83. CHAPTER LXXXIII.
In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway
and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war
scourge, curses mix with tears; and the sigh and the sob
furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to
drown buried griefs of their own. Checkers were played in
the waist at the time of Shenly's burial; and as the body
plunged, a player swept the board. The bubbles had hardly
burst, when all hands were piped down by the Boatswain,
and the old jests were heard again, as if Shenly himself were
there to hear.
This man-of-war life has not left me unhardened. I can
not stop to weep over Shenly now; that would be false to the
life I depict; wearing no mourning weeds, I resume the task
of portraying our man-of-war world.
Among the various other vocations, all driven abreast on
board of the Neversink, was that of the schoolmaster. There
were two academies in the frigate. One comprised the apprentice
boys, who, upon certain days of the week, were indoctrinated
in the mysteries of the primer by an invalid corporal
of marines, a slender, wizzen-cheeked man, who had received
a liberal infant-school education.
The other school was a far more pretentious affair—a sort
of army and navy seminary combined, where mystical mathematical
problems were solved by the midshipmen, and great
ships-of-the-line were navigated over imaginary shoals by unimaginable
observations of the moon and the stars, and learned
lectures were delivered upon great guns, small arms, and
the curvilinear lines described by bombs in the air.
“The Professor” was the title bestowed upon the erudite
gentleman who conducted this seminary, and by that title
alone was he known throughout the ship. He was domiciled
in the Ward-room, and circulated there on a social par with
the Purser, Surgeon, and other non-combatants and Quakers.
By being advanced to the dignity of a peerage in the Ward-room,
Science and Learning were ennobled in the person of
this Professor, even as divinity was honored in the Chaplain
enjoying the rank of a spiritual peer.
Every other afternoon, while at sea, the Professor assembled
his pupils on the half-deck, near the long twenty-four pounders.
A bass drum-head was his desk, his pupils forming a
semicircle around him, seated on shot-boxes and match-tubs.
They were in the jelly of youth, and this learned Professor
poured into their susceptible hearts all the gentle, gunpowder
maxims of war. Presidents of Peace Societies and Superintendents
of Sabbath Schools, must it not have been a most
interesting sight?
But the Professor himself was a noteworthy person. A tall,
thin, spectacled man, about forty years old, with a student's
stoop in his shoulders, and wearing uncommonly scanty pantaloons,
exhibiting an undue proportion of his boots. In early
life he had been a cadet in the military academy of West
Point; but, becoming very weak-sighted, and thereby in a
good manner disqualified for active service in the field, he had
declined entering the army, and accepted the office of Professor
in the Navy.
His studies at West Point had thoroughly grounded him in
a knowledge of gunnery; and, as he was not a little of a pedant,
it was sometimes amusing, when the sailors were at
quarters, to hear him criticise their evolutions at the batteries.
He would quote Dr. Hutton's Tracts on the subject, also, in
the original, “The French Bombardier,” and wind up by Italian
passages from the “Prattica Manuale dell' Artiglieria.”
Though not required by the Navy regulations to instruct
his scholars in aught but the application of mathematics to
navigation, yet besides this, and besides instructing them in
the theory of gunnery, he also sought to root them in the theory
of frigate and fleet tactics. To be sure, he himself did not
know how to splice a rope or furl a sail; and, owing to his
partiality for strong coffee, he was apt to be nervous when we
fired salutes; yet all this did not prevent him from delivering
lectures on cannonading and “breaking the enemy's line.”
He had arrived at his knowledge of tactics by silent, solitary
study, and earnest meditation in the sequestered retreat of his
state-room. His case was somewhat parallel to the Scotchman's—John
Clerk, Esq., of Eldin—who, though he had never
been to sea, composed a quarto treatise on fleet-fighting,
which to this day remains a text-book; and he also originated
a nautical maneuvre, which has given to England many a
victory over her foes.
Now there was a large black-board, something like a great-gun
target—only it was square—which during the professor's
lectures was placed upright on the gun-deck, supported behind
by three boarding-pikes. And here he would chalk out diagrams
of great fleet engagements; making marks, like the
soles of shoes, for the ships, and drawing a dog-vane in one
corner to denote the assumed direction of the wind. This
done, with a cutlass he would point out every spot of interest.
“Now, young gentlemen, the board before you exhibits the
disposition of the British West Indian squadron under Rodney,
when, early on the morning of the 9th of April, in the
year of our blessed Lord 1782, he discovered part of the French
fleet, commanded by the Count de Grasse, lying under the
north end of the Island of Dominica. It was at this juncture
that the Admiral gave the signal for the British line to prepare
for battle, and stand on. D'ye understand, young gentlemen?
