CHAPTER XXXI.
THE GUNNER UNDER HATCHES.
Among such a crowd of marked characters as were to be met with on boardour frigate, many of whom moved in mysterious circles beneath thelowermost deck, and at long intervals flitted into sight likeapparitions, and disappeared again for whole weeks together, there weresome who inordinately excited my curiosity, and whose names, callings,and precise abodes I industriously sought out, in order to learnsomething satisfactory concerning them.
While engaged in these inquiries, often fruitless, or but partiallygratified, I could not but regret that there was no public printedDirectory for the Neversink, such as they have in large towns,containing an alphabetic list of all the crew, and where they might befound. Also, in losing myself in some remote, dark corner of the bowelsof the frigate, in the vicinity of the various store-rooms, shops, andwarehouses, I much lamented that no enterprising tar had yet thought ofcompiling a _Hand-book of the Neversink_, so that the tourist mighthave a reliable guide.
Indeed, there were several parts of the ship under hatches shrouded inmystery, and completely inaccessible to the sailor.
Wondrous old doors, barred and bolted in dingy bulkheads, must haveopened into regions full of interest to a successful explorer.
They looked like the gloomy entrances to family vaults of buried dead;and when I chanced to see some unknown functionary insert his key, andenter these inexplicable apartments with a battle-lantern, as if onsolemn official business, I almost quaked to dive in with him, andsatisfy myself whether these vaults indeed contained the moulderingrelics of by-gone old Commodores and Post-captains. But the habitationsof the living commodore and captain--their spacious and curtainedcabins--were themselves almost as sealed volumes, and I passed them inhopeless wonderment, like a peasant before a prince's palace. Night andday armed sentries guarded their sacred portals, cutlass in hand; andhad I dared to cross their path, I would infallibly have been cut down,as if in battle. Thus, though for a period of more than a year I was aninmate of this floating box of live-oak, yet there were numberlessthings in it that, to the last, remained wrapped in obscurity, orconcerning which I could only lose myself in vague speculations. I wasas a Roman Jew of the Middle Ages, confined to the Jews' quarter of thetown, and forbidden to stray beyond my limits. Or I was as a moderntraveller in the same famous city, forced to quit it at last withoutgaining ingress to the most mysterious haunts--the innermost shrine ofthe Pope, and the dungeons and cells of the Inquisition.
But among all the persons and things on board that puzzled me, andfilled me most with strange emotions of doubt, misgivings and mystery,was the Gunner--a short, square, grim man, his hair and beard grizzledand singed, as if with gunpowder. His skin was of a flecky brown, likethe stained barrel of a fowling-piece, and his hollow eyes burned inhis head like blue-lights. He it was who had access to many of thosemysterious vaults I have spoken of. Often he might be seen groping hisway into them, followed by his subalterns, the old quarter-gunners, asif intent upon laying a train of powder to blow up the ship. Iremembered Guy Fawkes and the Parliament-house, and made earnestinquiry whether this gunner was a Roman Catholic. I felt relieved wheninformed that he was not.
A little circumstance which one of his _mates_ once told me heightenedthe gloomy interest with which I regarded his chief. He told me that,at periodical intervals, his master the Gunner, accompanied by hisphalanx, entered into the great Magazine under the Gun-room, of whichhe had sole custody and kept the key, nearly as big as the key of theBastile, and provided with lanterns, something like Sir Humphrey Davy'sSafety-lamp for coal mines, proceeded to turn, end for end, all thekegs of powder and packages of cartridges stored in this innermostexplosive vault, lined throughout with sheets of copper. In thevestibule of the Magazine, against the panelling, were several pegs forslippers, and, before penetrating further than that vestibule, everyman of the gunner's gang silently removed his shoes, for fear that thenails in their heels might possibly create a spark, by striking againstthe coppered floor within. Then, with slippered feet and with hushedwhispers, they stole into the heart of the place.
This turning of the powder was to preserve its inflammability. Andsurely it was a business full of direful interest, to be buried so deepbelow the sun, handling whole barrels of powder, any one of which,touched by the smallest spark, was powerful enough to blow up a wholestreet of warehouses.
The gunner went by the name of _Old Combustibles_, though I thoughtthis an undignified name for so momentous a personage, who had all ourlives in his hand.
While we lay in Callao, we received from shore several barrels ofpowder. So soon as the _launch_ came alongside with them, orders weregiven to extinguish all lights and all fires in the ship; and themaster-at-arms and his corporals inspected every deck to see that thisorder was obeyed; a very prudent precaution, no doubt, but not observedat all in the Turkish navy. The Turkish sailors will sit on theirgun-carriages, tranquilly smoking, while kegs of powder are beingrolled under their ignited pipe-bowls. This shows the great comfortthere is in the doctrine of these Fatalists, and how such a doctrine,in some things at least, relieves men from nervous anxieties. But weall are Fatalists at bottom. Nor need we so much marvel at the heroismof that army officer, who challenged his personal foe to bestride abarrel of powder with him--the match to be placed between them--and beblown up in good company, for it is pretty certain that the whole earthitself is a vast hogshead, full of inflammable materials, and which weare always bestriding; at the same time, that all good Christiansbelieve that at any minute the last day may come and the terriblecombustion of the entire planet ensue.
As if impressed with a befitting sense of the awfulness of his calling,our gunner always wore a fixed expression of solemnity, which washeightened by his grizzled hair and beard. But what imparted such asinister look to him, and what wrought so upon my imaginationconcerning this man, was a frightful scar crossing his left cheek andforehead. He had been almost mortally wounded, they said, with asabre-cut, during a frigate engagement in the last war with Britain.
He was the most methodical, exact, and punctual of all the forwardofficers. Among his other duties, it pertained to him, while inharbour, to see that at a certain hour in the evening one of the greatguns was discharged from the forecastle, a ceremony only observed in aflag-ship. And always at the precise moment you might behold himblowing his match, then applying it; and with that booming thunder inhis ear, and the smell of the powder in his hair, he retired to hishammock for the night. What dreams he must have had!
The same precision was observed when ordered to fire a gun to _bringto_ some ship at sea; for, true to their name, and preserving itsapplicability, even in times of peace, all men-of-war are great bullieson the high seas. They domineer over the poor merchantmen, and with ahissing hot ball sent bowling across the ocean, compel them to stoptheir headway at pleasure.
It was enough to make you a man of method for life, to see the gunnersuperintending his subalterns, when preparing the main-deck batteriesfor a great national salute. While lying in harbour, intelligencereached us of the lamentable casualty that befell certain high officersof state, including the acting Secretary of the Navy himself, someother member of the President's cabinet, a Commodore, and others, allengaged in experimenting upon a new-fangled engine of war. At the sametime with the receipt of this sad news, orders arrived to fireminute-guns for the deceased head of the naval department. Upon thisoccasion the gunner was more than usually ceremonious, in seeing thatthe long twenty-fours were thoroughly loaded and rammed down, and thenaccurately marked with chalk, so as to be discharged in undeviatingrotation, first from the larboard side, and then from the starboard.
But as my ears hummed, and all my bones danced in me with thereverberating din, and my eyes and nostrils were almost suffocated withthe smoke, and when I saw this grim old gunner firing away so solemnly,I thought it a strange mode of honouring a man's memory who had himselfbeen slaughtered by a cannon. Only the smoke, that, after rolling in atthe po
rt-holes, rapidly drifted away to leeward, and was lost to view,seemed truly emblematical touching the personage thus honoured, sincethat great non-combatant, the Bible, assures us that our life is but avapour, that quickly passeth away.