University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

The feeling of insecurity concerning one's possessions in the
Neversink, which the things just narrated begat in the minds
of honest men, was curiously exemplified in the case of my
poor friend Lemsford, a gentlemanly young member of the
After-Guard. I had very early made the acquaintance of
Lemsford. It is curious, how unerringly a man pitches upon
a spirit, any way akin to his own, even in the most miscellaneous
mob.

Lemsford was a poet; so thoroughly inspired with the divine
afflatus, that not even all the tar and tumult of a man-of-war
could drive it out of him.

As may readily be imagined, the business of writing verse
is a very different thing on the gun-deck of a frigate, from
what the gentle and sequestered Wordsworth found it at
placid Rydal Mount in Westmoreland. In a frigate, you can
not sit down and meander off your sonnets, when the full heart
prompts; but only, when more important duties permit: such
as bracing round the yards, or reefing top-sails fore and aft.
Nevertheless, every fragment of time at his command was religiously
devoted by Lemsford to the Nine. At the most unseasonable
hours, you would behold him, seated apart, in some
corner among the guns—a shot-box before him, pen in hand,
and eyes “in a fine frenzy rolling.”

“What's that 'ere born nat'ral about?”—“He's got a fit,
hain't he?” were exclamations often made by the less learned
of his shipmates. Some deemed him a conjurer; others a
lunatic; and the knowing ones said, that he must be a crazy
Methodist. But well knowing by experience the truth of the

saying, that poetry is its own exceeding great reward, Lemsford
wrote on; dashing off whole epics, sonnets, ballads, and
acrostics, with a facility which, under the circumstances,
amazed me. Often he read over his effusions to me; and
well worth the hearing they were. He had wit, imagination,
feeling, and humor in abundance; and out of the very ridicule
with which some persons regarded him, he made rare metrical
sport, which we two together enjoyed by ourselves; or
shared with certain select friends.

Still, the taunts and jeers so often leveled at my fine friend
the poet, would now and then rouse him into rage; and at
such times the haughty scorn he would hurl on his foes, was
proof positive of his possession of that one attribute, irritability,
almost universally ascribed to the votaries of Parnassus
and the Nine.

My noble Captain, Jack Chase, rather patronized Lemsford,
and he would stoutly take his part against scores of adversaries.
Frequently, inviting him up aloft into his top, he
would beg him to recite some of his verses; to which he
would pay the most heedful attention, like Mecænas listening
to Virgil, with a book of the æneid in his hand. Taking the
liberty of a well-wisher, he would sometimes gently criticise
the piece, suggesting a few immaterial alterations. And upon
my word, noble Jack, with his native-born good sense, taste,
and humanity, was not ill qualified to play the true part of a
Quarterly Review;—which is, to give quarter at last, however
severe the critique.

Now Lemsford's great care, anxiety, and endless source of
tribulation was the preservation of his manuscripts. He had
a little box, about the size of a small dressing-case, and secured
with a lock, in which he kept his papers and stationery.
This box, of course, he could not keep in his bag or
hammock, for, in either case, he would only be able to get at
it once in the twenty-four hours. It was necessary to have
it accessible at all times. So when not using it, he was
obliged to hide it out of sight, where he could. And of all

places in the world, a ship of war, above her hold, least
abounds in secret nooks. Almost every inch is occupied; almost
every inch is in plain sight; and almost every inch is
continually being visited and explored. Added to all this,
was the deadly hostility of the whole tribe of ship-underlings
—master-at-arms, ship's corporals, and boatswain's mates,
—both to the poet and his casket. They hated his box, as
if it had been Pandora's, crammed to the very lid with hurricanes
and gales. They hunted out his hiding-places like
pointers, and gave him no peace night or day.

Still, the long twenty-four-pounders on the main-deck offered
some promise of a hiding-place to the box; and, accordingly,
it was often tucked away behind the carriages, among
the side tackles; its black color blending with the ebon hue
of the guns.

