Chapter 76

THE CHAINS.

When wearied with the tumult and occasional contention of the
gun-deck of our frigate, I have often retreated to a port-hole,
and calmed myself down by gazing broad off upon a placid sea.
After the battle-din of the last two chapters, let us now do the
like, and, in the sequestered fore-chains of the Neversink,
tranquillise ourselves, if we may.

Notwithstanding the domestic communism to which the seamen in a
man-of-war are condemned, and the publicity in which actions the
most diffident and retiring in their nature must be performed,
there is yet an odd corner or two where you may sometimes steal
away, and, for a few moments, almost be private.

Chief among these places is the _chains_, to which I would
sometimes hie during our pleasant homeward-bound glide over those
pensive tropical latitudes. After hearing my fill of the wild
yarns of our top, here would I recline--if not disturbed--
serenely concocting information into wisdom.

The chains designates the small platform outside of the hull, at
the base of the large shrouds leading down from the three mast-
heads to the bulwarks. At present they seem to be getting out of
vogue among merchant-vessels, along with the fine, old-fashioned
quarter-galleries, little turret-like ap-purtenances, which, in
the days of the old Admirals, set off the angles of an armed
ship's stern. Here a naval officer might lounge away an hour
after action, smoking a cigar, to drive out of his whiskers the
villainous smoke of the gun-powder. The picturesque, delightful
stern-gallery, also, a broad balcony overhanging the sea, and
entered from the Captain's cabin, much as you might enter a bower
from a lady's chamber; this charming balcony, where, sailing over
summer seas in the days of the old Peruvian viceroys, the Spanish
cavalier Mendanna, of Lima, made love to the Lady Isabella, as
they voyaged in quest of the Solomon Islands, the fabulous Ophir,
the Grand Cyclades; and the Lady Isabella, at sunset, blushed
like the Orient, and gazed down to the gold-fish and silver-hued
flying-fish, that wove the woof and warp of their wakes in
bright, scaly tartans and plaids underneath where the Lady
reclined; this charming balcony--exquisite retreat--has been cut
away by Vandalic innovations. Ay, that claw-footed old gallery is
no longer in fashion; in Commodore's eyes, is no longer genteel.

Out on all furniture fashions but those that are past! Give me my
grandfather's old arm-chair, planted upon four carved frogs, as
the Hindoos fabled the world to be supported upon four tortoises;
give me his cane, with the gold-loaded top--a cane that, like the
musket of General Washington's father and the broadsword of
William Wallace, would break