A KNAVE IN OFFICE IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
The last smuggling story now about to be related also occurred while we
lay in Rio. It is the more particularly presented, since it furnishes
the most curious evidence of the almost incredible corruption pervading
nearly all ranks in some men-of-war.
For some days, the number of intoxicated sailors collared and brought
up to the mast by the master-at-arms, to be reported to the
deck-officers—previous to a flogging at the gangway—had, in the last
degree, excited the surprise and vexation of the Captain and senior
officers. So strict were the Captain’s regulations concerning the
suppression of grog-smuggling, and so particular had he been in
charging the matter upon all the Lieutenants, and every understrapper
official in the frigate, that he was wholly at a loss how so large a
quantity of spirits could have been spirited into the ship, in the face
of all these checks, guards, and precautions.
Still additional steps were adopted to detect the smugglers; and Bland,
the master-at-arms, together with his corporals, were publicly
harangued at the mast by the Captain in person, and charged to exert
their best powers in suppressing the traffic. Crowds were present at
the time, and saw the master-at-arms touch his cap in obsequious
homage, as he solemnly assured the Captain that he would still continue
to do his best; as, indeed, he said he had always done. He concluded
with a pious ejaculation expressive of his personal abhorrence of
smuggling and drunkenness, and his fixed resolution, so help him
Heaven, to spend his last wink in sitting up by night, to spy out all
deeds of darkness.
“I do not doubt you, master-at-arms,” returned the Captain; “now go to
your duty.” This master-at-arms was a favourite of the Captain’s.
The next morning, before breakfast, when the market-boat came off (that
is, one of the ship’s boats regularly deputed to bring off the daily
fresh provisions for the officers)—when this boat came off, the
master-at-arms, as usual, after carefully examining both her and her
crew, reported them to the deck-officer to be free from suspicion. The
provisions were then hoisted out, and among them came a good-sized
wooden box, addressed to “Mr. —— Purser of the United States ship
Neversink.” Of course, any private matter of this sort, destined for a
gentleman of the ward-room, was sacred from examination, and the
master-at-arms commanded one of his corporals to carry it down into the
Purser’s state-room. But recent occurrences had sharpened the vigilance
of the deck-officer to an unwonted degree, and seeing the box going
down the hatchway, he demanded what that was, and whom it was for.
“All right, sir,” said the master-at-arms, touching his cap; “stores
for the Purser, sir.”
“Let it remain on deck,” said the Lieutenant. “Mr. Montgomery!” calling
a midshipman, “ask the Purser whether there is any box coming off for
him this morning.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said the middy, touching his cap.
Presently he returned, saying that the Purser was ashore.
“Very good, then; Mr. Montgomery, have that box put into the ‘brig,’
with strict orders to the sentry not to suffer any one to touch it.”
“Had I not better take it down into my mess, sir, till the Purser comes
off?” said the master-at-arms, deferentially.
“I have given my orders, sir!” said the Lieutenant, turning away.
When the Purser came on board, it turned out that he knew nothing at
all about the box. He had never so much as heard of it in his life. So
it was again brought up before the deck-officer, who immediately
summoned the master-at-arms.
“Break open that box!”
“Certainly, sir!” said the master-at-arms; and, wrenching off the
cover, twenty-five brown jugs like a litter of twenty-five brown pigs,
were found snugly nestled in a bed of straw.
“The smugglers are at work, sir,” said the master-at-arms, looking up.
“Uncork and taste it,” said the officer.
The master-at-arms did so; and, smacking his lips after a puzzled
fashion, was a little doubtful whether it was American whisky or
Holland gin; but he said he was not used to liquor.
“Brandy; I know it by the smell,” said the officer; “return the box to
the brig.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” said the master-at-arms, redoubling his activity.
The affair was at once reported to the Captain, who, incensed at the
audacity of the thing, adopted every plan to detect the guilty parties.
Inquiries were made ashore; but by whom the box had been brought down
to the market-boat there was no finding out. Here the matter rested for
a time.
Some days after, one of the boys of the mizzen-top was flogged for
drunkenness, and, while suspended in agony at the gratings, was made to
reveal from whom he had procured his spirits. The man was called, and
turned out to be an old superannuated marine, one Scriggs, who did the
cooking for the marine-sergeants and masters-at-arms’ mess. This marine
was one of the most villainous-looking fellows in the ship, with a
squinting, pick-lock, gray eye, and hang-dog gallows gait. How such a
most unmartial vagabond had insinuated himself into the honourable
marine corps was a perfect mystery. He had always been noted for his
personal uncleanliness, and among all hands, fore and aft, had the
reputation of being a notorious old miser, who denied himself the few
comforts, and many of the common necessaries of a man-of-war life.
