ricals, when my attention had been directed to the fact that
the officers had _shipped their quarter-deck faces_--upon that
occasion, I say, it was seen with what facility a sea-officer assumes
his wonted severity of demeanour after a casual relaxation of it. This
was especially the case with Captain Claret upon the present occasion.
For any landsman to have beheld him in the lee waist, of a pleasant
dog-watch, with a genial, good-humoured countenance, observing the
gladiators in the ring, and now and then indulging in a playful
remark--that landsman would have deemed Captain Claret the indulgent
father of his crew, perhaps permitting the excess of his
kind-heartedness to encroach upon the appropriate dignity of his
station. He would have deemed Captain Claret a fine illustration of
those two well-known poetical comparisons between a sea-captain and a
father, and between a sea-captain and the master of apprentices,
instituted by those eminent maritime jurists, the noble Lords Tenterden
and Stowell.

But surely, if there is anything hateful, it is this _shipping of the
quarter-deck face_ after wearing a merry and good-natured one. How can
they have the heart? Methinks, if but once I smiled upon a man--never
mind how much beneath me--I could not bring myself to condemn him to
the shocking misery of the lash. Oh officers! all round the world, if
this quarter-deck face you wear at all, then never unship it for
another, to be merely sported for a moment. Of all insults, the
temporary condescension of a master to a slave is the most outrageous
and galling. That potentate who most condescends, mark him well; for
that potentate, if occasion come, will prove your uttermost tyrant.

CHAPTER LXVII.

WHITE-JACKET ARRAIGNED AT THE MAST.

When with five hundred others I made one of the compelled spectators at
the scourging of poor Rose-water, I little thought what Fate had
ordained for myself the next day.

Poor mulatto! thought I, one of an oppressed race, they degrade you
like a hound. Thank God! I am a white. Yet I had seen whites also
scourged; for, black or white, all my shipmates were liable to that.
Still, there is something in us, somehow, that in the most degraded
condition, we snatch at a chance to deceive ourselves into a fancied
superiority to others, whom we suppose lower in the scale than
ourselves.

Poor Rose-water! thought I; poor mulatto! Heaven send you a release
from your humiliation!

To make pla