Chapter III: Appendix: 233 (2)

As the hour for the lecture approached, the students one by one, closed their books, washed their hands, and descended to the lecture-room. We descended with the rest, and as we passed the grim porter, at the bottom of the stair-case, I observed in the corner behind him a number of stout bludgeons, besides several cutlasses and muskets. A popular commotion a short time previous, among some of the well-intentioned but ignorant of the lower classes, had induced the necessity of caution, and this preparation for resistance. Entering the lecture-room, we took our places on the third or fourth row of seats from the demonstrator’s table, upon which a subject was lying, covered with a white sheet, and had time, as the room gradually filled, to look about us. Besides the students, Lee pointed out to me several able professional gentlemen, advanced in life, who were attracted by the celebrity of the lecturer; among others, Abernethy and Sir Astley Cooper. Shortly after we had taken our seats, a slender, melancholy-looking young man, dressed in deep mourning, entered the circle in which we were seated, and took his place on the vacant bench at my side. He bowed reservedly to my companions as he passed them, but immediately on sitting down became absorbed in deep sadness. My friends returned his salute, but did not appear inclined to break into his abstraction. At the precise moment that the lecture was announced to be delivered, the tall form of the eminent surgeon was seen descending the alley of crowded seats to his chair. The lights in the various parts of the room were raised suddenly, throwing a glare on all around; and one of the skeletons, to which an accidental jar had been given, vibrated slowly forward and backward, while the other hung perfectly motionless from its cord. In his short and sententious manner, he opened the subject of the lecture, which was the cause, effect, and treatment of that scourge of our country—consumption. His remarks were singularly lucid and clear, even to me, a layman. After having gone rapidly through the pathology of the disease, consuming perhaps some twenty minutes of time, he said,—“We will now, gentlemen, proceed to demonstration upon the subject itself.” I shall not readily forget the scene that followed. As he slowly turned up the wristbands of his shirt sleeves, and bent over to select an instrument from the case at his side, he motioned to an assistant to withdraw the sheet that covered the corpse. Resuming his erect position, the long knife glittering in his hand, the sheet was slowly drawn off, exhibiting the emaciated features of an aged woman, her white hair parted smoothly in the middle of her forehead, passing around to the back of the head, beneath the plain white muslin cap. The silence which always arrests even the most frivolous in the presence of the dead, momentarily checked the busy hum of whispers around me, when I heard a gasp—a choking—a rattling in the throat, at my side; and the next instant, the young man sitting next to me, rose to his feet, threw his arms wildly upwards, and shrieking in a tone of agony, that caused every man’s heart in that assembly, momentarily to stop—“_My m-o-t-h-e-r!_”—plunged prostrate and stiff, head foremost upon those in front of him. All was instant consternation and confusion;—there was one present who knew him, but to the majority of the students, he was as much a stranger as he was to my friends. He was from one of the adjoining parishes of London, and two weeks before, had lost his mother, to whom he was much attached, and by fatal mischance, that mother lay extended before him, upon the demonstrator’s table. He was immediately raised, but entirely stiff and insensible, and carried into an adjoining room;—sufficient animation was at length restored to enable him to stand, but he stared vacantly about him, the great beads of sweat trickling down his forehead, without a particle of mind or memory. The lecture was of course closed, and the lifeless corse again entrusted to hands to replace it in its tomb. The young man, on the following day, was brought sufficiently to himself to have memory present the scene again to his mind, and fell almost immediately into a raging fever, accompanied with fierce and violent delirium; his fever gradually abated, and his delirium at intervals; but when I left London for the continent, three months after, he was rapidly sinking under the disease which carried off his mother—happily in a state of helpless and senseless idiocy; and in a very short time after, death relieved him from his misery. The whole scene was so thrilling and painful, that, connecting it in some measure with my introduction to Lee, his presence always recalled it to my memory.

THE RESURRECTIONISTS.

As we returned to our lodgings, our conversation naturally turned upon the agitating event that we had just witnessed, and the extreme caution necessary in the procuring of subjects for anatomical examination. Lee related an occurrence that had happened to Dr. ——, a gentleman of high standing in South Carolina.

