for what you please,Until you’ve had your whack, boys;
We’ll think no more of raging seas,
Now that we’ve come back, boys.
Chorus—With a whip, snip, high cum diddledy. The cog-wheels of life have need of much oiling; Smack, crack—this is our jubilee; Huzza, my lads! we’ll keep the pot boiling.
As this was the last chorus, it was repeated three or four times, and with hallooing, screaming, and dancing in mad gesticulation.
“Hurrah, my lads,” cried Jemmy, “three cheers and a bravo.”
It was high time that they went on board; so thought Frau Vandersloosh, who trembled for her chandeliers; so thought Babette, who had begun to yawn before the last song, and who had tired herself more with laughing at it; so thought they all, and they sallied forth out of the Lust Haus, with Jemmy Ducks having the advance, and fiddling to them the whole way down to the boat. Fortunately, not one of them fell into the canal, and in ten minutes they were all on board; they were not, however, permitted to turn into their hammocks without the important information being imparted to them, that Snarleyyow had disappeared.
Chapter Ten.
In which is explained the Sublime Mystery of Keelhauling—Snarleyyow saves Smallbones from being drowned, although Smallbones would have drowned him.
It is a dark morning; the wind is fresh from the north-west; flakes of snow are seen wafting here and there by the wind, the avant-couriers of a heavy fall; the whole sky is of one murky grey, and the sun is hidden behind a dense bank. The deck of the cutter is wet and slippery, and Dick Short has the morning watch. He is wrapt up in a Flushing pea-jacket, with thick mittens on his hands; he looks about him, and now and then a fragment of snow whirls into his eye; he winks it out, it melts and runs like a tear down his cheek. If it were not that it is contrary to man-of-war custom he would warm himself with the double-shuffle, but such a step would be unheard of on the quarter-deck of even the cutter Yungfrau.
The tarpaulin over the hatchway is pushed on one side, and the space between the coamings is filled with the bull head and broad shoulders of Corporal Van Spitter, who, at last, gains the deck; he looks round him, and apparently is not much pleased with the weather. Before he proceeds to business, he examines the sleeves and front of his jacket, and having brushed off with the palm of his hand a variety of blanket-hairs, adhering to the cloth, he is satisfied, and now turns to the right and to the left, and forward and aft—in less than a minute he goes right round the compass. What can Corporal Van Spitter want at so early an hour? He has not come up on deck for nothing, and yet he appears to be strangely puzzled: the fact is, by the arrangements of last night, it was decided, that this morning, if Snarleyyow did not make his appearance in the boat sent on shore for fresh beef for the ship’s company, the unfortunate Smallbones was to be keel-hauled.
What a delightful morning for a keel-hauling!
This ingenious process, which, however, like many other good old customs, has fallen into disuse, must be explained to the non-nautical reader. It is nothing more nor less than sending a poor navigator on a voyage of discovery under the bottom of the vessel, lowering him (The author has here explained keel-hauling as practised in those times in small fore-and-aft vessels. In large and square-rigged vessels, the man was hauled up to one main-yard arm, and dropped into the sea, and hauled under the bottom of the vessel to the other; but this in small fore-and-aft vessels was not so easily effected, nor was it considered sufficient punishment) down over the bows, and with ropes retaining him exactly in his position under the kelsom (keelson), while he is drawn aft by a hauling line until he makes his appearance at the rudder-chains, generally speaking quite out of breath, not at the rapidity of his motion, but because, when so long under the water, he has expended all the breath in his body, and is induced to take in salt water en lieu. There is much merit in this invention; people are very apt to be content with walking the deck of a man-of-war, and complain of it as a hardship, but when once they have learnt, by experience, the difference between being comfortable above board, and the number of deprivations which they have to submit to when under board and overboard at the same time, they find that there are worse situations than being on the deck of a vessel—we say privations when under board, for they really are very important:—you are deprived of the air to breathe, which is not borne with patience even by a philosopher, and you are obliged to drink salt water instead of fresh. In the days of keel-hauling, the bottoms of vessels were not coppered, and in consequence were well studded with a species of shell-fish which attached themselves, called barnacles, and as these shells were all open-mouthed and with sharp cutting points, those who underwent this punishment (for they were made by the ropes at each side, fastened to their arms, to hug the kelsom of the vessel) were cut and scored all over their body, as if with so many lancets, generally coming up bleeding in every part, and with their faces, especially their noses, as if they had been gnawed by the rats; but this was considered rather advantageous than otherwise, as the loss of blood restored the patient if he was not quite drowned, and the consequence was, that one out of three, it is said, have been known to recover after their submarine excursion. The Dutch have the credit, and we will not attempt to take from them their undoubted right, of having invented this very agreeable description of punishment. They are considered a heavy, phlegmatic sort of people, but on every point in which the art of ingeniously tormenting is in request, it must be admitted that they have taken the lead of much more vivacious and otherwise more inventive nations.
And now the reader will perceive why Corporal Van Spitter was in a dilemma. With all the good-will in the world, with every anxiety to fulfil his duty and to obey his superior officer, he was not a seaman, and did not know how to commence operations. He knew nothing about foddering a vessel’s bottom, much less how to fodder it with the carcase of one of his fellow-creatures. The corporal, as we said before, turned round and round the compass to ascertain if he could compass his wishes; at last, he commenced by dragging one rope’s-end from one side and another from the other; those would do for the side ropes, but he wanted a long one from forward and another from aft, and how to get the one from aft under the cutter’s bottom was a puzzle; and then there was the mast and the rigging in his way;—the corporal reflected—the more he considered the matter, the more his brain became confused; he was at a nonplus, and he gave it up in despair: he stood still, took out a blue cotton handkerchief from the breast of his jacket and wiped his forehead, for the intensity of thought had made him perspire—anything like reflection was very hard work for Corporal Van Spitter.
“Tousand tyfels!” at last exclaimed the corporal, and he paused and knocked his big head with his fist.
“Hundred tousand tyfels!” repeated the corporal after five minutes’ more thought.
“Twenty hundred tousand tyfels!” muttered the corporal, once more knocking his head: but he knocked in vain; like an empty house, there was no one within to answer the appeal. The corporal could no more; so he returned his pocket-handkerchief to the breast of his jacket, and a heavy sigh escaped from his own breast. All the devils in hell were mentally conjured and summoned to his aid, but they were, it is to be presumed, better employed, for although the work in hand was diabolical enough, still Smallbones was such a poor devil, that probably he might have been considered as remotely allied to the fraternity.
It may be inquired why, as this was on service, Corporal Van Spitter did not apply for the assistance of the seamen belonging to the vessel, particularly to the officer in charge of the deck; but the fact was, that he was unwilling to do this, knowing that his application would be in