Seeing no escape, Scriggs fell on his knees before the Captain, and
confessed the charge of the boy. Observing the fellow to be in an agony
of fear at the sight of the boatswain’s mates and their lashes, and all
the striking parade of public punishment, the Captain must have thought
this a good opportunity for completely pumping him of all his secrets.
This terrified marine was at length forced to reveal his having been
for some time an accomplice in a complicated system of underhand
villainy, the head of which was no less a personage than the
indefatigable chief of police, the master-at-arms himself. It appeared
that this official had his confidential agents ashore, who supplied him
with spirits, and in various boxes, packages, and bundles—addressed to
the Purser and others—brought them down to the frigate’s boats at the
landing. Ordinarily, the appearance of these things for the Purser and
other ward-room gentlemen occasioned no surprise; for almost every day
some bundle or other is coming off for them, especially for the Purser;
and, as the master-at-arms was always present on these occasions, it
was an easy matter for him to hurry the smuggled liquor out of sight,
and, under pretence of carrying the box or bundle down to the Purser’s
room, hide it away upon his own premises.
The miserly marine, Scriggs, with the pick-lock eye, was the man who
clandestinely sold the spirits to the sailors, thus completely keeping
the master-at-arms in the background. The liquor sold at the most
exorbitant prices; at one time reaching twelve dollars the bottle in
cash, and thirty dollars a bottle in orders upon the Purser, to be
honored upon the frigate’s arrival home. It may seem incredible that
such prices should have been given by the sailors; but when some
man-of-war’s-men crave liquor, and it is hard to procure, they would
almost barter ten years of their life-time for but one solitary “_tot_”
if they could.
The sailors who became intoxicated with the liquor thus smuggled on
board by the master-at-arms, were, in almost numberless instances,
officially seized by that functionary and scourged at the gangway. In a
previous place it has been shown how conspicuous a part the
master-at-arms enacts at this scene.
The ample profits of this iniquitous business were divided, between all
the parties concerned in it; Scriggs, the marine, coming in for one
third. His cook’s mess-chest being brought on deck, four canvas bags of
silver were found in it, amounting to a sum something short of as many
hundred dollars.
The guilty parties were scourged, double-ironed, and for several weeks
were confined in the “brig” under a sentry; all but the master-at-arms,
who was merely cashiered and imprisoned for a time; with bracelets at
his wrists. Upon being liberated, he was turned adrift among the ship’s
company; and by way of disgracing him still more, was thrust into the
_waist_, the most inglorious division of the ship.
Upon going to dinner one day, I found him soberly seated at my own
mess; and at first I could not but feel some very serious scruples
about dining with him. Nevertheless, he was a man to study and digest;
so, upon a little reflection; I was not displeased at his presence. It
amazed me, however, that he had wormed himself into the mess, since so
many of the other messes had declined the honour, until at last, I
ascertained that he had induced a mess-mate of ours, a distant relation
of his, to prevail upon the cook to admit him.
Now it would not have answered for hardly any other mess in the ship to
have received this man among them, for it would have torn a huge rent
in their reputation; but our mess, A. No. 1—the Forty-two-pounder
Club—was composed of so fine a set of fellows; so many captains of
tops, and quarter-masters—men of undeniable mark on board ship—of
long-established standing and consideration on the gun-deck; that, with
impunity, we could do so many equivocal things, utterly inadmissible
for messes of inferior pretension. Besides, though we all abhorred the
monster of Sin itself, yet, from our social superiority, highly
rarified education in our lofty top, and large and liberal sweep of the
aggregate of things, we were in a good degree free from those useless,
personal prejudices, and galling hatreds against conspicuous _sinners_,
not _Sin_—which so widely prevail among men of warped understandings
and unchristian and uncharitable hearts. No; the superstitions and
dogmas concerning Sin had not laid their withering maxims upon our
hearts. We perceived how that evil was but good disguised, and a knave
a saint in his way; how that in other planets, perhaps, what we deem
wrong, may there be deemed right; even as some substances, without
undergoing any mutations in themselves utterly change their colour,
according to the light thrown upon them. We perceived that the
anticipated millennium must have begun upon the morning the first words
were created; and that, taken all in all, our man-of-war world itself
was as eligible a round-sterned craft as any to be found in the Milky
Way. And we fancied that though some of us, of the gun-deck, were at
times condemned to sufferings and blights, and all manner of
tribulation and anguish, yet, no doubt, it was only our misapprehension
of these things that made us take them for woeful pains instead of the
most agreeable pleasures. I have dreamed of a sphere, says Pinzella,
where to break a man on the wheel is held the most exquisite of
delights you can confer upon him; where for one gentleman in any way to
vanquish another is accounted an everlasting dishonour; where to tumble
one into a pit after death, and then throw cold clods upon his upturned
face, is a species of contumely, only inflicted upon the most notorious
criminals.
