charge of our
man-of-war's-men at home, should he _then_ be held by them as an enemy,
as free and independent citizens they would waylay him in the public
streets, and take purple vengeance for all his iniquities, past,
present, and possible in the future. More than once a master-at-arms
ashore has been seized by night by an exasperated crew, and served as
Origen served himself, or as his enemies served Abelard.

But though, under extreme provocation, _the people_ of a man-of-war
have been guilty of the maddest vengeance, yet, at other times, they
are very placable and milky-hearted, even to those who may have
outrageously abused them; many things in point might be related, but I
forbear.

This account of the master-at-arms cannot better be concluded than by
denominating him, in the vivid language of the Captain of the Fore-top,
as "_the two ends and middle of the thrice-laid strand of a bloody
rascal_," which was intended for a terse, well-knit, and
all-comprehensive assertion, without omission or reservation. It was
also asserted that, had Tophet itself been raked with a fine-tooth
comb, such another ineffable villain could not by any possibility have
been caught.

CHAPTER XLV.

PUBLISHING POETRY IN A MAN-OF-WAR.

A day or two after our arrival in Rio, a rather amusing incident
occurred to a particular acquaintance of mine, young Lemsford, the
gun-deck bard.

The great guns of an armed ship have blocks of wood, called _tompions_,
painted black, inserted in their muzzles, to keep out the spray of the
sea. These tompions slip in and out very handily, like covers to butter
firkins.

By advice of a friend, Lemsford, alarmed for the fate of his box of
poetry, had latterly made use of a particular gun on the main-deck, in
the tube of which he thrust his manuscripts, by simply crawling partly
out of the porthole, removing the tompion, inserting his papers,
tightly rolled, and making all snug again.

Breakfast over, he and I were reclining in the main-top--where, by
permission of my noble master, Jack Chase, I had invited him--when, of
a sudden, we heard a cannonading. It was our own ship.

"Ah!" said a top-man, "returning the shore salute they gave us
yesterday."

"O Lord!" cried Lemsford, "my _Songs of the Sirens!_" and he ran down
the rigging to the batteries; but just as he touched the gun-deck, gun
No. 20--his literary strong-box--went off with a terrific report.

"Well, my after-guard Virgil,"