79. CHAPTER LXXIX.
HOW MAN-OF-WAR'S-MEN DIE AT SEA.
Shenly, my sick mess-mate, was a middle-aged, handsome,
intelligent seaman, whom some hard calamity, or perhaps
some unfortunate excess, must have driven into the Navy.
He told me he had a wife and two children in Portsmouth,
in the state of New Hampshire. Upon being examined by
Cuticle, the surgeon, he was, on purely scientific grounds,
reprimanded by that functionary for not having previously
appeared before him. He was immediately consigned to one
of the invalid cots as a serious case. His complaint was of
long standing; a pulmonary one, now attended with general
prostration.
The same evening he grew so much worse, that, according
to man-of-war usage, we, his mess-mates, were officially notified
that we must take turns at sitting up with him through
the night. We at once made our arrangements, allotting
two hours for a watch. Not till the third night did my own
turn come round. During the day preceding, it was stated
at the mess that our poor mess-mate was run down completely;
the surgeon had given him up.
At four bells (two o'clock in the morning), I went down to
relieve one of my mess-mates at the sick man's cot. The
profound quietude of the calm pervaded the entire frigate
through all her decks. The watch on duty were dozing on
the carronade-slides, far above the sick-bay; and the watch
below were fast asleep in their hammocks, on the same deck
with the invalid.
Groping my way under these two hundred sleepers, I entered
the hospital. A dim lamp was burning on the table,
which was screwed down to the floor. This light shed dreary
shadows over the white-washed walls of the place, making it
look like a whited sepulchre under ground. The wind-sail
had collapsed, and lay motionless on the deck. The low
groans of the sick were the only sounds to be heard; and as
I advanced, some of them rolled upon me their sleepless, silent,
tormented eyes.
“Fan him, and keep his forehead wet with this sponge,”
whispered my mess-mate, whom I came to relieve, as I drew
near to Shenly's cot, “and wash the foam from his mouth;
nothing more can be done for him. If he dies before your
watch is out, call the Surgeon's steward; he sleeps in that
hammock,” pointing it out. “Good-by, good-by, mess-mate,”
he then whispered, stooping over the sick man; and so saying,
he left the place.
Shenly was lying on his back. His eyes were closed,
forming two dark-blue pits in his face; his breath was coming
and going with a slow, long-drawn, mechanical precision.
It was the mere foundering hull of a man that was
before me; and though it presented the well-known features
of my mess-mate, yet I knew that the living soul of Shenly
never more would look out of those eyes.
So warm had it been during the day, that the Surgeon
himself, when visiting the sick-bay, had entered it in his
shirt sleeves; and so warm was now the night, that even in
the lofty top I had worn but a loose linen frock and trowsers.
But in this subterranean sick-bay, buried in the very bowels
of the ship, and at sea cut off from all ventilation, the heat
of the night calm was intense. The sweat dripped from me
as if I had just emerged from a bath; and stripping myself
naked to the waist, I sat by the side of the cot, and with a
bit of crumpled paper—put into my hand by the sailor I had
relieved—kept fanning the motionless white face before me.
I could not help thinking, as I gazed, whether this man's
fate had not been accelerated by his confinement in this heated
furnace below; and whether many a sick man round me
might not soon improve, if but permitted to swing his hammock
in the airy vacancies of the half-deck above, open to
the port-holes, but reserved for the promenade of the officers.
At last the heavy breathing grew more and more irregular,
and gradually dying away, left forever the unstirring form
of Shenley.
Calling the Surgeon's steward, he at once told me to rouse
the master-at-arms, and four or five of my mess-mates. The
master-at-arms approached, and immediately demanded the
dead man's bag, which was accordingly dragged into the bay.
Having been laid on the floor, and washed with a bucket of
water which I drew from the ocean, the body was then
dressed in a white frock, trowsers, and neckerchief, taken out
of the bag. While this was going on, the master-at-arms—
standing over the operation with his rattan, and directing
myself and mess-mates—indulged in much discursive levity,
intended to manifest his fearlessness of death.
Pierre, who had been a “chummy” of Shenly's, spent
much time in tying the neckkerchief in an elaborate bow, and
affectionately adjusting the white frock and trowsers; but
the master-at-arms put an end to this by ordering us to carry
the body up to the gun-deck. It was placed on the death-board
(used for that purpose), and we proceeded with it toward
the main hatchway, awkwardly crawling under the tiers
of hammocks, where the entire watch-below was sleeping.
As, unavoidably, we rocked their pallets, the man-of-war's-men
would cry out against us; through the mutterings of
curses, the corpse reached the hatchway. Here the board
slipped, and some time was spent in readjusting the body.
At length we deposited it on the gun-deck, between two guns,
and a union-jack being thrown over it for a pall, I was left
again to watch by its side.
I had not been seated on my shot-box three minutes, when
the messenger-boy passed me on his way forward; presently
the slow, regular stroke of the ship's great bell was heard,
proclaiming through the calm the expiration of the watch;
it was four o'clock in the morning.
Poor Shenly! thought I, that sounds like your knell! and
here you lie becalmed, in the last calm of all!
Hardly had the brazen din died away, when the Boatswain
and his mates mustered round the hatchway, within a yard
or two of the corpse, and the usual thundering call was given
for the watch below to turn out.
“All the starboard-watch, ahoy! On deck there, below!
Wide awake there, sleepers!”
But the dreamless sleeper by my side, who had so often
sprung from his hammock at that summons, moved not a
limb; the blue sheet over him lay unwrinkled.
A mess-mate of the other watch now came to relieve me;
but I told him I chose to remain where I was till daylight
came.