Shortly after the American revolution, he visited Europe for the purpose of pursuing his medical studies, and was received into the family of the same distinguished gentleman, whom we had just heard lecture, then beginning to rise to eminence and notice; an advantage which was necessarily confined to a very few. In one of the dark and stormy nights of December, Mr. Hunter and his wife having been called to the bedside of a dying relative in the country, as Dr. —— was quietly sitting at the parlour fire, absorbed in his studies, he was aroused by a hurried ring at the street door, and rising, went to answer it himself. Upon opening the door, a hackney coach, with its half-drowned horses, presented itself at the side of the walk, and two men, in slouched hats and heavy sailor coals dripping with water, standing upon the steps, inquired in a low tone if he wanted a subject. Being answered in the affirmative, they opened the carriage door, lifted out the body, which was enveloped in a sack, and having carried it up stairs to the dissecting-room, which was in the garret, received the two guineas which they had demanded, and withdrew. The affair was not unusual, and Dr. —— resuming his book, soon forgot the transaction. About eleven o’clock, while still absorbed in his studies, he heard a violent female shriek in the entry, and the next instant the servant maid, dashing open the door, fell senseless upon the carpet at his feet, the candlestick which she held, rolling some distance as it fell.

Perceiving that the cause of alarm, whatever it might be, was without, he caught up the candlestick, and, jumping over her prostrate form, rushed into the hall where an object met his view which might well have tried the nerves of the strongest man. Standing half-way down the stair-case, was a fierce, grim-looking man, perfectly naked, his eyes glaring wildly and fearfully from beneath a coarse shock of dark hair, which, nearly concealing a narrow forehead, partially impeded a small stream of blood trickling down the side of the face, from a deep scratch in the temple. In one hand he grasped a sharp long belt-knife, such as is used by riggers and sailors, the other holding on by the bannister, as he somewhat bent over to meet the gaze of the Doctor rushing into the entry. The truth flashed across the mind of Dr. —— in an instant, and with admirable presence of mind, he made one spring, catching the man by the wrist which held the knife, in a way that effectually prevented his using it. “In the name of God! where am I?” demanded the man in a horror-stricken voice, “am I to be murdered?” “Silence!—not a whisper,” sternly answered Dr. ——, looking him steadily in the eyes—“Silence—and your life is safe.”—Wrenching the knife from his hand, he pulled him by the arm passively along into the yard, and hurrying through the gate, first ran with him through one alley, then into another, and finally rapidly through a third, till coming to an outlet upon one of the narrow and unfrequented streets, he gave him a violent push,—retracing his steps again on the wings of the wind, pulling too, and doubly locking the gate behind him, leaving the object of his alarm perfectly bewildered and perplexed, and entirely ignorant of the place from whence he had been so summarily ejected. The precaution and presence of mind of Dr. ——, most probably saved the house of Mr. Hunter from being torn down and sacked by the mob, which would have been instantly collected around it, had the aggrieved party known where to have led them to wreak his vengeance.

After a few days, inquiry was carefully and cautiously made through the police, and it was ascertained that three men answering the description of the resurrectionists and their victim had been drinking deeply through the afternoon, in one of the low dens in the neighbourhood of Wapping; that one had sunk into a stupid state of intoxication, and had, in that situation, been stripped and placed in a sack by his companions, a knife having been previously placed in his hand that he might relieve himself from his confinement upon his return to sensibility; and that in addition to the poor wretch’s clothes, they had realized the two guineas for his body.

It is certainly painful, that the requirements of suffering humanity should make the occasional violation of the grave indispensably necessary. Whether the spirit, released from its confinement, lies in the limbo of the fathers, the purgatory of the Catholics, awaiting the great day of doom; whether called from a life of virtue, all time and distance annihilated, it sweeps free and unconstrained in heavenly delight through the myriads and myriads of worlds, rolling in the vast sublimity of space; whether summoned from a course of evil, it shudders in regions of darkness and desolation, or writhes in agony amid flaming atmospheres; or whether its germ of life remains torpid, as in the wheat taken from the Egyptian pyramids, thousands of years existent, but apparently not sentient, must, of course, be to us but the wild theories of imagination, and so remain until that judgment, predicted by the holy Revelation, shall sweep away the darkness with which, in inscrutable and awful wisdom, the Almighty has enveloped us.

