56. CHAPTER LVI.
A SHORE EMPEROR ON BOARD A MAN-OF-WAR.
While we lay in Rio, we sometimes had company from
shore; but an unforeseen honor awaited us. One day, the
young Emperor, Don Pedro II., and suite—making a circuit
of the harbor, and visiting all the men-of-war in rotation—at
last condescendingly visited the Neversink.
He came in a splendid barge, rowed by thirty African
slaves, who, after the Brazilian manner, in concert rose upright
to their oars at every stroke; then sank backward again
to their seats with a simultaneous groan.
He reclined under a canopy of yellow silk, looped with tassels
of green, the national colors. At the stern waved the
Brazilian flag, bearing a large diamond figure in the centre,
emblematical, perhaps, of the mines of precious stones in the
interior; or, it may be, a magnified portrait of the famous
“Portuguese diamond” itself, which was found in Brazil, in
the district of Tejuco, on the banks of the Rio Belmonte.
We gave them a grand salute, which almost made the
ship's live-oak knees knock together with the tremendous concussions.
We manned the yards, and went through a long
ceremonial of paying the Emperor homage. Republicans are
often more courteous to royalty than royalists themselves.
But doubtless this springs from a noble magnanimity.
At the gangway, the Emperor was received by our Commodore
in person, arrayed in his most resplendent coat and
finest French epaulets. His servant had devoted himself to
polishing every button that morning with rotten-stone and
rags—your sea air is a sworn foe to metallic glosses; whence
it comes that the swords of sea-officers have, of late, so rusted
in their scabbards that they are with difficulty drawn.
It was a fine sight to see this Emperor and Commodore
complimenting each other. Both wore chapeaux-de-bras, and
both continually waved them. By instinct, the Emperor
knew that the venerable personage before him was as much
a monarch afloat as he himself was ashore. Did not our
Commodore carry the sword of state by his side? For though
not borne before him, it must have been a sword of state,
since it looked far too lustrous to have been his fighting sword.
That was naught but a limber steel blade, with a plain, serviceable
handle, like the handle of a slaughter-house knife.
Who ever saw a star when the noon sun was in sight?
But you seldom see a king without satellites. In the suite of
the youthful Emperor came a princely train; so brilliant with
gems, that they seemed just emerged from the mines of the
Rio Belmonte.
You have seen cones of crystallized salt? Just so flashed
these Portuguese Barons, Marquises, Viscounts, and Counts.
Were it not for their titles, and being seen in the train of
their lord, you would have sworn they were eldest sons of
jewelers all, who had run away with their fathers' cases on
their backs.
Contrasted with these lamp-lustres of Barons of Brazil, how
waned the gold lace of our barons of the frigate, the officers
of the gun-room! and compared with the long, jewel-hilted
rapiers of the Marquises, the little dirks of our cadets of noble
houses—the middies—looked like gilded tenpenny nails in
their girdles.
But there they stood! Commodore and Emperor, Lieutenants
and Marquises, middies and pages! The brazen band
on the poop struck up; the marine guard presented arms;
and high aloft, looking down on this scene, all the people vigorously
hurraed. A top-man next me on the main-royal-yard
removed his hat, and diligently manipulated his head
in honor of the event; but he was so far out of sight in the
clouds, that this ceremony went for nothing.
A great pity it was, that in addition to all these honors,
that admirer of Portuguese literature, Viscount Strangford, of
Great Britain—who, I believe, once went out Embassador
Extraordinary to the Brazils—it was a pity that he was not
present on this occasion, to yield his tribute of “A Stanza to
Braganza!” For our royal visitor was an undoubted Braganza,
allied to nearly all the great families of Europe. His
grandfather, John VI., had been King of Portugal; his own
sister, Maria, was now its queen. He was, indeed, a distinguished
young gentleman, entitled to high consideration, and
that consideration was most cheerfully accorded him.
He wore a green dress-coat, with one regal morning-star
at the breast, and white pantaloons. In his chapeau was a
single, bright, golden-hued feather of the Imperial Toucan
fowl, a magnificent, omnivorous, broad-billed bandit bird of
prey, a native of Brazil. Its perch is on the loftiest trees,
whence it looks down upon all humbler fowls, and, hawk-like,
flies at their throats. The Toucan once formed part of the
savage regalia of the Indian caciques of the country, and,
upon the establishment of the empire, was symbolically retained
by the Portuguese sovereigns.
His Imperial Majesty was yet in his youth; rather corpulent,
if any thing, with a care-free, pleasant face, and a polite,
indifferent, and easy address. His manners, indeed, were entirely
unexceptionable.
