87. CHAPTER LXXXVII.
OLD USHANT AT THE GANGWAY.
The rebel beards, headed by old Ushant's, streaming like
a Commodore's bougee, now stood in silence at the mast.
“You knew the order!” said the Captain, eying them severely;
“what does that hair on your chins?”
“Sir,” said the Captain of the Forecastle, “did old Ushant
ever refuse doing his duty? did he ever yet miss his muster?
But, sir, old Ushant's beard is his own!”
“What's that, sir? Master-at-arms, put that man into
the brig.”
“Sir,” said the old man, respectfully, “the three years for
which I shipped are expired; and though I am perhaps
bound to work the ship home, yet, as matters are, I think
my beard might be allowed me. It is but a few days, Captain
Claret.”
“Put him into the brig!” cried the Captain; “and now,
you old rascals!” he added, turning round upon the rest, “I
give you fifteen minutes to have those beards taken off; if
they then remain on your chins, I'll flog you—every mother's
son of you—though you were all my own godfathers!”
The band of beards went forward, summoned their barbers,
and their glorious pennants were no more. In obedience to
orders, they then paraded themselves at the mast, and, addressing
the Captain, said, “Sir, our muzzle-lashings are
cast off!”
Nor is it unworthy of being chronicled, that not a single
sailor who complied with the general order but refused to
sport the vile regulation-whiskers prescribed by the Navy
Department. No! like heroes they cried, “Shave me clean!
I will not wear a hair, since I can not wear all!”
On the morrow, after breakfast, Ushant was taken out of
irons, and, with the master-at-arms on one side and an armed
sentry on the other, was escorted along the gun-deck and up
the ladder to the main-mast. There the Captain stood, firm
as before. They must have guarded the old man thus to prevent
his escape to the shore, something less than a thousand
miles distant at the time.
“Well, sir, will you have that beard taken off? you have
slept over it a whole night now; what do you say? I don't
want to flog an old man like you, Ushant!”
“My beard is my own, sir!” said the old man, lowly.
“Will you take it off?”
“It is mine, sir!” said the old man, tremulously.
“Rig the gratings!” roared the Captain. “Mast-at-arms,
strip him! quarter-masters, seize him up! boatswain's
mates, do your duty!”
While these executioners were employed, the Captain's excitement
had a little time to abate; and when, at last, old
Ushant was tied up by the arms and legs, and his venerable
back was exposed—that back which had bowed at the guns
of the frigate Constitution when she captured the Guerriere—
the Captain seemed to relent.
“You are a very old man,” he said, “and I am sorry to
flog you; but my orders must be obeyed. I will give you
one more chance; will you have that beard taken off?”
“Captain Claret,” said the old man, turning round painfully
in his bonds, “you may flog me, if you will; but, sir, in
this one thing I can not obey you.”
“Lay on! I'll see his backbone!” roared the Captain in
a sudden fury.
“By Heaven!” thrillingly whispered Jack Chase, who
stood by, “it's only a halter; I'll strike him!”
“Better not,” said a top-mate; “it's death, or worse punishment,
remember.”
“There goes the lash!” cried Jack. “Look at the old
man! By G—d, I can't stand it! Let me go, men!” and
with moist eyes Jack forced his way to one side.
“You, boatswain's mate,” cried the Captain, “you are favoring
that man! Lay on soundly, sir, or I'll have your own
cat laid soundly on you.”
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven, twelve lashes were laid on the back of that heroic old
man. He only bowed over his head, and stood as the Dying
Gladiator lies.
“Cut him down,” said the Captain.
“And now go and cut your own throat,” hoarsely whispered
an old sheet-anchor-man, a mess-mate of Ushant's.
When the master-at-arms advanced with the prisoner's
shirt, Ushant waived him off with the dignified air of a Brahim,
saying, “Do you think, master-at-arms, that I am hurt?
I will put on my own garment. I am never the worse for
it, man; and 'tis no dishonor when he who would dishonor
you, only dishonors himself.”
“What says he?” cried the Captain; “what says that
tarry old philosopher with the smoking back? Tell it to
me, sir, if you dare! Sentry, take that man back to the
brig. Stop! John Ushant, you have been Captain of the
Forecastle; I break you. And now you go into the brig,
there to remain till you consent to have that beard taken off.”
“My beard is my own,” said the old man, quietly. “Sentry,
I am ready.”
