CHAPTER XII.
THE GOOD OR BAD TEMPER OF MEN-OF-WAR'S MEN, IN A GREAT DEGREE,ATTRIBUTABLE TO THEIR PARTICULAR STATIONS AND DUTIES ABOARD SHIP.
Quoin, the quarter-gunner, was the representative of a class on boardthe Neversink, altogether too remarkable to be left astern, withoutfurther notice, in the rapid wake of these chapters.
As has been seen, Quoin was full of unaccountable whimsies; he was,withal, a very cross, bitter, ill-natured, inflammable old man. So,too, were all the members of the gunner's gang; including the twogunner's mates, and all the quarter-gunners. Every one of them had thesame dark brown complexion; all their faces looked like smoked hams.They were continually grumbling and growling about the batteries;running in and out among the guns; driving the sailors away from them;and cursing and swearing as if all their conscience had beenpowder-singed, and made callous, by their calling. Indeed they were amost unpleasant set of men; especially Priming, the nasal-voicedgunner's mate, with the hare-lip; and Cylinder, his stutteringcoadjutor, with the clubbed foot. But you will always observe, that thegunner's gang of every man-of-war are invariably ill-tempered, uglyfeatured, and quarrelsome. Once when I visited an Englishline-of-battle ship, the gunner's gang were fore and aft, polishing upthe batteries, which, according to the Admiral's fancy, had beenpainted white as snow. Fidgeting round the great thirty-two-pounders,and making stinging remarks at the sailors and each other, theyreminded one of a swarm of black wasps, buzzing about rows of whiteheadstones in a church-yard.
Now, there can be little doubt, that their being so much among the gunsis the very thing that makes a gunner's gang so cross and quarrelsome.Indeed, this was once proved to the satisfaction of our whole companyof main-top-men. A fine top-mate of ours, a most merry andcompanionable fellow, chanced to be promoted to a quarter-gunner'sberth. A few days afterward, some of us main-top-men, his old comrades,went to pay him a visit, while he was going his regular rounds throughthe division of guns allotted to his care. But instead of greeting uswith his usual heartiness, and cracking his pleasant jokes, to ouramazement, he did little else but scowl; and at last, when we ralliedhim upon his ill-temper, he seized a long black rammer from overhead,and drove us on deck; threatening to report us, if we ever dared to befamiliar with him again.
My top-mates thought that this remarkable metamorphose was the effectproduced upon a weak, vain character suddenly elevated from the levelof a mere seaman to the dignified position of a _petty officer_. Butthough, in similar cases, I had seen such effects produced upon some ofthe crew; yet, in the present instance, I knew better than that;--itwas solely brought about by his consorting with with those villainous,irritable, ill-tempered cannon; more especially from his being subjectto the orders of those deformed blunderbusses, Priming and Cylinder.
The truth seems to be, indeed, that all people should be very carefulin selecting their callings and vocations; very careful in seeing toit, that they surround themselves by good-humoured, pleasant-lookingobjects; and agreeable, temper-soothing sounds. Many an angelicdisposition has had its even edge turned, and hacked like a saw; andmany a sweet draught of piety has soured on the heart from people'schoosing ill-natured employments, and omitting to gather round themgood-natured landscapes. Gardeners are almost always pleasant, affablepeople to con-verse with; but beware of quarter-gunners, keepers ofarsenals, and lonely light-house men.
It would be advisable for any man, who from an unlucky choice of aprofession, which it is too late to change for another, should find histemper souring, to endeavour to counteract that misfortune, by fillinghis private chamber with amiable, pleasurable sights and sounds. Insummer time, an Aeolian harp can be placed in your window at a verytrifling expense; a conch-shell might stand on your mantel, to be takenup and held to the ear, that you may be soothed by its continuallulling sound, when you feel the blue fit stealing over you. Forsights, a gay-painted punch-bowl, or Dutch tankard--never mind aboutfilling it--might be recommended. It should be placed on a bracket inthe pier. Nor is an old-fashioned silver ladle, nor a chaseddinner-castor, nor a fine portly demijohn, nor anything, indeed, thatsavors of eating and drinking, bad to drive off the spleen. But perhapsthe best of all is a shelf of merrily-bound books, containing comedies,farces, songs, and humorous novels. You need never open them; only havethe titles in plain sight. For this purpose, Peregrine Pickle is a goodbook; so is Gil Blas; so is Goldsmith.
But of all chamber furniture in the world, best calculated to cure ahad temper, and breed a pleasant one, is the sight of a lovely wife. Ifyou have children, however, that are teething, the nursery should be agood way up stairs; at sea, it ought to be in the mizzen-top. Indeed,teething children play the very deuce with a husband's temper. I haveknown three promising young husbands completely spoil on their wives'hands, by reason of a teething child, whose worrisomeness happened tobe aggravated at the time by the summer-complaint. With a breakingheart, and my handkerchief to my eyes, I followed those three haplessyoung husbands, one after the other, to their premature graves.
Gossiping scenes breed gossips. Who so chatty as hotel-clerks, marketwomen, auctioneers, bar-keepers, apothecaries, newspaper-reporters,monthly-nurses, and all those who live in bustling crowds, or arepresent at scenes of chatty interest.
Solitude breeds taciturnity; _that_ every body knows; who so taciturnas authors, taken as a race?
