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- 3581
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 3526
- text
- A profound portrait-painter like Titian or our famous countryman
Stewart, what such an observer sees in any face he may earnestly study,
that essentially is the man. To disentangle his true history from
contemporary report is superfluous. Not so with us who are scarce
Titians and Stewarts. Occasionally we are struck by some exceptional
aspect instantly awakening our interest. But it is an interest that in
its ignorance is full of commonplace curiosity. We try to ascertain from
somebody the career and experience of the man, or may seek to obtain the
information from himself. But what we hear from others may prove but
unreliable gossip, and he himself, if approached, prove uncommunicative.
In short, in most instances he turns out to be like a meteoric stone in
a field. There it lies. The neighbours have their say about it, and an
odd enough say it may prove. But what is it? Whence did it come? In what
unimaginable sphere did it get that strange, igneous, metallic look, the
kine now cropping the dewy grass about it?
Any attempt to depict such a character as is here suggested must be an
imperfect one. Nevertheless, it is a man of this description who is the
subject of the present essay at a sketch.
A sailor’s name as it appears on a crew-list is not always his real
name, nor in every instance does it indicate his country. This premised,
be it said that by the name at the head of this writing long went an old
man-of-war’s man of whose earlier history it may verily be said that
nobody knew anything but himself; and it was idle to seek it in that
quarter. Conscientious, constantly so, in discharging his duties, the
respect of his officers naturally followed. And for his fellow-sailors,
if none had reason to like one so unlike themselves, none dared to take
the slightest liberties with him. Any approach to it, and his eye was a
tutoring and deterring one. Getting in years at last, he was retired as
captain of a top, and assigned to a lower grade and post, namely, at the
foot of the mainmast, his business there being simply to stand by, to
let go, and make fast. But even this, with the night-watches, ere long
exacted too much from a sailor, a septuagenarian. In brief, he belays
his last halyard, and slips into obscure moorings ashore. Whatever his
disposition may originally have been, there, in his latter cruise at
least, had he been specially noted for his unsociability. Not that he
was gruff like some marine veterans with the lumbago, nor stealthily
taciturn like an Indian; but moody, frequently muttering to himself. And
from such muttered soliloquy he would sometimes start, and with a look
or gesture so uncheerfully peculiar that the Calvinistic imagination of
a certain frigate’s chaplain construed it into remorseful condemnation
of some dark deed in the past.
His features were large, strong, cast as in iron; but the effect of a
cartridge explosion had peppered all below the eyes with dense dottings
of black-blue. When according to custom he as mainmast man used to doff
his hat in less laconic speech with the officer-of-the-deck, his tanned
brow showed like October’s tawny moon revealed in crescent above an
ominous cloud. Along with his moody ways, was it this uncanny physical
aspect, the result of a mere chance, was it this, and this alone, that
had suggested the germ of the rumour among certain afterguardsmen that
in earlier life he had been a bucanier of the Keys and the Gulf, one of
Lafitte’s murderous crew? Certain it is, he had once served on a
letter-of-marque.
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