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- 13534
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- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.278Z
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- 13473
- text
- would certainly be deemed forfeited should the president of the company
chance to lounge by and behold him in that imminent peril. For myself,
I accounted it an excellent preparation for going into a sea-fight,
where fortitude in standing up to your gun and running the risk of all
splinters, comprise part of the practical qualities that make up an
efficient man-of-war’s man.
It remains to be related, that these barbers of ours had their labours
considerably abridged by a fashion prevailing among many of the crew,
of wearing very large whiskers; so that, in most cases, the only parts
needing a shave were the upper lip and suburbs of the chin. This had
been more or less the custom during the whole three years’ cruise; but
for some time previous to our weathering Cape Horn, very many of the
seamen had redoubled their assiduity in cultivating their beards
preparatory to their return to America. There they anticipated creating
no small impression by their immense and magnificent
_homeward-bounders_—so they called the long fly-brushes at their chins.
In particular, the more aged sailors, embracing the Old Guard of sea
grenadiers on the forecastle, and the begrimed gunner’s mates and
quarter-gunners, sported most venerable beards of an exceeding length
and hoariness, like long, trailing moss hanging from the bough of some
aged oak. Above all, the Captain of the Forecastle, old Ushant—a fine
specimen of a sea sexagenarian—wore a wide, spreading beard, gizzled
and grey, that flowed over his breast and often became tangled and
knotted with tar. This Ushant, in all weathers, was ever alert at his
duty; intrepidly mounting the fore-yard in a gale, his long beard
streaming like Neptune’s. Off Cape Horn it looked like a miller’s,
being all over powdered with frost; sometimes it glittered with minute
icicles in the pale, cold, moonlit Patagonian nights. But though he was
so active in time of tempest, yet when his duty did not call for
exertion, he was a remarkably staid, reserved, silent, and majestic old
man, holding himself aloof from noisy revelry, and never participating
in the boisterous sports of the crew. He resolutely set his beard
against their boyish frolickings, and often held forth like an oracle
concerning the vanity thereof. Indeed, at times he was wont to talk
philosophy to his ancient companions—the old sheet-anchor-men around
him—as well as to the hare-brained tenants of the fore-top, and the
giddy lads in the mizzen.
Nor was his philosophy to be despised; it abounded in wisdom. For this
Ushant was an old man, of strong natural sense, who had seen nearly the
whole terraqueous globe, and could reason of civilized and savage, of
Gentile and Jew, of Christian and Moslem. The long night-watches of the
sailor are eminently adapted to draw out the reflective faculties of
any serious-minded man, however humble or uneducated. Judge, then, what
half a century of battling out watches on the ocean must have done for
this fine old tar. He was a sort of a sea-Socrates, in his old age
“pouring out his last philosophy and life,” as sweet Spenser has it;
and I never could look at him, and survey his right reverend beard,
without bestowing upon him that title which, in one of his satires,
Persius gives to the immortal quaffer of the hemlock—_Magister
Barbatus_—the bearded master.
Not a few of the ship’s company had also bestowed great pains upon
their hair, which some of them—especially the genteel young sailor
bucks of the After-guard—wore over their shoulders like the ringleted
Cavaliers. Many sailors, with naturally tendril locks, prided
themselves upon what they call _love curls_, worn at the side of the
head, just before the ear—a custom peculiar to tars, and which seems to
have filled the vacated place of the old-fashioned Lord Rodney cue,
which they used to wear some fifty years ago.
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