standing,
Trumpet at mouth, thrown up all amain,
An elephant’s bugle, vociferous demanding
Of topmen aloft in the hurricane of rain,
“Letting that sail there your faces flog? 
Manhandle it, men, and you’ll get the good
    grog!”
O Tom, but he knew a blue-jacket’s ways,
And how a lieutenant may genially haze;
Only a sailor sailors heartily praise.

Wife, where be all these chaps, I wonder? 
Trumpets in the tempest, terrors in the fray,
Boomed their commands along the deck like
    thunder;
But silent is the sod, and thunder dies away. 
But Captain Turret, "Old Hemlock" tall,
(A leaning tower when his tank brimmed all,)
Manoeuvre out alive from the war did he? 
Or, too old for that, drift under the lee? 
Kentuckian colossal, who, touching at Madeira,
The huge puncheon shipped o’ prime
    Santa-Clara;
Then rocked along the deck so solemnly! 
No whit the less though judicious was enough
In dealing with the Finn who made the great
    huff;
Our three-decker’s giant, a grand boatswain’s
    mate,
Manliest of men in his own natural senses;
But driven stark mad by the devil’s drugged
    stuff,
Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late,
Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses,
A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power,
The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to
    make cower. 
“Put him in brig there!” said Lieutenant
    Marrot. 
“Put him in brig!” back he mocked like a
    parrot;
“Try it, then!” swaying a fist like Thor’s
    sledge,
And making the pigmy constables hedge—­
Ship’s corporals and the master-at-arms. 
“In brig there, I say!”—­They dally no more;
Like hounds let slip on a desperate boar,
Together they pounce on the formidable Finn,
Pinion and cripple and hustle him in. 
Anon, under sentry, between twin guns,
He slides off in drowse, and the long night runs.

Morning brings a summons.  Whistling it calls,
Shrilled through the pipes of the boatswain’s
    four aids;
Trilled down the hatchways along the dusk
    halls: 
Muster to the Scourge!—­Dawn of doom and
    its blast! 
As from cemeteries raised, sailors swarm before
    the mast,
Tumbling up the ladders from the ship’s nether
    shades.

Keeping in the background and taking small
    part,
Lounging at their ease, indifferent in face,
Behold the trim marines uncompromised in
    heart;
Their Major, buttoned up, near the staff finds
    room—­
The staff o’ lieutenants standing grouped in
    their place. 
All the Laced Caps o’ the ward-room come,
The Chaplain among them, disciplined and
    dumb. 
The blue-nosed boatswain, complexioned like
    slag,
Like a blue Monday lours—­his implements in
    bag. 
Executioners, his aids, a couple by him stand,
At a nod there the thongs to receive from his hand. 
Never venturing a caveat whatever may betide,
Though functionally here on humanity’s side,
The grave Surgeon shows, like the formal
    physician
Attending the rack o’ the Spanish Inquisition.