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CHAPTER L

THE BAY OF ALL BEAUTIES

I have said that I must pass over Rio without a description; but just now such a flood of scented reminiscences steals over me, that I must needs yield and recant, as I inhale that musky air.

More than one hundred and fifty miles’ circuit of living green hills embosoms a translucent expanse, so gemmed in by sierras of grass, that among the Indian tribes the place was known as “The Hidden Water.” On all sides, in the distance, rise high conical peaks, which at sunrise and sunset burn like vast tapers; and down from the interior, through vineyards and forests, flow radiating streams, all emptying into the harbour.

Talk not of Bahia de Todos os Santos – the Bay of All Saints; for though that be a glorious haven, yet Rio is the Bay of all Rivers – the Bay of all Delights – the Bay of all Beauties. From circumjacent hill-sides, untiring summer hangs perpetually in terraces of vivid verdure; and, embossed with old mosses, convent and castle nestle in valley and glen.

All round, deep inlets run into the green mountain land, and, overhung with wild Highlands, more resemble Loch Katrines than Lake Lemans. And though Loch Katrine has been sung by the bonneted Scott, and Lake Leman by the coroneted Byron; yet here, in Rio, both the loch and the lake are but two wild flowers in a prospect that is almost unlimited. For, behold! far away and away, stretches the broad blue of the water, to yonder soft-swelling hills of light green, backed by the purple pinnacles and pipes of the grand Organ

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Mountains; fitly so called, for in thunder-time they roll cannonades down the bay, drowning the blended bass of all the cathedrals in Rio. Shout amain, exalt your voices, stamp your feet, jubilate, Organ Mountains! and roll your Te Deums round the world!

What though, for more than five thousand five hundred years, this grand harbour of Rio lay hid in the hills, unknown by the Catholic Portuguese? Centuries ere Haydn performed before emperors and kings, these Organ Mountains played his Oratorio of the Creation, before the Creator himself. But nervous Haydn could not have endured that cannonading choir, since this composer of thunderbolts himself died at last through the crashing commotion of Napoleon’s bombardment of Vienna.

But all mountains are Organ Mountains: the Alps and the Himalayas; the Appalachian Chain, the Ural, the Andes, the Green Hills and the White. All of them play anthems forever: The Messiah, and Samson, and Israel in Egypt, and Saul, and Judas Maccabeus, and Solomon.

Archipelago Rio! ere Noah on old Ararat anchored his ark, there lay anchored in you all these green, rocky isles I now see. But God did not build on you, isles! those long lines of batteries; nor did our blessed Saviour stand godfather at the christening of yon frowning fortress of Santa Cruz, though named in honour of himself, the divine Prince of Peace!

Amphitheatrical Rio! in your broad expanse might be held the Resurrection and Judgment-day of the whole world’s men-of-war, represented by the flag-ships of fleets – the flag-ships of the Phoenician armed galleys of Tyre and Sidon; of King Solomon’s annual squadrons that sailed to Ophir; whence in after times, perhaps, sailed the Acapulco fleets of the Spaniards, with golden ingots for ballasting; the flag-ships of all the Greek and Persian craft that exchanged the war-hug at Salamis; of all the Roman and Egyptian gal-

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leys that, eagle-like, with blood-dripping prows, beaked each other at Actium; of all the Danish keels of the Vikings; of all the musquito craft of Abba Thule, king of the Pelaws, when he went to vanquish Artinsall; of all the Venetian, Genoese, and Papal fleets that came to the shock at Lepanto; of both horns of the crescent of the Spanish Armada; of the Portuguese squadron that, under the gallant Gama, chastised the Moors, and discovered the Moluccas; of all the Dutch navies red by Van Tromp, and sunk by Admiral Hawke; of the fortyseven French and Spanish sail-of-the-line that, for three months, essayed to batter down Gibraltar; of all Nelson’s seventy-fours that thunder-bolted off St. Vincent’s, at the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar; of all the frigate-merchantmen of the East India Company; of Perry’s war-brigs, sloops, and schooners that scattered the British armament on Lake Erie; of all the Barbary corsairs captured by Bainbridge; of the war-canoes of the Polynesian kings, Tammahammaha and Pomare – ay! one and all, with Commodore Noah for their Lord High Admiral – in this abounding Bay of Rio these flag-ships might all come to anchor, and swing round in concert to the first of the flood.

