82. CHAPTER LXXXII.
WHAT REMAINS OF A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN AFTER HIS BURIAL
AT SEA.
Upon examining Shenly's bag, a will was found, scratched
in pencil, upon a blank leaf in the middle of his Bible; or, to
use the phrase of one of the seamen, in the midships, atween
the Bible and Testament, where the Pothecary (Apocrypha)
uses to be.
The will was comprised in one solitary sentence, exclusive
of the dates and signatures: “In case I die on the voyage,
the Purser will please pay over my wages to my wife, who
lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.”
Besides the testator's, there were two signatures of witnesses.
This last will and testament being shown to the Purser,
who, it seems, had been a notary, or surrogate, or some sort
of cosy chamber practitioner in his time, he declared that it
must be “proved.” So the witnesses were called, and after
recognizing their hands to the paper; for the purpose of additionally
testing their honesty, they were interrogated concerning
the day on which they had signed—whether it was Banyan
Day, or Duff Day, or Swamp-seed Day; for among the
sailors on board a man-of-war, the land terms, Monday, Tuesday,
Wednesday, are almost unknown. In place of these they
substitute nautical names, some of which are significant of
the daily bill of fare at dinner for the week.
The two witnesses were somewhat puzzled by the attorney-like
questions of the Purser, till a third party came along, one
of the ship's barbers, and declared, of his own knowledge, that
Shenly executed the instrument on a Shaving Day; for the
deceased seaman had informed him of the circumstance, when
he came to have his beard reaped on the morning of the event.
In the Purser's opinion, this settled the question; and it is
to be hoped that the widow duly received her husband's death-earned
wages.
Shenly was dead and gone; and what was Shenly's epitaph?
—“D. D.”—
opposite his name in the Purser's books, in “Black's best
Writing Fluid”—funereal name and funereal hue—meaning
“Discharged, Dead.”
