“Leggs!” says the master-at-arms to his other aid, “Leggs, how is it with you—any spies?”
“Ten on’ em,” says Leggs. “There’s one on ’em now—that fellow stitching a hat.”
“Halloo, you, sir!” cried the master-at-arms, “top your boom and sail large, now. If I see you about me again, I’ll have you up to the mast.”
“What am I a-doin’ now?” says the hat-stitcher, with a face as long as a rope-walk. “Can’t a feller be workin’ here, without being ’spected of Tom Coxe’s traverse, up one ladder and down t’other?”
“Oh, I know the moves, sir; I have been on board a guardo. Top your boom, I say, and be off, or I’ll have you hauled up and riveted in a clinch—both fore-tacks over the main-yard, and no bloody knife to cut the seizing. Sheer! or I’ll pitch into you like a shin of beef into a beggar’s wallet.”
It is often observable, that, in vessels of all kinds, the men who talk the most sailor lingo are the least sailor-like in reality. You may sometimes hear even marines jerk out more salt phrases than the Captain of the Forecastle himself. On the other hand, when not actively engaged in his vocation, you would take the best specimen of a seaman for a landsman. When you see a fellow yawning about the docks like a homeward-bound Indiaman, a long Commodore’s pennant of black ribbon flying from his mast-head, and fetching up at a grog-shop with a slew of his hull, as if an Admiral were coming alongside a three-decker in his barge; you may put that man down for what man-of-war’s-men call a damn-my-eyes-tar, that is, a humbug. And many damn-my-eyes humbugs there are in this man-of-war world of ours.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
THE MAIN-TOP AT NIGHT.
The whole of our run from Rio to the Line was one delightful yachting, so far as fine weather and the ship’s sailing were concerned. It was especially pleasant when our quarter-watch lounged in the main-top, diverting ourselves in many agreeable ways. Removed from the immediate presence of the officers, we there harmlessly enjoyed ourselves, more than in any other part of the ship. By day, many of us were very industrious, making hats or mending our clothes. But by night we became more romantically inclined.
Often Jack Chase, an enthusiastic admirer of sea-scenery, would direct our attention to the moonlight on the waves, by fine snatches from his catalogue of poets. I shall never forget the lyric air with which, one morning, at dawn of day, when all the East was flushed with red and gold, he stood leaning against the top-mast shrouds, and stretching his bold hand over the sea, exclaimed, “Here comes Aurora: top-mates, see!” And, in a liquid, long-lingering tone, he recited the lines,
“With gentle hand, as seeming oft to pause,
The purple curtains of the morn she draws.”