I assented to the argument, and was struck with the truth it conveyed; the moon certainly gave a charming light to the picture, but the eye of practical experience detected the incongruity, though perhaps not till that very moment when the heart was more immediately interested in the subject. The circumstances connected with the re-capture of the Hermione, and her having previously fallen into the enemy’s hands, were revived in my memory; but I felt a strong desire to hear the story from my aged chaperon, and after a few observations he indulged me.
“Them as wishes to know what a seaman can do, sir,” said the old man, “should study a little of their cha-rackter. Thank God, the day’s gone by when the cat was considered the best means of freshening a poor devil’s way, or keeping a good man to his duty. I can remember when I was a young top-man, and the hands were turned up, there was always a boatswain’s mate stationed at each hatchway to start the last man on the ladder, and sometimes half a dozen of the hindmost would get well started before they set foot on deck; it was harassing work and produced great discontent, because, d’ye mind, as there must always be somebody last, it stands to reason there was no escaping. Well, as I said, this, with many other grievances, occasioned the men to be dissatisfied, and brought about that toast which I am sorry to say was but too common between decks, though certainly there was a goodish scope of provocation when all the bearings of the thing is correctly worked;—I mean the toast, ‘A dark night, a sharp knife, and a bloody blanket!’ Now, your honour, ’tis impossible to tell which man saves his strength, when a gang is tailing-on to a taut rope; but a lubber who skulks in the lee-rigging when he ought to be shinning away aloft to take in a reef or toss up a sail is soon found out, and mayhap a cuff or two would make him quicker in turning to windward; but when the end of a rope flies about indiscriminately and every body is in constant dread of the gangway, it becomes grating to the feelings. Not, sir, that I hold with the attempts to make Jack Nasty-face a gentleman; for if so be as they goes to destroy the peculiarities which mark a regular man-o’-war’s-man, they’ll have to make a few curious entries in the log-book before they’ve done.”
“But about the Hermione,” said I; “she has a beautiful appearance in the picture; her yards are nicely squared, and she looks all ready for sea. But, come, let’s hear how the Spaniards captured her.”
“Captured her!” exclaimed the veteran; “no, no, they didn’t capture her; she was run away with by her own crew, and a horrible deed of blood they made of it. It was in the month of September, —97; the frigate was cruising off the west-end of Porto Rico, just jogging off and on, and now and then taking a peep into Port-au-Prince, and that way, to look arter the enemy. She was commanded by Captain P——, whose very natur was that of a tyrant, and a cruel one too; for by all accounts, he scored the smallest offence upon the bare back of the offender, and very often punished, because the whim took him in the head, for no offence at all. The ship’s company were none of the best, to be sure; there was a sprinkling of all nations, and not a few with C. P. alongside o’their names.”
“C. P.” said I; “what does C. P. mean.”
“Why, your honour, it just means this here,” replied the old man. “You must understand that when some know-nothing rascal had been caught in a crowd, and suspected of dipping his grappling hooks—” here the veteran crook’d his fingers,—“into a neighbour’s pocket, if so be they couldn’t bring it slap home to him, the magistrates sent him on board a man-o’-war to teach him honesty, and thus a pretty set of the scum and scrapings of villany,—a sort of devil’s own,—contaminated the sarvice; and the C. P. was a kind of curse o’ Cromwell upon ’em—a mark of Cain, denoting they were shipped by the Civil Power, and the master-at-arms had ’special orders to watch their motions.”
“And did this really take place?” inquired I; “was the navy made a condemned service for convicts?”
