CHAPTER LXXXVI.
THE REBELS BROUGHT TO THE MAST.
Though many heads of hair were shorn, and many fine beards reaped thatday, yet several still held out, and vowed to defend their sacred hairto the last gasp of their breath. These were chiefly old sailors--someof them petty officers--who, presuming upon their age or rank,doubtless thought that, after so many had complied with the Captain'scommands, _they_, being but a handful, would be exempted fromcompliance, and remain a monument of our master's clemency.
That same evening, when the drum beat to quarters, the sailors wentsullenly to their guns, and the old tars who still sported their beardsstood up, grim, defying, and motionless, as the rows of sculpturedAssyrian kings, who, with their magnificent beards, have recently beenexhumed by Layard.
When the proper time arrived, their names were taken down by theofficers of divisions, and they were afterward summoned in a body tothe mast, where the Captain stood ready to receive them. The wholeship's company crowded to the spot, and, amid the breathless multitude,the vener-able rebels advanced and unhatted.
It was an imposing display. They were old and venerable mariners; theircheeks had been burned brown in all latitudes, wherever the sun sends atropical ray. Reverend old tars, one and all; some of them might havebeen grandsires, with grandchildren in every port round the world. Theyought to have commanded the veneration of the most frivolous ormagisterial beholder. Even Captain Claret they ought to have humiliatedinto deference. But a Scythian is touched with no reverentialpromptings; and, as the Roman student well knows, the august Senatorsthemselves, seated in the Senate-house, on the majestic hill of theCapitol, had their holy beards tweaked by the insolent chief of theGoths.
Such an array of beards! spade-shaped, hammer-shaped, dagger-shaped,triangular, square, peaked, round, hemispherical, and forked. But chiefamong them all, was old Ushant's, the ancient Captain of theForecastle. Of a Gothic venerableness, it fell upon his breast like acontinual iron-gray storm.
Ah! old Ushant, Nestor of the crew! it promoted my longevity to beholdyou.
He was a man-of-war's-man of the old Benbow school. He wore a shortcue, which the wags of the mizzen-top called his "_plug of pig-tail_."About his waist was a broad boarder's belt, which he wore, he said, tobrace his main-mast, meaning his backbone; for at times he complainedof rheumatic twinges in the spine, consequent upon sleeping on deck,now and then, during the night-watches of upward of half a century. Hissheath-knife was an antique--a sort of old-fashioned pruning-hook; itshandle--a sperm whale's tooth--was carved all over with ships, cannon,and anchors. It was attached to his neck by a _lanyard_, elaboratelyworked into "rose-knots" and "Turks' heads" by his own venerablefingers.
Of all the crew, this Ushant was most beloved by my glorious captain,Jack Chase, who one day pointed him out to me as the old man was slowlycoming down the rigging from the fore-top.
"There, White-Jacket! isn't that old Chaucer's shipman?
"'A dagger hanging by a las hadde he, About his nekke, under his arm adown; The hote sommer hadde made his beard all brown. Hardy he is, and wise; I undertake With many a tempest has his beard be shake.'
From the Canterbury Tales, White-Jacket! and must not old Ushant havebeen living in Chaucer's time, that Chaucer could draw his portrait sowell?"