But whatever we mess-mates thought, in whatever circumstances we found
ourselves, we never forgot that our frigate, had as it was, was
homeward-bound. Such, at least, were our reveries at times, though
sorely jarred, now and then, by events that took our philosophy aback.
For after all, philosophy—that is, the best wisdom that has ever in any
way been revealed to our man-of-war world—is but a slough and a mire,
with a few tufts of good footing here and there.
But there was one man in the mess who would have naught to do with our
philosophy—a churlish, ill-tempered, unphilosophical, superstitious old
bear of a quarter-gunner; a believer in Tophet, for which he was
accordingly preparing himself. Priming was his name; but methinks I
have spoken of him before.
Besides, this Bland, the master-at-arms, was no vulgar, dirty knave. In
him—to modify Burke’s phrase—vice _seemed_, but only seemed, to lose
half its seeming evil by losing all its apparent grossness. He was a
neat and gentlemanly villain, and broke his biscuit with a dainty hand.
There was a fine polish about his whole person, and a pliant,
insinuating style in his conversation, that was, socially, quite
irresistible. Save my noble captain, Jack Chase, he proved himself the
most entertaining, I had almost said the most companionable man in the
mess. Nothing but his mouth, that was somewhat small, Moorish-arched,
and wickedly delicate, and his snaky, black eye, that at times shone
like a dark-lantern in a jeweller-shop at midnight, betokened the
accomplished scoundrel within. But in his conversation there was no
trace of evil; nothing equivocal; he studiously shunned an indelicacy,
never swore, and chiefly abounded in passing puns and witticisms,
varied with humorous contrasts between ship and shore life, and many
agreeable and racy anecdotes, very tastefully narrated. In short—in a
merely psychological point of view, at least—he was a charming
blackleg. Ashore, such a man might have been an irreproachable
mercantile swindler, circulating in polite society.
But he was still more than this. Indeed, I claim for this
master-at-arms a lofty and honourable niche in the Newgate Calendar of
history. His intrepidity, coolness, and wonderful self-possession in
calmly resigning himself to a fate that thrust him from an office in
which he had tyrannised over five hundred mortals, many of whom hated
and loathed him, passed all belief; his intrepidity, I say, in now
fearlessly gliding among them, like a disarmed swordfish among
ferocious white-sharks; this, surely, bespoke no ordinary man. While in
office, even, his life had often been secretly attempted by the seamen
whom he had brought to the gangway. Of dark nights they had dropped
shot down the hatchways, destined “to damage his pepper-box,” as they
phrased it; they had made ropes with a hangman’s noose at the end and
tried to _lasso_ him in dark corners. And now he was adrift among them,
under notorious circumstances of superlative villainy, at last dragged
to light; and yet he blandly smiled, politely offered his cigar-holder
to a perfect stranger, and laughed and chatted to right and left, as if
springy, buoyant, and elastic, with an angelic conscience, and sure of
kind friends wherever he went, both in this life and the life to come.
While he was lying ironed in the “brig,” gangs of the men were
sometimes overheard whispering about the terrible reception they would
give him when he should be set at large. Nevertheless, when liberated,
they seemed confounded by his erect and cordial assurance, his
gentlemanly sociability and fearless companionableness. From being an
implacable policeman, vigilant, cruel, and remorseless in his office,
however polished in his phrases, he was now become a disinterested,
sauntering man of leisure, winking at all improprieties, and ready to
laugh and make merry with any one. Still, at first, the men gave him a
wide berth, and returned scowls for his smiles; but who can forever
resist the very Devil himself, when he comes in the guise of a
gentleman, free, fine, and frank? Though Goethe’s pious Margaret hates
the Devil in his horns and harpooner’s tail, yet she smiles and nods to
the engaging fiend in the persuasive, _winning_, oily, wholly harmless
Mephistopheles. But, however it was, I, for one, regarded this
master-at-arms with mixed feelings of detestation, pity, admiration,
and something opposed to enmity. I could not but abominate him when I
thought of his conduct; but I pitied the continual gnawing which, under
all his deftly-donned disguises, I saw lying at the bottom of his soul.
I admired his heroism in sustaining himself so well under such
reverses. And when I thought how arbitrary the _Articles of War_ are in
defining a man-of-war villain; how much undetected guilt might be
sheltered by the aristocratic awning of our quarter-deck; how many
florid pursers, ornaments of the ward-room, had been legally protected
in defrauding _the people_, I could not but say to myself, Well, after
all, though this man is a most wicked one indeed, yet is he even more
luckless than depraved.
