, like a disarmed swordfish among
ferocious white-sharks; this, surely, bespoke no ordinary man. While in
office, even, his life had often been secretly attempted by the seamen
whom he had brought to the gangway. Of dark nights they had dropped
shot down the hatchways, destined "to damage his pepper-box," as they
phrased it; they had made ropes with a hangman's noose at the end and
tried to _lasso_ him in dark corners. And now he was adrift among them,
under notorious circumstances of superlative villainy, at last dragged
to light; and yet he blandly smiled, politely offered his cigar-holder
to a perfect stranger, and laughed and chatted to right and left, as if
springy, buoyant, and elastic, with an angelic conscience, and sure of
kind friends wherever he went, both in this life and the life to come.

While he was lying ironed in the "brig," gangs of the men were
sometimes overheard whispering about the terrible reception they would
give him when he should be set at large. Nevertheless, when liberated,
they seemed confounded by his erect and cordial assurance, his
gentlemanly sociability and fearless companionableness. From being an
implacable policeman, vigilant, cruel, and remorseless in his office,
however polished in his phrases, he was now become a disinterested,
sauntering man of leisure, winking at all improprieties, and ready to
laugh and make merry with any one. Still, at first, the men gave him a
wide berth, and returned scowls for his smiles; but who can forever
resist the very Devil himself, when he comes in the guise of a
gentleman, free, fine, and frank? Though Goethe's pious Margaret hates
the Devil in his horns and harpooner's tail, yet she smiles and nods to
the engaging fiend in the persuasive,_winning_, oily, wholly harmless
Mephistopheles. But, however it was, I, for one, regarded this
master-at-arms with mixed feelings of detestation, pity, admiration,
and something op-posed to enmity. I could not but abominate him when I
thought of his conduct; but I pitied the continual gnawing which, under
all his deftly-donned disguises, I saw lying at the bottom of his soul.
I admired his heroism in sustaining himself so well under such
reverses. And when I thought how arbitrary the _Articles of War_ are in
defining a man-of-war villain; how much undetected guilt might be
sheltered by the aristocratic awning of our quarter-deck; how many
florid pursers, ornaments of the ward-room, had been legally protected
in