But that the spirit can look with other than indifference, if not loathing, on the perishing exuviæ of its chrysalis existence, which, to its retrospective gaze, presents little other than a tasking house of base necessities, a chained prison of cruel disappointments, even to our human reason, clogged as it is with bars and contradictions, appears hardly to admit the opportunity of question, and of consequence to that spirit its disposition can but be a matter of indifference. Still, to the surviving friends, whose affection cannot separate mind from matter, those forms lying in the still and silent tomb, retain all their dear associations, and surely it most gravely becomes the members of that profession, which, next to the altar, stands foremost in benevolence, that the deepest prudence should be exercised in this gloomy rite required by the living from the dead.

OLD KENNEDY, THE QUARTER-MASTER.

(Constitution and Guerriere.)

No. I.

The sun became more and more powerful as it ascended towards the meridian, and was reflected with effulgent intensity from the mirror-surface of the river. As we bent over the side and looked far down into the deep vault reflected from above, and saw our gallant little yacht, with her white sails and dark hull, suspended with even minute tracery over it, we could almost imagine ourselves with the Ancient Mariner, “in a painted ship upon a painted ocean.”—The white sandbanks quivered and palpitated in the sultry glare, and the atmosphere of the adjoining swamps hung over them in a light blue vapour; the deadly miasma, their usual covering, dissipated in the fervent heat; while the silence was unbroken, save by the occasional scream of the gull, as it wheeled about in pursuit of its prey, or the quick alarmed cry of the kingfisher, hastily leaving some dead branch upon the shore to wing its way farther from the object of its terror. The black boy, in perfect negro elysium, lay stretched fast asleep, with his arm resting upon one of the dogs, in the blazing sun on the forecastle, while we ourselves, reclined upon the cushions, with our refreshments before us, indolently puffed our cigars under the awning, Old Kennedy, perched upon the taffrail, coxswain fashion, with the tiller between his legs. While thus enjoying ourselves, like true disciples of Epicurus, the guitar was taken from its case in the cabin, and accompanied by the rich tones of Walter Lee: “Here’s a health to thee, Mary,” in compliment to our kind hostess, swept over the still surface of the river, till, dissipated in the distance, and anon the “Wild Huntsman,” and “Here’s a health to all good lassies,” shouted at the pitch of three deep bass voices, bounded over the banks, penetrating the deep forest, causing the wild game to spring from their coverts in consternation at such unusual disturbance of its noontide stillness. “We bade dull care be gone, and daft the time away.” Old Kennedy, seated at the tiller, his grey hair smoothed down on one side, and almost falling into his eyes, his cheek distended with a huge quid of tobacco, which gave an habitual drag to a mouth whose expression indicated surly honesty and resolution, was a perfect portrait of many an old quartermaster, still in the service; while his scrupulously clean shirt, with its blue collar open at the neck, discovering a rugged throat, encircled by a ring of grey hairs, and his white canvass trowsers, as tight at the hips as they were egregiously large at the ancles, indicated the rig in which he had turned up, for the last thirty years, to Sunday muster. The old seaman had seen a great deal of service, having entered the navy at the opening of the difficulties with the Barbary powers, and had been engaged in several of the signal naval actions which followed in the subsequent war with Great Britain. Previous to that time, he had been in the employ of Tom’s father, who was an extensive shipping merchant at Alexandria, and now, in his old age, influenced by an attachment for the son, who had built a snug cottage for him on his estate, and, vested with the full control of the yacht, he had been induced to come down to spend the remainder of his days on the banks of the Potomac, enjoying the pension awarded by government for the loss of his arm.

