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- of him in his general character, as a flag-officer. In the first place,
then, I have serious doubts, whether for the most part, he was not
dumb; for in my hearing, he seldom or never uttered a word. And not
only did he seem dumb himself, but his presence possessed the strange
power of making other people dumb for the time. His appearance on the
Quarter-deck seemed to give every officer the lock-jaw.
Another phenomenon about him was the strange manner in which everyone
shunned him. At the first sign of those epaulets of his on the weather
side of the poop, the officers there congregated invariably shrunk over
to leeward, and left him alone. Perhaps he had an evil eye; may be he
was the Wandering Jew afloat. The real reason probably was, that like
all high functionaries, he deemed it indispensable religiously to
sustain his dignity; one of the most troublesome things in the world,
and one calling for the greatest self-denial. And the constant watch,
and many-sided guardedness, which this sustaining of a Commodore’s
dignity requires, plainly enough shows that, apart from the common
dignity of manhood, Commodores, in general possess no real dignity at
all. True, it is expedient for crowned heads, generalissimos,
Lord-high-admirals, and Commodores, to carry themselves straight, and
beware of the spinal complaint; but it is not the less veritable, that
it is a piece of assumption, exceedingly uncomfortable to themselves,
and ridiculous to an enlightened generation.
Now, how many rare good fellows there were among us main-top-men, who,
invited into his cabin over a social bottle or two, would have rejoiced
our old Commodore’s heart, and caused that ancient wound of his to heal
up at once.
Come, come, Commodore don’t look so sour, old boy; step up aloft here
into the _top_, and we’ll spin you a sociable yarn.
Truly, I thought myself much happier in that white jacket of mine, than
our old Commodore in his dignified epaulets.
One thing, perhaps, that more than anything else helped to make our
Commodore so melancholy and forlorn, was the fact of his having so
little to do. For as the frigate had a captain; of course, so far as
_she_ was concerned, our Commodore was a supernumerary. What abundance
of leisure he must have had, during a three years’ cruise; how
indefinitely he might have been improving his mind!
But as everyone knows that idleness is the hardest work in the world,
so our Commodore was specially provided with a gentleman to assist him.
This gentleman was called the _Commodore’s secretary_. He was a
remarkably urbane and polished man; with a very graceful exterior, and
looked much like an Ambassador Extraordinary from Versailles. He messed
with the Lieutenants in the Ward-room, where he had a state-room,
elegantly furnished as the private cabinet of Pelham. His cot-boy used
to entertain the sailors with all manner of stories about the
silver-keyed flutes and flageolets, fine oil paintings, morocco bound
volumes, Chinese chess-men, gold shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases,
extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of
scented note-paper, embroidered vests, incense-burning sealing-wax,
alabaster statuettes of Venus and Adonis, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes,
inlaid toilet-cases, ivory-handled hair-brushes and mother-of-pearl
combs, and a hundred other luxurious appendages scattered about this
magnificent secretary’s state-room.
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