them.

For some hours the seamen paced to and fro in no very good humour,
vowing not to sacrifice a hair. Beforehand, they denounced that man who
should abase himself by compliance. But habituation to discipline is
magical; and ere long an old forecastle-man was discovered elevated
upon a match-tub, while, with a malicious grin, his barber--a fellow
who, from his merciless rasping, was called Blue-Skin--seized him by
his long beard, and at one fell stroke cut it off and tossed it out of
the port-hole behind him. This forecastle-man was ever afterwards known
by a significant title--in the main equivalent to that name of reproach
fastened upon that Athenian who, in Alexander's time, previous to which
all the Greeks sported beards, first submitted to the deprivation of
his own. But, spite of all the contempt hurled on our forecastle-man,
so prudent an example was soon followed; presently all the barbers were
busy.

Sad sight! at which any one but a barber or a Tartar would have wept!
Beards three years old; _goatees_ that would have graced a Chamois of
the Alps; _imperials_ that Count D'Orsay would have envied; and
_love-curls_ and man-of-war ringlets that would have measured, inch for
inch, with the longest tresses of The Fair One with the Golden
Locks--all went by the board! Captain Claret! how can you rest in your
hammock! by this brown beard which now waves from my chin--the
illustrious successor to that first, young, vigorous beard I yielded to
your tyranny--by this manly beard, I swear, it was barbarous!

My noble captain, Jack Chase, was indignant. Not even all the special
favours he had received from Captain Claret, and the plenary pardon
extended to him for his desertion into the Peruvian service, could
restrain the expression of his feelings. But in his cooler moments,
Jack was a wise man; he at last deemed it but wisdom to succumb.

When he went to the barber he almost drew tears from his eyes. Seating
himself mournfully on the match-tub, he looked sideways, and said to
the barber, who was _slithering_ his sheep-shears in readiness to
begin: "My friend, I trust your scissors are consecrated. Let them not
touch this beard if they have yet to be dipped in holy water; beards
are sacred things, barber. Have you no feeling for beards, my friend?
think of it;" and mournfully he laid his deep-dyed, russet cheek upon
his hand. "Two summers have gone by since my chin has been reaped. I
was in Coquimbo then, on the Sp