I had previously had the hint given me, that a little adroit management would set him to spinning a yarn which would suit my fancy. So, watching a good opportunity, knowing that the old man had been with Hull in his fight with the Guerriere, I successfully gave a kick to the ball by remarking, “You felt rather uncomfortable, Kennedy, did you not, as you were bearing down on the Guerriere, taking broadside and broadside from her, without returning a shot. You had time to think of your sins, my good fellow, as conscience had you at the gangway?” “Well, sir,” replied he, deliberately rolling his tobacco from one side of his mouth to the other, squirting the juice through his front teeth with true nautical grace—“Well, sir, that ere was the first frigate action as ever I was engaged in, and I am free to confess, I overhauled the log of my conscience to see how it stood, so it mought be I was called to muster in the other world in a hurry; but I don’t think any of his shipmates will say that Old Bill Kennedy did his duty any the worse that day, because he thought of his God, as he has many a time since at quarters. There’s them as says the chaplain is paid for the religion of the ship, and it’s none of the sailor’s business; but I never seen no harm in an honest seaman’s thinking for himself. Howsomever, I don’t know the man who can stand by his gun at such time, tackle cast loose, decks sanded, matches lighted, arm-chests thrown open, yards slung, marines in the gangways, powder-boys passing ammunition buckets, ship as still as death, officers in their iron-bound boarding caps, cutlashes hanging by lanyards at their wrists, standing like statues at divisions, enemy may-be bearing down on the weather-quarter—I say, I doesn’t know the man at sich time, as won’t take a fresh bite of his quid, and give a hitch to the waistbands of his trowsers, as he takes a squint at the enemy through the port as he bears down. And as you say at that particular time, the Guerriere (as is French for soger) was wearing and manœuvering, and throwing her old iron into us, broadside and broadside, like as I have seen them Italians in Naples throw sugar-plums at each other in Carnival time.—Afore she was through, tho’, she found it was no sugar-plum work, so far as Old Ironsides was consarned. You obsarve, when we first made her out, we seen she was a large ship close hauled on the starboard tack; so we gave chase, and when within three miles of her, took in all our light sails, hauled courses up, beat to quarters and got ready for action. She wore and manœuvered for some time, endeavouring to rake, but not making it out, bore up under her jib, and topsails, and gallantly waited for us. Well, sir—as we walked down to her, there stands the old man, (Hull) his swabs on his shoulders, dressed as fine in his yellow nankin vest and breeches, as if he was going ashore on leave—there he stands, one leg inside the hammock nettings, taking snuff out of his vest pocket, watching her manœuvres, as she blazed away like a house a-fire, just as cool as if he was only receiving complimentary salutes. She burnt her brimstone, and was noisy—but never a gun fires we. Old Ironsides poked her nose steady right down for her, carrying a bank of foam under her bows like a feather-bed cast loose. Well, as we neared her, and she wears first a-star-board, and then a-larboard, giving us a regular broadside at every tack, her shot first falls short, but as we shortened the distance, some of them begins to come aboard—first among the rigging, and cuts away some of the stuff aloft, for them Englishmen didn’t larn to fire low till we larnt ’em. First they comes in aloft, but by-and-by, in comes one—lower—crash—through the bulwarks, making the splinters fly like carpenter’s chips,—then another, taking a gouge out of the main-mast; and pretty soon agin—‘_chit_’—I recollects the sound of that ere shot well—‘chit’—another dashed past my ear, and glancing on a gun-carriage, trips up the heels of three as good men as ever walked the decks of that ere ship; and all this while, never a gun fires we; but continues steadily eating our way right down on to his quarter, the old man standing in the hammock nettings, watching her movements as if she was merely playing for his amusement. Well, as we came within carronade distance, them shot was coming on board rather faster than mere fun, and some of the young sailors begins to grumble, and by-and-by, the old men-of-wars-men growled too, and worked rusty—cause why—they sees the enemy’s mischief, and nothing done by us to aggravate them in return. Says Bill Vinton, the vent-holder, to me, ‘I say, Kennedy,’ says he, ‘what’s the use—if this here’s the way they fights frigates, dam’me! but I’d rather be at it with the Turks agin, on their own decks as we was at Tripoli. It’s like a Dutch bargain—all on one side. I expects the next thing, they’ll order pipe down, and man the side-ropes for that ere Englishman to come aboard and call the muster-roll.’ ‘Avast a bit,’ says I; ‘never you fear the old man. No English press-gang comes on board this ship—old Blow-hard knows what he’s about.’

