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- 3686
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- broken by uncontrollable bursts of applause. At length, when that
heart-thrilling scene came on, where Percy Royal-Mast rescues fifteen
oppressed sailors from the watch-house, in the teeth of a posse of
constables, the audience leaped to their feet, overturned the capstan
bars, and to a man hurled their hats on the stage in a delirium of
delight. Ah Jack, that was a ten-stroke indeed!
The commotion was now terrific; all discipline seemed gone for ever;
the Lieutenants ran in among the men, the Captain darted from his
cabin, and the Commodore nervously questioned the armed sentry at his
door as to what the deuce _the people_ were about. In the midst of all
this, the trumpet of the officer-of-the-deck, commanding the
top-gallant sails to be taken in, was almost completely drowned. A
black squall was coming down on the weather-bow, and the boat-swain’s
mates bellowed themselves hoarse at the main-hatchway. There is no
knowing what would have ensued, had not the bass drum suddenly been
heard, calling all hands to quarters, a summons not to be withstood.
The sailors pricked their ears at it, as horses at the sound of a
cracking whip, and confusedly stumbled up the ladders to their
stations. The next moment all was silent but the wind, howling like a
thousand devils in the cordage.
“Stand by to reef all three top-sails!—settle away the halyards!—haul
out—so: make fast!—aloft, top-men! and reef away!”
Thus, in storm and tempest terminated that day’s theatricals. But the
sailors never recovered from the disappointment of not having the
“_True Yankee Sailor_” sung by the Irish Captain of the Head.
And here White-jacket must moralize a bit. The unwonted spectacle of
the row of gun-room officers mingling with “the people” in applauding a
mere seaman like Jack Chase, filled me at the time with the most
pleasurable emotions. It is a sweet thing, thought I, to see these
officers confess a human brotherhood with us, after all; a sweet thing
to mark their cordial appreciation of the manly merits of my matchless
Jack. Ah! they are noble fellows all round, and I do not know but I
have wronged them sometimes in my thoughts.
Nor was it without similar pleasurable feelings that I witnessed the
temporary rupture of the ship’s stern discipline, consequent upon the
tumult of the theatricals. I thought to myself, this now is as it
should be. It is good to shake off, now and then, this iron yoke round
our necks. And after having once permitted us sailors to be a little
noisy, in a harmless way—somewhat merrily turbulent—the officers
cannot, with any good grace, be so excessively stern and unyielding as
before. I began to think a man-of-war a man-of-peace-and-good-will,
after all. But, alas! disappointment came.
Next morning the same old scene was enacted at the gang-way. And
beholding the row of uncompromising-looking-officers there assembled
with the Captain, to witness punishment—the same officers who had been
so cheerfully disposed over night—an old sailor touched my shoulder and
said, “See, White-Jacket, all round they have _shipped their
quarter-deck faces again_. But this is the way.”
I afterward learned that this was an old man-of-war’s-man’s phrase,
expressive of the facility with which a sea-officer falls back upon all
the severity of his dignity, after a temporary suspension of it.
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