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Therefore, Mad Jack! you did right, and no one else could have acquitted himself better. Think of it, if future historians should devote a long chapter to the great Rebellion of the Beards on board the United States ship Neversink. Why, through all time thereafter, barbers would cut down their spiralised poles, and substitute miniature main-masts for the emblems of their calling.
But in order to prepare for its narration, some account of a part of the ship called the "sick-bay" must needs be presented. The "sick-bay" is that part of a man-of-war where the invalid seamen are placed; in many respects it answers to a public hospital ashore. As with most frigates, the sick-bay of the Neversink was on the berth-deck the third deck from above.
Yet it must be confessed that at times you see midshipmen who are noble little fellows, and not at all disliked by the crew. Besides three gallant youths, one black-eyed little lad in particular, in the Neversink, was such a one. From his diminutiveness, he went by the name of Boat Plug among the seamen.
The Biscuit Brook came in here from the west, a fine, rapid trout stream six or eight miles in length, with plenty of deer in the mountains about its head. On its banks we found the house of an old woodman, to whom we had been directed for information about the section we proposed to traverse. "Is the way very difficult," we inquired, "across from the Neversink into the head of the Beaver-kill?"
The crowd was decidedly a heterogeneous one on the edge of which I stood at eight o'clock, A.M., one scorching July morning, under an awning at the end of a rickety pier, waiting for the excursion-steamer which was to convey us to the distant sand-banks over which the clear waters lap, away down below the green-sloped highlands of Neversink, sea-shoal banks, from which silvery fishes were warning us off with their waving fins.
"The Sultan, Indiaman, from New York, and bound to Callao and Canton, sixty days out, all well. What frigate's that?" "The United States ship Neversink, homeward bound." "Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" yelled our enthusiastic countryman, transported with patriotism. By this time the Sultan had swept past, but the Lieutenant of the Watch could not withhold a parting admonition. "D'ye hear?
This vast and populous city, with all its passing show of life, would be little better than a waste, howling wilderness if we could not catch a glimpse, now and then, of young people falling in love in the good old-fashioned way. Even on a trout-stream, I have seen nothing prettier than the sight upon which I once came suddenly as I was fishing down the Neversink.
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.
Nearly one third of the petty officers of the Neversink were born east of the Atlantic. Why is this? Because the same principle that operates in hindering Americans from hiring themselves out as menial domestics also restrains them, in a great measure, from voluntarily assuming a far worse servitude in the Navy.
On their starboard hand was Mess No. 2, embracing sundry rare jokers and high livers, who waxed gay and epicurean over their salt fare, and were known as the "Society for the Destruction of Beef and Pork." On the larboard hand was Mess No. 31, made up entirely of fore-top-men, a dashing, blaze-away set of men-of-war's-men, who called themselves the "Cape Horn Snorters and Neversink Invincibles."
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