Chapter 68 - Page 2

many
snug little niches, wherein are ensconced certain superannuated old
pensioner officials; and, more especially, as in most ecclesiastical
establishments, a few choice prebendary stalls are to be found,
furnished with well-filled mangers and racks; so, in a man-of-war,
there are a variety of similar snuggeries for the benefit of decrepit
or rheumatic old tars. Chief among these is the office of _mast-man_.

There is a stout rail on deck, at the base of each mast, where a
number of _braces, lifts_, and _buntlines_ are belayed to the
pins. It is the sole duty of the mast-man to see that these ropes
are always kept clear, to preserve his premises in a state of the
greatest attainable neatness, and every Sunday morning to dispose
his ropes in neat _Flemish coils_.

The _main-mast-man_ of the Neversink was a very aged seaman, who
well deserved his comfortable berth. He had seen more than half a
century of the most active service, and, through all, had proved
himself a good and faithful man. He furnished one of the very
rare examples of a sailor in a green old age; for, with most
sailors, old age comes in youth, and Hardship and Vice carry them
on an early bier to the grave.

As in the evening of life, and at the close of the day, old
Abraham sat at the door of his tent, biding his time to die, so
sits our old mast-man on the _coat of the mast_, glancing round
him with patriarchal benignity. And that mild expression of his
sets off very strangely a face that has been burned almost black
by the torrid suns that shone fifty years ago--a face that is
seamed with three sabre cuts. You would almost think this old
mast-man had been blown out of Vesuvius, to look alone at his
scarred, blackened forehead, chin, and cheeks. But gaze down into
his eye, and though all the snows of Time have drifted higher and
higher upon his brow, yet deep down in that eye you behold an
infantile, sinless look, the same that answered the glance of
this old man's mother when first she cried for the babe to be
laid by her side. That look is the fadeless, ever infantile
immortality within.

* * * * *

The Lord Nelsons of the sea, though but Barons in the state, yet
oftentimes prove more potent than their royal masters; and at
such scenes as Trafalgar--dethroning this Emperor and reinstating
that--enact on the ocean the proud part of mighty Richard Neville,
the king-making Earl of the land. And as Richard Neville entrenched
himself in his moated old man-of-war castle of Warwick, which,
underground, was traversed with vaults, hewn out of the solid rock,
and intricate as the wards of the old keys of Calais surrendered to
Edward III.; even so do these King-Commodores house themselves in their