While these orders were being executed, the whistles ringing through the ship, the sailors lining the white hammocks, stowed in a double line, fore and aft, around the nettings of the frigate, in readiness to cast off the stops and lacings and let fall the awnings, the officer on deck stood near the gangway. At the same time there tripped up the accommodation-ladder, lightly touching the snowy man-ropes, a young fellow of about one-and-twenty, dressed in undress frock-coat, one epaulet, smooth white trowsers, and shoes. Catching up his sword in his left hand as he reached the upper grating of the ladder, he took off his blue, gold-banded cap, and half bounded, with a springy step, on to the frigate’s deck.
Observe him well, young ladies, as he stands there; for of all the scarlet or blue jackets on whose arm you have leaned and looked up at with your soft violet, blue, or dark eyes, you never saw a young fellow that you would sooner give those eyes, or those warm hearts too, throbbing under your bodices, or who would drive you wilder to possess him, than that gallant young sailor standing on the “Monongahela’s” deck. Ay, observe him well, that tall, graceful youth, with a waist you might span with one of your short plump arms; those slim patrician feet, that might wear your own little satin slippers; then that swelling chest and those elegantly turned shoulders, which will take both of your arms, one of these days, to entwine and clasp around them! Ah! but the round throat and chin, the smiling 194 mouth, half hiding a double row of even teeth, with the merest moonshine of a mustache darkening the short upper lip, and then those large, fearless hazel eyes, sparkling with health and fun, shaded by a mass of chestnut curls, which cluster about his clear open forehead! Ay, there he stands, “a king and a kingdom” for the girl who wins him!
“Well, Harry, give us your fist, my boy! How do you get on aboard your prize? Not so roomy as the old frigate, eh? And a little more work than when you were playing flag-lieutenant, eh? Well, glad to see you, but can’t stop to talk. So jump down below there in the wardroom; the mess are just through dinner, and yours won’t be ready for an hour yet. Come, bear a hand, or I’ll let these awnings fall on your new gold epaulet.”
The new-comer tripped as lightly down the ladder to the gun-deck as Mr. Mouse, and making another dive down to the berth-deck, exchanging a rapid volley of pleasantry with the midshipmen in the steerage, he opened the wardroom door and entered. There, in a large open space, transversely dividing the stern of the ship, with rows of latticed-doored staterooms on either side, lighted by open skylights from above, with a barrel of a wind-sail coming down between the sashes, and every thing, from beams to bulkheads, painted a glistening white, and the deck so clean that you might have rubbed your handkerchief on it without leaving a stain on the cambric, around a large extension mahogany table stretching from side to side, the cloth removed, decanters and wine-glasses here and there, and water-monkeys in flannel jackets hanging like criminals from a gallows from the beams above, sat the wardroom mess of the frigate.
“By all that’s handsome, here’s Darcantel! Why, Harry, we are delighted to see you!” exclaimed half a dozen voices; “come, sit down here and take a glass of wine with us!”
As the handsome young fellow entered the wardroom, all faces lighted up as they saw him. The old sailing-master, who seldom indulged in more than a scowl since he lost his right ear by the stroke of a cutlass in capturing the tender to the “Plantagenet” seventy-four off the Hills of Navesink; the rigid old major of marines, who pipe-clayed his very knuckles, and wore a stiff sheet-iron padding to his stock to encourage discipline in the guard; the dear, kind old surgeon, who swallowed calomel pills by the pint, out of pure principle, and who lopped off limbs and felt yellow fever pulses all through the still watches of the hot nights with never a sign or look of encouragement; and the staid old chaplain, who had often assisted the surgeon and helped to fill cartridges, contributing his own cotton hose for the purpose when those government stores gave out in battle, and who never smiled, even when committing a marine to the briny deep; the purser, too, prim and business-like, looking as if he 195 were a complicated key with an iron lock of his own strong chest, calculating perpetually the amount of dollars deposited in his charge, the total of pay to be deducted therefrom, and never making a mistake save when he overcharged the dead men for chewing tobacco; and the gay, young, roistering lieutenants, who never did any thing else but laugh, unmindful of navigation, pipe-clay, pills, parsons, or pursers, though standing somewhat in awe of the sharpish, exacting executive officer at the head of the table––all welcomed, each in his peculiar way, the bright, graceful young blade who dawned upon them. And not only the mess were cheered by his presence, but also a troop of clean-dressed sable attendants, whose wide jaws stretched wider, while the whites of their eyes seemed painfully like splashes of whitewash on the outside of the galley coppers, as they nudged one another and yaw-yaw’d quietly away aft there in the region of the pantry.
“Here, my salt-water pet, come and sit down by me, where all those old fellows can see you! Steward, a wine-glass for Mr. Darcantel! What? you won’t take a sip of Tinta, and you can only stop a minute because you are to dine with your uncle the commodore, eh? Well, I’ll drink your uncle’s health even if you don’t!” said the first lieutenant, as he familiarly laid his hand on the young fellow’s shoulder and drained his glass.
“Why, Harry, what the deuce did you come down here for?” squeaked out the purser, as he unscrewed his lips into a pleasant smile. “You’ve put an end to that interesting account the master was giving us of how he lay inside Sandy Hook for six months with a glass to his––”
“Mouth,” broke in the surgeon.
|
“It was Sam Jones the fisherman, Who was bound to Sandy Hook; But first upon the Almanac A solemn oath he took–– That he would catch a load of clams!” |