Now here, thought I, is a very fine lad, with very fine
prospects before him. He is supreme Emperor of all these
Brazils; he has no stormy night-watches to stand; he can
lay abed of mornings just as long as he pleases. Any gentleman
in Rio would be proud of his personal acquaintance,
and the prettiest girl in all South America would deem herself
honored with the least glance from the acutest angle of
his eye.
Yes: this young Emperor will have a fine time of this
life, even so long as he condescends to exist. Every one
jumps to obey him; and see, as I live, there is an old nobleman
in his suit—the Marquis d'Acarty they call him, old
enough to be his grandfather—who, in the hot sun, is standing
bareheaded before him, while the Emperor carries his hat
on his head.
“I suppose that old gentleman, now,” said a young New
England tar beside me, “would consider it a great honor to
put on his Royal Majesty's boots; and yet, White-Jacket, if
yonder Emperor and I were to strip and jump overboard for
a bath, it would be hard telling which was of the blood royal
when we should once be in the water. Look you, Don Pedro
II.,” he added, “how do you come to be Emperor? Tell
me that. You can not pull as many pounds as I on the
main-topsail-halyards; you are not as tall as I; your nose is
a pug, and mine is a cut-water; and how do you come to be
a `brigand,' with that thin pair of spars? A brigand,
indeed!”
“Braganza, you mean,” said I, willing to correct the
rhetoric of so fierce a republican, and, by so doing, chastise
his censoriousness.
“Braganza! bragger it is,” he replied; “and a bragger,
indeed. See that feather in his cap! See how he struts in
that coat! He may well wear a green one, top-mates—he's
a green-looking swab at the best.”
“Hush, Jonathan,” said I; “there's the First Luff looking
up. Be still! the Emperor will hear you;” and I put
my hand on his mouth.
“Take your hand away, White-Jacket,” he cried; “there's
no law up aloft here. I say, you Emperor—you green-horn
in the green coat, there—look you, you can't raise a pair of
whiskers yet; and see what a pair of homeward-bounders I
have on my jowls! Don Pedro, eh? What's that, after
all, but plain Peter—reckoned a shabby name in my country.
Damn me, White-Jacket, I wouldn't call my dog Peter!”
“Clap a stopper on your jaw-tackle, will you?” cried Ring-bolt,
the sailor on the other side of him. “You'll be getting
us all into darbies for this.”
“I won't trice up my red rag for nobody,” retorted Jonathan.
“So you had better take a round turn with yours,
Ringbolt, and let me alone, or I'll fetch you such a swat over
your figure-head, you'll think a Long Wharf truck-horse kicked
you with all four shoes on one hoof! You Emperor—you
counter-jumping son of a gun—cock your weather eye up
aloft here, and see your betters! I say, top-mates, he ain't
any Emperor at all—I'm the rightful Emperor. Yes, by
the Commodore's boots! they stole me out of my cradle here
in the palace at Rio, and put that green-horn in my place.
Ay, you timber-head, you, I'm Don Pedro II., and by good
rights you ought to be a main-top-man here, with your fist in
a tar-bucket! Look you, I say, that crown of yours ought
to be on my head; or, if you don't believe that, just heave it
into the ring once, and see who's the best man.”
“What's this hurra's nest here aloft?” cried Jack Chase,
coming up the t'-gallant rigging from the top-sail yard.
“Can't you behave yourself, royal-yard-men, when an Emperor's
on board?”
“It's this here Jonathan,” answered Ringbolt; “he's been
blackguarding the young nob in the green coat, there. He
says Don Pedro stole his hat.”
“How?”
“Crown, he means, noble Jack,” said a top-man.
“Jonathan don't call himself an Emperor, does he?” asked
Jack.
“Yes,” cried Jonathan; “that green-horn, standing there
by the Commodore, is sailing under false colors; he's an impostor,
I say; he wears my crown.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed Jack, now seeing into the joke, and
willing to humor it; “though I'm born a Briton, boys, yet,
by the mast! these Don Pedros are all Perkin Warbecks.
But I say, Jonathan, my lad, don't pipe your eye now about
the loss of your crown; for, look you, we all wear crowns,
from our cradles to our graves, and though in double-darbies
in the brig, the Commodore himself can't unking us.”
“A riddle, noble Jack.”
“Not a bit; every man who has a sole to his foot has a
crown to his head. Here's mine;” and so saying, Jack, removing
his tarpaulin, exhibited a bald spot, just about the
bigness of a crown-piece, on the summit of his curly and
classical head.
