John Marr and Other Poems | Page 4

himself and loyal to his clan.
Tom blessed us starboard and d--d us larboard,
Right down from rail
to the streak o' the
garboard.
Nor less, wife, we liked him.--Tom was a man
In contrast
queer with Chaplain Le Fan,
Who blessed us at morn, and at night yet
again,
D--ning us only in decorous strain;
Preaching 'tween the
guns--each cutlass in its
place--
From text that averred old Adam a hard case.
I see
him--Tom--on horse-block standing,
Trumpet at mouth, thrown up all
amain,
An elephant's bugle, vociferous demanding
Of topmen aloft
in the hurricane of rain,
"Letting that sail there your faces flog?

Manhandle it, men, and you'll get the good
grog!"
O Tom, but he knew a blue-jacket's ways,
And how a
lieutenant may genially haze;
Only a sailor sailors heartily praise.
Wife, where be all these chaps, I wonder?
Trumpets in the tempest,
terrors in the fray,
Boomed their commands along the deck like
thunder;
But silent is the sod, and thunder dies away.
But Captain
Turret, "Old Hemlock" tall,
(A leaning tower when his tank brimmed
all,)
Manoeuvre out alive from the war did he?
Or, too old for that,
drift under the lee?
Kentuckian colossal, who, touching at Madeira,

The huge puncheon shipped o' prime
Santa-Clara;
Then rocked along the deck so solemnly!
No whit the
less though judicious was enough
In dealing with the Finn who made
the great
huff;
Our three-decker's giant, a grand boatswain's

mate,
Manliest of men in his own natural senses;
But driven stark
mad by the devil's drugged
stuff,
Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late,
Challenging to
battle, vouchsafing no pretenses,
A reeling King Ogg, delirious in
power,
The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to
make cower.
"Put him in brig there!" said Lieutenant
Marrot.
"Put him in brig!" back he mocked like a
parrot;
"Try it, then!" swaying a fist like Thor's
sledge,
And making the pigmy constables hedge--
Ship's corporals
and the master-at-arms.
"In brig there, I say!"--They dally no more;

Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar,
Together they pounce on the
formidable Finn,
Pinion and cripple and hustle him in.
Anon, under
sentry, between twin guns,
He slides off in drowse, and the long night
runs.
Morning brings a summons. Whistling it calls,
Shrilled through the
pipes of the boatswain's
four aids;
Trilled down the hatchways along the dusk
halls:
Muster to the Scourge!--Dawn of doom and
its blast!
As from cemeteries raised, sailors swarm before
the mast,
Tumbling up the ladders from the ship's nether
shades.
Keeping in the background and taking small
part,
Lounging at their ease, indifferent in face,
Behold the trim

marines uncompromised in
heart;
Their Major, buttoned up, near the staff finds
room--
The staff o' lieutenants standing grouped in
their place.
All the Laced Caps o' the ward-room come,
The
Chaplain among them, disciplined and
dumb.
The blue-nosed boatswain, complexioned like
slag,
Like a blue Monday lours--his implements in
bag.
Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand,
At a nod there
the thongs to receive from his hand.
Never venturing a caveat
whatever may betide,
Though functionally here on humanity's side,

The grave Surgeon shows, like the formal
physician
Attending the rack o' the Spanish Inquisition.
The angel o' the "brig" brings his prisoner up;
Then, steadied by his
old Santa-Clara, a sup,
Heading all erect, the ranged assizes there,

Lo, Captain Turret, and under starred
bunting,
(A florid full face and fine silvered hair,)
Gigantic the yet
greater giant confronting.
Now the culprit he liked, as a tall captain can
A Titan subordinate and
true sailor-man;
And frequent he'd shown it--no worded
advance,
But flattering the Finn with a well-timed glance.
But what
of that now? In the martinet-mien
Read the Articles of War, heed the
naval
routine;
While, cut to the heart a dishonor there to win,
Restored to
his senses, stood the Anak Finn;
In racked self-control the squeezed

tears
peeping,
Scalding the eye with repressed inkeeping.
Discipline
must be; the scourge is deemed due.
But ah for the sickening and
strange heartbenumbing,
Compassionate abasement in shipmates that view;
Such a grand
champion shamed there succumbing!
"Brown, tie him up."--The cord
he brooked:
How else?--his arms spread apart--never
threaping;
No, never he flinched, never sideways he looked,
Peeled
to the waistband, the marble flesh
creeping,
Lashed by the sleet the officious winds urge.
In function his fellows their fellowship merge--
The twain standing
nigh--the two boatswain's
mates,
Sailors of his grade, ay, and brothers of his
mess.
With sharp thongs adroop the junior one
awaits
The word to uplift.
"Untie him--so!
Submission is enough, Man, you may go."
Then,
promenading aft, brushing fat Purser
Smart,
"Flog? Never meant it--hadn't any heart.
Degrade that tall
fellow? "--Such, wife, was he,
Old Captain Turret, who the brave
wine could
stow.
Magnanimous, you think?--But what does
Dick see?
Apron to your eye! Why, never fell a blow;
Cheer up, old
wifie, 't was a long time ago.
But where's that sore one, crabbed and-severe,
Lieutenant Lon

Lumbago, an arch scrutineer?
Call the roll to-day, would he
answer--Here!
When the Blixum's fellows to quarters
mustered
How he'd lurch along the lane of gun-crews
clustered,
Testy as touchwood, to pry and to peer.
Jerking his sword
underneath larboard arm,
He ground his worn grinders to keep
himself
calm.
Composed in his nerves, from the fidgets set
free,
Tell, Sweet Wrinkles, alive now is he,
In Paradise a parlor
where the even