"Better say that to yourself, old man," replied Ringrope, stooping close to the light to thread his coarse needle, which trembled in his withered hands like the needle, in a compass of a Greenland ship near the Pole. "You ain't long for the sarvice. I wish I could give you some o' the blood in my veins, old man!"
"Ye ain't got ne'er a teaspoonful to spare," said Thrummings. "It will go hard, and I wouldn't want to do it; but I'm afeard I'll have the sewing on ye up afore long!"
"Sew me up? Me dead and you alive, old man?" shrieked Ringrope. "Well, I've he'rd the parson of the old Independence say as how old age was deceitful; but I never seed it so true afore this blessed night. I'm sorry for ye, old man-to see you so innocent- like, and Death all the while turning in and out with you in your hammock, for all the world like a hammock-mate."
"You lie! old man," cried Thrummings, shaking with rage. "It's _you_ that have Death for a hammock-mate; it's _you_ that will make a hole in the shot-locker soon."
"Take that back!" cried Ringrope, huskily, leaning far over the corpse, and, needle in hand, menacing his companion with his aguish fist. "Take that back, or I'll throttle your lean bag of wind fer ye!"
"Blast ye! old chaps, ain't ye any more manners than to be fighting over a dead man?" cried one of the sail-maker's mates, coming down from the spar-deck. "Bear a hand! — bear a hand! and get through with that job!"
"Only one more stitch to take," muttered Ringrope, creeping near the face.
"Drop your '_palm_,' then and let Thrummings take it; follow me- the foot of the main-sail wants mending-must do it afore a breeze springs up. D'ye hear, old chap! I say, drop your _palm_, and follow me."
At the reiterated command of his superior, Ringrope rose, and, turning to his comrade, said, "I take it all back, Thrummings, and I'm sorry for it, too. But mind ye, take that 'ere last stitch, now; if ye don't, there's no tellin' the consekenses."
As the mate and his man departed, I stole up to Thrummings. "Don't do it-don't do it, now, Thrummings-depend on it, it's wrong!"
"Well, youngster, I'll try this here one without it for jist this here once; and if, arter that, he don't spook me, I'll be dead agin the last stitch as long as my name is Thrummings."
So, without mutilation, the remains were replaced between the guns, the union jack again thrown over them, and I reseated myself on the shot-box.
CHAPTER LXXXI
HOW THEY BURY A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN AT SEA
Quarters over in the morning, the boatswain and his four mates stood round the main hatchway, and after giving the usual whistle, made the customary announcement-"_All hands bury the dead, ahoy!_"
In a man-of-war, every thing, even to a man's funeral and burial, proceeds with the unrelenting promptitude of the martial code. And whether it is _all hands bury the dead!_ or _all hands splice the main-brace_, the order is given in the same hoarse tones.
Both officers and men assembled in the lee waist, and through that bareheaded crowd the mess-mates of Shenly brought his body to the same gangway where it had thrice winced under the scourge. But there is something in death that ennobles even a pauper's corpse; and the Captain himself stood bareheaded before the remains of a man whom, with his hat on, he had sentenced to the ignominious gratings when alive.
"_I am the resurrection and the life!_" solemnly began the Chaplain, in full canonicals, the prayer-book in his hand.
"Damn you! off those booms!" roared a boatswain's mate to a crowd of top-men, who had elevated themselves to gain a better view of the scene.
"_We commit this body to the deep!_" At the word, Shenly's mess- mates tilted the board, and the dead sailor sank in the sea.
"Look aloft," whispered Jack Chase. "See that bird! it is the spirit of Shenly."
Gazing upward, all beheld a snow-white, solitary fowl, which- whence coming no one could tell-had been hovering over the main-mast during the service, and was now sailing far up into the depths of the sky.
CHAPTER LXXXII
WHAT REMAINS OF A MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN AFTER HIS BURIAL AT SEA
Upon examining Shenly's bag, a will was found, scratched in pencil, upon a blank leaf in the middle of his Bible; or, to use the phrase of one of the seamen, in the midships, atween the Bible and Testament, where the Pothecary (Apocrypha) uses to be.
The will was comprised in one solitary sentence, exclusive of the dates and signatures: "_In case I die on the voyage, the Purser will please pay over my wages to my wife, who lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire_."
Besides the testator's, there were two signatures of witnesses.
This last will and testament being shown to the Purser, who, it seems, had been a notary, or surrogate, or some sort of cosy chamber practitioner in his time, he declared that it must be "proved." So the witnesses were called, and after recognising their hands to the paper; for the purpose of additionally testing their honesty, they were interrogated concerning the day on which they had signed-whether it was _Banyan Day_, or _Duff Day_, or _Swampseed Day_; for among the sailors on board a man-of-war, the land terms, _Monday_, _Tuesday_, _Wednesday_, are almost unknown. In place of these they substitute nautical names, some of which are significant of the daily bill of fare at dinner for the week.
The two witnesses were somewhat puzzled by the attorney-like questions of the Purser, till a third party came along, one of the ship's barbers, and declared, of his own knowledge, that Shenly executed the instrument on a _Shaving Day_; for the deceased seaman had informed him of the circumstance, when he came to have his beard reaped on the morning of the event.
In the Purser's opinion, this settled the question; and it is to be hoped that the widow duly received her husband's death-earned wages.
Shenly was dead and gone; and what was Shenly's epitaph?
— "D. D."-
opposite his name in the Purser's books, in "_Black's best Writing Fluid_"-funereal name and funereal hue-meaning "Discharged, Dead."
CHAPTER LXXXIII
A MAN-OF-WAR COLLEGE
In our man-of-war world, Life comes in at one gangway and Death goes overboard at the other. Under the man-of-war scourge, curses mix with tears; and the sigh and the sob furnish the bass to the shrill octave of those who laugh to drown buried griefs of their own. Checkers were played in the waist at the time of Shenly's burial; and as the body plunged, a player swept the board. The bubbles had hardly burst, when all hands were _piped down_ by the Boatswain, and the old jests were heard again, as if Shenly himself were there to hear.
This man-of-war life has not left me unhardened. I cannot stop to weep over Shenly now; that would be false to the life I depict; wearing no mourning weeds, I resume the task of portraying our man-of-war world.
Among the various other vocations, all driven abreast on board of the Neversink, was that of the schoolmaster. There were two academies in the frigate. One comprised the apprentice boys, who, upon certain days of the week, were indoctrinated in the mysteries of the primer by an invalid corporal of marines, a slender, wizzen-cheeked man, who had received a liberal infant- school education.
The other school was a far more pretentious affair-a sort of army and navy seminary combined, where mystical mathematical problems were solved by the midshipmen, and great ships-of-the-line were navigated over imaginary shoals by unimaginable observations of the moon and the stars, and learned lectures were delivered upon great guns, small arms, and the curvilinear lines described by bombs in the air.