White Jacket; Or, The World on a Man-of-War Part 42

HOW THEY BURY A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN AT SEA.

Quarters over in the morning, the boatswain and his four mates stood round the main hatchway, and after giving the usual whistle, made the customary announcement--"_All hands bury the dead, ahoy!_"

In a man-of-war, every thing, even to a man's funeral and burial, proceeds with the unrelenting prompt.i.tude of the martial code. And whether it is _all hands bury the dead!_ or _all hands splice the main-brace_, the order is given in the same hoa.r.s.e tones.

Both officers and men a.s.sembled in the lee waist, and through that bareheaded crowd the mess-mates of Shenly brought his body to the same gangway where it had thrice winced under the scourge. But there is something in death that enn.o.bles even a pauper's corpse; and the Captain himself stood bareheaded before the remains of a man whom, with his hat on, he had sentenced to the ignominious gratings when alive.

"_I am the resurrection and the life!_" solemnly began the Chaplain, in full canonicals, the prayer-book in his hand.

"d.a.m.n you! off those booms!" roared a boatswain's mate to a crowd of top-men, who had elevated themselves to gain a better view of the scene.

"_We commit this body to the deep!_" At the word, Shenly's mess-mates tilted the board, and the dead sailor sank in the sea.

"Look aloft," whispered Jack Chase. "See that bird! it is the spirit of Shenly."

Gazing upward, all beheld a snow-white, solitary fowl, which--whence coming no one could tell--had been hovering over the main-mast during the service, and was now sailing far up into the depths of the sky.

CHAPTER Lx.x.xII.

WHAT REMAINS OF A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN AFTER HIS BURIAL AT SEA.

Upon examining Shenly's bag, a will was found, scratched in pencil, upon a blank leaf in the middle of his Bible; or, to use the phrase of one of the seamen, in the midships, atween the Bible and Testament, where the Pothecary (Apocrypha) uses to be.

The will was comprised in one solitary sentence, exclusive of the dates and signatures: "_In case I die on the voyage, the Purser will please pay over my wages to my wife, who lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire_."

Besides the testator's, there were two signatures of witnesses.

This last will and testament being shown to the Purser, who, it seems, had been a notary, or surrogate, or some sort of cosy chamber pract.i.tioner in his time, he declared that it must be "proved." So the witnesses were called, and after recognising their hands to the paper; for the purpose of additionally testing their honesty, they were interrogated concerning the day on which they had signed--whether it was _Banyan Day_, or _Duff Day_, or _Swampseed Day_; for among the sailors on board a man-of-war, the land terms, _Monday_, _Tuesday_, _Wednesday_, are almost unknown. In place of these they subst.i.tute nautical names, some of which are significant of the daily bill of fare at dinner for the week.

The two witnesses were somewhat puzzled by the attorney-like questions of the Purser, till a third party came along, one of the ship's barbers, and declared, of his own knowledge, that Shenly executed the instrument on a _Shaving Day_; for the deceased seaman had informed him of the circ.u.mstance, when he came to have his beard reaped on the morning of the event.

In the Purser's opinion, this settled the question; and it is to be hoped that the widow duly received her husband's death-earned wages.

Shenly was dead and gone; and what was Shenly's epitaph?

--"D. D."--

opposite his name in the Purser's books, in "_Black's best Writing Fluid_"--funereal name and funereal hue--meaning "Discharged, Dead."

CHAPTER Lx.x.xIII.

A MAN-OF-WAR COLLEGE.

In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, curses mix with tears; and the sigh and the sob furnish the ba.s.s to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own. Checkers were played in the waist at the time of Shenly's burial; and as the body plunged, a player swept the board. The bubbles had hardly burst, when all hands were _piped down_ by the Boatswain, and the old jests were heard again, as if Shenly himself were there to hear.

This man-of-war life has not left me unhardened. I cannot stop to weep over Shenly now; that would be false to the life I depict; wearing no mourning weeds, I resume the task of portraying our man-of-war world.

Among the various other vocations, all driven abreast on board of the Neversink, was that of the schoolmaster. There were two academies in the frigate. One comprised the apprentice boys, who, upon certain days of the week, were indoctrinated in the mysteries of the primer by an invalid corporal of marines, a slender, wizzen-cheeked man, who had received a liberal infant-school education.

The other school was a far more pretentious affair--a sort of army and navy seminary combined, where mystical mathematical problems were solved by the midshipmen, and great ships-of-the-line were navigated over imaginary shoals by unimaginable observations of the moon and the stars, and learned lectures were delivered upon great guns, small arms, and the curvilinear lines described by bombs in the air.

