There is a volume of argument, in this defence, against the whisky-ration. It is a shame for the government to render a sailor half intoxicated, and then punish him for becoming wholly so. It is the first glass, and not the last, on which your indignation should light. This whisky-ration has done evil enough in the service; let it be consigned to perdition, where it belongs.
Thursday, May 14. The birds which followed us from the coast have returned; but several boobies, who had probably lost their reckoning, circled around our masts at sunset. As twilight deepened, they perched on our yards, and were in a few minutes sound asleep. They might have been easily captured, but sailors are not very partial to such trophies. There is something in their name which they do not like, and which seems to react on the valor of the captor. Give them a tiger, and they will storm his jungle with only such weapons as they can pick up on the way. But a booby, that can harm no one, and whose stupidity seems to have suggested his name, is allowed to go unmolested. The weakest man in the community has generally the fewest detractors, while an intellectual giant will always have a pack at his heels. There is more honor in striking at a lion, than there is in killing a monkey.
Friday, May 15. The sick sailor whom I came down from Lima to see, has passed the crisis of his disease, and may recover. He fluttered for some time between life and death. The vital flame seemed to come and go as a thing apart from him. But now its ray is more bright and steady. He is an orphan, without father or mother; but has a sister, to whom he is much attached. The idea of being permitted to see her again, is almost too much for his exhausted state. If you would get at the true character of the sailor, you must visit him in his sickness. His better feelings then gush out over the asperities of his lot, like a spring from amid the tangled shrubs of the wildwood.
Saturday, May 16. We went to general quarters this morning at three bells, and exercised the guns. Those on the main-deck are so heavy, they require a prodigious outlay of strength to work them. Any irregularity in the application of the force frustrates all dexterity of movement; each man must forego all individual volition, independent action, and become a part of the mechanism which is to be tasked to the utmost as a whole; and yet he must have all that enthusiasm which is felt in freedom from constraint, and when the strong impulses of the soul throw themselves off in resistless action. It is much easier to slash away gallantly with the sabre, than to train quickly and accurately on the enemy a forty-four-pounder. This requires self-possession, and indomitable firmness. Sailors have no retreat. They must conquer, die, or surrender. The last they would seldom do, were it not forced upon them by the laws of humanity. They would sooner die, as boarders, on the deck of the enemy, than survive, as captives, over their own keel.
Sunday, May 17. Divine service: subject of the sermon, the influence of religion on a man’s intellectual character. The object of the speaker was to show that religion aids mental development,—that while it strikes down pride, it imparts true dignity. Nothing can be more absurd than the idea, that religion impairs strength of character. It invests even the timid with a firmness and force which stand undismayed amid dungeons, racks, and flaming stakes.
To possess the religious character seems to the sailor such a vast stride in advance of his ordinary habits, that he is extremely diffident in preferring his humble claims. He will pray when peril presses, for he thinks a wicked man may do that, but he connects a worthy profession of personal piety with a degree of sanctity hardly compatible with the infirmities of his nature. He has rarely enjoyed the advantages of a religious education; no moral training has gradually introduced him to the sanctities of the Christian life. The utmost that he feels himself fit to do is, like the poor publican, to smite upon his breast, and exclaim, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” But to take his place among those whose piety is to guide and animate others, is to him as if a lost star were to spring out of the depths of darkness, and take its station among the burning constellations of heaven. When therefore he does avow his religious faith and hopes, it is generally with him no halfway measure; no decent compromise between conscience and inclination. He takes with him his all for this world and the next.
Monday, May 18. The phrase “fickle as the wind” is not applicable to the trades of the Pacific. The wind before which we are running has hardly veered a point for the last week. I commend its steadiness to those politicians who find it necessary every few months to define their position.
We have had about our ship this afternoon several sea-birds, to which sailors have given the name of boatswains. They have a long feather in their tail; which streams behind them like the train of a duchess at court. But it answers a much wiser purpose, for instead of embarrassing motion, it acts as a rudder, and steadies the bird in navigating the aerial currents. Nature never bestows any useless appendages. These are the achievements of human vanity; and sorry achievements they are. They even enter the grave, and mock with their tinsel its awful reality.
Tuesday, May 19. We have had through the day a soft, hazy atmosphere. At sunset these light, floating vapors gathered themselves into more substantial clouds, and promised a shower. But after hanging on the horizon for a time, they seemed to sink below its rim. The moon came up late; her soft light fell on the sea, but the wings of the clouds, if touched by the effulgence, were invisible. The wind, though of sufficient force to carry us on some eight knots, scarcely agitated the breast of the ocean. It seemed as something intended to move over its level plain and not to disturb its depths. It was like a shadow gliding over the tops of a vast sleeping forest.
Wednesday, May 20. Our gun-carriages, with their black paint on a white ground, could never be made to look neat for any length of time. The white was perpetually working itself through its sable covering, like an inborn levity of heart through an assumed gravity of demeanor. Our captain and first lieutenant, who have an acknowledged taste in every thing that belongs to the appearance of a man-of-war, ordered the carriages thoroughly scraped of every particle of paint. A dark stain was then given to the wood, through which the grain shows itself in its native strength. Over this a thin varnish of spirit and oil was spread, imparting to the wood a beautiful polish, and blending itself with its texture. The battery of a frigate, especially as you come upon her gun-deck, is that which first strikes the eye. Like the pulpit of a church, if forlorn in its appearance, elegance elsewhere will not retrieve the error. A rough pulpit may have thunder in it, but the thunder don’t lie in its roughness.