The purser, O’Keefe, was an elderly man, very careful of the pounds, shillings, and pence. He was affected with an incurable deafness, which he never thought proper to acknowledge, but catching at a word or two in the sentence, would frame his answer accordingly, occasioning frequent mirth to his mess-mates, whom he imagined were laughing with, and not at him. For the present I shall pass over the rest of the officers, with the exception of the boatswain, whose character was of a very peculiar nature.
He was a man who had long been considered as one of the best boatswains in the service, and had been applied for by Captain M—. He used his cane with severity, but had always some jest at hand to soften down the smart of the blow, and was very active in his own person, setting an example to the men. It had, however, happened, that about a year before he joined, Mr Hardsett had been induced by his wife to go with her to a conventicle, which the rising sect of methodists had established at the port where she resided; and whether it was that his former life smote his conscience, or that the preacher was unusually powerful, he soon became one of the most zealous of his converts. He read nothing but his Bible, which employed all his leisure hours, and he was continually quoting it in his conversation. But he was not exactly a methodist, taking the cognomen in the worst or the best interpretation: he was an enthusiast and a fanatic—notwithstanding which, he contrived that his duty towards his Maker should not interfere with that of boatswain of the ship. Captain M— regretted the man’s bigotry: but as he never tried to make any converts, and did his duty in his situation, the captain did not attempt to interfere with his religious opinions, the more so, as he was convinced that Hardsett was sincere.
The Aspasia was but a short time in harbour, for the captain was anxious to add to the laurels which he had already won: and having reported the ship ready for sea, received an order to proceed to the West India station. The frigate was unmoored, the blue-peter hoisted, and the fore-topsail loosened as the signal for departure: and after lying a short time with her anchor “short stay apeak,” Captain M— came on board, the anchor was run up to the bows, and once more the frigate started, like an armed knight in search of battle and adventure.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the tenants of the gun-room had assembled to their repast. “Now all my misery is about to commence,” cried Courtenay, as he took his seat at the gun-room table, on which the dinner was smoking in all the variety of pea-soup, Irish stew, and boiled mutton with caper sauce.
“Indeed!” said the master. “Pray, then, what is it that you have been grumbling about, ever since you have joined the ship?”
“Psha! they were only petty vexations, but now we are at sea. I shall be sea-sick. I am always obliged to throw off the accumulation of bile whenever I go out of harbour.”
“I say, doctor,” replied Pearce, “can you stop up the leak in that little gentleman’s liver? He’s not content to keep a hand-pump going to get rid of his bile when in harbour, but it seems that he requires the chain-pumps to be manned when he goes to sea.”
“Chain-pumps!” exclaimed Courtenay, shuddering, and drawing back his head with a grimace at the idea of such a forcible discharge, and then looking round at his messmates with one of his serio-comic faces.
“Pumps! ay,” said Price; “you remember Shakespeare in the ‘Tempest’—he says—dear me,—I—”
“Come, Price,” said Courtenay, “don’t make me sick before my time,—it’s unkind. You don’t know what an analogy there is between spouting and sea-sickness. In both cases you throw up what is nauseous, because your head or you stomach is too weak to retain it. Spare me, then, a quotation, my dear fellow, till you see me in the agony of Nature ‘aback,’ and then one will be of service in assisting her efforts to ‘box off.’ I say, Billy Pitt, did you stow away the two jars of pickled cabbage in my cabin?”