Forward on the forecastle old Bentley was planted, surrounded by such of the older and more experienced petty officers and men as he permitted to associate with him on terms of more or less familiarity. Not only the position he occupied, that of boatswain of the frigate, gave him a vast importance with the men, but his age and experience, his long association with the captain, as well as some almost incredible tales of his familiar companionship with certain men of awe-inspiring name and great renown, with various mighty feats of arms in recent campaigns, vaguely current, conduced to make him the monarch of the forecastle, and the arbiter of the various discussions and arguments among the men, who rarely ventured to dispute the dictum of their oracle.
"Well, here we are pointing out again, thank the Lord!" he said to his particular friend and crony among the crew, the carpenter, Richard Spicer, a battered old shell-back, like himself. "There is only one place from which I like to see the land, Richard!"
"And where is that, bosun?"
"Over the stern, as now, mate, when we 're going free with a fair wind, and leaving it fast behind. I feel safer then. A time since and I felt as if I never wanted to see it again from any place. To think of me, a decent God-fearing, seafaring man, at my time of life, turning soldier!" It is not in the power of written language to express the peculiar intonation of contempt which the old man laid upon that inoffensive word, "soldier." No one venturing to interrupt him, after staring at his particular aversion for a few moments, he went on more mildly, and in a reflective tone,—
"Not but what I have seen some decent soldiers—a few. There was old Blodgett, and young Mr. Talbot, ay, and General Washington too! Now there 's a man for you, ship-mates. Lord, what a sailorman he would have made! They tell me he had a midshipman's warrant offered him when he was a lad once, and actually refused it—refused it! preferred to be a soldier, and what a chance he lost! Might have been an admiral by now!"
"I 've heard tell as how 't was his mother that prevented him from goin' to sea—when he was ready an' willin' an' waitin' to get aboard," returned one of the men.
"May be, may be. The result's the same. You never can tell what women, and 'specially mothers, will do. They 're necessary, of course, leastways it's generally believed we all had 'em, though I remember none myself, nor Captain Seymour neither, and he 's a pretty good sort of a man—let alone me—but they've no place aboard ship. Now look what this one did,—spoiled a man that had the makin's of a first-class sailor in him, and turned him into a soldier!"
"But where would we be in this country of ours now, bosun, if it were not for the soldiers? No, no, don't be too hard on this man, Captain Washington; he 's done his duty, and is doing it very well, too, so I 'm told, accordin' to your own account, matey," replied the old carpenter; "and soldiers is good too—in their places, that is, of course," he went on deprecatingly. "There are two kinds of men, as I take it, William, to do the fightin' in this world, sailormen and soldiermen; each has a place, a station to fill, and something to do, and one can't do t' other's work. Look at that there blasted marine, aft there in the gangway, for instance; he's a good man, I make no manner o' doubt, and he has got his place on this barkey, even if he is only a kind of a soldier and no sailorman at all."
"Now I asks you, Chips, what particular good are soldiers, anyway, leaving marines out of the question, for they do live on ships," said the old sailorman. "What can they do that we can't? They can fight, and fight hard—I 've seen 'em, but so can we," he continued, extending his brawny arm; "and they can march, too,—I've seen their bloody footmarks in the snow; but there were sailormen there that kept right alongside of 'em and did all that they could do. Oh, I forgot one thing—they can ride horses, that's one thing I could never learn at all! You 'd ought to seen me on one of the land-lubberly brutes. A horse has no place on shipboard, no more than a woman, and I 've no use for either of 'em. But if this country would spend all its money buying ships, and man 'em with real first-class sailormen, why, d'ye see, King George's men could never land on our shores at all. We 'd keep 'em off, and then there'd be no use for the soldiers; they could all go a-farming. No, give me ships every time, they always win. I know what I am talking about; I have been on the shore for a month at a time until I thought I would turn into mud itself. No, 't is not even a fit place to be buried in; 'earth to earth' won't do for me when I die; I just want to be dropped overboard—there."
"There is one time ships didn't win," said the carpenter, persisting in the argument, and pointing aft to the low mounds of sand backed by the rudely interlaced palmetto logs, behind which the gallant Moultrie had fought Barker's fleet six months before, until the ships had been driven off in defeat.