54. CHAPTER LIV.
“THE PEOPLE” ARE GIVEN “LIBERTY.”
Whenever, in intervals of mild benevolence, or yielding
to mere politic dictates, Kings and Commodores relax the
yoke of servitude, they should see to it well that the concession
seem not too sudden or unqualified; for, in the commoner's
estimation, that might argue feebleness or fear.
Hence it was, perhaps, that, though noble Jack had carried
the day captive in his audience at the mast, yet more
than thirty-six hours elapsed ere any thing official was heard
of the “liberty” his shipmates so earnestly coveted. Some
of the people began to growl and grumble.
“It's turned out all gammon, Jack,” said one.
“Blast the Commodore!” cried another, “he bamboozled
you, Jack.”
“Lay on your oars a while,” answered Jack, “and we shall
see; we've struck for liberty, and liberty we'll have! I'm
your tribune, boys; I'm your Rienzi. The Commodore must
keep his word.”
Next day, about breakfast-time, a mighty whistling and
piping was heard at the main-hatchway, and presently the
boatswain's voice was heard: “D'ye hear there, fore and aft!
all you starboard-quarter watch! get ready to go ashore on
liberty!”
In a paroxysm of delight, a young mizzen-top-man, standing
by at the time, whipped the tarpaulin from his head, and
smashed it like a pancake on the deck. “Liberty!” he shouted,
leaping down into the berth-deck after his bag.
At the appointed hour, the quarter-watch mustered round
the capstan, at which stood our old First Lord of the Treasury
and Pay-Master-General, the Purser, with several goodly
buck-skin bags of dollars, piled up on the capstan. He helped
us all round to half a handful or so, and then the boats
were manned, and, like so many Esterhazys, we were pulled
ashore by our shipmates. All their lives lords may live in
listless state; but give the commoners a holiday, and they out-lord
the Commodore himself.
The ship's company were divided into four sections or quarter-watches,
only one of which were on shore at a time, the
rest remaining to garrison the frigate—the term of liberty for
each being twenty-four hours.
With Jack Chase and a few other discreet and gentlemanly
top-men, I went ashore on the first day, with the first quarter-watch.
Our own little party had a charming time; we
saw many fine sights; fell in—as all sailors must—with dashing
adventures. But, though not a few good chapters might
be written on this head, I must again forbear; for in this book
I have nothing to do with the shore further than to glance at
it, now and then, from the water; my man-of-war world alone
must supply me with the staple of my matter; I have taken
an oath to keep afloat to the last letter of my narrative.
Had they all been as punctual as Jack Chase's party, the
whole quarter-watch of liberty-men had been safe on board
the frigate at the expiration of the twenty-four hours. But
this was not the case; and during the entire day succeeding,
the midshipmen and others were engaged in ferreting them
out of their hiding-places on shore, and bringing them off in
scattered detachments to the ship.
They came in all imaginable stages of intoxication; some
with blackened eyes and broken heads; some still more severely
injured, having been stabbed in frays with the Portuguese
soldiers. Others, unharmed, were immediately dropped
on the gun-deck, between the guns, where they lay snoring
for the rest of the day. As a considerable degree of license is
invariably permitted to man-of-war's-men just “off liberty,”
and as man-of-war's-men well know this to be the case, they
occasionally avail themselves of the privilege to talk very
frankly to the officers when they first cross the gangway, taking
care, meanwhile, to reel about very industriously, so that
there shall be no doubt about their being seriously intoxicated,
and altogether
non compos for the time. And though but
few of them have cause to feign intoxication, yet some individuals
may be suspected of enacting a studied part upon these
occasions. Indeed—judging by certain symptoms—even
when really inebriated, some of the sailors must have previously
determined upon their conduct; just as some persons
who, before taking the exhilarating gas, secretly make up
their minds to perform certain mad feats while under its influence,
which feats consequently come to pass precisely as if
the actors were not accountable for them.
For several days, while the other quarter-watches were
given liberty, the Neversink presented a sad scene. She was
more like a mad-house than a frigate; the gun-deck resounded
with frantic fights, shouts, and songs. All visitors from shore
were kept at a cable's length.
These scenes, however, are nothing to those which have
repeatedly been enacted in American men-of-war upon other
stations. But the custom of introducing women on board, in
harbor, is now pretty much discontinued, both in the English
and American Navy, unless a ship, commanded by some dissolute
Captain, happens to lie in some far away, outlandish port,
in the Pacific or Indian Ocean.
The British line-of-battle ship, Royal George, which in
1782 sunk at her anchors at Spithead, carried down three
hundred English women among the one thousand souls that
were drowned on that memorable morning.
When, at last, after all the mad tumult and contention of
“Liberty,” the reaction came, our frigate presented a very
different scene. The men looked jaded and wan, lethargic
and lazy; and many an old mariner, with hand upon abdomen,
called upon the Flag-staff to witness that there were more
hot coppers in the Neversink than those in the ship's galley.
