e to put them ashore, he was as cool as though
nothing was happening. The great guns weren't so bad," he
continued--"but the rifle-bullets that came singing along in clouds
like mosquitoes! Yah!" he used to snap, each time he told me the tale,
slapping his ears right and left, as one does at the hum of those
intrusive insects. He did not like the carpenter, either, for reasons
of another kind. They were both humorists, but of a different order.
Indeed, I don't think that the boatswain, though slightly sardonic in
expression, suspected himself of humor; but he really came at times
pretty close to wit, if that be a perception of incongruities, as I
have heard said. He was telling one day of some mishap that befell a
vessel, wherein the officer in charge showed the happy blending of
composure and ignorance we sometimes find; a condition concerning
which a sufferer once said of himself, "I never open my mouth but I
put my foot in it;" a confusion of metaphor, and suggestion of
physical contortion, not often so neatly combined in a dozen words.
The boatswain commented: "He didn't mind. He didn't know what to do,
but there he stood, looking all the time as happy as a duck
barefooted." A duck shod, and the consequent expression of its
countenance, presents to my mind infinite entertainment. Our first
lieutenant, under whom immediately he worked, was a great trial to
him. He was an elderly man, as first lieutenants of big ships were
then, great with the paint-brush and tar-pot, traces of which were
continually surprising one's clothes; mighty also in that lavish
swashing of sea-water which is called washing decks, and in the
tropics is not so bad; but otherwise, while he was one of the
kindliest of men, the go was pretty well out of him. "Yes," the
boatswain used to say grimly,--he seldom smiled,--"the first
lieutenant is like an old piece of soap--half wore out. Go day, come
day, God send Sunday; that's he."

The carpenter, on the other hand, was always on a broad grin--or
rather roar. He breathed farce, both in story and feature. Unlike the
boatswain, who was middle-sized and very trig, as well as scrupulously
neat, the carpenter was over six feet, broad in proportion, with big,
round, red, close-shaven face, framed with abundance of white hair. He
looked not unlike one's fancies of the typical English yeoman, while
withal having a strong Yankee flavor. Wearing always a frock-coat,
buttoned up as high as any one then buttone