Chapter Fifty Two.
The captain taketh to tantrums—And keepeth on board monkeys, bears, and discipline—It is feared, also, that the moon hath too much to do with his observations.
Notwithstanding my misery, I became convalescent. I went to my duty doggedly. Everybody saw and respected my grief; and the affair was never mentioned to me by any, with one only exception, and that was six months after, by a heavy brutal master’s-mate, named Pigtop, who had been in the pinnace that brought me off.
He came close to me, and, without preparation, he electrified me by drawling out, “I say, Rattlin, what a mess you made of it at Aniana? That girl of yours, to my thinking, burst a blood-vessel as she was giving you chase. I saw the blood bubble out of her mouth and nose.”
“Liar!” I exclaimed, and, seizing a heavy block that one of the afterguard was fitting, I felled him to the deck.
The base-hearted poltroon went and made his complaint to Captain Reud, who ordered him to leave the ship immediately he came into harbour.
We must now retrograde a little in the narrative, in order to show what events led to the disastrous catastrophe I have just related. Captain Reud, having been lying for many, many weeks, apparently unconscious of objects around him, one morning said, in a faint, low voice, when Dr Thompson and Mr Farmer, the first-lieutenant, were standing near him, “Send Ralph Rattlin to read the Bible to me.”
Now, since my absence, some supposed I had been privately stabbed by one of the few ferocious and angry marauders still left in the town; but, as no traces of my body could be found, still more of my shipmates believed that I had deserted. In plain sincerity, these latter friends of mine were, as our Transatlantic brethren say, pretty considerably, slap-dashically right. However, as the shock to the wounded captain would have been the greater to say that I had been assassinated, they chose the milder alternative, and told him that “they feared I had deserted.”
Captain Reud merely said, “I don’t believe it,” turned his face to the bulkhead, and remained silent for three or four days more. Still, as he was proceeding towards convalescence, he began to be more active, or, rather, ordered more active measures to be taken to clear up the mystery of my disappearance. Parties were consequently sent to scour the country for miles round; but I was too well concealed to permit them to be of any utility. The only two seamen that had seen me near Manuel’s premises belonged to the frigate which had sailed before my captain had recovered his faculties.
But I was not to be so easily given up; perhaps he remembered that what remained of life to him was preserved by me, and, notwithstanding his cruel usage, I well knew that he entertained for me a sincere affection. As the Eos got under weigh, after remaining so long at anchor in the port, that the men observed she would shortly ground upon the beef-bones that their active masticators had denuded, and which were thrown overboard, the wind was light, and the boats were all out towing, with the exception of the pinnace, which was ordered to sweep round the bay and look into all the inlets, in order to seek for some vestige of my important self. For good or for evil, the heart-rending results ensued.
How short is the real romance of life! A shout of joy—a pulsation of ecstasy—and it is over! In the course of my eventful life, I have seen very fair faces and very many beautiful forms. The fascinations of exterior loveliness I have met combined with high intellect, unswerving principles, and virtuous emotions, awful from their very holiness. The fair possessors of many of these lofty attributes I have sometimes wooed and strove to love; but, though I often sighed and prayed for a return of that heart-whole and absorbing passion, there was no magic, no charm, to call the dead embers into life. That young and beautiful savage swept from my bosom all the tenderer stuff: she collected the fresh flowers of passion, and left—It is of no consequence—Josephine, farewell!
Let us talk idly. It is a droll world: let us mock each other, and call it mirth. There is my poor half-deranged captain cutting such antics, that even authority with the two-edged sword in his hand cannot repress the outbursting of ignoble derision. First of all, he takes a mania for apes and monkeys; disrates all his midshipmen, taking care, however, that they still do their duty; and makes the ship’s tailor rig out their successors in uniform. The officers are aghast, for the maniac is so cunning, and the risk of putting a superior officer under an arrest so tremendous, that they know not what to do. Besides, their captain is only mad on one subject at one time. Indeed, insanity seems sometimes to find a vent in monomania, actually improving all the faculties on all other points. Well, the monkey midshipmen did not behave very correctly; so, Captain Reud had them one afternoon all tied up to one of his guns in the cabin, and one after the other, well flogged with the cat-o’-nine-tails. It was highly ludicrous to see the poor fellows waiting each for his turn, well knowing what was to come; they never, than when under the impression of their fears, looked more human. That night they stole into the cabin, by two or three, in the dead of the night, and nearly murdered their persecutor. This looked very like combination, and an exercise of faculties that may be nearly termed reasoning.
