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- the bow where the coxswain had directed him to sit, and, waving his hat
to his silent shipmates sorrowfully looking over at him from the
taffrail, bade the lads a genial good-bye. Then making a salutation as
to the ship herself, ‘And good-bye to you too, old _Rights-of-Man_!’
‘Down, sir,’ roared the Lieutenant, instantly assuming all the rigour of
his rank, though with difficulty repressing a smile.
To be sure, Billy’s action was a terrible breach of naval decorum. But
in that decorum he had never been instructed; in consideration of which
the Lieutenant would hardly have been so energetic in reproof but for
the concluding farewell to the ship. This he rather took as meant to
convey a covert sally on the new recruit’s part, a sly slur at
impressment in general, and that of himself in especial. And yet, more
likely, if satire it was in effect, it was hardly so by intention, for
Billy, though happily endowed with the gaiety of high health, youth, and
a free heart, was yet by no means of a satirical turn. The will to it
and the sinister dexterity were alike wanting. To deal in double meaning
and insinuations of any sort was quite foreign to his nature.
As to his enforced enlistment, that he seemed to take pretty much as he
was wont to take any vicissitudes of weather. Like the animals, though
no philosopher he was, without knowing it, practically a fatalist. And,
it may be, that he rather liked this adventurous turn in his affairs
which promised an opening into novel scenes and martial excitements.
Aboard the _Indomitable_ our merchant-sailor was forthwith rated as an
able seaman, and assigned to the starboard watch of the foretop. He was
soon at home in the service, not at all disliked for his unpretentious
good looks, and a sort of genial happy-go-lucky air. No merrier man in
his mess; in marked contrast to certain other individuals included like
himself among the impressed portion of the ship’s company; for these
when not actively employed were sometimes, and more particularly in the
last dog-watch when the drawing near of twilight induced revery, apt to
fall into a saddish mood which in some partook of sullenness. But they
were not so young as our foretopman, and no few of them must have known
a hearth of some sort, others may have had wives and children left, too
probably, in uncertain circumstances, and hardly any but must have
acknowledged kith and kin; while for Billy, as will shortly be seen, his
entire family was practically invested in himself.
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