“Well, by-and-by Mr. Morris, our first lieutenant, who all the while had been walking up and down the quarter-deck, his trumpet under his arm, and his eyes glistening like a school-boy’s just let out to play; by-and-by _he_ begins to look sour, ’ticularly when he sees his favourite coxswain of the first cutter carried by a shot through the opposite port. So he first looks hard at the Old Man, and then walks up to him, and says by way of a hint, in a low tone, ‘The ship is ready for action, sir, and the men are getting impatient;’—the Old Man never turns, but keeps his eye steadily on the enemy, while he replies, ‘Are—you—all ready, Mr. Morris?’—‘All ready, sir,’—says the lieutenant—‘Don’t fire a gun till I give the orders, Mr. Morris,’—says the old man. Presently up comes a midshipman from the main-deck, touches his hat—‘First division all ready, sir,—the second lieutenant reports the enemy’s shot have hurt his men, and he can with difficulty restrain them from returning their fire;’—‘Tell him to wait for orders, Mr. Morris,’ says the old man again—never turning his head. Well—just, you see, as the young gentleman turned to go below, and another shot carries off Mr. Bush, lieutenant of marines—just as we begins to run into their smoke, and even the old gun-boat men, as had been with Decatur and Somers, begins to stare, up jumps the old man in the air, slaps his hand on his thigh with a report like a pistol, and roars out in a voice that reached the gunners in the magazines—‘Now, Mr. Morris, give it to them,—now give it to them—fore and aft—round and grape—give it to ’em, sir—give it to ’em,’ and the words was scarce out of his mouth, before our whole broadside glanced at half pistol shot—the old ship trembling from her keel to her trucks, like an aspen, at the roar of her own batteries—instantly shooting ahead and doubling across his bows, we gave him the other with three cheers, and then at it we went—regular hammer and tongs. You would a thought you were in a thunder storm in the tropics, from the continual roar and flash of the batteries. In ten minutes, his mizen-mast went by the board. ‘Hurrah!’ shouts the old man; ‘hurrah, boys, we’ve made a brig of her.—Fire low, never mind their top hamper! hurrah! we’ll make a sloop of her before we’ve done.’ In ten minutes more over went her main-mast, carrying twenty men overboard as it went; and sure enough, sir, in thirty minutes, that ere Englishman was a sheer hulk, smooth as a canoe, not a spar standing but his bowsprit; and his decks so completely swept by our grape and cannister, that there was barely hands enough left to haul down the colours, as they had bravely nailed to the stump of their main-mast. ‘I say, Kennedy,’ says the vent-holder to me, lying across the gun after she struck, looking out at the wrack through the port, and his nose was as black as a nigger’s from the powder flashing under it—‘I say, I wonder how that ere Englishman likes the smell of the old man’s snuff.’”

OLD KENNEDY, THE QUARTER-MASTER

(Sailors Ashore.—Hornet and Peacock.)

No. II.

“Well—well—sailors, is queer animals any how—and always ready for a fight or frolic—and, so far as I sees, it don’t much matter which. Now, there was Captain ——, he was a Lieutenant then;—I was up in a draft of men, with him to the lakes in the war, and as there was no canals nor steamboats in them days, they marched us up sojer fashion. As we marched along the road, there was nothing but skylarking and frolic the whole time,—never a cow lying in the road but the lads must ride, nor a pig, but they must have a pull at his tail. I recollects, once’t, as we was passing a farm yard, Jim Albro, as was alongside of me—what does Jim do, but jumps over the fence and catches a goose out of the pond, and was clearing with it under his arm, but the farmer, too quick for him, grabs his musket out of his door, and levelling at Jim, roars out to drop the goose. Jim catches the goose’s neck tight in his hand, as it spraddles under his arm, and then turning his head over his shoulder, cries out, ‘_You fire_,—I’ll wring his neck off.’ And so Jim would have got off with the goose, but one of the officers seeing what was going on, orders Jim to drop the goose, and have a care how he aggravates the honest farmers in that ere sort of a way; for, ‘By the powers!’ said he, ‘Mister Jim Albro—this isn’t the first time, and if I hear of the like agin from you,—but your back and the boatswain’s mate shall scrape an acquaintance the first moment we come within the smell of a tarred ratlin.’