Well, the British van having nearly fetched up
with the centre of the enemy—who, be it remembered, were
then on the starboard tack—and Rodney's centre and rear
being yet becalmed under the lee of the land—the question I
ask you is, What should Rodney now do?”
“Blaze away, by all means!” responded a rather confident
reefer, who had zealously been observing the diagram.
“But, sir, his centre and rear are still becalmed, and his
van has not yet closed with the enemy.”
“Wait till he does come in range, and then blaze away,”
said the reefer.
“Permit me to remark, Mr. Pert, that `blaze away' is not
a strictly technical term; and also permit me to hint, Mr.
Pert, that you shold consider the subject rather more deeply
before you hurry forward your opinion.”
This rebuke not only abashed Mr. Pert, but for a time intimidated
the rest; and the professor was obliged to proceed,
and extricate the British fleet by himself. He concluded by
awarding Admiral Rodney the victory, which must have been
exceedingly gratifying to the family pride of the surviving relatives
and connections of that distinguished hero.
“Shall I clean the board, sir?” now asked Mr. Pert, brightening
up.
“No, sir; not till you have saved that crippled French
ship in the corner. That ship, young gentlemen, is the Glorieuse;
you perceive she is cut off from her consorts, and the
whole British fleet is giving chase to her. Her bowsprit is
gone; her rudder is torn away; she has one hundred round
shot in her hull, and two thirds of her men are dead or dying.
What's to be done? the wind being at northeast by north?”
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Dash, a chivalric young gentleman
from Virginia, “I wouldn't strike yet; I'd nail my colors to
the main-royal-mast! I would, by Jove!”
“That would not save your ship, sir; besides, your mainmast
has gone by the board.”
“I think, sir,” said Mr. Slim, a diffident youth, “I think,
sir, I would haul back the fore-top-sail.”
“And why so? of what service would that be, I should
like to know, Mr. Slim?”
“I can't tell exactly; but I think it would help her a little,”
was the timid reply.
“Not a whit, sir—not one particle; besides, you can't haul
back your fore-top-sail—your fore-mast is lying across your
forecastle.”
“Haul back the main-top-sail, then,” suggested another.
“Can't be done; your main-mast, also, has gone by the
board!”
“Mizzen-top-sail?” meekly suggested little Boat-Plug.
“Your mizzen-top-mast, let me inform you, sir, was shot
down in the first of the fight!”
“Well, sir,” cried Mr. Dash, “I'd tack ship, any way;
bid 'em good-by with a broadside; nail my flag to the keel,
if there was no other place; and blow my brains out on the
poop!”
“Idle, idle, sir! worse than idle! you are carried away,
Mr. Dash, by your ardent Southern temperament! Let me
inform you, young gentleman, that this ship,” touching it with
his cutlass, “can not be saved.”
Then, throwing down his cutlass, “Mr. Pert, have the
goodness to hand me one of those cannon-balls from the rack.”
Balancing the iron sphere in one hand, the learned professor
began fingering it with the other, like Columbus illustrating
the rotundity of the globe before the Royal Commission of
Castilian Ecclesiastics.
“Young gentlemen, I resume my remarks on the passage
of a shot in vacuo, which remarks were interrupted yesterday
by general quarters. After quoting that admirable passage
in `Spearman's British Gunner,' I then laid it down, you remember,
that the path of a shot in vacuo describes a parabolic
curve. I now add that, agreeably to the method pursued
by the illustrious Newton in treating the subject of curvilinear
motion, I consider the trajectory or curve described by a
moving body in space as consisting of a series of right lines,
described in successive intervals of time, and constituting the
diagonals of parallelograms formed in a vertical plane between
the vertical deflections caused by gravity and the production
of the line of motion which has been described in each preceding
interval of time. This must be obvious; for, if you
say that the passage
in vacuo of this cannon-ball, now held
in my hand, would describe otherwise than a series of right
lines, &c., then you are brought to the
Reductio ad Absurdum,
that the diagonals of parallelograms are—”
“All hands reef top-sail!” was now thundered forth by the
boatswain's mates. The shot fell from the professor's palm;
his spectacles dropped on his nose, and the school tumultuously
broke up, the pupils scrambling up the ladders with the
sailors, who had been overhearing the lecture.
