Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 26, 2025
Bargate, the old man-of-war's-man, was the cockswain, and his lordship gave the word to him to give way. "Pull to the Apollo Bunder, if you please, my man," said he. "Which, your honor?" asked Bargate blankly. "I mean the bit of a basin you see nearly abreast of the ship," the new leader explained, pointing out the locality.
Whether these titles were given to express some peculiarity of their owner he could not tell, for a silence followed as they slowly ranged themselves upon the floor of the cabin in a semicircle around their cadaverous host. At length Malmsey Butt, a spherical-bodied man-of-war's-man, with a rubicund nose, got on his legs somewhat unsteadily, and addressed himself to the company.
In ten minutes they emerged, Johnson clad in the blue rig of a man-of-war's-man, Breen in the undress uniform of an officer, his crippled arm buttoned into the coat. As they stepped toward the gangway, Captain Bacon, pale and perspiring, wheezing painfully, entered the cabin and passed out of their lives.
He 'tended his duty in the house of the Lord, and he wouldn't look after the women; but he kept his live eye upon every young chap as were fit for a man-of-war's-man Dan Tugwell especial, and young Harry Shanks. You see if he don't have both of they afore ever the war comes on again!"
But though, from the keen sense of my situation as a man-of-war's-man all this about my keeping myself in the back ground was true enough, yet I had no idea of hiding my diffident merits under ground. I became alarmed at the old Yeoman's goggling glances, lest he should drag me down into tarry perdition in his hideous store-rooms.
He found that she was the "Grecian" frigate, and that she was standing on and off the land, waiting to take the Captain and some of the officers on board. He, however, was at once regularly entered, and found himself speedily transferred into a man-of-war's-man. Scarcely had he signed the papers, than loud peals of laughter broke from the seamen round him.
The sailmaker was the head man of the watch, and was generally considered the most experienced seaman on board. He was a thoroughbred old man-of-war's-man, had been to sea twenty-two years, in all kinds of vessels men-of-war, privateers, slavers, and merchantmen; everything except whalers, which a thorough sailor despises, and will always steer clear of, if he can.
Indeed, come to look at it, what more does a man-of-war's-man absolutely require to live in than his own skin? That's room enough; and room enough to turn in, if he but knew how to shift his spine, end for end, like a ramrod, without disturbing his next neighbour.
And he had a sad story about a man-of-war's-man who broke his heart at Portsmouth during the late war, and threw away his life recklessly at one of the quarter-deck cannonades, in the battle between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another incomprehensible story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be dunning a sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some eel soup, for a spell against the scurvy.
He and the second captain "provide" themselves with waist belts and primers, and the first with some other implements. But the handling of one of these great guns is about as technical as a surgical operation would be, and it would be quite impossible for the uninitiated to understand it, though it is every-day work to the ordinary man-of-war's-man.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking