At the earnest entreaties of the seamen, Lemsford, the gun-deck poet,had been prevailed upon to draw up this bill. And upon this oneoccasion his literary abilities were far from being underrated, even bythe least intellectual person on board. Nor must it be omitted that,before the bill was placarded, Captain Claret, enacting the part ofcensor and grand chamberlain ran over a manuscript copy of "_The OldWagon Paid Off_," to see whether it contained anything calculated tobreed disaffection against lawful authority among the crew. He objectedto some parts, but in the end let them all pass.
The morning of The Fourth--most anxiously awaited--dawned clear andfair. The breeze was steady; the air bracing cold; and one and all thesailors anticipated a gleeful afternoon. And thus was falsified theprophecies of certain old growlers averse to theatricals, who hadpredicted a gale of wind that would squash all the arrangements of thegreen-room.
As the men whose regular turns, at the time of the performance, wouldcome round to be stationed in the tops, and at the various halyards andrunning ropes about the spar-deck, could not be permitted to partake inthe celebration, there accordingly ensued, during the morning, manyamusing scenes of tars who were anxious to procure substitutes at theirposts. Through the day, many anxious glances were cast to windward; butthe weather still promised fair.
At last _the people_ were piped to dinner; two bells struck; and soonafter, all who could be spared from their stations hurried to thehalf-deck. The capstan bars were placed on shot-boxes, as at prayers onSundays, furnishing seats for the audience, while a low stage, riggedby the carpenter's gang, was built at one end of the open space. Thecurtain was composed of a large ensign, and the bulwarks round aboutwere draperied with the flags of all nations. The ten or twelve membersof the brass band were ranged in a row at the foot of the stage, theirpolished instruments in their hands, while the consequential Captain ofthe Band himself was elevated upon a gun carriage.
At three bells precisely a group of ward-room officers emerged from theafter-hatchway, and seated themselves upon camp-stools, in a centralposition, with the stars and stripes for a canopy. _That_ was the royalbox. The sailors looked round for the Commodore but neither Commodorenor Captain honored _the people_ with their presence.
At the call of a bugle the band struck up _Hail Columbia_, the wholeaudience keeping time, as at Drury Lane, when _God Save The King_ isplayed after a great national victory.
At the discharge of a marine's musket the curtain rose, and foursailors, in the picturesque garb of Maltese mariners, staggered on thestage in a feigned state of intoxication. The truthfulness of therepresentation was much heightened by the roll of the ship.
"The Commodore," "Old Luff," "The Mayor," and "Gin and Sugar Sall,"were played to admiration, and received great applause. But at thefirst appearance of that universal favourite, Jack Chase, in thechivalric character of _Percy Royal-Mast_, the whole audiencesimultaneously rose to their feet, and greeted hire with three heartycheers, that almost took the main-top-sail aback.
Matchless Jack, _in full fig_, bowed again and again, with truequarter-deck grace and self possession; and when five or six untwistedstrands of rope and bunches of oakum were thrown to him, as substitutesfor bouquets, he took them one by one, and gallantly hung them from thebuttons of his jacket.
"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!--go on! go on!--stop hollering--hurrah!--goon!--stop hollering--hurrah!" was now heard on all sides, till at last,seeing no end to the enthusiasm of his ardent admirers, Matchless Jackstepped forward, and, with his lips moving in pantomime, plunged intothe thick of the part. Silence soon followed, but was fifty timesbroken by uncontrollable bursts of applause. At length, when thatheart-thrilling scene came on, where Percy Royal-Mast rescues fifteenoppressed sailors from the watch-house, in the teeth of a posse ofconstables, the audience leaped to their feet, overturned the capstanbars, and to a man hurled their hats on the stage in a delirium ofdelight. Ah Jack, that was a ten-stroke indeed!
The commotion was now terrific; all discipline seemed gone for ever;the Lieutenants ran in among the men, the Captain darted from hiscabin, and the Commodore nervously questioned the armed sentry at hisdoor as to what the deuce _the people_ were about. In the midst of allthis, the trumpet of the officer-of-the-deck, commanding thetop-gallant sails to be taken in, was almost completely drowned. Ablack squall was coming down on the weather-bow, and the boat-swain'smates bellowed themselves hoarse at the main-hatchway. There is noknowing what would have ensued, had not the bass drum suddenly beenheard, calling all hands to quarters, a summons not to be withstood.The sailors pricked their ears at it, as horses at the sound of acracking whip, and confusedly stumbled up the ladders to theirstations. The next moment all was silent but the wind, howling like athousand devils in the cordage.
"Stand by to reef all three top-sails!--settle away the halyards!--haulout--so: make fast!--aloft, top-men! and reef away!"
Thus, in storm and tempest terminated that day's theatricals. But thesailors never recovered from the disappointment of not having the"_True Yankee Sailor_" sung by the Irish Captain of the Head.
And here White-jacket must moralize a bit. The unwonted spectacle ofthe row of gun-room officers mingling with "the people" in applauding amere seaman like Jack Chase, filled me at the time with the mostpleasurable emotions. It is a sweet thing, thought I, to see theseofficers confess a human brotherhood with us, after all; a sweet thingto mark their cordial appreciation of the manly merits of my matchlessJack. Ah! they are noble fellows all round, and I do not know but Ihave wronged them sometimes in my thoughts.
Nor was it without similar pleasurable feelings that I witnessed thetemporary rupture of the ship's stern discipline, consequent upon thetumult of the theatricals. I thought to myself, this now is as itshould be. It is good to shake off, now and then, this iron yoke roundour necks. And after having once permitted us sailors to be a littlenoisy, in a harmless way--somewhat merrily turbulent--the officerscannot, with any good grace, be so excessively stern and unyielding asbefore. I began to think a man-of-war a man-of-peace-and-good-will,after all. But, alas! disappointment came.
Next morning the same old scene was enacted at the gang-way. Andbeholding the row of uncompromising-looking-officers there assembledwith the Captain, to witness punishment--the same officers who had beenso cheerfully disposed over night--an old sailor touched my shoulderand said, "See, White-Jacket, all round they have _shipped theirquarter-deck faces again_. But this is the way."
I afterward learned that this was an old man-of-war's-man's phrase,expressive of the facility with which a sea-officer falls back upon allthe severity of his dignity, after a temporary suspension of it.