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- as much as he did, but anyhow he gave the burly fool a terrible
drubbing. It took about half a minute, I should think. And, Lord bless
you, the lubber was astonished at the celerity. And will you believe it,
Lieutenant, the Red Whiskers now really loves Billy--loves him, or is
the biggest hypocrite that ever I heard of. But they all love him. Some
of ’em do his washing, darn old trowsers for him; the carpenter is at
odd times making a pretty little chest of drawers for him. Anybody will
do anything for Billy Budd; and it’s the happy family here. Now,
Lieutenant, if that young fellow goes, I know how it will be aboard the
_Rights_. Not again very soon shall I, coming up from dinner, lean over
the capstan smoking a quiet pipe--no, not very soon again, I think. Ay,
Lieutenant, you are going to take away the jewel of ’em; you are going
to take away my peacemaker.’ And with that the good soul had really some
ado in checking a rising sob.
‘Well,’ said the Lieutenant, who had listened with amused interest to
all this, and now waxing merry with his tipple, ‘well, blessed are the
peacemakers, especially the fighting peacemakers! And such are the
seventy-four beauties, some of which you see poking their noses out of
the port-holes of yonder warship lying-to for me,’ pointing through the
cabin windows at the _Indomitable_. ‘But courage! don’t look so
downhearted, man. Why, I pledge you in advance the royal approbation.
Rest assured that His Majesty will be delighted to know that in a time
when his hard-tack is not sought for by sailors with such avidity as
should be; a time also when some shipmasters privily resent the
borrowing from them of a tar or two for the service; His Majesty, I say,
will be delighted to learn that _one_ shipmaster at least cheerfully
surrenders to the King the flower of his flock, a sailor who with equal
loyalty makes no dissent. But where’s my Beauty? Ah,’ looking through
the cabin’s open door, ‘here he comes; and, by Jove! lugging along his
chest--Apollo with his portmanteau! My man,’ stepping out to him, ‘you
can’t take that big box aboard a warship. The boxes there are mostly
shot-boxes. Put your duds in a bag, lad. Boot and saddle for the
cavalryman, bag and hammock for the man-of-war’s man.’
The transfer from chest to bag was made. And, after seeing his man into
the cutter, and then following him down, the Lieutenant pushed off from
the _Rights-of-Man_. That was the merchant ship’s name; though by her
master and crew abbreviated in sailor fashion into the _Rights_. The
hard-headed Dundee owner was a staunch admirer of Thomas Paine, whose
book in rejoinder to Burke’s arraignment of the French Revolution had
then been published for some time, and had gone everywhere. In
christening his vessel after the title of Paine’s volume, the man of
Dundee was something like his contemporary shipowner, Stephen Girard of
Philadelphia, whose sympathies alike with his native land and its
liberal philosophies he evinced by naming his ships after Voltaire,
Diderot, and so forth.
But now when the boat swept under the merchantman’s stern, and officer
and oarsmen were noting, some bitterly and others with a grin, the name
emblazoned there; just then it was that the new recruit jumped up from
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.
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