And back he went into durance between the guns; but
after lying some four or five days in irons, an order came to
remove them; but he was still kept confined.
Books were allowed him, and he spent much time in reading.
But he also spent many hours in braiding his beard,
and interweaving with it strips of red bunting, as if he desired
to dress out and adorn the thing which had triumphed
over all opposition.
He remained a prisoner till we arrived in America; but
the very moment he heard the chain rattle out of the hawse-hole,
and the ship swing to her anchor, he started to his feet,
dashed the sentry aside, and gaining the deck, exclaimed,
“At home, with my beard!”
His term of service having some months previous expired,
and the ship being now in harbor, he was beyond the reach
of naval law, and the officers durst not molest him. But
without unduly availing himself of these circumstances, the
old man merely got his bag and hammock together, hired a
boat, and throwing himself into the stern, was rowed ashore,
amid the unsuppressible cheers of all hands. It was a glorious
conquest over the Conqueror himself, as well worthy to
be celebrated as the Battle of the Nile.
Though, as I afterward learned, Ushant was earnestly entreated
to put the case into some lawyer's hands, he firmly
declined, saying, “I have won the battle, my friends, and I
do not care for the prize-money.” But even had he complied
with these entreaties, from precedents in similar cases, it is
almost certain that not a sou's worth of satisfaction would
have been received.
I know not in what frigate you sail now, old Ushant; but
Heaven protect your storied old beard, in whatever Typhoon
it may blow. And if ever it must be shorn, old man, may it
fare like the royal beard of Henry I., of England, and be
clipped by the right reverend hand of some Archbishop of
Sees.
As for Captain Claret, let it not be supposed that it is here
sought to impale him before the world as a cruel, black-hearted
man. Such he was not. Nor was he, upon the whole,
regarded by his crew with any thing like the feelings which
man-of-war's-men sometimes cherish toward signally tyrannical
commanders. In truth, the majority of the Neversink's
crew—in previous cruises habituated to flagrant misusage—
deemed Captain Claret a lenient officer. In many things he
certainly refrained from oppressing them. It has been related
what privileges he accorded to the seamen respecting the
free playing of checkers—a thing almost unheard of in most
American men-of-war. In the matter of overseeing the men's
clothing, also, he was remarkably indulgent, compared with
the conduct of other Navy Captains, who, by sumptuary regulations,
oblige their sailors to run up large bills with the Purser
for clothes. In a word, of whatever acts Captain Claret
might have been guilty in the Neversink, perhaps none of them
proceeded from any personal, organic hard-heartedness. What
he was, the usages of the Navy had made him. Had he been
a mere landsman—a merchant, say—he would no doubt have
been considered a kind-hearted man.
There may be some who shall read of this Bartholomew
Massacre of beards who will yet marvel, perhaps, that the
loss of a few hairs, more or less, should provoke such hostility
from the sailors, lash them into so frothing a rage; indeed,
come near breeding a mutiny.
But these circumstances are not without precedent. Not
to speak of the riots, attended with the loss of life, which once
occurred in Madrid, in resistance to an arbitrary edict of the
king's, seeking to suppress the cloaks of the Cavaliers; and,
not to make mention of other instances that might be quoted,
it needs only to point out the rage of the Saxons in the time
of William the Conqueror, when that despot commanded the
hair on their upper lips to be shaven off—the hereditary mustaches
which whole generations had sported. The multitude
of the dispirited vanquished were obliged to acquiesce; but
many Saxon Franklins and gentlemen of spirit, choosing rather
to lose their castles than their mustaches, voluntarily deserted
their fire-sides, and went into exile. All this is indignantly
related by the stout Saxon friar, Matthew Paris, in his
Historia Major, beginning with the Norman Conquest.
And that our man-of-war's-men were right in desiring to
perpetuate their beards, as martial appurtenances, must seem
very plain, when it is considered that, as the beard is the token
of manhood, so, in some shape or other, has it ever been held
the true badge of a warrior. Bonaparte's grenadiers were
stout whiskerandoes; and perhaps, in a charge, those fierce
whiskers of theirs did as much to appall the foe as the sheen
of their bayonets. Most all fighting creatures sport either
whiskers or beards; it seems a law of Dame Nature. Witness
the boar, the tiger, the cougar, man, the leopard, the ram,
the cat—all warriors, and all whiskerandoes. Whereas, the
peace-loving tribes have mostly enameled chins.