“It was wrong, to be sure, for Bill to take the man’s goose, seeing as how it was none of his; but there was one affair that same day, as the lads turned up to, and though a steady man, I’m free to confess I had a hand in’t. Why, what do you think sir, but as we what was bound for to fight the battles of our country—what do you think, but as we comes to one of them big gates they has on the roads, but the feller as keeps it, damme, sir, what does he do? but makes all fast, and swear that we shan’t go through without paying! I’m free to confess, sir, that that ere gate went off its hinges a little quicker than the chain of our best bower ever run through the hawse hole. A cummudgeonly son of a land lubber,—as if, because we didn’t wear long-tail coats, and high-heel boots, we was to pay like horses and oxen! If the miserable scamp hadn’t’ve vanished like a streak into the woods, we’d have paid him out of his own tar bucket, and rolled him over in the feathers of one of his wife’s own beds. But, d’ye see, that wasn’t the end of it. Them ere lawyers gets hold of it—and it was the first time any of them land-shirks ever came athwart my hawse.

“When we gets to the next town, up comes a constable to the midshipman, supposing as how he was in command of the draft—up comes the constable, and says, says he, ‘Capting, I arrests you for a salt and battery, in behalf of these here men, as has committed it,’ meaning, you understand, the affair of the gate. Well, the midshipman, all ripe for frolic and fun himself, pulls a long face, and says gruffly, that his men hadn’t been engaged in no salt, or no battery; but that they was ready at all times to fight for their country, and asks him whereaway that same English battery lay, as he would answer for the lads’ salting it quick enough. Then the lawyer as was standing with his hands behind him, up and tells him that ‘it’s for a trespass in the case.’ ‘Oh! a trespass in the gate—you mean,’ says the midshipman; but just then the lieutenant comes up to see what’s the muss, and bids me put on my jacket, for d’ye see, I had squared off to measure the constable for a pair of black eyes—hang me if the feller didn’t turn as white as a sheet. ‘Put on your jacket, sir,’ says he, ‘and leave the man alone;’ and then turning to the midshipman, ‘Mr. ——, take the men down to the tavern and splice the main-brace, while I walk up to the justice’s with the gentle man to settle this affair. And, hark’ee, ye rascals,’ says he, ‘don’t disgrace the name of blue jacket in this quiet village, but behave yourselves till I return.’ Well, he and the lawyer walks up to the justice’s, and there they three takes a glass of wine together, and that’s the last we hearn of that ere business.

“There agin, when we took the Peacock;—you all knows about that ere action; it was what I calls short and sweet. Fifteen minutes from the first gun, he was cut almost entirely to pieces, his main-mast gone by the board, six feet of water in the hold, and his flag flying in the fore-rigging, as a signal of distress. The sea was running so heavy, as to wash the muzzles of our guns, as we run down. We exchanged broadsides at half pistol shot, and then, as he wore to rake us, we received his other broadside, running him close in upon the starboard quarter, and a drunken sailor never hugged a post closer, nor we did that brig, till we had hammered day-light out of her. A queer thing is war, though, and I can’t say as I was ever satisfied as to its desarts, though I’ve often turned the thing over in my mind in mid-watch since. There was we, what was stowing our round shot into that ere brig, as if she had been short of kenteledge, and doing all we could to sweep, with our grape and cannister, every thing living, from her decks,—there was we, fifteen minutes after, working as hard as we could pull to, to keep her above water, while we saved her wounded, and the prisoners, like as she had been an unfortunate wrack, foundering at sea. But all wouldn’t do—down she went, carrying thirteen of her own wounded, besides some of our own brave lads, as was exerting themselves to save them, and mighty near did Bill Kennedy come to being one of the number, and having a big D marked agin his name, on the purser’s book, at that same time. The moment she showed signals of distress, all our boats was put in requisition to transport the prisoners and wounded to the Hornet. I was in the second cutter, with midshipman C——; he was a little fellow then, tho’ he’s a captain now. Well, we stowed her as full as she could stow, and I was holding on by the boat-hook in the bows, jist ready to push off, when midshipman C——, jumps aboard agin, and runs back to call a couple of the Englishmen, as was squared off at each other, at the foot of the main hatch ladder, settling some old grudge—(for d’ye see, sir, all discypline is over the moment a ship strikes)—he runs back to tell them to clear themselves—for the ship was sinking,—but before he could reach it, she rolls heavily, sways for an instant from side to side, gives a heavy lurch, and then, down she goes head foremost, carrying them fellers as was squared off agin each other, and her own wounded, besides four or five of our own brave lads, right down in the vortex. Our boat spun round and round like a top, for a moment, and then swept clear, but the midshipman barely saved himself, by springing into an empty chest as was floating by, and there he was dancing about in the heavy sea, like a gull in the surf, and it was nigh on two hours afore we picked him up; but the little fellow was jist as cool and unconsarned, as if he was in a canoe on a fish-pond. The next day we opens a subscription, and furnishes all the British seamen with two shirts, and a blue jacket and trowsers each,—cause why—d’ye see, they’d lost all their traps in their ship when she went down.”

