She Was A Virgin Vessel, Just Out Of Brest.
Poor Innocent!
To die in the very first month of her union with the
noble whiskered god of war!
We Britons on board the English boat received the news of the
"Groenenland's" abrupt demise with grins of satisfaction. It was a
sort of national compliment, and cause of agreeable congratulation.
"The lubbers!" we said; "the clumsy humbugs! there's none but
Britons to rule the waves!" and we gave ourselves piratical airs,
and went down presently and were sick in our little buggy berths.
It was pleasant, certainly, to laugh at Joinville's admiral's flag
floating at his foremast, in yonder black ship, with its two
thundering great guns at the bows and stern, its busy crew swarming
on the deck, and a crowd of obsequious shore-boats bustling round
the vessel - and to sneer at the Mogador warrior, and vow that we
English, had we been inclined to do the business, would have
performed it a great deal better.
Now yesterday at Lisbon we saw H.M.S. "Caledonia." THIS, on the
contrary, inspired us with feelings of respect and awful pleasure.
There she lay - the huge sea-castle - bearing the unconquerable flag
of our country. She had but to open her jaws, as it were, and she
might bring a second earthquake on the city - batter it into
kingdom-come - with the Ajuda palace and the Necessidades, the
churches, and the lean, dry, empty streets, and Don John,
tremendous on horseback, in the midst of Black Horse Square.
Wherever we looked we could see that enormous "Caledonia," with her
flashing three lines of guns. We looked at the little boats which
ever and anon came out of this monster, with humble wonder. There
was the lieutenant who boarded us at midnight before we dropped
anchor in the river: ten white-jacketed men pulling as one, swept
along with the barge, gig, boat, curricle, or coach-and-six, with
which he came up to us. We examined him - his red whiskers - his
collars turned down - his duck trousers, his bullion epaulets - with
awe. With the same reverential feeling we examined the seamen - the
young gentleman in the bows of the boat - the handsome young
officers of marines we met sauntering in the town next day - the
Scotch surgeon who boarded us as we weighed anchor - every man, down
to the broken-nosed mariner who was drunk in a wine-house, and had
"Caledonia" written on his hat. Whereas at the Frenchmen we looked
with undisguised contempt. We were ready to burst with laughter as
we passed the Prince's vessel - there was a little French boy in a
French boat alongside cleaning it, and twirling about a little
French mop - we thought it the most comical, contemptible French
boy, mop, boat, steamer, prince - Psha! it is of this wretched
vapouring stuff that false patriotism is made. I write this as a
sort of homily 'a propos of the day, and Cape Trafalgar, off which
we lie. What business have I to strut the deck, and clap my wings,
and cry "Cock-a-doodle-doo" over it? Some compatriots are at that
work even now.
We have lost one by one all our jovial company. There were the
five Oporto wine-merchants - all hearty English gentlemen - gone to
their wine-butts, and their red-legged partridges, and their duels
at Oporto. It appears that these gallant Britons fight every
morning among themselves, and give the benighted people among whom
they live an opportunity to admire the spirit national. There is
the brave honest major, with his wooden leg - the kindest and
simplest of Irishmen: he has embraced his children, and reviewed
his little invalid garrison of fifteen men, in the fort which he
commands at Belem, by this time, and, I have no doubt, played to
every soul of them the twelve tunes of his musical-box. It was
pleasant to see him with that musical-box - how pleased he wound it
up after dinner - how happily he listened to the little clinking
tunes as they galloped, ding-dong, after each other! A man who
carries a musical-box is always a good-natured man.
Then there was his Grace, or his Grandeur, the Archbishop of
Beyrouth (in the parts of the infidels), His Holiness's Nuncio to
the Court of Her Most Faithful Majesty, and who mingled among us
like any simple mortal, - except that he had an extra smiling
courtesy, which simple mortals do not always possess; and when you
passed him as such, and puffed your cigar in his face, took off his
hat with a grin of such prodigious rapture, as to lead you to
suppose that the most delicious privilege of his whole life was
that permission to look at the tip of your nose or of your cigar.
With this most reverend prelate was his Grace's brother and
chaplain - a very greasy and good-natured ecclesiastic, who, from
his physiognomy, I would have imagined to be a dignitary of the
Israelitish rather than the Romish Church - as profuse in smiling
courtesy as his Lordship of Beyrouth. These two had a meek little
secretary between them, and a tall French cook and valet, who, at
meal times, might be seen busy about the cabin where their
reverences lay. They were on their backs for the greater part of
the voyage; their yellow countenances were not only unshaven, but,
to judge from appearances, unwashed. They ate in private; and it
was only of evenings, as the sun was setting over the western wave,
and, comforted by the dinner, the cabin-passengers assembled on the
quarter-deck, that we saw the dark faces of the reverend gentlemen
among us for a while. They sank darkly into their berths when the
steward's bell tolled for tea.
At Lisbon, where we came to anchor at midnight, a special boat came
off, whereof the crew exhibited every token of reverence for the
ambassador of the ambassador of Heaven, and carried him off from
our company.
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