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- 2026-01-30T20:47:50.352Z
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- But king o’ the club, the gayest golden spark,
Sailor o’ sailors, what sailor do I mark?
Tom Tight, Tom Tight, no fine fellow finer,
A cutwater nose, ay, a spirited soul;
But, bowsing away at the well-brewed bowl,
He never bowled back from that last voyage to China.
Tom was lieutenant in the brig-o’-war famed
When an officer was hung for an arch-mutineer,
But a mystery cleaved, and the captain was blamed,
And a rumpus too raised, though his honor it was clear.
And Tom he would say, when the mousers would try him,
And with cup after cup o’ Burgundy ply him:
“Gentlemen, in vain with your wassail you beset,
For the more I tipple, the tighter do I get.”
No blabber, no, not even with the can—
True to himself and loyal to his clan.
Tom blessed us starboard and d—d us larboard,
Right down from rail to the streak o’ the garboard.
Nor less, wife, we liked him.—Tom was a man
In contrast queer with Chaplain Le Fan,
Who blessed us at morn, and at night yet again,
D—ning us only in decorous strain;
Preaching ’tween the guns—each cutlass in its place—
From text that averred old Adam a hard case.
I see him—Tom—on _horse-block_ standing,
Trumpet at mouth, thrown up all amain,
An elephant’s bugle, vociferous demanding
Of topmen aloft in the hurricane of rain,
“Letting that sail there your faces flog?
Manhandle it, men, and you’ll get the good grog!”
O Tom, but he knew a blue-jacket’s ways,
And how a lieutenant may genially haze;
Only a sailor sailors heartily praise.
Wife, where be all these chaps, I wonder?
Trumpets in the tempest, terrors in the fray,
Boomed their commands along the deck like thunder;
But silent is the sod, and thunder dies away.
But Captain Turret, _“Old Hemlock”_ tall,
(A leaning tower when his tank brimmed all,)
Manoeuvre out alive from the war did he?
Or, too old for that, drift under the lee?
Kentuckian colossal, who, touching at Madeira,
The huge puncheon shipped o’ prime _Santa-Clara;_
Then rocked along the deck so solemnly!
No whit the less though judicious was enough
In dealing with the Finn who made the great huff;
Our three-decker’s giant, a grand boatswain’s mate,
Manliest of men in his own natural senses;
But driven stark mad by the devil’s drugged stuff,
Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late,
Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses,
A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power,
The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower.
“Put him in _brig_ there!” said Lieutenant Marrot.
“Put him in _brig!_” back he mocked like a parrot;
“Try it, then!” swaying a fist like Thor’s sledge,
And making the pigmy constables hedge—
Ship’s corporals and the master-at-arms.
“In _brig_ there, I say!”—They dally no more;
Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar,
Together they pounce on the formidable Finn,
Pinion and cripple and hustle him in.
Anon, under sentry, between twin guns,
He slides off in drowse, and the long night runs.
Morning brings a summons. Whistling it calls,
Shrilled through the pipes of the boatswain’s four aids;
Trilled down the hatchways along the dusk halls:
_Muster to the Scourge!_—Dawn of doom and its blast!
As from cemeteries raised, sailors swarm before the mast,
Tumbling up the ladders from the ship’s nether shades.
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