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- 10497
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.274Z
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- start_line
- 10427
- text
- Ay, and Byron helped put a piece of a keel on the fire; for it was made
of bits of a wreck, they say; one wreck burning another! And was not
Byron a sailor? an amateur forecastle-man, White-Jacket, so he was;
else how bid the ocean heave and fall in that grand, majestic way? I
say, White-Jacket, d’ye mind me? there never was a very great man yet
who spent all his life inland. A snuff of the sea, my boy, is
inspiration; and having been once out of sight of land, has been the
making of many a true poet and the blasting of many pretenders; for,
d’ye see, there’s no gammon about the ocean; it knocks the false keel
right off a pretender’s bows; it tells him just what he is, and makes
him feel it, too. A sailor’s life, I say, is the thing to bring us
mortals out. What does the blessed Bible say? Don’t it say that we
main-top-men alone see the marvellous sights and wonders? Don’t deny
the blessed Bible, now! don’t do it! How it rocks up here, my boy!”
holding on to a shroud; “but it only proves what I’ve been saying—the
sea is the place to cradle genius! Heave and fall, old sea!”
“And _you_, also, noble Jack,” said I, “what are you but a sailor?”
“You’re merry, my boy,” said Jack, looking up with a glance like that
of a sentimental archangel doomed to drag out his eternity in disgrace.
“But mind you, White-Jacket, there are many great men in the world
besides Commodores and Captains. I’ve that here, White-Jacket”—touching
his forehead—“which, under happier skies—perhaps in you solitary star
there, peeping down from those clouds—might have made a Homer of me.
But Fate is Fate, White-Jacket; and we Homers who happen to be captains
of tops must write our odes in our hearts, and publish them in our
heads. But look! the Captain’s on the poop.”
It was now midnight; but all the officers were on deck.
“Jib-boom, there!” cried the Lieutenant of the Watch, going forward and
hailing the headmost look-out. “D’ye see anything of those fellows
now?”
“See nothing, sir.”
“See nothing, sir,” said the Lieutenant, approaching the Captain, and
touching his cap.
“Call all hands!” roared the Captain. “This keel sha’n’t be beat while
I stride it.”
All hands were called, and the hammocks stowed in the nettings for the
rest of the night, so that no one could lie between blankets.
Now, in order to explain the means adopted by the Captain to insure us
the race, it needs to be said of the Neversink, that, for some years
after being launched, she was accounted one of the slowest vessels in
the American Navy. But it chanced upon a time, that, being on a cruise
in the Mediterranean, she happened to sail out of Port Mahon in what
was then supposed to be very bad trim for the sea. Her bows were
rooting in the water, and her stern kicking up its heels in the air.
But, wonderful to tell, it was soon discovered that in this comical
posture she sailed like a shooting-star; she outstripped every vessel
on the station. Thenceforward all her Captains, on all cruises,
_trimmed her by the head;_ and the Neversink gained the name of a
clipper.
To return. All hands being called, they were now made use of by Captain
Claret as make-weights, to trim the ship, scientifically, to her most
approved bearings. Some were sent forward on the spar-deck, with
twenty-four-pound shot in their hands, and were judiciously scattered
about here and there, with strict orders not to budge an inch from
their stations, for fear of marring the Captain’s plans. Others were
distributed along the gun and berth-decks, with similar orders; and, to
crown all, several carronade guns were unshipped from their carriages,
and swung in their breechings from the beams of the main-deck, so as to
impart a sort of vibratory briskness and oscillating buoyancy to the
frigate.
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