"More
service may offer than that we seek."
Barnstable well understood his allusion, but still he replied:
"Make it all seamen, and I will give you room for thirty. But these
soldiers never know how to stow away their arms and legs, unless at a
drill. One will take the room of two sailors; they swing their hammocks
athwart-ships, heads to leeward, and then turn out wrong end uppermost
at the call. Why, damn it, sir, the chalk and rottenstone of twenty
soldiers will choke my hatches!"
"Give me the launch, Captain Munson!" exclaimed the indignant marine,
"and we will follow Mr. Griffith in an open boat, rather than put
Captain Barnstable to so much inconvenience."
"No, no, Manual," cried the other, extending his muscular arm across the
table, with an open palm, to the soldier; "you would all become so many
Jonahs in uniform, and I doubt whether the fish could digest your
cartridge-boxes and bayonet-belts. You shall go with me, and learn, with
your own eyes, whether we keep the cat's watch aboard the Ariel that you
joke about."
The laugh was general, at the expense of the soldier, if we except the
pilot and the commander of the frigate. The former was a silent, and
apparently an abstracted, but in reality a deeply interested listener to
the discourse; and there were moments when he bent his looks on the
speakers, as if he sought more in their characters than was exhibited by
the gay trifling of the moment. Captain Munson seldom allowed a muscle
of his wrinkled features to disturb their repose; and if he had not the
real dignity to repress the untimely mirth of his officers, he had too
much good nature to wish to disturb their harmless enjoyments.
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