CHAPTER XIII.
A MAN-OF-WAR HERMIT IN A MOB.
The allusion to the poet Lemsford in a previous chapter, leads me tospeak of our mutual friends, Nord and Williams, who, with Lemsfordhimself, Jack Chase, and my comrades of the main-top, comprised almostthe only persons with whom I unreservedly consorted while on board thefrigate. For I had not been long on board ere I found that it would notdo to be intimate with everybody. An indiscriminate intimacy with allhands leads to sundry annoyances and scrapes, too often ending with adozen at the gang-way. Though I was above a year in the frigate, therewere scores of men who to the last remained perfect strangers to me,whose very names I did not know, and whom I would hardly be able torecognise now should I happen to meet them in the streets.
In the dog-watches at sea, during the early part of the evening, themain-deck is generally filled with crowds of pedestrians, promenadingup and down past the guns, like people taking the air in Broadway. Atsuch times, it is curious to see the men nodding to each other'srecognitions (they might not have seen each other for a week);exchanging a pleasant word with a friend; making a hurried appointmentto meet him somewhere aloft on the morrow, or passing group after groupwithout deigning the slightest salutation. Indeed, I was not at allsingular in having but comparatively few acquaintances on board, thoughcertainly carrying my fastidiousness to an unusual extent.
My friend Nord was a somewhat remarkable character; and if mysteryincludes romance, he certainly was a very romantic one. Before seekingan introduction to him through Lemsford, I had often marked his tall,spare, upright figure stalking like Don Quixote among the pigmies ofthe Afterguard, to which he belonged. At first I found him exceedinglyreserved and taciturn; his saturnine brow wore a scowl; he was almostrepelling in his demeanour. In a word, he seemed desirous of hinting,that his list of man-of war friends was already made up, complete, andfull; and there was no room for more. But observing that the only manhe ever consorted with was Lemsford, I had too much magnanimity, bygoing off in a pique at his coldness, to let him lose forever thechance of making so capital an acquaintance as myself. Besides, I sawit in his eye, that the man had been a reader of good books; I wouldhave staked my life on it, that he seized the right meaning ofMontaigne. I saw that he was an earnest thinker; I more than suspectedthat he had been bolted in the mill of adversity. For all these things,my heart yearned toward him; I determined to know him.
At last I succeeded; it was during a profoundly quiet midnight watch,when I perceived him walking alone in the waist, while most of the menwere dozing on the carronade-slides.
That night we scoured all the prairies of reading; dived into thebosoms of authors, and tore out their hearts; and that nightWhite-Jacket learned more than he has ever done in any single nightsince.
The man was a marvel. He amazed me, as much as Coleridge did thetroopers among whom he enlisted. What could have induced such a man toenter a man-of-war, all my sapience cannot fathom. And how he managedto preserve his dignity, as he did, among such a rabble rout wasequally a mystery. For he was no sailor; as ignorant of a ship, indeed,as a man from the sources of the Niger. Yet the officers respected him;and the men were afraid of him. This much was observable, however, thathe faithfully discharged whatever special duties devolved upon him; andwas so fortunate as never to render himself liable to a reprimand.Doubtless, he took the same view of the thing that another of the crewdid; and had early resolved, so to conduct himself as never to run therisk of the scourge. And this it must have been--added to whateverincommunicable grief which might have been his--that made this Nordsuch a wandering recluse, even among our man-of-war mob. Nor could hehave long swung his hammock on board, ere he must have found that, toinsure his exemption from that thing which alone affrighted him, hemust be content for the most part to turn a man-hater, and sociallyexpatriate himself from many things, which might have rendered hissituation more tolerable. Still more, several events that took placemust have horrified him, at times, with the thought that, however hemight isolate and entomb himself, yet for all this, the improbabilityof his being overtaken by what he most dreaded never advanced to theinfallibility of the impossible.
In my intercourse with Nord, he never made allusion to his pastcareer--a subject upon which most high-bred castaways in a man-of-warare very diffuse; relating their adventures at the gaming-table; therecklessness with which they have run through the amplest fortunes in asingle season; their alms-givings, and gratuities to porters and poorrelations; and above all, their youthful indiscretions, and thebroken-hearted ladies they have left behind. No such tales had Nord totell. Concerning the past, he was barred and locked up like the specievaults of the Bank of England. For anything that dropped from him, noneof us could be sure that he had ever existed till now. Altogether, hewas a remarkable man.
My other friend, Williams, was a thorough-going Yankee from Maine, whohad been both a peddler and a pedagogue in his day. He had all mannerof stories to tell about nice little country frolics, and would runover an endless list of his sweethearts. He was honest, acute, witty,full of mirth and good humour--a laughing philosopher. He wasinvaluable as a pill against the spleen; and, with the view ofextending the advantages of his society to the saturnine Nord, Iintroduced them to each other; but Nord cut him dead the very sameevening, when we sallied out from between the guns for a walk on themain-deck.