45. CHAPTER XLV.
PUBLISHING POETRY IN A MAN-OF-WAR.
A DAY or two after our arrival in Rio, a rather amusing
incident occurred to a particular acquaintance of mine, young
Lemsford, the gun-deck bard.
The great guns of an armed ship have blocks of wood, called
tompions, painted black, inserted in their muzzles, to keep
out the spray of the sea. These tompions slip in and out
very handily, like covers to butter firkins.
By advice of a friend, Lemsford, alarmed for the fate of
his box of poetry, had latterly made use of a particular gun
on the main-deck, in the tube of which he thrust his manuscripts,
by simply crawling partly out of the port-hole, removing
the tompion, inserting his papers, tightly rolled, and making
all snug again.
Breakfast over, he and I were reclining in the main-top—
where, by permission of my noble master, Jack Chase, I had
invited him—when, of a sudden, we heard a cannonading.
It was our own ship.
“Ah!” said a top-man, “returning the shore salute they
gave us yesterday.”
“O Lord!” cried Lemsford, “my Songs of the Sirens!”
and he ran down the rigging to the batteries; but just as he
touched the gun-deck, gun No. 20—his literary strong-box—
went off with a terrific report.
“Well, my after-guard Virgil,” said Jack Chase to him,
as he slowly returned up the rigging, “did you get it? You
need not answer; I see you were too late. But never mind,
my boy; no printer could do the business for you better.
That's the way to publish, White-Jacket,” turning to me—
“fire it right into 'em; every canto a twenty-four-pound
shot;
hull the blockheads, whether they will or no. And
mind you, Lemsford, when your shot does the most execution,
you hear the least from the foe. A killed man can not even
lisp.”
“Glorious Jack!” cried Lemsford, running up and snatching
him by the hand, “say that again, Jack! look me in the
eyes. By all the Homers, Jack, you have made my soul
mount like a balloon! Jack, I'm a poor devil of a poet.
Not two months before I shipped aboard here, I published a
volume of poems, very aggressive on the world, Jack. Heaven
knows what it cost me. I published it, Jack, and the cursed
publisher sued me for damages; my friends looked sheepish;
one or two who liked it were non-committal; and as for the
addle-pated mob and rabble, they thought they had found out
a fool. Blast them, Jack, what they call the public is a
monster, like the idol we saw in Owhyhee, with the head of
a jackass, the body of a baboon, and the tail of a scorpion!”
“I don't like that,” said Jack; “when I'm ashore, I myself
am part of the public.”
“Your pardon, Jack; you are not. You are then a part
of the people, just as you are aboard the frigate here. The
public is one thing, Jack, and the people another.”
“You are right,” said Jack; “right as this leg. Virgil,
you are a trump; you are a jewel, my boy. The public and
the people! Ay, ay, my lads, let us hate the one and cleave
to the other.”