Besides, a studied observation of Bland convinced me that he was an
organic and irreclaimable scoundrel, who did wicked deeds as the cattle
browse the herbage, because wicked deeds seemed the legitimate
operation of his whole infernal organisation. Phrenologically, he was
without a soul. Is it to be wondered at, that the devils are
irreligious? What, then, thought I, who is to blame in this matter? For
one, I will not take the Day of Judgment upon me by authoritatively
pronouncing upon the essential criminality of any man-of-war’s-man; and
Christianity has taught me that, at the last day, man-of-war’s-men will
not be judged by the _Articles of War_, nor by the _United States
Statutes at Large_, but by immutable laws, ineffably beyond the
comprehension of the honourable Board of Commodores and Navy
Commissioners. But though I will stand by even a man-of-war thief, and
defend him from being seized up at the gangway, if I can—remembering
that my Saviour once hung between two thieves, promising one
life-eternal—yet I would not, after the plain conviction of a villain,
again let him entirely loose to prey upon honest seamen, fore and aft
all three decks. But this did Captain Claret; and though the thing may
not perhaps be credited, nevertheless, here it shall be recorded.
After the master-at-arms had been adrift among the ship’s company for
several weeks, and we were within a few days’ sail of home, he was
summoned to the mast, and publicly reinstated in his office as the
ship’s chief of police. Perhaps Captain Claret had read the Memoirs of
Vidocq, and believed in the old saying, _set a rogue to catch a rogue_.
Or, perhaps, he was a man of very tender feelings, highly susceptible
to the soft emotions of gratitude, and could not bear to leave in
disgrace a person who, out of the generosity of his heart, had, about a
year previous, presented him with a rare snuff-box, fabricated from a
sperm-whale’s tooth, with a curious silver hinge, and cunningly wrought
in the shape of a whale; also a splendid gold-mounted cane, of a costly
Brazilian wood, with a gold plate, bearing the Captain’s name and rank
in the service, the place and time of his birth, and with a vacancy
underneath—no doubt providentially left for his heirs to record his
decease.
Certain it was that, some months previous to the master-at-arms’
disgrace, he had presented these articles to the Captain, with his best
love and compliments; and the Captain had received them, and seldom
went ashore without the cane, and never took snuff but out of that box.
With some Captains, a sense of propriety might have induced them to
return these presents, when the generous donor had proved himself
unworthy of having them retained; but it was not Captain Claret who
would inflict such a cutting wound upon any officer’s sensibilities,
though long-established naval customs had habituated him to scourging
_the people_ upon an emergency.
Now had Captain Claret deemed himself constitutionally bound to decline
all presents from his subordinates, the sense of gratitude would not
have operated to the prejudice of justice. And, as some of the
subordinates of a man-of-war captain are apt to invoke his good wishes
and mollify his conscience by making him friendly gifts, it would
perhaps _have_ been an excellent thing for him to adopt the plan
pursued by the President of the United States, when he received a
present of lions and Arabian chargers from the Sultan of Muscat. Being
forbidden by his sovereign lords and masters, the imperial people, to
accept of any gifts from foreign powers, the President sent them to an
auctioneer, and the proceeds were deposited in the Treasury. In the
same manner, when Captain Claret received his snuff-box and cane, he
might have accepted them very kindly, and then sold them off to the
highest bidder, perhaps to the donor himself, who in that case would
never have tempted him again.
Upon his return home, Bland was paid off for his full term, not
deducting the period of his suspension. He again entered the service in
his old capacity.
As no further allusion will be made to this affair, it may as well be
stated now that, for the very brief period elapsing between his
restoration and being paid off in port by the Purser, the
master-at-arms conducted himself with infinite discretion, artfully
steering between any relaxation of discipline—which would have awakened
the displeasure of the officers—and any unwise severity—which would
have revived, in tenfold force, all the old grudges of the seamen under
his command.
Never did he show so much talent and tact as when vibrating in this his
most delicate predicament; and plenty of cause was there for the
exercise of his cunningest abilities; for, upon the discharge of our
man-of-war’s-men at home, should he _then_ be held by them as an enemy,
as free and independent citizens they would waylay him in the public
streets, and take purple vengeance for all his iniquities, past,
present, and possible in the future. More than once a master-at-arms
ashore has been seized by night by an exasperated crew, and served as
Origen served himself, or as his enemies served Abelard.
But though, under extreme provocation, _the people_ of a man-of-war
have been guilty of the maddest vengeance, yet, at other times, they
are very placable and milky-hearted, even to those who may have
outrageously abused them; many things in point might be related, but I
forbear.
This account of the master-at-arms cannot better be concluded than by
denominating him, in the vivid language of the Captain of the Fore-top,
as “_the two ends and middle of the thrice-laid strand of a bloody
rascal_,” which was intended for a terse, well-knit, and
all-comprehensive assertion, without omission or reservation. It was
also asserted that, had Tophet itself been raked with a fine-tooth
comb, such another ineffable villain could not by any possibility have
been caught.