They were all thrown overboard. The next phantasy was the getting up of the forecastle carronades into the tops, thereby straining the ship and nearly carrying away the mast. That folly wore out, and the guns came down to their proper places. Then a huge bear came on board—a very gentlemanly, dignified fellow; never in a hurry, and who always moved about with a gracious deliberation. Captain Reud amused himself by endeavouring to teach him to dance; and a worthless blackguard who could play on the pipe and tambour, and who probably had led a bear about the country, was taken into especial grace, and was loaded with benefits, in order to assist his captain in his singular avocations.
“Come and see my bear dance, do come and see him dance,” was now the little Creole’s continual cry. But the bear did not take his tuition kindly, and grew daily more ferocious; till, at length, seizing his opportunity, he caught up the diminutive skipper and nearly hugged the breath out of his body, and almost rubbed his red nose off his yellow face in endeavouring to bite him through his muzzle. The star of Ursa Major was no longer in the ascendant, and he was bartered away, with the master of the first merchant vessel we met, for a couple of game-cocks; and the bear-leader was turned back into the waist, and flogged the next day for impertinence, whilst, two days before, the vagabond was too proud to say “sir” to a middy.
But it would be ridiculous to enumerate the long succession of these insane whimsicalities, each latter one being more bizarre than the preceding.
Whether a man be mad or not, Christmas will come round again. Now, Jack, from time immemorial, thinks that he has a right undeniable to get drunk on that auspicious day. In harbour, that right is not discussed by his officers, but is usually exercised sub silentio under their eyes, with everything but silence on the part of the exercisers. Even at sea, without the ship be in sight of the enemy, or it blows hard enough to blow the ship’s coppers overboard, our friends think it hard, very hard, to have their cups scored next morning upon their back; and, indeed, to keep all a frigate’s crew from intoxication on a Christmas-day would be something like undertaking the labour of Sisyphus, for, as fast as one man could be frightened or flogged into sobriety, another would become glorious.
It was for this very reason that Captain Reud, the Christmas-day after he had received his wound, undertook the task; and, as the weather was fine, he hoped to find it not quite so hard as rolling a stone up a steep hill, and invariably seeing it bound down again before it attains the coveted summit. Immediately after breakfast, he had the word passed, fore and aft, that no man should be drunk that day, and that six dozen (not of wine) would be the reward of any who should dare, in the least, to infringe that order. What is drunkenness? What it is we can readily pronounce, when we see a man under its revolting phases. What is not drunkenness is more hard to say. Is it not difficult to ascertain the nice line that separates excitement from incipient delirium? Not at all, to a man like Captain Reud. To understand a disease thoroughly, a physician will tell you that you will be much assisted by the having suffered from it yourself. Upon this self-evident principle, our Aesculapius with the epaulettes was the first man drunk in the ship. After dinner that day, he had heightened his testing powers with an unusual, even to him, share of claret.
Well, at the usual time, we beat to quarters; that is always done just before the hammocks are piped down; and it is then that the sobriety of the crew, as they stand to their guns, is narrowly looked into by the respective officers; for then the grog has been served out for the day, and it is supposed to have been all consumed. The captain, of course, came on the quarter-deck to quarters, making tack and half tack, till he fairly threw out his starboard grappling-iron, and moored himself to one of the belaying pins round the mizzen-mast.
“Mister Farmer,” said he to the first luff, “you see I know how to keep a ship in discipline—not (hiccup) a man drunk on board of her.”
“I doubt it, sir,” was, the respectful answer. “I think, sir, I can see one now,” said he, taking his eyes off his superior, after a searching glance, and looking carelessly around.
“Where is he?”
“Oh, sir, we must not forget that it is Christmas-day: so if you please, sir, we will not scrutinise very particularly.”