OLD KENNEDY, THE QUARTER-MASTER.

(Perry’s Victory on Lake Erie.)

No. III.

“But,” says I, “Kennedy—I think you said your draft was bound for the lakes—which did you go to, Ontario, or Erie?” “I was on both, sir,” says he, “afore the war was over; and we got as much accustomed to poking our flying jib-boom into the trees on them shores, as if the sticks was first cousins—which, seeing as how the ships was built in the woods, wouldn’t be much of a wonder. Part of that ere draft staid down on Ontario, with the old commodore, as was watching Sir James, and part was sent up to Erie. I went up to Erie and joined the Lawrence, Commodore Oliver H. Perry—and I hopes that old Bill Kennedy needn’t be called a braggart, if he says he did his part in showing off as handsome a fight on that same fresh-water pond, as has ever been done by an equal force on blue water. Our gallant young commodore, made as tight a fight of it as it has ever been my luck to be engaged in; and seeing as how half of his men was down with fever and ager, and not one in a dozen knew the difference between the smell of gunpowder and oil of turpentine, blow me! but I think it was about as well done.

“You see our squadron was lying in a bay, as they calls Put-in-Bay—and when the enemy first hove in sight, it was in the morning, about seven o’clock. I knows that that was the time, because I had just been made Quarter-Master, by Captain Perry, and was the first as seen them through my glass. They was in the nor’-west, bearing down: as soon as we made them out to be the enemy’s fleet, up went the signal to get under way; our ship, the Lawrence, in course taking the lead. Well, as we was working slowly to windward to clear some small islands—one of ’em was Snake Island—I hearn Captain Perry come up to the master, and ask him in a low voice, whether he thought he should be able to work out to windward in time to get the weather-gage of the enemy; but the master said as how the wind was sou’-west, and light, and he didn’t think he could. ‘Then,’ said the commodore, aloud, ‘wear ship, sir, and go to leeward, for I am determined to fight them to-day,’—but just then, the wind came round to the south’ard and east’erd, and we retained the weather-gage, and slowly bore down upon the enemy. They did all they could to get the wind, but not succeeding, hove into line, heading westward, and gallantly waited for us as we came down.

“There lay their squadron, all light sails taken in, just like a boxer, with his sleeves rolled up, and handkercher tied about his loins, ready to make a regular stand-up fight, and there wasn’t a braver man, nor better sailor, in the British navy, nor that same Barclay, whose broad pennant floated in the van of that squadron.

“Pretty soon, up runs our motto-flag, the dying words of our hero Lawrence—‘_Don’t give up the ship_,’ and floats proudly from our main, and then the general order was passed down the line by trumpet, ‘_Each ship, lay your enemy alongside_’—and if you ever seen a flock of wild geese flying south’erd in the fall of the year, you’ll have some idee of us, as we went down into action. The men was full of spirit, and panting for a fight, and even them as was so sick, as to be hardly able to stand, insisted upon taking their places at the guns. I recollects one in particular—he was a carpenter’s mate, a steady man, from Newport—he crawls up when we beat to quarters, and seats himself upon the head of one of the pumps, with the sounding-rod in his hand, looking as yellow as if he had just been dragged out of a North Carolina cypress swamp: but one of the officers comes up to him as he was sitting there, and says—‘You are too sick to be here, my man,—there’s no use of your being exposed for nothing—you had better go below.’ ‘If you please, sir,’ says the poor fellow, ‘if I can do nothing else, I can save the time of a better man, and sit here and sound the pump.’ Well, sir, as we bore down, the English occasionally tried our distance by a shot, and when we was within about a mile of ’em, one comes ricochetting across the water, bounds over the bulwarks, and takes that man’s head as clean off his shoulders, as if it had been done with his own broad-axe. I have hearn say, that ‘every bullet has its billet,’ and that is sartin, that it’s no use to dodge a shot, for if you are destined to fall by a shot, you will sartin fall by that same shot; and I bears in mind, that an English sailor, one of our prisoners, told me that in a ship of their’n a feller, as skulked in the cable-tier, during an action with the French, was found dead with a spent forty-two resting on his neck. The ball had come in at the starn-port—struck one of the beams for’ard, and tumbled right in upon him, breaking his neck, as he lay snugly coiled away in the cable-tier. No, no—misfortins and cannon shot is very much alike—there’s no dodging—every man must stand up to his work, and take his chance—if they miss, he is ready when they pipes to grog—if they hit, the purser’s book is squared, and no more charges is scored agin him.

