A SHORE EMPEROR ON BOARD A MAN-OF-WAR.
While we lay in Rio, we sometimes had company from shore; but an
unforeseen honour awaited us. One day, the young Emperor, Don Pedro
II., and suite—making a circuit of the harbour, and visiting all the
men-of-war in rotation—at last condescendingly visited the Neversink.
He came in a splendid barge, rowed by thirty African slaves, who, after
the Brazilian manner, in concert rose upright to their oars at every
stroke; then sank backward again to their seats with a simultaneous
groan.
He reclined under a canopy of yellow silk, looped with tassels of
green, the national colours. At the stern waved the Brazilian flag,
bearing a large diamond figure in the centre, emblematical, perhaps, of
the mines of precious stones in the interior; or, it may be, a
magnified portrait of the famous “Portuguese diamond” itself, which was
found in Brazil, in the district of Tejuco, on the banks of the Rio
Belmonte.
We gave them a grand salute, which almost made the ship’s live-oak
_knees_ knock together with the tremendous concussions. We manned the
yards, and went through a long ceremonial of paying the Emperor homage.
Republicans are often more courteous to royalty than royalists
themselves. But doubtless this springs from a noble magnanimity.
At the gangway, the Emperor was received by our Commodore in person,
arrayed in his most resplendent coat and finest French epaulets. His
servant had devoted himself to polishing every button that morning with
rotten-stone and rags—your sea air is a sworn foe to metallic glosses;
whence it comes that the swords of sea-officers have, of late, so
rusted in their scabbards that they are with difficulty drawn.
It was a fine sight to see this Emperor and Commodore complimenting
each other. Both were _chapeaux-de-bras_, and both continually waved
them. By instinct, the Emperor knew that the venerable personage before
him was as much a monarch afloat as he himself was ashore. Did not our
Commodore carry the sword of state by his side? For though not borne
before him, it must have been a sword of state, since it looked far to
lustrous to have been his fighting sword. _That_ was naught but a
limber steel blade, with a plain, serviceable handle, like the handle
of a slaughter-house knife.
Who ever saw a star when the noon sun was in sight? But you seldom see
a king without satellites. In the suite of the youthful Emperor came a
princely train; so brilliant with gems, that they seemed just emerged
from the mines of the Rio Belmonte.
You have seen cones of crystallised salt? Just so flashed these
Portuguese Barons, Marquises, Viscounts, and Counts. Were it not for
their titles, and being seen in the train of their lord, you would have
sworn they were eldest sons of jewelers all, who had run away with
their fathers’ cases on their backs.
Contrasted with these lamp-lustres of Barons of Brazil, how waned the
gold lace of our barons of the frigate, the officers of the gun-room!
and compared with the long, jewel-hilted rapiers of the Marquises, the
little dirks of our cadets of noble houses—the middies—looked like
gilded tenpenny nails in their girdles.
But there they stood! Commodore and Emperor, Lieutenants and Marquises,
middies and pages! The brazen band on the poop struck up; the marine
guard presented arms; and high aloft, looking down on this scene, all
_the people_ vigorously hurraed. A top-man next me on the
main-royal-yard removed his hat, and diligently manipulated his head in
honour of the event; but he was so far out of sight in the clouds, that
this ceremony went for nothing.
A great pity it was, that in addition to all these honours, that
admirer of Portuguese literature, Viscount Strangford, of Great
Britain—who, I believe, once went out Ambassador Extraordinary to the
Brazils—it was a pity that he was not present on this occasion, to
yield his tribute of “A Stanza to Braganza!” For our royal visitor was
an undoubted Braganza, allied to nearly all the great families of
Europe. His grandfather, John VI., had been King of Portugal; his own
sister, Maria, was now its queen. He was, indeed, a distinguished young
gentleman, entitled to high consideration, and that consideration was
most cheerfully accorded him.
He wore a green dress-coat, with one regal morning-star at the breast,
and white pantaloons. In his chapeau was a single, bright, golden-hued
feather of the Imperial Toucan fowl, a magnificent, omnivorous,
broad-billed bandit bird of prey, a native of Brazil. Its perch is on
the loftiest trees, whence it looks down upon all humbler fowls, and,
hawk-like, flies at their throats. The Toucan once formed part of the
savage regalia of the Indian caciques of the country, and upon the
establishment of the empire, was symbolically retained by the
Portuguese sovereigns.
His Imperial Majesty was yet in his youth; rather corpulent, if
anything, with a care-free, pleasant face, and a polite, indifferent,
and easy address. His manners, indeed, were entirely unexceptionable.