"_The Professor_" was the t.i.tle bestowed upon the erudite gentleman who conducted this seminary, and by that t.i.tle alone was he known throughout the ship. He was domiciled in the Ward-room, and circulated there on a social par with the Purser, Surgeon, and other _non-combatants_ and Quakers. By being advanced to the dignity of a peerage in the Ward-room, Science and Learning were enn.o.bled in the person of this Professor, even as divinity was honoured in the Chaplain enjoying the rank of a spiritual peer.

Every other afternoon, while at sea, the Professor a.s.sembled his pupils on the half-deck, near the long twenty-four pounders. A ba.s.s drum-head was his desk, his pupils forming a semicircle around him, seated on shot-boxes and match-tubs.

They were in the jelly of youth, and this learned Professor poured into their susceptible hearts all the gentle gunpowder maxims of war.

Presidents of Peace Societies and Superintendents of Sabbath-schools, must it not have been a most interesting sight?

But the Professor himself was a noteworthy person. A tall, thin, spectacled man, about forty years old, with a student's stoop in his shoulders, and wearing uncommonly scanty pantaloons, exhibiting an undue proportion of his boots. In early life he had been a cadet in the military academy of West Point; but, becoming very weak-sighted, and thereby in a good manner disqualified for active service in the field, he had declined entering the army, and accepted the office of Professor in the Navy.

His studies at West Point had thoroughly grounded him in a knowledge of gunnery; and, as he was not a little of a pedant, it was sometimes amusing, when the sailors were at quarters, to hear him criticise their evolutions at the batteries. He would quote Dr. Hutton's Tracts on the subject, also, in the original, "_The French Bombardier_," and wind up by Italian pa.s.sages from the "_Prattica Manuale dell' Artiglieria_."

Though not required by the Navy regulations to instruct his scholars in aught but the application of mathematics to navigation, yet besides this, and besides instructing them in the theory of gunnery, he also sought to root them in the theory of frigate and fleet tactics. To be sure, he himself did not know how to splice a rope or furl a sail; and, owing to his partiality for strong coffee, he was apt to be nervous when we fired salutes; yet all this did not prevent him from delivering lectures on cannonading and "breaking the enemy's line."

He had arrived at his knowledge of tactics by silent, solitary study, and earnest meditation in the sequestered retreat of his state-room.

His case was somewhat parallel to the Scotchman's--John. Clerk, Esq., of Eldin--who, though he had never been to sea, composed a quarto treatise on fleet-fighting, which to this day remains a text-book; and he also originated a nautical manoeuvre, which has given to England many a victory over her foes.

Now there was a large black-board, something like a great-gun target--only it was square--which during the professor's lectures was placed upright on the gun-deck, supported behind by three boarding-pikes. And here he would chalk out diagrams of great fleet engagements; making marks, like the soles of shoes, for the ships, and drawing a dog-vane in one corner to denote the a.s.sumed direction of the wind. This done, with a cutla.s.s he would point out every spot of interest.

"Now, young gentlemen, the board before you exhibits the disposition of the British West Indian squadron under Rodney, when, early on the morning of the 9th of April, in the year of our blessed Lord 1782, he discovered part of the French fleet, commanded by the Count de Gra.s.se, lying under the north end of the Island of Dominica. It was at this juncture that the Admiral gave the signal for the British line to prepare for battle, and stand on. D'ye understand, young gentlemen?

Well, the British van having nearly fetched up with the centre of the enemy--who, be it remembered, were then on the starboard tack--and Rodney's centre and rear being yet becalmed under the lee of the land--the question I ask you is, What should Rodney now do?"

"Blaze away, by all means!" responded a rather confident reefer, who had zealously been observing the diagram.

"But, sir, his centre and rear are still becalmed, and his van has not yet closed with the enemy."

"Wait till he _does_ come in range, and _then_ blaze away," said the reefer.

"Permit me to remark, Mr. Pert, that '_blaze away_' is not a strictly technical term; and also permit me to hint, Mr. Pert, that you should consider the subject rather more deeply before you hurry forward your opinion."

This rebuke not only abashed Mr. Pert, but for a time intimidated the rest; and the professor was obliged to proceed, and extricate the British fleet by himself. He concluded by awarding Admiral Rodney the victory, which must have been exceedingly gratifying to the family pride of the surviving relatives and connections of that distinguished hero.

"Shall I clean the board, sir?" now asked Mr. Pert, brightening up.

"No, sir; not till you have saved that crippled French ship in the corner. That ship, young gentlemen, is the Glorieuse: you perceive she is cut off from her consorts, and the whole British fleet is giving chase to her. Her bowsprit is gone; her rudder is torn away; she has one hundred round shot in her hull, and two thirds of her men are dead or dying. What's to be done? the wind being at northeast by north?"

"Well, sir," said Mr. Dash, a chivalric young gentleman from Virginia, "I wouldn't strike yet; I'd nail my colours to the main-royal-mast! I would, by Jove!"

"That would not save your ship, sir; besides, your main-mast has gone by the board."