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Updated: May 31, 2025
What were a day without a dinner? a dinnerless day! such a day had better be a night. Again: twelve o'clock is the natural hour for us men-of-war's men to dine, because at that hour the very time-pieces we have invented arrive at their terminus; they can get no further than twelve; when straightway they continue their old rounds again.
There are the dirty men-of-war's boats of the Russians, with unwashed mangy crews; the great ferry-boats carrying hundreds of passengers to the villages; the melon-boats piled up with enormous golden fruit; His Excellency the Pasha's boat, with twelve men bending to their oars; and His Highness's own caique, with a head like a serpent, and eight-and-twenty tugging oarsmen, that goes shooting by amidst the thundering of the cannon.
The small basin was busy with a hundred ships, from the huge guard-ship, which lies there a city in itself; merchantmen loading and crews cheering, under all the flags of the world flaunting in the sunshine; a half-score of busy black steamers perpetually coming and going, coaling and painting, and puffing and hissing in and out of harbour; slim men-of-war's barges shooting to and fro, with long shining oars flashing like wings over the water; hundreds of painted town-boats, with high heads and white awnings, down to the little tubs in which some naked, tawny young beggars came paddling up to the steamer, entreating us to let them dive for halfpence.
We have had nearly two score of Englishmen here, officers and men; some privateersmen, some merchant seamen, the men-of-war's men having been taken mostly in prizes, except a dozen of us who belong to the Buzzard schooner, and we should not have been taken had not the sloop of war we were engaging knocked away our fore-topmast, and pretty well killed or wounded two-thirds of our ship's company.
In the great majority of cases, and most likely in all, the number of these months was less than six. Even within the nineteenth century men-of-war's men had to wait for their pay for years.
Now and then a man-of-war's boat, with half-a-dozen reckless midshipmen in her, who looked as if they would not have the slightest scruple in sailing over us, would pass within a few inches of the wherry; now a ship's launch with a party of marines, pulling with uncertain strokes like a huge maimed centipede, would come right across our course and receive old Bob's no very complimentary remarks; next a boatful of men-of-war's men, liberty men returning from leave.
"If we are seen, I hope that we may be mistaken for the guard-boat," said La Motte, as we were preparing to shove off. "Now, my lads, shove off, and try and row as much like Frenchmen as you can." The advice was not unnecessary, for the steady, measured pull of English men-of-war's men would have inevitably betrayed us.
"Ay; but it's gospel your Honour," I heard the man reply; and, I believe, sailors do hand down to each other a tradition of that kind; for there is a figure of speech, and it is nothing more, with which the English men-of-war's men used to hail the lobster smacks going up the Thames. "Smack a-hoy! hand us a few lobsters, or you know what'll happen!"
The sufferings of many were more than human endurance could sustain, and next morning, when the men-of-war's boats returned, half of the hapless beings were found dead. We, meantime, when our services could be of no further avail, found ourselves, being in an enemy's country, marched off as prisoners; but I am bound to say that we were treated with the greatest kindness by the French.
There are men who pause before the old Admiral and see the cutwater of men-of-war's bows and hear the singing of the signal halyards as they rise with the command to close in. Perhaps the Eternal Painter had put a little of his soul into the heart of Jack; for some busy marchers of the Avenue trail as they glanced at him saw the free desert and heard hoof-beats in the sand.
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