Chapter 43

SMUGGLING IN A MAN-OF-WAR.

It is in a good degree owing to the idleness just described,
that, while lying in harbour, the man-of-war's-man is exposed to
the most temptations and gets into his saddest scrapes. For
though his vessel be anchored a mile from the shore, and her
sides are patrolled by sentries night and day, yet these things
cannot entirely prevent the seductions of the land from reaching
him. The prime agent in working his calamities in port is his old
arch-enemy, the ever-devilish god of grog.

Immured as the man-of-war's-man is, serving out his weary three
years in a sort of sea-Newgate, from which he cannot escape,
either by the roof or burrowing underground, he too often flies
to the bottle to seek relief from the intolerable ennui of
nothing to do, and nowhere to go. His ordinary government
allowance of spirits, one gill per diem, is not enough to give a
sufficient to his listless senses; he pronounces his grog basely
_watered_; he scouts at it as _thinner than muslin;_ he craves a
more vigorous _nip at the cable_, a more sturdy _swig at the
halyards;_ and if opium were to be had, many would steep
themselves a thousand fathoms down in the densest fumes of that
oblivious drug. Tell him that the delirium tremens and the mania-
a-potu lie in ambush for drunkards, he will say to you, "Let them
bear down upon me, then, before the wind; anything that smacks of
life is better than to feel Davy Jones's chest-lid on your nose."
He is reckless as an avalanche; and though his fall destroy
himself and others, yet a ruinous commotion is better than being
frozen fast in unendurable solitudes. No wonder, then, that he
goes all lengths to procure the thing he craves; no wonder that
he pays the most exorbitant prices, breaks through all law, and
braves the ignominious lash itself, rather than be deprived of
his stimulus.

Now, concerning no one thing in a man-of-war, are the regulations
more severe than respecting the smuggling of grog, and being
found intoxicated. For either offence there is but one penalty,
invariably enforced; and that is the degradation of the gangway.

All conceivable precautions are taken by most frigate-executives
to guard against the secret admission of spirits into the vessel.
In the first place, no shore-boat whatever is allowed to approach
a man-of-war in a foreign harbour without permission from the
officer of the deck. Even the _bum-boats_, the small craft
licensed by the officers to bring off fruit for the sailors, to
be bought out of their own money--these are invariably inspected
before permitted to hold intercourse with the ship's company. And
not only this, but every one of the numerous ship's boats--kept
almost continually