“But we will scru—scrutinise very particularly: remember me of scru—scrutinise, Mister Rattlin—a good word that scru—screws—trenails—tenpenny nails—hammers—iron—clamps, and dog-fastenings—what were we all talking about. Mr Farmer? Oh; sobriety! we will—assuredly (hiccup) find out the drunken man.”
So, with a large cortège of officers, the master-at-arms, and the ship’s corporals, Captain Reud leaning his right arm heavily upon my left shoulder—for he was cunning enough, just then, to find that the gout was getting into his foot—we proceeded round the ship on our voyage of discovery. Now, it is no joke for a man half drunk to be tried for drunkenness by one wholly so. It was a curious and a comic sight, that examination—for many of the examined were conscious of a cup too much. These invariably endeavoured to look the most sober. As we approached the various groups around each gun, the different artifices of the men to pass muster were most amusing. Some drew themselves stiffly up, and looked as rigid as iron-stanchions; others took the examination with an easy, debonair air, as if to say, “Who so innocent as I?” Some again, not exactly liking the judge, quietly dodged round, shifting places with their shipmates, so that when the captain peered into the eyes of the last for the symptoms of ebriety, the mercurial rascals had quietly placed themselves first.
To the sharp, startling accusation, “You are drunk, sir,” the answers were beautifully various. The indignant “No, sir!”—the well-acted surprise, “I, sir?”—the conciliatory “God bless your honour, no, sir!”—the logical “Bill Bowling was cook to-day, sir,”—and the sarcastic “No more than your honour’s honour,” to witness, were, as we small wits say, better than a play.
The search was almost unavailing. The only fish that came to the net was a poor idiotic young man, that, to my certain knowledge, had not tasted grog for months; for his messmates gave him a hiding whenever he asked for his allowance. To the sudden, “You’re drunk, sir,” of Captain Reud, the simple youth, taken by surprise, and perhaps thinking it against the articles of war to contradict the captain, said, “Yes, sir; but I haven’t tasted grog since—”
“You got drunk, sir; take him aft, master-at-arms, and put him in irons.”
The scrutiny over, our temperate captain went aft himself, glorifying that, in all the ship’s company, there was only one instance of intoxication on Christmas-day; and thus he delivered himself; hiccupping on the gratifying occasion:
“I call that discipline, Mr Farmer. The only drunken man in his Majesty’s vessel, under my command, aft on the poop, in irons, and that fellow not worth his salt.”
“I quite agree with you,” said the sneering purser, “that the only fellow who has dared to get disgracefully drunk to-day, is not worth his salt, but he is not in irons, aft on the poop.”
“I am sure he is not,” said the first lieutenant.
“That is as—astonishing,” said the mystified extirpator of intemperance, as he staggered into his cabin, to console himself for, and to close his labours with, the two other bottles.
The reader will perceive, from these incidents, that it was time that Captain Reud retired to enjoy his laurels on his solum natale in otium cum as much dignitate as would conduce to the happiness of one of his mischief-loving temperament. The admiral on the station thought so too, when Reud took the ship into Port Royal. He superseded the black pilot, and took upon himself to con the ship; the consequence was, that she hugged the point so closely, that she went right upon the church steeple of old Port Royal, which is very quietly lying beside the new one, submerged by an earthquake, and a hole was knocked in the ship’s forefoot, of that large and ruinous description which may be aptly compared to the hole in a patriot’s reputation, who has lately taken office with his quondam opponents. With all the efforts of all the fleet, that sent relays of hands on board of us to work the pumps, we could not keep her afloat; so we were obliged, first putting a thrummed sail under her bottom, to tow her alongside of the dockyard wharf, lighten her, and lash her to it.
The same evening, by nine o’clock, she had an empty hull, and all the ship’s company and officers were located in the dockyard, and preparations were made, the next day, for heaving the frigate down. It was the opinion of everybody that, had not our skipper been the nephew of a very high official of the Admiralty, he would have been tried by a court-martial, for thus attempting to overturn submarine churches and cracking the bottom of his Majesty’s beautiful frigate. As it was, we were only ordered to be repaired with all haste, and to go home, very much, indeed, to the satisfaction of everybody but the captain himself.