“It was, indeed,” replied the old pensioner, “till it got to be a kind of Solomon’s proverb, that ‘a king’s ship and the gallows refused nobody,’ and the tars that had always done their duty in battle and in storm, felt it a great degradation to be mustered with felons and jail-birds, and rely upon it, your honour, it prevented many a brave lad from volunteering; for who would go for to enter the sarvice, when almost every ship had a black list as long as the main-top bowline. Besides, there was another concarn that bred evils as fast as barnacles grows on the bottom of a dull sailer. D’ye mind, the fellows didn’t love work, and when there was a fresh breeze, they either skulked down below, or got kicked about upon deck like a Muscovy duck in the lee scuppers, and a captain was often obliged to flog even against his own inclination. In course of time, the lubberly sons of —— chafed his temper till the strands parted, and then he became severe, and from severity proceeded to cruelty, till discrimination was foundered, and the cat’s tails were felt by the good man as well as the bad. Now this was very likely the case with Captain P——, and I’m the more strengthened in the likelihoods of it by what followed; for though in the heat of passion reason is shrivelled and scorched up like the fag-end of an exploded cartridge, and a man may be driven to dye his hands in the blood of a countryman, yet when passion has grown cool and the beatings of the heart have become steady and true, like the droppings of the sand in the half-hour glass, none but a murderer,—a detestable, cowardly, craven-breasted murderer,—would bury his knife in the body of youth. Shame! shame!” exclaimed the veteran, as he shook his hoary head, and his cheeks assumed a flush of abhorrent indignation; “shame! shame!—but I forget all this time I arn’t telling you the story. Captain P——, sir, always came out of his cabin arter dinner,—you mind me, sir, arter dinner,—and had the hands turned up to reef top-sails; and if they were more than two minutes and a half about it, he flogged the last man who came off each yard. Well, on the day before the mutiny,—I think I told you there was a mutiny, but if not I tell you so now,—on the day before the mutiny, the hands were turned up as usual and the mizen-topmen were rather slack in stays; so he, that’s the captain, your honour,—swore he would flog the last man off the mizen-top-sail yard. Now you must understand, the smartest seamen are always at the yard-arms to haul out the earings, and consequently, unless they can spring over the heads of the other topmen, they must be the last to lie-in. Well, so it happened this evening, and the two captains of the top, knowing that their commander would keep his word, made a spring for the top-mast rigging; in their haste and fear they missed their grasp, and fell on to the quarter-deck. They were both young, active men, and were much beloved by the ship’s company; they had gone aloft full of spirit and vigour, desirous to obey orders; the last beams of the sun, as it just touched the verge of the horizon, shone upon their light but manly frames stretching out to secure the leeches of the sail to the yard; and before the upper limb of the bright luminary had disappeared, they laid stretched on the deck, each a lifeless and mangled corpse! It’s hard lines that, your honour;” and the veteran held down his head in mournful cogitation.
“Hard lines indeed, old friend,” said I; “and really it seems surprising that men should so far forget the social ties, which in every station ought to bind together the brethren of the dust, as to commit deliberate acts of cruelty.”
“Mayhap you’re right, sir,” answered the pensioner, “though I can’t say exactly as I understands it all. As for being dustmen, we arn’t got no such great matter of dust at sea, because of the soakings we get; and sailors are apt to moisten their clay a bit when they can lay hold of the stuff. But with regard to the cruelty! there unfortunately was too much of it. But to return to my story. The poor lads were carried below, and many a half stifled curse was muttered as their shipmates touched the shattered limbs, and stained their hands in the blood of innocence. A silent, but deep feeling of revenge passed from heart to heart; the face was calm and smooth, but there was a storm in the breast that raged with fury. Well, your honour, the surgeon reported to Mr. Spriggs, the first-lieutenant, that the lads were both dead; and he—that’s the first-lieutenant,—told the captain, who immediately said, ‘Throw the lubbers overboard.’ And this was done,—for to have read any sarvice over them would have been insult and mockery; and thus were two human beings sent out of the world worse than dogs. Not that I think a cast of the parson’s office is of any great consequence to a dead man; but nevertheless, the living like to see things o’that kind done somewhat ship-shape, and besides there’s many a warm glow of friendship lighted up among messmates, when natur stirs within ’em over an ocean grave. The words ‘We commit his body to the deep,’ that deep whose surface is as familiar to a seaman, as the face of the mother is to the infant, and under ‘the sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection,’—oh, your honour, I can’t explain what I mean, but take an old tar’s word that there’s none so sensible of the power of the Almighty as them who are constantly hearing his voice upon the waters, and who so often witness the opening of his hands to loose the tempest.” The veteran paused for a moment or two, gazing intently upon the picture, as if the scene he had described was present to his view; he then continued, “The hands were called on deck and very threatening language used to them, and some were particularly pointed out as the next to be seized up at the gangway. That night, when the watch below was turned in, there was a secret meeting of the petty officers, and a plan was arranged for taking possession of the ship; no one mentioned murder, but each one knew by the wolfish strugglings of vengeance in his breast, that blood must be shed before their purpose could be achieved. The ringleaders were French refugers, who were fighting against their own country and had no love for ours,—fellows that it was dangerous to trust; and yet what is very remarkable, the captain does not appear to have suspected evil designs, so confident was he of his own supposed superiority in preserving discipline. But there was one whose eyes looked on with anxious apprehensions,—for like the soundings to the pilot, those eyes had studied the various changes in the features of man to fathom out the depths of the heart,—it was woman, your honour. Fanny Martin was the boatswain’s wife, and though without larning and that sort of eddyfication, she loved her husband and trembled for his safety; for he had had some words with one of the master’s-mates of the name of Farmer, and she strongly suspected Farmer was bent upon mischief, particularly as she saw him during the next day holding mysterious communications with the people, and having the keys of the spirit-room to get up the grog, he had distributed extra allowance amongst the disaffected.