Now here, thought I, is a very fine lad, with very fine prospects
before him. He is supreme Emperor of all these Brazils; he has no
stormy night-watches to stand; he can lay abed of mornings just as long
as he pleases. Any gentleman in Rio would be proud of his personal
acquaintance, and the prettiest girl in all South America would deem
herself honoured with the least glance from the acutest angle of his
eye.
Yes: this young Emperor will have a fine time of this life, even so
long as he condescends to exist. Every one jumps to obey him; and see,
as I live, there is an old nobleman in his suit—the Marquis d’Acarty
they call him, old enough to be his grandfather—who, in the hot sun, is
standing bareheaded before him, while the Emperor carries his hat on
his head.
“I suppose that old gentleman, now,” said a young New England tar
beside me, “would consider it a great honour to put on his Royal
Majesty’s boots; and yet, White-Jacket, if yonder Emperor and I were to
strip and jump overboard for a bath, it would be hard telling which was
of the blood royal when we should once be in the water. Look you, Don
Pedro II.,” he added, “how do you come to be Emperor? Tell me that. You
cannot pull as many pounds as I on the main-topsail-halyards; you are
not as tall as I: your nose is a pug, and mine is a cut-water; and how
do you come to be a ‘_brigand_,’ with that thin pair of spars? A
_brigand_, indeed!”
“_Braganza_, you mean,” said I, willing to correct the rhetoric of so
fierce a republican, and, by so doing, chastise his censoriousness.
“Braganza! _bragger_ it is,” he replied; “and a bragger, indeed. See
that feather in his cap! See how he struts in that coat! He may well
wear a green one, top-mates—he’s a green-looking swab at the best.”
“Hush, Jonathan,” said I; “there’s the _First Duff_ looking up. Be
still! the Emperor will hear you;” and I put my hand on his mouth.
“Take your hand away, White-Jacket,” he cried; “there’s no law up aloft
here. I say, you Emperor—you greenhorn in the green coat, there—look
you, you can’t raise a pair of whiskers yet; and see what a pair of
homeward-bounders I have on my jowls! _Don Pedro_, eh? What’s that,
after all, but plain Peter—reckoned a shabby name in my country. Damn
me, White-Jacket, I wouldn’t call my dog Peter!”
“Clap a stopper on your jaw-tackle, will you?” cried Ringbolt, the
sailor on the other side of him. “You’ll be getting us all into darbies
for this.”
“I won’t trice up my red rag for nobody,” retorted Jonathan. “So you
had better take a round turn with yours, Ringbolt, and let me alone, or
I’ll fetch you such a swat over your figure-head, you’ll think a Long
Wharf truck-horse kicked you with all four shoes on one hoof! You
Emperor—you counter-jumping son of a gun—cock your weather eye up aloft
here, and see your betters! I say, top-mates, he ain’t any Emperor at
all—I’m the rightful Emperor. Yes, by the Commodore’s boots! they stole
me out of my cradle here in the palace of Rio, and put that green-horn
in my place. Ay, you timber-head, you, I’m Don Pedro II., and by good
rights you ought to be a main-top-man here, with your fist in a
tar-bucket! Look you, I say, that crown of yours ought to be on my
head; or, if you don’t believe _that_, just heave it into the ring
once, and see who’s the best man.”
“What’s this hurra’s nest here aloft?” cried Jack Chase, coming up the
t’-gallant rigging from the top-sail yard. “Can’t you behave yourself,
royal-yard-men, when an Emperor’s on board?”
“It’s this here Jonathan,” answered Ringbolt; “he’s been blackguarding
the young nob in the green coat, there. He says Don Pedro stole his
hat.”
“How?”
“Crown, he means, noble Jack,” said a top-man.
“Jonathan don’t call himself an Emperor, does he?” asked Jack.
“Yes,” cried Jonathan; “that greenhorn, standing there by the
Commodore, is sailing under false colours; he’s an impostor, I say; he
wears my crown.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Jack, now seeing into the joke, and willing to humour
it; “though I’m born a Briton, boys, yet, by the mast! these Don Pedros
are all Perkin Warbecks. But I say, Jonathan, my lad, don’t pipe your
eye now about the loss of your crown; for, look you, we all wear
crowns, from our cradles to our graves, and though in _double-darbies_
in the _brig_, the Commodore himself can’t unking us.”
“A riddle, noble Jack.”
“Not a bit; every man who has a sole to his foot has a crown to his
head. Here’s mine;” and so saying, Jack, removing his tarpaulin,
exhibited a bald spot, just about the bigness of a crown-piece, on the
summit of his curly and classical head.