WHAT REMAINS OF A MAN-OF-WAR’S-MAN AFTER HIS BURIAL AT SEA.
Upon examining Shenly’s bag, a will was found, scratched in pencil,
upon a blank leaf in the middle of his Bible; or, to use the phrase of
one of the seamen, in the midships, atween the Bible and Testament,
where the Pothecary (Apocrypha) uses to be.
The will was comprised in one solitary sentence, exclusive of the dates
and signatures: “_In case I die on the voyage, the Purser will please
pay over my wages to my wife, who lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire_.”
Besides the testator’s, there were two signatures of witnesses.
This last will and testament being shown to the Purser, who, it seems,
had been a notary, or surrogate, or some sort of cosy chamber
practitioner in his time, he declared that it must be “proved.” So the
witnesses were called, and after recognising their hands to the paper;
for the purpose of additionally testing their honesty, they were
interrogated concerning the day on which they had signed—whether it was
_Banyan Day_, or _Duff Day_, or _Swampseed Day_; for among the sailors
on board a man-of-war, the land terms, _Monday_, _Tuesday_,
_Wednesday_, are almost unknown. In place of these they substitute
nautical names, some of which are significant of the daily bill of fare
at dinner for the week.
The two witnesses were somewhat puzzled by the attorney-like questions
of the Purser, till a third party came along, one of the ship’s
barbers, and declared, of his own knowledge, that Shenly executed the
instrument on a _Shaving Day_; for the deceased seaman had informed him
of the circumstance, when he came to have his beard reaped on the
morning of the event.
In the Purser’s opinion, this settled the question; and it is to be
hoped that the widow duly received her husband’s death-earned wages.
Shenly was dead and gone; and what was Shenly’s epitaph?
—“D. D.”—
opposite his name in the Purser’s books, in “_Black’s best Writing
Fluid_”—funereal name and funereal hue—meaning “Discharged, Dead.”