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- CHAPTER LXXIV.
THE MAIN-TOP AT NIGHT.
The whole of our run from Rio to the Line was one delightful yachting,
so far as fine weather and the ship’s sailing were concerned. It was
especially pleasant when our quarter-watch lounged in the main-top,
diverting ourselves in many agreeable ways. Removed from the immediate
presence of the officers, we there harmlessly enjoyed ourselves, more
than in any other part of the ship. By day, many of us were very
industrious, making hats or mending our clothes. But by night we became
more romantically inclined.
Often Jack Chase, an enthusiastic admirer of sea-scenery, would direct
our attention to the moonlight on the waves, by fine snatches from his
catalogue of poets. I shall never forget the lyric air with which, one
morning, at dawn of day, when all the East was flushed with red and
gold, he stood leaning against the top-mast shrouds, and stretching his
bold hand over the sea, exclaimed, “Here comes Aurora: top-mates, see!”
And, in a liquid, long-lingering tone, he recited the lines,
“With gentle hand, as seeming oft to pause,
The purple curtains of the morn she draws.”
“Commodore Camoens, White-Jacket.—But bear a hand there; we must rig
out that stun’-sail boom—the wind is shifting.”
From our lofty perch, of a moonlight night, the frigate itself was a
glorious sight. She was going large before the wind, her stun’-sails
set on both sides, so that the canvas on the main-mast and fore-mast
presented the appearance of majestic, tapering pyramids, more than a
hundred feet broad at the base, and terminating in the clouds with the
light copestone of the royals. That immense area of snow-white canvas
sliding along the sea was indeed a magnificent spectacle. The three
shrouded masts looked like the apparitions of three gigantic Turkish
Emirs striding over the ocean.
Nor, at times, was the sound of music wanting, to augment the poetry of
the scene. The whole band would be assembled on the poop, regaling the
officers, and incidentally ourselves, with their fine old airs. To
these, some of us would occasionally dance in the _top_, which was
almost as large as an ordinary sized parlour. When the instrumental
melody of the band was not to be had, our nightingales mustered their
voices, and gave us a song.
Upon these occasions Jack Chase was often called out, and regaled us,
in his own free and noble style, with the “_Spanish Ladies_”—a
favourite thing with British man-of-war’s-men—and many other salt-sea
ballads and ditties, including,
“Sir Patrick Spens was the best sailor
That ever sailed the sea.”
also,
“And three times around spun our gallant ship;
Three times around spun she;
Three times around spun our gallant ship,
And she went to the bottom of the sea—
The sea, the sea, the sea,
And she went to the bottom of the sea!”
These songs would be varied by sundry _yarns_ and _twisters_ of the
top-men. And it was at these times that I always endeavoured to draw
out the oldest Tritons into narratives of the war-service they had
seen. There were but few of them, it is true, who had been in action;
but that only made their narratives the more valuable.
There was an old negro, who went by the name of Tawney, a
sheet-anchor-man, whom we often invited into our top of tranquil
nights, to hear him discourse. He was a staid and sober seaman, very
intelligent, with a fine, frank bearing, one of the best men in the
ship, and held in high estimation by every one.
It seems that, during the last war between England and America, he had,
with several others, been “impressed” upon the high seas, out of a New
England merchantman. The ship that impressed him was an English
frigate, the Macedonian, afterward taken by the Neversink, the ship in
which we were sailing.
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