his own venerable
fingers.

Of all the crew, this Ushant was most beloved by my glorious captain,
Jack Chase, who one day pointed him out to me as the old man was slowly
coming down the rigging from the fore-top.

"There, White-Jacket! isn't that old Chaucer's shipman?

"'A dagger hanging by a las hadde he,
About his nekke, under his arm adown;
The hote sommer hadde made his beard all brown.
Hardy he is, and wise; I undertake
With many a tempest has his beard be shake.'

From the Canterbury Tales, White-Jacket! and must not old Ushant have
been living in Chaucer's time, that Chaucer could draw his portrait so
well?"

CHAPTER LXXXVII.

OLD USHANT AT THE GANGWAY.

The rebel beards, headed by old Ushant's, streaming like a Commodore's
_bougee_, now stood in silence at the mast.

"You knew the order!" said the Captain, eyeing them severely; "what
does that hair on your chins?"

"Sir," said the Captain of the Forecastle, "did old Ushant ever refuse
doing his duty? did he ever yet miss his muster? But, sir, old Ushant's
beard is his own!"

"What's that, sir? Master-at-arms, put that man into the brig."

"Sir," said the old man, respectfully, "the three years for which I
shipped are expired; and though I am perhaps bound to work the ship
home, yet, as matters are, I think my beard might be allowed me. It is
but a few days, Captain Claret."

"Put him into the brig!" cried the Captain; "and now, you old rascals!"
he added, turning round upon the rest, "I give you fifteen minutes to
have those beards taken off; if they then remain on your chins, I'll
flog you--every mother's son of you--though you were all my own
god-fathers!"

The band of beards went forward, summoned their barbers, and their
glorious pennants were no more. In obedience to orders, they then
paraded themselves at the mast, and, addressing the Captain, said,
"Sir, our _muzzle-lashings_ are cast off!"

Nor is it unworthy of being chronicled, that not a single sailor who
complied with the general order but refused to sport the vile
_regulation-whiskers_ prescribed by the Navy Department. No! like
heroes they cried, "Shave me clean! I will not wear a hair, since I
cannot wear all!"

On the morrow, after breakfast, Ushant was taken out of irons, and,
with the master-at-arms on one side and an armed sentry on the other,
was escorted along the gun-deck and up the ladder to the main-mast.
There the Capta