But Quoin, one of the quarter-gunners, had eyes like a
ferret. Quoin was a little old man-of-war's man, hardly five
feet high, with a complexion like a gun-shot wound after it is
healed. He was indefatigable in attending to his duties;
which consisted in taking care of one division of the guns, embracing
ten of the aforesaid twenty-four-pounders. Ranged
up against the ship's side at regular intervals, they resembled
not a little a stud of sable chargers in their stalls. Among
this iron stud little Quoin was continually running in and out,
currying them down, now and then, with an old rag, or keeping
the flies off with a brush. To Quoin, the honor and dignity
of the United States of America seemed indissolubly linked
with the keeping his guns unspotted and glossy. He himself
was black as a chimney-sweep with continually tending
them, and rubbing them down with black paint. He would
sometimes get outside of the port-holes and peer into their
muzzles, as a monkey into a bottle. Or, like a dentist, he
seemed intent upon examining their teeth. Quite as often,
he would be brushing out their touch-holes with a little wisp
of oakum, like a Chinese barber in Canton, cleaning a patient's
ear.

Such was his solicitude, that it was a thousand pities he
was not able to dwarf himself still more, so as to creep in at
the touch-hole, and examining the whole interior of the tube,
emerge at last from the muzzle. Quoin swore by his guns, and
slept by their side. Woe betide the man whom he found
leaning against them, or in any way soiling them. He seemed
seized with the crazy fancy, that his darling twenty-four-pounders
were fragile, and might break, like glass retorts.

Now, from this Quoin's vigilance, how could my poor friend
the poet hope to escape with his box? Twenty times a week
it was pounced upon, with a “here's that d—d pill-box again!”
and a loud threat, to pitch it overboard the next time, without
a moment's warning, or benefit of clergy. Like many
poets, Lemsford was nervous, and upon these occasions he
trembled like a leaf. Once, with an inconsolable countenance,
he came to me, saying that his casket was nowhere to be found;
he had sought for it in his hiding-place, and it was not there.

I asked him where he had hidden it?

“Among the guns,” he replied.

“Then depend upon it, Lemsford, that Quoin has been the
death of it.”

Straight to Quoin went the poet. But Quoin knew nothing
about it. For ten mortal days the poet was not to be
comforted; dividing his leisure time between cursing Quoin
and lamenting his loss. The world is undone, he must have
thought; no such calamity has befallen it since the Deluge;
—my verses are perished.

But though Quoin, as it afterward turned out, had indeed
found the box, it so happened that he had not destroyed it;
which no doubt led Lemsford to infer that a superintending
Providence had interposed to preserve to posterity his invaluable
casket. It was found at last, lying exposed near the
galley.

Lemsford was not the only literary man on board the Neversink.
There were three or four persons who kept journals
of the cruise. One of these journalists embellished his work

—which was written in a large blank account-book—with
various colored illustrations of the harbors and bays at which
the frigate had touched; and also, with small crayon sketches
of comical incidents on board the frigate itself. He would
frequently read passages of his book to an admiring circle of
the more refined sailors, between the guns. They pronounced
the whole performance a miracle of art. As the author declared
to them that it was all to be printed and published so
soon as the vessel reached home, they vied with each other in
procuring interesting items, to be incorporated into additional
chapters. But it having been rumored abroad that this journal
was to be ominously entitled “The Cruise of the Neversink,
or a Paixhan Shot into Naval Abuses;” and it having
also reached the ears of the Ward-room that the work
contained reflections somewhat derogatory to the dignity of
the officers, the volume was seized by the master-at-arms,
armed with a warrant from the Captain. A few days after,
a large nail was driven straight through the two covers, and
clinched on the other side, and, thus everlastingly sealed, the
book was committed to the deep. The ground taken by the
authorities on this occasion was, perhaps, that the book was
obnoxious to a certain clause in the Articles of War, forbidding
any person in the Navy to bring any other person in the
Navy into contempt, which the suppressed volume undoubtedly
did.