A forced, interior quietude, in the midst of great out-ward commotion,breeds moody people. Who so moody as railroad-brakemen,steam-boat-engineers, helmsmen, and tenders of power-looms in cottonfactories? For all these must hold their peace while employed, and letthe machinery do the chatting; they cannot even edge in a singlesyllable.
Now, this theory about the wondrous influence of habitual sights andsounds upon the human temper, was suggested by my experiences on boardour frigate. And al-though I regard the example furnished by ourquarter-gunners--especially him who had once been our top-mate--as byfar the strongest argument in favour of the general theory; yet, theentire ship abounded with illustrations of its truth. Who were moreliberal-hearted, lofty-minded, gayer, more jocund, elastic,adventurous, given to fun and frolic, than the top-men of the fore,main, and mizzen masts? The reason of their liberal-heartedness was,that they were daily called upon to expatiate themselves all over therigging. The reason of their lofty-mindedness was, that they were highlifted above the petty tumults, carping cares, and paltrinesses of thedecks below.
And I feel persuaded in my inmost soul, that it is to the fact of myhaving been a main-top-man; and especially my particular post being onthe loftiest yard of the frigate, the main-royal-yard; that I am nowenabled to give such a free, broad, off-hand, bird's-eye, and, morethan all, impartial account of our man-of-war world; withholdingnothing; inventing nothing; nor flattering, nor scandalising any; butmeting out to all--commodore and messenger-boy alike--their precisedescriptions and deserts.
The reason of the mirthfulness of these top-men was, that they alwayslooked out upon the blue, boundless, dimpled, laughing, sunny sea. Nordo I hold, that it militates against this theory, that of a stormy day,when the face of the ocean was black, and overcast, that some of themwould grow moody, and chose to sit apart. On the contrary, it onlyproves the thing which I maintain. For even on shore, there are manypeople naturally gay and light-hearted, who, whenever the autumnal windbegins to bluster round the corners, and roar along the chimney-stacks,straight becomes cross, petulant, and irritable. What is more mellowthan fine old ale? Yet thunder will sour the best nut-brown ever brewed.
The _Holders_ of our frigate, the Troglodytes, who lived down in thetarry cellars and caves below the berth-deck, were, nearly all of them,men of gloomy dispositions, taking sour views of things; one of themwas a blue-light Calvinist. Whereas, the old-sheet-anchor-men, whospent their time in the bracing sea-air and broad-cast sunshine of theforecastle, were free, generous-hearted, charitable, and full ofgood-will to all hands; though some of them, to tell the truth, provedsad exceptions; but exceptions only prove the rule.
br /> The "steady-cooks" on the berth-deck, the "steady-sweepers," and"steady-spit-box-musterers," in all divisions of the frigate, fore andaft, were a narrow-minded set; with contracted souls; imputable, nodoubt, to their groveling duties. More especially was this evinced inthe case of those odious ditchers and night scavengers, the ignoble"Waisters."
The members of the band, some ten or twelve in number, who had nothingto do but keep their instruments polished, and play a lively air nowand then, to stir the stagnant current in our poor old Commodore'storpid veins, were the most gleeful set of fellows you ever saw. Theywere Portuguese, who had been shipped at the Cape De Verd islands, onthe passage out. They messed by themselves; forming a dinner-party, notto be exceeded ire mirthfulness, by a club of young bridegrooms, threemonths after marriage, completely satisfied with their bargains, aftertesting them.
But what made them, now, so full of fun? What indeed but their merry,martial, mellow calling. Who could he a churl, and play a flageolet?who mean and spiritless, braying forth the souls of thousand heroesfrom his brazen trump? But still more efficacious, perhaps, inministering to the light spirits of the band, was the consolingthought, that should the ship ever go into action, they would beexempted from the perils of battle. In ships of war, the members of the"music," as the band is called, are generally non-combatants; andmostly ship, with the express understanding, that as soon as the vesselcomes within long gun-shot of an enemy, they shall have the privilegeof burrowing down in the cable-tiers, or sea coal-hole. Which showsthat they are inglorious, but uncommonly sensible fellows.
Look at the barons of the gun-room--Lieutenants, Purser, Marineofficers, Sailing-master--all of them gentlemen with stiff upper lips,and aristocratic cut noses. Why was this? Will any one deny, that fromtheir living so long in high military life, served by a crowd of menialstewards and cot-boys, and always accustomed to command right and left;will any one deny, I say, that by reason of this, their very noses hadbecome thin, peaked, aquiline, and aristocratically cartilaginous? Evenold Cuticle, the Surgeon, had a Roman nose.
But I never could account how it came to be, that our grey headed FirstLieutenant was a little lop-sided; that is, one of his shouldersdisproportionately dropped. And when I observed, that nearly all theFirst Lieutenants I saw in other men-of-war, besides many Second andThird Lieutenants, were similarly lop-sided, I knew that there must besome general law which induced the phenomenon; and I put myself tostudying it out, as an interesting problem. At last, I came to theconclusion--to which I still adhere--that their so long wearing onlyone epaulet (for to only one does their rank entitle them) was theinfallible clew to this mystery. And when any one reflects upon sowell-known a fact, that many sea Lieutenants grow decrepit from age,without attaining a Captaincy and wearing _two_ epaulets, which wouldstrike the balance between their shoulders, the above reason assignedwill not appear unwarrantable.