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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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7 pointing thro’ the cabin window at the Indomitable. “But courage! don’t look so downhearted, man. Why, I pledge you in advance the royal approbation. Rest assured that His Majesty will be delighted to know that in a time when his hard tack is not sought for by sailors with such avidity as should be; a time also when some shipmasters privily resent the borrowing from them a tar or two for the service; His Majesty, I say, will be delighted to learn that one shipmaster at least cheerfully surrenders to the King, the flower of his flock, a sailor who with equal loyalty makes no dissent.- But where’s my beauty? Ah,” looking through the cabin’s open door, “Here he comes; and, by Jove-lugging along his chestApollo with his portmanteau!- My man,” stepping out to him, “you can’t take that big box aboard a war-ship. The boxes there are mostly shot-boxes. Put your duds in a bag, lad. Boot and saddle for the cavalryman, bag and hammock for the manof-war’s man.” The transfer from chest to bag was made. And, after seeing his man into the cutter and then following him down, the Lieutenant pushed off from the Rights-ofMan. That was the merchant-ship’s name; tho’ by her master and crew abbrevi- ated in sailor fashion into The Rights. The hard-headed Dundee owner was a staunch admirer of Thomas Paine whose book in rejoinder to Burke’s arraignment of the French Revolution had then been published for some time and had gone everywhere. In christening his vessel after the title of Paine’s volume, the man of Dundee was something like his contemporary shipowner, Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, whose sympathies, alike with his native land and its liberal philosophers, he evinced by naming his ships after Voltaire, Diderot, and so forth. But now, when the boat swept under the merchantman’s stern, and officer and oarsmen were noting-some bitterly and others with a grin,- the name emblazoned there; just then it was that the new recruit jumped up from the bow where the coxswain had directed him to sit, and waving his hat to his silent shipmates sorrowfully looking over at him from the taffrail, bade the lads a genial good- bye. Then, making a salutation as to the ship herself, “And good- bye to you too, old Rightsof-Man.” “Down, Sir!” roared the Lieutenant, instantly assuming all the rigour of his rank, though with difficulty repressing a smile. To be sure, Billy’s action was a terrible breach of naval decorum. But in that decorum he had never been instructed; in consideration of which the Lieutenant would hardly have been so energetic in reproof but for the concluding farewell to the ship. This he rather |
