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these adventurers, slowly and cautiously mounting the rigging, acted very
much, on the scattered topmen, in the manner that the appearance of so
many flies, in the immediate vicinity of a web, is known to act on their
concealed and rapacious enemies. The sailors aloft saw, by expressive
glances from them below, that a soldier was considered legal game. No
sooner, therefore, had the latter fairly entered into the toils, than
twenty topmen rushed out upon them, in order to make sure of their
prizes. In an incredibly short time, this important result was achieved.
Two or three of the aspiring adventurers were lashed where they had been
found, utterly unable to make any resistance in a spot where instinct
itself seemed to urge them to devote both hands to the necessary duty of
holding fast; while the rest were transferred, by the means of whips, to
different spars, very much as a light sail or a yard would have been
swayed into its place.
In the midst of the clamorous rejoicings that attended this success, one
individual made himself conspicuous for the gravity and business-like air
with which he performed his part of the comedy. Seated on the outer end of
a lower yard, with as much steadiness as though he had been placed on an
ottoman, he was intently occupied in examining into the condition of a
captive, who had been run up at his feet, with an order from the waggish
captain of the top, "to turn him in for a jewel-block;" a name that
appears to have been taken from the precious stones that are so often seen
pendant from the ears of the other sex.
"Ay, ay," muttered this deliberate and grave-looking tar, who was no other
than Richard Fid "the stropping you've sent with the fellow is none of the
best; and, if he squeaks so now, what will he do when you come to reeve a
rope through him! By the Lord, masters, you should have furnished the lad
a better outfit, if you meant to send him into good company aloft. Here
are more holes in his jacket than there are cabin windows to a Chinese
junk. Hilloa!--on deck there!--you Guinea, pick me up a tailor, and send
him aloft, to keep the wind out of this waister's tarpauling."
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The athletic African, who had been posted on the forecastle for his vast
strength, cast an eye upward, and, with both arms thrust into his bosom,
he rolled along the deck, with just as serious a mien as though he had
been sent on a duty of the greatest import. The uproar over his head had
drawn a most helpless-looking mortal from a retired corner of the
birth-deck, to the ladder of the forward hatch, where, with a body half
above the combings, a skein of strong coarse thread around his neck, a
piece of bees-wax in one hand, and a needle in the other, he stood staring
about him, with just that sort of bewildered air that a Chinese mandarin
would manifest, were he to be suddenly initiated in the mysteries of the
ballet. On this object the eye of Scipio fell. Stretching out an arm, he
cast him upon his shoulder; and, before the startled subject of his attack
knew into whose hands he had fallen, a hook was passed beneath the
waistband of his trowsers, and he was half way between the water and the
spar, on his way to join the considerate Fid.
"Have a care lest you let the man fall into the sea!" cried Wilder
sternly, from his stand on the distant poop.
"He'm tailor, masser Harry," returned the black, without altering a
muscle; "if a clothes no 'trong, he nobody blame but heself."
During this brief parlance, the good-man Homespun had safely arrived at
the termination of his lofty flight. Here he was suitably received by Fid,
who raised him to his side; and, having placed him comfortably between the
yard and the boom, he proceeded to secure him by a lashing that would give
the tailor the proper disposition of his hands.
"Bouse a bit on this waister!" called Richard, when he had properly
secured the good-man; "so; belay all that."
He then put one foot on the neck of his prisoner, and, seizing his lower
member as it swung uppermost, he coolly placed it in the lap of the
awe-struck tailor.
"There, friend," he said, "handle your needle and palm now, as if you
were at job-work. Your knowing handicraft always begins with the
foundation wherein he makes sure that his upper gear will stand."
"The Lord protect me, and all other sinful mortals, from an untimely end!"
exclaimed Homespun, gazing at the vacant view from his giddy elevation,
with a sensation a little resembling that with which the aeronaut, in his
first experiment, regards the prospect beneath.
"Settle away this waister," again called Fid; "he interrupts rational
conversation by his noise; and, as his gear is condemned by this here
tailor, why, you may turn him over to the purser for a new outfit."
The real motive, however, for getting rid of his pendant companion was a
twinkling of humanity, that still glimmered through the rough humour of
the tar, who well knew that his prisoner must hang where he did, at some
little expense of bodily ease. As soon as his request was complied with,
he turned to the good-man, to renew the discourse, with just as much
composure as though they were both seated on the deck, or as if a dozen
practical jokes, of the same character, were not in the process of
enactment, in as many different parts of the vessel.
"What makes you open your eyes, brother, in this port-hole fashion?"
commenced the topman. "This is all water that you see about you, except
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that hommoc of blue in the eastern board, which is a morsel of upland in
the Bahamas, d'ye see."
"A sinful and presuming world is this we live in!" returned the good-man;
"nor can any one tell at what moment his life is to be taken from him.
Five bloody and cruel wars have I lived to see in safety and yet am I
reserved to meet this disgraceful and profane end at last."
"Well, since you've had your luck in the wars, you've the less reason to
grumble at the bit of a surge you may have felt in your garments, as they
run you up to this here yard-arm. I say, brother, I've known stouter
fellows take the same ride, who never knew when or how they got down
again."
Homespun, who did not more than half comprehend the allusion of Fid, now
regarded him in a way that announced some little desire for an
explanation, mingled with great admiration of the unconcern with which his
companion maintained his position, without the smallest aid from any thing
but his self-balancing powers.
"I say, brother," resumed Fid, "that many a stout seaman has been whipt up
to the end of a yard, who has started by the signal of a gun, and who has
staid there just as long as the president of a court-martial was pleased
to believe might be necessary to improve his honesty!"
"It would be a fearful and frightful trifling with Providence, in the
least offending and conscientious mariner, to take such awful punishments
in vain, by acting them in his sports; but doubly so do I pronounce it in
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