During the period that Bland was suspended from his office as master-at-arms, a person who, among the sailors, went by the name of Sneak, having been long suspected to have been a _white-mouse_, was put in Bland's place. He proved a hangdog, sidelong catch-thief, but gifted with a marvellous perseverance in ferreting out culprits; following in their track like an inevitable Cuba blood-hound, with his noiseless nose. When disconcerted, however, you sometimes heard his bay.
"The muffled dice are somewhere around," Sneak would say to his aids; "there are them three chaps, there, been dogging me about for the last half-hour. I say, Pounce, has any one been scouting around _you_ this morning?"
"Four on 'em," says Pounce. "I know'd it; I know'd the muffled dice was rattlin'!"
"Leggs!" says the master-at-arms to his other aid, "Leggs, how is it with _you_-any spies?"
"Ten on' em," says Leggs. "There's one on 'em now-that fellow stitching a hat."
"Halloo, you, sir!" cried the master-at-arms, "top your boom and sail large, now. If I see you about me again, I'll have you up to the mast."
"What am I a-doin' now?" says the hat-stitcher, with a face as long as a rope-walk. "Can't a feller be workin' here, without being 'spected of Tom Coxe's traverse, up one ladder and down t'other?"
"Oh, I know the moves, sir; I have been on board a _guardo_. Top your boom, I say, and be off, or I'll have you hauled up and riveted in a clinch-both fore-tacks over the main-yard, and no bloody knife to cut the seizing. Sheer! or I'll pitch into you like a shin of beef into a beggar's wallet."
It is often observable, that, in vessels of all kinds, the men who talk the most sailor lingo are the least sailor-like in reality. You may sometimes hear even marines jerk out more salt phrases than the Captain of the Forecastle himself. On the other hand, when not actively engaged in his vocation, you would take the best specimen of a seaman for a landsman. When you see a fellow yawning about the docks like a homeward-bound Indiaman, a long Commodore's pennant of black ribbon flying from his mast- head, and fetching up at a grog-shop with a slew of his hull, as if an Admiral were coming alongside a three-decker in his barge; you may put that man down for what man-of-war's-men call a _damn- my-eyes-tar_, that is, a humbug. And many damn-my-eyes hum-bugs there are in this man-of-war world of ours.
CHAPTER LXXIV
THE MAIN-TOP AT NIGHT
The whole of our run from Rio to the Line was one delightful yachting, so far as fine weather and the ship's sailing were concerned. It was especially pleasant when our quarter-watch lounged in the main-top, diverting ourselves in many agreeable ways. Removed from the immediate presence of the officers, we there harmlessly enjoyed ourselves, more than in any other part of the ship. By day, many of us were very industrious, making hats or mending our clothes. But by night we became more romantically inclined.
Often Jack Chase, an enthusiastic admirer of sea-scenery, would direct our attention to the moonlight on the waves, by fine snatches from his catalogue of poets. I shall never forget the lyric air with which, one morning, at dawn of day, when all the East was flushed with red and gold, he stood leaning against the top-mast shrouds, and stretching his bold hand over the sea, exclaimed, "Here comes Aurora: top-mates, see!" And, in a liquid, long-lingering tone, he recited the lines,
"With gentle hand, as seeming oft to pause, The purple curtains of the morn she draws."
"Commodore Camoens, White-Jacket.-But bear a hand there; we must rig out that stun'-sail boom-the wind is shifting."
From our lofty perch, of a moonlight night, the frigate itself was a glorious sight. She was going large before the wind, her stun'-sails set on both sides, so that the canvas on the main- mast and fore-mast presented the appearance of majestic, tapering pyramids, more than a hundred feet broad at the base, and terminating in the clouds with the light copestone of the royals. That immense area of snow-white canvas sliding along the sea was indeed a magnificent spectacle. The three shrouded masts looked like the apparitions of three gigantic Turkish Emirs striding over the ocean.
Nor, at times, was the sound of music wanting, to augment the poetry of the scene. The whole band would be assembled on the poop, regaling the officers, and incidentally ourselves, with their fine old airs. To these, some of us would occasionally dance in the _top_, which was almost as large as an ordinary sized parlour. When the instrumental melody of the band was not to be had, our nightingales mustered their voices, and gave us a song.
Upon these occasions Jack Chase was often called out, and regaled us, in his own free and noble style, with the "_Spanish Ladies_"- a favourite thing with British man-of-war's-men-and many other salt-sea ballads and ditties, including,
"Sir Patrick Spens was the best sailor That ever sailed the sea."
also,
"And three times around spun our gallant ship; Three times around spun she; Three times around spun our gallant ship, And she went to the bottom of the sea- The sea, the sea, the sea, And she went to the bottom of the sea!"
These songs would be varied by sundry _yarns_ and _twisters_ of the top-men. And it was at these times that I always endeavoured to draw out the oldest Tritons into narratives of the war-service they had seen. There were but few of them, it is true, who had been in action; but that only made their narratives the more valuable.
There was an old negro, who went by the name of Tawney, a sheet- anchor-man, whom we often invited into our top of tranquil nights, to hear him discourse. He was a staid and sober seaman, very intelligent, with a fine, frank bearing, one of the best men in the ship, and held in high estimation by every one.
It seems that, during the last war between England and America, he had, with several others, been «impressed» upon the high seas, out of a New England merchantman. The ship that impressed him was an English frigate, the Macedonian, afterward taken by the Neversink, the ship in which we were sailing.
It was the holy Sabbath, according to Tawney, and, as the Briton bore down on the American-her men at their quarters-Tawney and his countrymen, who happened to be stationed at the quarter-deck battery, respectfully accosted the captain-an old man by the name of Cardan-as he passed them, in his rapid promenade, his spy-glass under his arm. Again they assured him that they were not Englishmen, and that it was a most bitter thing to lift their hands against the flag of that country which harboured the mothers that bore them. They conjured him to release them from their guns, and allow them to remain neutral during the conflict. But when a ship of any nation is running into action, it is no time for argument, small time for justice, and not much time for humanity. Snatching a pistol from the belt of a boarder standing by, the Captain levelled it at the heads of the three sailors, and commanded them instantly to their quarters, under penalty of being shot on the spot. So, side by side with his country's foes, Tawney and his companions toiled at the guns, and fought out the fight to the last; with the exception of one of them, who was killed at his post by one of his own country's balls.
At length, having lost her fore and main-top-masts, and her mizzen-mast having been shot away to the deck, and her fore-yard lying in two pieces on her shattered forecastle, and in a hundred places having been _hulled_ with round shot, the English frigate was reduced to the last extremity. Captain Cardan ordered his signal quarter-master to strike the flag.
Tawney was one of those who, at last, helped pull him on board the Neversink. As he touched the deck, Cardan saluted Decatur, the hostile commander, and offered his sword; but it was courteously declined. Perhaps the victor remembered the dinner parties that he and the Englishman had enjoyed together in Norfolk, just previous to the breaking out of hostilities-and while both were in command of the very frigates now crippled on the sea. The Macedonian, it seems, had gone into Norfolk with dispatches. _Then_ they had laughed and joked over their wine, and a wager of a beaver hat was said to have been made between them upon the event of the hostile meeting of their ships.