The “gray mare” on which the obstreperous were forced to gallop was the spanker-boom—the long spar that extends far over the water at the ship’s stern. By casting loose the sheets, the boom rolled briskly from side to side, and the lonely horseman was forced in this perilous position to hold himself by digging his nails into the soft wood or swinging to any of the gear that flew into his reach. At best it was not a safe saddle, and a rough sea made it worse than a bucking broncho.
THE SMOKING HOUR
Paul Jones had a neat way of disciplining his midshipmen aloft. He would go to the rail himself, and casting loose the halyards, let the yard go down with a run, to the young gentleman’s great discomfiture.
But the life of the old salt was not all bitterness. It was not all shore-leave, but there was skittles now and then for the deserving and good-conduct men. Jack’s pleasures were simple, as they are to-day. There was never a crew that did not have its merry chanter and its flute, fiddle, or guitar, or the twice-told tale of the ship’s Methuselah to entertain the dog-watches of the evening or the smoking-hour and make a break in the dreary monotony of routine.
On public holidays, when everything was snug at sea or in port, a glorious skylark was the order of the afternoon. At the call of the bos’n’s mate, “All hands frolic,” rigorous discipline was suspended, and the men turned to with a will to make the day one to be talked about. Mast-head-races, potato- and sack-races, climbing the greased pole, and rough horse-play and man-handling filled the afternoon until hammocks were piped down and the watch was set. Purses from the wardroom and prizes of rum and tobacco—luxuries dear to Jack’s heart—were the incentives to vigorous athletics and rough buffoonery. The rigging was filled from netting to top with the rough, jesting figures, and cheer upon cheer and laugh upon laugh greeted a successful bout or fortunate sally.
Jack is a child at the best of times and at the worst, and he takes his pleasures with the zest of a boy of seven, laughing and making merry until he falls to the deck from very weariness. And woe be at these merry times to the shipmate who has no sense of humor. His day is a hideous one, for he is hazed and bullied until he is forced in self-defence to seek the seclusion granted by the nethermost part of the hold. A practical joker always, when discipline is lax, Jack’s boisterous humor knows no restraint.
The ceremony of “crossing the line,” the boarding of the ship by Neptune and his court, seems almost as old as ships, and is honored even to-day, when much of the romantic seems to have passed out of sea-life. It is the time when the deep-sea sailor has the better of his cousin of the coasts. Every man who crossed the equator for the first time had to pay due honor to the god of the seas. They exacted it, too, among the whalers when they crossed the Arctic Circle.
NEPTUNE COMES ABOARD