Rio is a small Mediterranean; and what was fabled of the entrance to that sea, in Rio is partly made true; for here, at the mouth, stands one of Hercules’ Pillars, the Sugar-Loaf Mountain, one thousand feet high, inclining over a little, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. At its base crouch, like mastiffs, the batteries of Jose and Theodosia; while opposite, you are menaced by a rock-founded fort.

The channel between – the sole inlet to the bay – seems but a biscuit’s toss over; you see naught of the land-locked sea within till fairly in the strait. But, then, what a sight is beheld! Diversified as the harbour of Constantinople, but a thousand-fold grander. When the Neversink swept in, word was passed, “Aloft, top-men! and furl t’-gallant-sails and royals!”

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CHAPTER LI

ONE OF “THE PEOPLE” HAS AN AUDIENCE WITH THE COMMODORE AND THE CAPTAIN

ON THE QUARTER-DECK

We had not lain in Rio long, when in the innermost recesses of the mighty soul of my noble Captain of the Top – incomparable Jack Chase – the deliberate opinion was formed, and rock-founded, that our ship’s company must have at least one day’s “liberty” to go ashore ere we weighed anchor for home.

Here it must be mentioned that, concerning anything of this kind, no sailor in a man-of-war ever presumes to be an agitator, unless he is of a rank superior to a mere able-seaman; and no one short of a petty officer – that is, a captain of the top, a quarter-gunner, or boatswain’s mate – ever dreams of being a spokesman to the supreme authority of the vessel in soliciting any kind of favor for himself and shipmates.

After canvassing the matter thoroughly with several old quar- ter-masters and other dignified sea-fencibles, Jack, hat in hand, made his appearance, one fine evening, at the mast, and, waiting till Captain Claret drew nigh, bowed, and addressed him in his own off-hand, polished, and poetical style. In his intercourse with the quarter-deck, he always presumed upon his being such a universal favourite.

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“Sir, this Rio is a charming harbour, and we poor mariners – your trusty sea-warriors, valiant Captain! who, with you at their head, would board the Rock of Gibraltar itself, and carry it by storm – we poor fellows, valiant Captain! have gazed round upon this ravishing landscape till we can gaze no more. Will Captain Claret vouchsafe one day’s liberty, and so assure himself of eternal felicity, since, in our flowing cups, he will be ever after freshly remembered?”

As Jack thus rounded off with a snatch from Shakspeare, he saluted the Captain with a gallant flourish of his tarpaulin, and then, bringing the rim to his mouth, with his head bowed, and his body thrown into a fine negligent attitude, stood a picture of eloquent but passive appeal. He seemed to say, Magnanimous Captain Claret, we fine fellows, and hearts of oak, throw ourselves upon your unparalleled goodness.

“And what do you want to go ashore for?” asked the Captain, evasively, and trying to conceal his admiration of Jack by affecting some haughtiness.

“Ah! sir,” sighed Jack, “why do the thirsty camels of the desert desire to lap the waters of the fountain and roll in the green grass of the oasis? Are we not but just from the ocean Sahara? and is not this Rio a verdant spot, noble Captain? Surely you will not keep us always tethered at anchor, when a little more cable would admit of our cropping the herbage! And it is a weary thing, Captain Claret, to be imprisoned month after month on the gun-deck, without so much as smelling a citron. Ah! Captain Claret, what sings sweet Waller:

‘But who can always on the billows lie? The watery wilderness yields no supply.’

compared with such a prisoner, noble Captain, ‘Happy, thrice happy, who, in battle slain, Press’d in Atrides’ cause the Trojan pain!’

Pope’s version, sir, not the original Greek.”

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And so saying, Jack once more brought his hat-rim to his mouth, and slightly bending forward, stood mute.