Such are the lamentable effects of suddenly and completely
releasing “the people” of a man-of-war from arbitrary discipline.
It shows that, to such, “liberty,” at first, must be
administered in small and moderate quantities, increasing with
the patient's capacity to make a good use of it.
Of course, while we lay in Rio, our officers frequently went
ashore for pleasure, and, as a general thing, conducted themselves
with propriety. But it is a sad thing to say, that, as
for Lieutenant Mad Jack, he enjoyed himself so delightfully
for three consecutive days in the town, that, upon returning
to the ship, he sent his card to the Surgeon, with his compliments,
begging him to drop into his state-room the first time
he happened to pass that way in the ward-room.
But one of our Surgeon's mates, a young medico of fine
family but slender fortune, must have created by far the strongest
impression among the hidalgoes of Rio. He had read
Don Quixote, and, instead of curing him of his Quixotism, as
it ought to have done, it only made him still more Quixotic.
Indeed, there are some natures concerning whose moral maladies
the grand maxim of Mr. Similia Similibus Curantur
Hahneman does not hold true, since, with them, like cures not
like, but only aggravates like. Though, on the other hand,
so incurable are the moral maladies of such persons, that the
antagonist maxim, contraria contrariis curantur, often proves
equally false.
Of a warm tropical day, this Surgeon's mate must needs
go ashore in his blue cloth boat-cloak, wearing it, with a gallant
Spanish toss, over his cavalier shoulder. By noon, he perspired
very freely; but then his cloak attracted all eyes, and
that was huge satisfaction. Nevertheless, his being knock-kneed,
and spavined of one leg, sorely impaired the effect of this
hidalgo cloak, which, by-the-way, was somewhat rusty in front,
where his chin rubbed against it, and a good deal bedraggled
all over, from his having used it as a counterpane off Cape Horn.
As for the midshipmen, there is no knowing what their
mammas would have said to their conduct in Rio. Three of
them drank a good deal too much; and when they came on
board, the Captain ordered them to be sewed up in their hammocks,
to cut short their obstreperous capers till sober.
This shows how unwise it is to allow children yet in their
teens to wander so far from home. It more especially illustrates
the folly of giving them long holidays in a foreign land,
full of seductive dissipation. Port for men, claret for boys,
cried Dr. Johnson. Even so, men only should drink the
strong drink of travel; boys should still be kept on milk and
water at home. Middies! you may despise your mother's
leading-strings, but they are the man-ropes, my lads, by which
many youngsters have steadied the giddiness of youth, and
saved themselves from lamentable falls. And middies! know
this, that as infants, being too early put on their feet, grow
up bandy-legged, and curtailed of their fair proportions, even so,
my dear middies, does it morally prove with some of you,
who prematurely are sent off to sea.
These admonitions are solely addressed to the more diminutive
class of midshipmen—those under five feet high, and
under seven stone in weight.
Truly, the records of the steerages of men-of-war are full
of most melancholy examples of early dissipation, disease, disgrace,
and death. Answer, ye shades of fine boys, who in the
soils of all climes, the round world over, far away sleep from
your homes.
Mothers of men! If your hearts have been cast down
when your boys have fallen in the way of temptations ashore,
how much more bursting your grief, did you know that those
boys were far from your arms, cabined and cribbed in by all
manner of iniquities. But this some of you can not believe.
It is, perhaps, well that it is so.
But, hold them fast—all those who have not yet weighed
their anchors for the Navy—round and round, hitch over hitch,
bind your leading-strings on them, and, clinching a ring-bolt
into your chimney-jam, moor your boys fast to that best of
harbors, the hearth-stone.
But if youth be giddy, old age is staid; even as young saplings,
in the litheness of their limbs, toss to their roots in the
fresh morning air; but, stiff and unyielding with age, mossy
trunks never bend. With pride and pleasure be it said, that,
as for our old Commodore, though he might treat himself to
as many “liberty days” as he pleased, yet throughout our
stay in Rio he conducted himself with the utmost discretion.
But he was an old, old man; physically, a very small man;
his spine was as an unloaded musket-barrel—not only attenuated,
but destitute of a solitary cartridge, and his ribs were
as the ribs of a weasel.
Besides, he was Commodore of the fleet, supreme lord of
the Commons in Blue. It beseemed him, therefore, to erect
himself into an ensample of virtue, and show the gun-deck
what virtue was. But alas! when Virtue sits high aloft on
a frigate's poop, when Virtue is crowned in the cabin a Commodore,
when Virtue rules by compulsion, and domineers over
Vice as a slave, then Virtue, though her mandates be outwardly
observed, bears little interior sway. To be efficacious,
Virtue must come down from aloft, even as our blessed Redeemer
came down to redeem our whole man-of-war world;
to that end, mixing with its sailors and sinners as equals.
