in your
hammock; for of all inns, your bed is the best.
But when, with five hundred other hammocks, yours is crowded and jammed
on all sides, on a frigate berth-deck; the third from above, when
“_spreaders_” are prohibited by an express edict from the Captain’s
cabin; and every man about you is jealously watchful of the rights and
privileges of his own proper hammock, as settled by law and usage;
_then_ your hammock is your Bastile and canvas jug; into which, or out
of which, it is very hard to get; and where sleep is but a mockery and
a name.
Eighteen inches a man is all they allow you; eighteen inches in width;
in _that_ you must swing. Dreadful! they give you more swing than that
at the gallows.
During warm nights in the Tropics, your hammock is as a stew-pan; where
you stew and stew, till you can almost hear yourself hiss. Vain are all
stratagems to widen your accommodations. Let them catch you insinuating
your boots or other articles in the head of your hammock, by way of a
“spreader.” Near and far, the whole rank and file of the row to which
you belong feel the encroachment in an instant, and are clamorous till
the guilty one is found out, and his pallet brought back to its
bearings.
In platoons and squadrons, they all lie on a level; their hammock
_clews_ crossing and recrossing in all directions, so as to present one
vast field-bed, midway between the ceiling and the floor; which are
about five feet asunder.
One extremely warm night, during a calm, when it was so hot that only a
skeleton could keep cool (from the free current of air through its
bones), after being drenched in my own perspiration, I managed to wedge
myself out of my hammock; and with what little strength I had left,
lowered myself gently to the deck. Let me see now, thought I, whether
my ingenuity cannot devise some method whereby I can have room to
breathe and sleep at the same time. I have it. I will lower my hammock
underneath all these others; and then—upon that separate and
independent level, at least—I shall have the whole berth-deck to
myself. Accordingly, I lowered away my pallet to the desired
point—about three inches from the floor—and crawled into it again.
But, alas! this arrangement made such a sweeping semi-circle of my
hammock, that, while my head and feet were at par, the small of my back
was settling down indefinitely; I felt as if some gigantic archer had
hold of me for a bow.
But there was another plan left. I triced up my hammock with all my
strength, so as to bring it wholly _above_ the tiers of pallets around
me. This done, by a last effort, I hoisted myself into it; but, alas!
it was much worse than before. My luckless hammock was stiff and
straight as a board; and there I was—laid out in it, with my nose
against the ceiling, like a dead man’s against the lid of his coffin.
So at last I was fain to return to my old level, and moralise upon the
folly, in all arbitrary governments, of striving to get either _below_
or _above_ those whom legislation has placed upon an equality with
yourself.
Speaking of hammocks, recalls a circumstance that happened one night in
the Neversink. It was three or four times repeated, with various but
not fatal results.
The watch below was fast asleep on the berth-deck, where perfect
silence was reigning, when a sudden shock and a groan roused up all
hands; and the hem of a pair of white trowsers vanished up one of the
ladders at the fore-hatchway.
We ran toward the groan, and found a man lying on the deck; one end of
his hammock having given way, pitching his head close to three
twenty-four pound cannon shot, which must have been purposely placed in
that position. When it was discovered that this man had long been
suspected of being an _informer_ among the crew, little surprise and
less pleasure were evinced at his narrow escape.