13. CHAPTER XIII.
A MAN-OF-WAR HERMIT IN A MOB.
The allusion to the poet Lemsford in a previous chapter,
leads me to speak of our mutual friends, Nord and Williams,
who, with Lemsford himself, Jack Chase, and my comrades
of the main-top, comprised almost the only persons with whom
I unreservedly consorted while on board the frigate. For I
had not been long on board ere I found that it would not do
to be intimate with every body. An indiscriminate intimacy
with all hands leads to sundry annoyances and scrapes, too
often ending with a dozen at the gang-way. Though I was
above a year in the frigate, there were scores of men who to
the last remained perfect strangers to me, whose very names
I did not know, and whom I would hardly be able to recognize
now should I happen to meet them in the streets.
In the dog-watches at sea, during the early part of the
evening, the main-deck is generally filled with crowds of pedestrians,
promenading up and down past the guns, like people
taking the air in Broadway. At such times, it is curious
to see the men nodding to each other's recognitions (they
might not have seen each other for a week); exchanging a
pleasant word with a friend; making a hurried appointment
to meet him somewhere aloft on the morrow, or passing group
after group without deigning the slightest salutation. Indeed,
I was not at all singular in having but comparatively few acquaintances
on board, though certainly carrying my fastidiousness
to an unusual extent.
My friend Nord was a somewhat remarkable character;
and if mystery includes romance, he certainly was a very romantic
one. Before seeking an introduction to him through
Lemsford, I had often marked his tall, spare, upright figure
stalking like Don Quixote among the pigmies of the Afterguard,
to which he belonged. At first I found him exceedingly
reserved and taciturn; his saturnine brow wore a scowl;
he was almost repelling in his demeanor. In a word, he
seemed desirous of hinting, that his list of man-of-war friends
was already made up, complete, and full; and there was no
room for more. But observing that the only man he ever
consorted with was Lemsford, I had too much magnanimity,
by going off in a pique at his coldness, to let him lose forever
the chance of making so capital an acquaintance as myself.
Besides, I saw it in his eye, that the man had been a reader
of good books; I would have staked my life on it, that he
seized the right meaning of Montaigne. I saw that he was
an earnest thinker; I more than suspected that he had been
bolted in the mill of adversity. For all these things, my heart
yearned toward him; I determined to know him.
At last I succeeded; it was during a profoundly quiet midnight
watch, when I perceived him walking alone in the waist,
while most of the men were dozing on the carronade-slides.
That night we scoured all the prairies of reading; dived
into the bosoms of authors, and tore out their hearts; and
that night White-Jacket learned more than he has ever done
in any single night since.
The man was a marvel. He amazed me, as much as Coleridge
did the troopers among whom he enlisted. What could
have induced such a man to enter a man-of-war, all my sapience
can not fathom. And how he managed to preserve
his dignity, as he did, among such a rabble rout was equally
a mystery. For he was no sailor; as ignorant of a ship, indeed,
as a man from the sources of the Niger. Yet the officers
respected him; and the men were afraid of him. This
much was observable, however, that he faithfully discharged
whatever special duties devolved upon him; and was so fortunate
as never to render himself liable to a reprimand.
Doubtless, he took the same view of the thing that another
of the crew did; and had early resolved, so to conduct himself
as never to run the risk of the scourge. And this it must
have been—added to whatever incommunicable grief which
might have been his—that made this Nord such a wandering
recluse, even among our man-of-war mob. Nor could he have
long swung his hammock on board, ere he must have found
that, to insure his exemption from that thing which alone affrighted
him, he must be content for the most part to turn a
man-hater, and socially expatriate himself from many things,
which might have rendered his situation more tolerable. Still
more, several events that took place must have horrified him,
at times, with the thought that, however he might isolate
and entomb himself, yet for all this, the improbability of his
being overtaken by what he most dreaded never advanced to
the infallibility of the impossible.
In my intercourse with Nord, he never made allusion to
his past career—a subject upon which most high-bred castaways
in a man-of-war are very diffuse; relating their adventures
at the gaming-table; the recklessness with which
they have run through the amplest fortunes in a single season;
their alms-givings, and gratituties to porters and poor relations;
and above all, their youthful indiscretions, and the brokenhearted
ladies they have left behind. No such tales had Nord
to tell. Concerning the past, he was barred and locked up
like the specie vaults of the Bank of England. For any thing
that dropped from him, none of us could be sure that he had
ever existed till now. Altogether, he was a remarkable man.
My other friend, Williams, was a thorough-going Yankee
from Maine, who had been both a peddler and a pedagogue
in his day. He had all manner of stories to tell about nice
little country frolics, and would run over an endless list of his
sweet-hearts. He was honest, acute, witty, full of mirth and
good humor—a laughing philosopher. He was invaluable as
a pill against the spleen; and, with the view of extending the
advantages of his society to the saturnine Nord, I introduced
them to each other; but Nord cut him dead the very same
evening, when we sallied out from between the guns for a
walk on the main-deck.
