32. CHAPTER XXXII.
In men-of-war, the space on the uppermost deck, round
about the main-mast, is the Police-office, Court-house, and
yard of execution, where all charges are lodged, causes tried,
and punishment administered. In frigate phrase, to be brought
up to the mast, is equivalent to being presented before the
grand-jury, to see whether a true bill will be found against you.
From the merciless, inquisitorial baiting, which sailors,
charged with offences, too often experience at the mast, that
vicinity is usually known among them as the bull-ring.
The main-mast, moreover, is the only place where the sailor
can hold formal communication with the captain and officers.
If any one has been robbed; if any one has been evilly
entreated; if any one's character has been defamed; if any
one has a request to present; if any one has aught important
for the executive of the ship to know—straight to the mainmast
he repairs; and stands there—generally with his hat
off—waiting the pleasure of the officer of the deck, to advance
and communicate with him. Often, the most ludicrous scenes
occur, and the most comical complaints are made.
One clear, cold morning, while we were yet running away
from the Cape, a raw-boned, crack-pated Down Easter, belonging
to the Waist, made his appearance at the mast, dolefully
exhibiting a blackened tin pan, bearing a few crusty
traces of some sort of a sea-pie, which had been cooked in it.
“Well, sir, what now?” said the Lieutenant of the Deck,
advancing.
“They stole it, sir; all my nice dunderfunk, sir; they did,
sir,” whined the Down Easter, ruefully holding up his pan.
“Stole your dundlefunk! what's that?”
“Dunderfunk, sir, dunderfunk; a cruel nice dish as ever
man put into him.”
“Speak out, sir; what's the matter?”
“My dunderfunk, sir—as elegant a dish of dunderfunk as
you ever see, sir—they stole it, sir!”
“Go forward, you rascal!” cried the Lieutenant, in a towering
rage, “or else stop your whining. Tell me, what's the
matter?”
“Why, sir, them 'ere two fellows, Dobs and Hodnose, stole
my dunderfunk.”
“Once more, sir, I ask what that dundledunk is? Speak!”
“As cruel a nice—”
“Be off, sir! sheer!” and muttering something about non
compos mentis, the Lieutenant stalked away; while the
Down Easter beat a melancholy retreat, holding up his pan
like a tambourine, and making dolorous music on it as he went.
“Where are you going with that tear in your eye, like a
traveling rat?” cried a top-man.
“Oh! he's going home to Down East,” said another; “so
far eastward, you know, shippy, that they have to pry up the
sun with a handspike.”
To make this anecdote plainer, be it said that, at sea, the
monotonous round of salt beef and pork at the messes of the
sailors—where but very few of the varieties of the season are
to be found—induces them to adopt many contrivances in
order to diversify their meals. Hence the various sea-rolls,
made dishes, and Mediterranean pies, well known by man-of-war's-men
— Scouse, Lob-scouse, Soft-Tack, Soft-Tommy,
Skillagalee, Burgoo, Dough-boys, Lob-Dominion, Dog's-Body,
and lastly, and least known, Dunderfunk; all of which
come under the general denomination of Manavalins.
Dunderfunk is made of hard biscuit, hashed and pounded,
mixed with beef fat, molasses, and water, and baked brown
in a pan. And to those who are beyond all reach of shore
delicacies, this dunderfunk, in the feeling language of the
Down Easter, is certainly “a cruel nice dish.”
Now the only way that a sailor, after preparing his dunder-funk,
could get it cooked on board the Neversink, was by slily
going to Old Coffee, the ship's cook, and bribing him to put
it into his oven. And as some such dishes or other are well
known to be all the time in the oven, a set of unprincipled
gourmands are constantly on the look-out for the chance of
stealing them. Generally, two or three league together, and
while one engages Old Coffee in some interesting conversation
touching his wife and family at home, another snatches the
first thing he can lay hands on in the oven, and rapidly passes
it to the third man, who at his earliest leisure disappears
with it.
In this manner had the Down Easter lost his precious pie,
and afterward found the empty pan knocking about the fore-castle.
