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Already has White-Jacket chronicled the mishaps and inconveniences, troubles and tribulations of all sorts brought upon him by that unfortunate but indispensable garment of his. But now it befalls him to record how this jacket, for the second and last time, came near proving his shroud.
In final reference to all that has been said in previous chapters touching the severity and unusualness of the laws of the American Navy, and the large authority vested in its commanding officers, be it here observed, that White-Jacket is not unaware of the fact, that the responsibility of an officer commanding at sea whether in the merchant service or the national marine is unparalleled by that of any other relation in which man may stand to man.
And, in the name of immortal manhood, would to God that every man who upholds this thing were scourged at the gangway till he recanted. But White-Jacket is ready to come down from the lofty mast-head of an eternal principle, and fight you Commodores and Captains of the navy on your own quarter-deck, with your own weapons, at your own paces.
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.
Do not hang back there by the bulwarks, White-Jacket; come up to the mark once more; for here goes still another minute-gun, which admonishes you never to be caught napping: Part of Art. XX. "If any person in the navy shall sleep upon his watch, he shall suffer death." Murderous! But then, in time of peace, they do not enforce these blood-thirsty laws? Do they not, indeed?
It was upon a particular name, in the list of officers and midshipmen, that Frank's fingers was placed. "That is my own brother," said he; "he must have got a reefer's warrant since I left home. Now, White-Jacket, what's to be done?
And though this is only a surmise, nevertheless, as having some knowledge of brandy and mankind, White-Jacket will venture to state that, had Captain Claret been an out-and-out temperance man, he would never have given that most imprudent order to hard up the helm.
No, no; I am a good Christian, White-Jacket, and love my enemy too much to drop his acquaintance." It may be readily imagined, therefore, what consternation and dismay pervaded the gun-deck at the first announcement of the tidings that the grog was expended. "The grog gone!" roared an old Sheet-anchor-man. "Oh! Lord! what a pain in my stomach!" cried a Main-top-man.
Marking all this from the beginning, I, White-Jacket, was sorely troubled with the idea, that, in the course of time, my own turn would come round to undergo the same objurgations. How to escape, I knew not. I resolved, please Heaven, to approve myself an unexceptionable caterer, and the most impartial of stewards.
Shelley poor lad! a Percy, too but they ought to have let him sleep in his sailor's grave he was drowned in the Mediterranean, you know, near Leghorn and not burn his body, as they did, as if he had been a bloody Turk. But many people thought him so, White-Jacket, because he didn't go to mass, and because he wrote Queen Mab. Trelawney was by at the burning; and he was an ocean-rover, too!
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