"Ay! trail your beards in grief and dishonour, oh crew of the Neversink!" sighed Jack. "Barber, come closer-now, tell me, my friend, have you obtained absolution for this deed you are about to commit? You have not? Then, barber, I will absolve you; your hands shall be washed of this sin; it is not you, but another; and though you are about to shear off my manhood, yet, barber, I freely forgive you; kneel, kneel, barber! that I may bless you, in token that I cherish no malice!"
So when this barber, who was the only tender-hearted one of his tribe, had kneeled, been absolved, and then blessed, Jack gave up his beard into his hands, and the barber, clipping it off with a sigh, held it high aloft, and, parodying the style of the boatswain's mates, cried aloud, "D'ye hear, fore and aft? This is the beard of our matchless Jack Chase, the noble captain of this frigate's main-top!"
CHAPTER LXXXVI
THE REBELS BROUGHT TO THE MAST
Though many heads of hair were shorn, and many fine beards reaped that day, yet several still held out, and vowed to defend their sacred hair to the last gasp of their breath. These were chiefly old sailors-some of them petty officers-who, presuming upon their age or rank, doubtless thought that, after so many had complied with the Captain's commands, _they_, being but a handful, would be exempted from compliance, and remain a monument of our master's clemency.
That same evening, when the drum beat to quarters, the sailors went sullenly to their guns, and the old tars who still sported their beards stood up, grim, defying, and motionless, as the rows of sculptured Assyrian kings, who, with their magnificent beards, have recently been exhumed by Layard.
When the proper time arrived, their names were taken down by the officers of divisions, and they were afterward summoned in a body to the mast, where the Captain stood ready to receive them. The whole ship's company crowded to the spot, and, amid the breathless multitude, the vener-able rebels advanced and unhatted.
It was an imposing display. They were old and venerable mariners; their cheeks had been burned brown in all latitudes, wherever the sun sends a tropical ray. Reverend old tars, one and all; some of them might have been grandsires, with grandchildren in every port round the world. They ought to have commanded the veneration of the most frivolous or magisterial beholder. Even Captain Claret they ought to have humiliated into deference. But a Scythian is touched with no reverential promptings; and, as the Roman student well knows, the august Senators themselves, seated in the Senate-house, on the majestic hill of the Capitol, had their holy beards tweaked by the insolent chief of the Goths.
Such an array of beards! spade-shaped, hammer-shaped, dagger- shaped, triangular, square, peaked, round, hemispherical, and forked. But chief among them all, was old Ushant's, the ancient Captain of the Forecastle. Of a Gothic venerableness, it fell upon his breast like a continual iron-gray storm.
Ah! old Ushant, Nestor of the crew! it promoted my longevity to behold you.
He was a man-of-war's-man of the old Benbow school. He wore a short cue, which the wags of the mizzen-top called his "_plug of pig-tail_." About his waist was a broad boarder's belt, which he wore, he said, to brace his main-mast, meaning his backbone; for at times he complained of rheumatic twinges in the spine, consequent upon sleeping on deck, now and then, during the night-watches of upward of half a century. His sheath-knife was an antique-a sort of old-fashioned pruning-hook; its handle-a sperm whale's tooth-was carved all over with ships, cannon, and anchors. It was attached to his neck by a _lanyard_, elaborately worked into «rose-knots» and "Turks' heads" by his own venerable fingers.
Of all the crew, this Ushant was most beloved by my glorious captain, Jack Chase, who one day pointed him out to me as the old man was slowly coming down the rigging from the fore-top.
"There, White-Jacket! isn't that old Chaucer's shipman?
"'A dagger hanging by a las hadde he, About his nekke, under his arm adown; The hote sommer hadde made his beard all brown. Hardy he is, and wise; I undertake With many a tempest has his beard be shake.'
From the Canterbury Tales, White-Jacket! and must not old Ushant have been living in Chaucer's time, that Chaucer could draw his portrait so well?"
CHAPTER LXXXVII
OLD USHANT AT THE GANGWAY
The rebel beards, headed by old Ushant's, streaming like a Commodore's _bougee_, now stood in silence at the mast.
"You knew the order!" said the Captain, eyeing them severely; "what does that hair on your chins?"
"Sir," said the Captain of the Forecastle, "did old Ushant ever refuse doing his duty? did he ever yet miss his muster? But, sir, old Ushant's beard is his own!"
"What's that, sir? Master-at-arms, put that man into the brig."
"Sir," said the old man, respectfully, "the three years for which I shipped are expired; and though I am perhaps bound to work the ship home, yet, as matters are, I think my beard might be allowed me. It is but a few days, Captain Claret."
"Put him into the brig!" cried the Captain; "and now, you old rascals!" he added, turning round upon the rest, "I give you fifteen minutes to have those beards taken off; if they then remain on your chins, I'll flog you-every mother's son of you- though you were all my own god-fathers!"
The band of beards went forward, summoned their barbers, and their glorious pennants were no more. In obedience to orders, they then paraded themselves at the mast, and, addressing the Captain, said, "Sir, our _muzzle-lashings_ are cast off!"
Nor is it unworthy of being chronicled, that not a single sailor who complied with the general order but refused to sport the vile _regulation-whiskers_ prescribed by the Navy Department. No! like heroes they cried, "Shave me clean! I will not wear a hair, since I cannot wear all!"
On the morrow, after breakfast, Ushant was taken out of irons, and, with the master-at-arms on one side and an armed sentry on the other, was escorted along the gun-deck and up the ladder to the main-mast. There the Captain stood, firm as before. They must have guarded the old man thus to prevent ms escape to the shore, something less than a thousand miles distant at the time.
"Well, sir, will you have that beard taken off? you have slept over it a whole night now; what do you say? I don't want to flog an old man like you, Ushant!"
"My beard is my own, sir!" said the old man, lowly.
"Will you take it off?"
"It is mine, sir?" said the old man, tremulously.
"Rig the gratings?" roared the Captain. "Master-at-arms, strip him! quarter-masters, seize him up! boatswain's mates, do your duty!"
While these executioners were employed, the Captain's excitement had a little time to abate; and when, at last, old Ushant was tied up by the arms and legs and his venerable back was exposed- that back which had bowed at the guns of the frigate Constitution when she captured the Guerriere-the Captain seemed to relent.
"You are a very old man," he said, "and I am sorry to flog you; but my orders must be obeyed. I will give you one more chance; will you have that beard taken off?"
"Captain Claret," said the old man, turning round painfully in his bonds, "you may flog me if you will; but, sir, in this one thing I _cannot_ obey you."
"Lay on! I'll see his backbone!" roared the Captain in a sudden fury.
"By Heaven!" thrillingly whispered Jack Chase, who stood by, "it's only a halter; I'll strike him!"