At this juncture the Most Serene Commodore himself happened to emerge from the after-gangway, his gilded buttons, epaulets, and the gold lace on his chapeau glittering in the flooding sunset. Attracted by the scene between Captain Claret and so well-known and admired a commoner as Jack Chase he approached, and assuming for the moment an air of pleasant condescension – never shown to his noble barons the officers of the ward-room – he said, with a smile, “Well, Jack, you and your shipmates are after some favour, I suppose – a day’s liberty, is it not?”

Whether it was the horizontal setting sun, streaming along the deck, that blinded Jack, or whether it was in sun-worshipping homage of the mighty Commodore, there is no telling; but just at this juncture noble Jack was standing reverentially holding his hat to his brow, like a man with weak eyes.

“Valiant Commodore,” said he, at last, “this audience is indeed an honour undeserved. I almost sink beneath it. Yes, valiant Commodore, your sagacious mind has truly divined our object. Liberty, sir; liberty is, indeed, our humble prayer. I trust your honourable wound, received in glorious battle, valiant Comodore, pains you less today than common.”

“Ah! cunning Jack!” cried the Commodore, by no means blind to the bold sortie of his flattery, but not at all displeased with it. In more respects than one, our Commodore’s wound was his weak side.

“I think we must give them liberty,” he added, turning to Captain Claret; who thereupon, waving Jack further off, fell into confidential discourse with his superior.

“Well, Jack, we will see about it,” at last cried the Commodore, advancing. “I think we must let you go.”

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CHAPTER LII

SOMETHING CONCERNING

MIDSHIPMEN

It was the next morning after matchless Jack’s interview with the Commodore and Captain, that a little incident occurred, soon forgotten by the crew at large, but long remembered by the few seamen who were in the habit of closely scrutinising every-day proceedings. Upon the face of it, it was but a common event – at least in a man-of-war – the flogging of a man at the gangway. But the under-current of circumstances in the case were of a nature that magnified this particular flogging into a matter of no small importance. The story itself cannot here be related; it would not well bear recital: enough that the person flogged was a middle-aged man of the Waist – a forlorn, broken-down, miserable object, truly; one of those wretched landsmen sometimes driven into the Navy by their unfitness for all things else, even as others are driven into the workhouse. He was flogged at the complaint of a midshipman; and hereby hangs the drift of the thing. For though this waister was so ignoble a mortal, yet his being scourged on this one occasion indirectly proceeded from the mere wanton spite and unscrupulousness of the midshipman in question – a youth, who was apt to indulge at times in undignified familiarities with some of the men, who, sooner or later, almost always suffered from his capricious preferences.

But the leading principle that was involved in this affair is far too mischievous to be lightly dismissed.

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In most cases, it would seem to be a cardinal principle with a Navy Captain that his subordinates are disintegrated parts of himself, detached from the main body on special service, and that the order of the minutest midshipman must be as deferentially obeyed by the seamen as if proceeding from the Commodore on the poop. This principle was once emphasised in a remarkable manner by the valiant and handsome Sir Peter Parker, upon whose death, on a national arson expedition on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, in 1812 or 1813, Lord Byron wrote his well-known stanzas. “By the god of war!” said Sir Peter to his sailors, “I’ll make you touch your hat to a midshipman’s coat, if it’s only hung on a broomstick to dry!”

That the king, in the eye of the law, can do no wrong, is the wellknown fiction of despotic states; but it has remained for the navies of Constitutional Monarchies and Republics to magnify this fiction, by indirectly extending it to all the quarter-deck subordinates of an armed ship’s chief magistrate. And though judicially unrecognised, and unacknowledged by the officers themselves, yet this is the principle that pervades the fleet; this is the principle that is every hour acted upon, and to sustain which, thousands of seamen have been flogged at the gangway.

However childish, ignorant, stupid, or idiotic a midshipman, if he but orders a sailor to perform even the most absurd action, that man is not only bound to render instant and unanswering obedience, but he would refuse at his peril. And if, having obeyed, he should then complain to the Captain, and the Captain, in his own mind, should be thoroughly convinced of the impropriety, perhaps of the illegality of the order, yet, in nine cases out of ten, he would not publicly reprimand the midshipman, nor by the slightest token admit before the complainant that, in this particular thing, the midshipman had done otherwise than perfectly right.

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