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Old Cuff
by
“You had better keep awake in that main-top;” thundered the lieutenant of the deck, through his trumpet, “you have lost one of your number already by your sleeping.”
All this was “Hebrew Greek” to us, but in a short time the sentry at the cabin door “reported” eight bells; the larboard watch was called, the wheel, look-outs, and tops relieved, and the mystery of the loss of “one of our number” fully explained.
“What did you heave Old Cuff out of the top for?” said the first one of the larboard watch, whose head came through the “lubber’s hole.”
“When did Old Cuff, fall from aloft?” said the next that ascended to the “sky-parlor.”
“Old Cuff is done for,” said the third that came up.
“He has broke his back-bone short off;” said a fourth, with his jacket over one shoulder.
“Yes, and four of his ribs to boot;” added a fifth, who was determined the story should not want particulars.
“The doctor says he won’t live till morning,” said a sixth, who had not yet hove in sight, speaking below the top, as Hamlet senior’s ghost does under the stage.
By this time, the whole of the alarming intelligence was fairly expended, the remaining eight, who made up the sum total of the quarter watch, having no farther particulars of consequence to communicate, the first six who came up having already broken every bone in poor Old Cuff’s body, and “abridged his doleful days” to boot. By dint of cross questioning, we made shift to ascertain, that about two o’clock, or four bells, Old Cuff had rolled away from under my head, and over the top brim. Fortunately he fell across the fore-topmast studding-sail tack, which broke two of his ribs and his fall, and thence he had gently canted over, and alighted upon the quarter-deck hammock-nettings, nearly knocked overboard the half-asleep main-topman who was perched up there as a look-out. He recovered, however, in two or three weeks, in spite of the doctor’s prognostication.
Upon our arrival at Valparaiso, a similar accident happened to him, that, taken in connexion with the first, formed what newspaper folks call “a singular coincidence.” A considerable portion of the town, or city, or whatever it may be, of Valparaiso, is built upon and among several high, rocky, precipitous cliffs, to which sailors, time out of mind, have given the names of fore, main, and mizen tops. It is, perhaps, another singular coincidence, that the name “main-royal,” that belongs of right to the highest sail in a ship, is applied to the lowest part of said respectable sea-port. The “main-top” is the favorite resort of sailors, but I cannot say much in praise of the moral virtues of the denizens of said main-top. They do, indeed, enjoy a better prospect and a purer air than their fellow citizens, whose location is somewhat nearer the level of the sea, so that their physical elevation gives them many advantages that serve to compensate them for what they lack through moral debasement. The part of the main-top that fronts the bay, is a sheer precipice of two hundred feet; but on another part, it is simply too steep for any animal but a monkey to make a highway of. Down this part Old Cuff, who was ashore on liberty, and who likewise had his “beer aboard,” contrived to trundle himself, and was picked up as dead in the street below. He, however, recovered from this tumble as speedily as he did from the other, having received but little damage, except some half dozen cuts and bruises in the countenance, which he held in but light esteem, being by no means vain of his beauty. I do not recollect that he met with any more accidents of consequence during the cruise. He returned to America in the frigate, and I have since been told that he had received a gunner’s warrant, in consideration of his long, and, in his way, faithful services and many wounds; for I believe he had been wounded in almost every naval engagement during the last war.