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- 4881
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- CHAPTER XXXI.
THE GUNNER UNDER HATCHES.
Among such a crowd of marked characters as were to be met with on board
our frigate, many of whom moved in mysterious circles beneath the
lowermost deck, and at long intervals flitted into sight like
apparitions, and disappeared again for whole weeks together, there were
some who inordinately excited my curiosity, and whose names, callings,
and precise abodes I industriously sought out, in order to learn
something satisfactory concerning them.
While engaged in these inquiries, often fruitless, or but partially
gratified, I could not but regret that there was no public printed
Directory for the Neversink, such as they have in large towns,
containing an alphabetic list of all the crew, and where they might be
found. Also, in losing myself in some remote, dark corner of the bowels
of the frigate, in the vicinity of the various store-rooms, shops, and
warehouses, I much lamented that no enterprising tar had yet thought of
compiling a _Hand-book of the Neversink_, so that the tourist might
have a reliable guide.
Indeed, there were several parts of the ship under hatches shrouded in
mystery, and completely inaccessible to the sailor.
Wondrous old doors, barred and bolted in dingy bulkheads, must have
opened into regions full of interest to a successful explorer.
They looked like the gloomy entrances to family vaults of buried dead;
and when I chanced to see some unknown functionary insert his key, and
enter these inexplicable apartments with a battle-lantern, as if on
solemn official business, I almost quaked to dive in with him, and
satisfy myself whether these vaults indeed contained the mouldering
relics of by-gone old Commodores and Post-captains. But the habitations
of the living commodore and captain—their spacious and curtained
cabins—were themselves almost as sealed volumes, and I passed them in
hopeless wonderment, like a peasant before a prince’s palace. Night and
day armed sentries guarded their sacred portals, cutlass in hand; and
had I dared to cross their path, I would infallibly have been cut down,
as if in battle. Thus, though for a period of more than a year I was an
inmate of this floating box of live-oak, yet there were numberless
things in it that, to the last, remained wrapped in obscurity, or
concerning which I could only lose myself in vague speculations. I was
as a Roman Jew of the Middle Ages, confined to the Jews’ quarter of the
town, and forbidden to stray beyond my limits. Or I was as a modern
traveller in the same famous city, forced to quit it at last without
gaining ingress to the most mysterious haunts—the innermost shrine of
the Pope, and the dungeons and cells of the Inquisition.
But among all the persons and things on board that puzzled me, and
filled me most with strange emotions of doubt, misgivings and mystery,
was the Gunner—a short, square, grim man, his hair and beard grizzled
and singed, as if with gunpowder. His skin was of a flecky brown, like
the stained barrel of a fowling-piece, and his hollow eyes burned in
his head like blue-lights. He it was who had access to many of those
mysterious vaults I have spoken of. Often he might be seen groping his
way into them, followed by his subalterns, the old quarter-gunners, as
if intent upon laying a train of powder to blow up the ship. I
remembered Guy Fawkes and the Parliament-house, and made earnest
inquiry whether this gunner was a Roman Catholic. I felt relieved when
informed that he was not.
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