31. CHAPTER XXXI.
THE GUNNER UNDER HATCHES.
Among such a crowd of marked characters as were to be
met with on board our frigate, many of whom moved in mysterious
circles beneath the lowermost deck, and at long intervals
flitted into sight like apparitions, and disappeared again
for whole weeks together, there were some who inordinately
excited my curiosity, and whose names, callings, and precise
abodes I industriously sought out, in order to learn something
satisfactory concerning them.
While engaged in these inquiries, often fruitless, or but partially
gratified, I could not but regret that there was no public
printed Directory for the Neversink, such as they have in
large towns, containing an alphabetic list of all the crew, and
where they might be found. Also, in losing myself in some
remote, dark corner of the bowels of the frigate, in the vicinity
of the various store-rooms, shops, and warehouses, I much
lamented that no enterprising tar had yet thought of compiling
a Hand-book of the Neversink, so that the tourist might
have a reliable guide.
Indeed, there were several parts of the ship under hatches
shrouded in mystery, and completely inaccessible to the sailor.
Wondrous old doors, barred and bolted in dingy bulk-heads,
must have opened 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, and enter these inexplicable apartments
with a battle-lantern, as if on solemn official business, I almost
quaked to dive in with him, and satisfy myself whether these
vaults indeed contained the moldering relics of by-gone old
Commodores and Post-captains. But the habitations of the
living commodore and captain—their spacious and curtained
cabins—were themselves almost as sealed volumes, and I
passed them in hopeless wonderment, like a peasant before a
prince's palace. Night and day armed sentries guarded their
sacred portals, cutlass in hand; and had 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 an inmate
of this floating box of live-oak, yet there were numberless
things in it that, to the last, remained wrapped in obscurity,
or concerning which I could only lose myself in vague
speculations. I was as a Roman Jew of the Middle Ages,
confined to the Jews' quarter of the town, and forbidden to
stray beyond my limits. Or I was as a modern traveler in
the same famous city, forced to quit it at last without gaining
ingress to the most mysterious haunts—the innermost shrine
of the Pope, and the dungeons and cells of the Inquisition.
But among all the persons and things on board that puzzled
me, and filled me most with strange emotions of doubt,
misgivings, and mystery, was the Gunner—a short, square,
grim man, his hair and beard grizzled and singed, as if with
gunpowder. His skin was of a flecky brown, like the stained
barrel of a fowling-piece, and his hollow eyes burned in his
head like blue-lights. He it was who had access to many of
those mysterious vaults I have spoken of. Often he might be
seen groping his way into them, followed by his subalterns,
the old quarter-gunners, as if intent upon laying a train of
powder to blow up the ship. I remembered Guy Fawkes
and the Parliament-house, and made earnest inquiry whether
this gunner was a Roman Catholic. I felt relieved when informed
that he was not.
A little circumstance which one of his mates once told me
heightened the gloomy interest with which I regarded his
chief. He told me that, at periodical intervals, his master the
Gunner, accompanied by his phalanx, entered into the great
Magazine under the Gun-room, of which he had sole custody
and kept the key, nearly as big as the key of the Bastile,
and provided with lanterns, something like Sir Humphrey
Davy's Safety-lamp for coal mines, proceeded to turn, end
for end, all the kegs of powder and packages of cartridges
stored in this innermost explosive vault, lined throughout with
sheets of copper. In the vestibule of the Magazine, against
the paneling, were several pegs for slippers, and, before penetrating
further than that vestibule, every man of the gunner's-gang
silently removed his shoes, for fear that the nails in their
heels might possibly create a spark, by striking against the
coppered floor within. Then, with slippered feet and with
hushed whispers, they stole into the heart of the place.
This turning of the powder was to preserve its inflammability.
And surely it was a business full of direful interest,
to be buried so deep below the sun, handling whole barrels of
powder, any one of which, touched by the smallest spark, was
powerful enough to blow up a whole street of warehouses.
The gunner went by the name of Old Combustibles, though
I thought this an undignified name for so momentous a personage,
who had all our lives in his hand.
While we lay in Callao, we received from shore several
barrels of powder. So soon as the launch came alongside
with them, orders were given to extinguish all lights and all
fires in the ship; and the master-at-arms and his corporals
inspected every deck to see that this order was obeyed; a
very prudent precaution, no doubt, but not observed at all in
the Turkish navy. The Turkish sailors will sit on their
gun-carriages, tranquilly smoking, while kegs of powder are
being rolled under their ignited pipe-bowls. This shows the
great comfort there is in the doctrine of these Fatalists, and
how such a doctrine, in some things at least, relieves men from
nervous anxieties. But we are all Fatalists at bottom. Nor
need we so much marvel at the heroism of that army officer,
who challenged his personal foe to bestride a barrel of powder
with him—the match to be placed between them—and be
blown up in good company, for it is pretty certain that the
whole earth itself is a vast hogshead, full of inflammable materials,
and which we are always bestriding; at the same time,
that all good Christians believe that at any minute the last
day may come, and the terrible combustion 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 was heightened by his grizzled hair and
beard. But what imparted such a sinister look to him, and
what wrought so upon my imagination concerning this man,
was a frightful scar crossing his left cheek and forehead. He
had been almost mortally wounded, they said, with a sabre-cut,
during a frigate engagement in the last war with Britain.
He was the most methodical, exact, and punctual of all
the forward officers. Among his other duties, it pertained to
him, while in harbor, to see that at a certain hour in the
evening one of the great guns was discharged from the fore-castle,
a ceremony only observed in a flag-ship. And always
at the precise moment you might behold him blowing his
match, then applying it; and with that booming thunder in
his ear, and the smell of the powder in his hair, he retired to
his hammock for the night. What dreams he must have
had!
The same precision was observed when ordered to fire a
gun to bring to some ship at sea; for, true to their name,
and preserving its applicability, even in times of peace, all
men-of-war are great bullies on the high seas. They domineer
over the poor merchantmen, and with a hissing hot ball
sent bowling across the ocean, compel them to stop their
headway at pleasure.
It was enough to make you a man of method for life, to
see the gunner superintending his subalterns, when preparing
the main-deck batteries for a great national salute. While
lying in harbor, intelligence reached us of the lamentable
casualty that befell certain high officers of state, including
the acting Secretary of the Navy himself, some other member
of the President's cabinet, a Commodore, and others, all
engaged in experimenting upon a new-fangled engine of war.
At the same time with the receipt of this sad news, orders
arrived to fire minute-guns for the deceased head of the naval
department. Upon this occasion the gunner was more than
usually ceremonious, in seeing that the long twenty-fours
were thoroughly loaded and rammed down, and then accurately
marked with chalk, so as to be discharged in undeviating
rotation, first from the larboard side, and then from the
starboard.
But as my ears hummed, and all my bones danced in me
with the reverberating din, and my eyes and nostrils were
almost suffocated with the smoke, and when I saw this grim
old gunner firing away so solemnly, I thought it a strange
mode of honoring a man's memory who had himself been
slaughtered by a cannon. Only the smoke, that, after rolling
in at the port-holes, rapidly drifted away to leeward, and
was lost to view, seemed truly emblematical touching the
personage thus honored, since that great non-combatant, the
Bible, assures us that our life is but a vapor, that quickly
passeth away.