“But as I was saying, it wasn’t long before we begun to make our carronades tell, and then at it we went, hot and heavy, the Lawrence taking the lead, engaging the Detroit, and every vessel as she came up, obeying orders and laying her enemy alongside, in right good arnest, except the Niagara. She hung back—damn her—with her jib brailed up, and her main-topsail to the mast—consequence was, the Charlotte, as was her opponent, avails herself of her distance—runs up close under the starn of the Detroit, and both ships pours in their combined fire into our ship the Lawrence. I hearn the master myself, and afterwards two or three of the other officers, go up to the Commodore during the action, and call his attention to the Niagara, and complain of her treacherous or cowardly conduct. Well, them two ships gin it to us hot and heavy, and in three minutes we was so enveloped in smoke, that we only aimed at the flashes of their guns, for we might as well have tried to trace a flock of ducks in the thickest fog on the coast of Labrador, as their spars or hulls. I was working at one of the for’ard guns, and as after she was loaded, the captain of the piece stood waiting with the trigger lanyard in his finger, ready to pull, one of the officers calls out, ‘I say, sir, why don’t you fire?’ ‘I want to make her tell, sir,’ says the gunner,—‘I am waiting for their flash,—there it is’—and as he pulled trigger, a cannon shot came through the port, and dashed him to pieces between us, covering me and the officer all over with his brains. Their fire was awful; the whole of the shot of the two heaviest ships in the squadron pouring into us nigh on two hours without stopping. Our brig became a complete slaughter-house—the guns dismounted—carriages knocked to pieces—some of our ports knocked into one—hammock-netting shot clean away—iron stancheons twisted like wire—and a devilish deal more day-light than canvass in our bolt ropes—the wounded pouring down so fast into the cockpit, that the surgeons didn’t pretend to do more than apply tourniquets to stop the bleeding; and many of the men came back to the guns in that condition; while others was killed in the hands of the surgeons. One shot came through the cockpit, jist over the surgeon’s head, and killed midshipman Laub, who was coming up on deck, with a tourniquet at his shoulder, and another killed a seaman who had already lost both arms. Our guns was nearly all dismounted; and finally, there was but one that could be brought to bear; and so completely was the crew disabled, that the commodore had to work at it with his own hands. The men became almost furious with despair, as they found themselves made the target for the whole squadron; and the wounded complained bitterly of the conduct of the Niagara, as they lay dying on the decks, and in the cockpit. Two shots passed through the magazine—one knocked the lantern to pieces, and sent the lighted wick upon the floor; and if the gunner hadn’t have jumped on it with his feet, before it caught the loose powder—my eyes! but that ere ship and every thing on board would have gone into the air like a sheaf of sky-rockets, and them as was on board, never would have know’d which side whipped. Out of one hundred men that went into action, eighty-three were either killed or wounded, and every officer was killed or hurt except the Commodore. Our Lieutenant of marines, lieutenant Brooks—him as was called the Boston Apollo—the handsomest man in the sarvice, was cut nearly in two by a cannon shot, and died before the close of the action.

“It was nigh on all up with us. The men was real grit though, and even the wounded, cried, ‘Blow her up,’ rather than strike. Well, as things stood, there was an end of the Lawrence, so far as fighting went,—and our Commodore says, says he,—‘Lieutenant Yarnall, the American flag must not be pulled down over my head this day, while life remains in my body: I will go on board that ship and bring her myself into action—and I will leave it to you to pull down the Lawrence’s flag, if there is no help for it.’ So we got our barge alongside, by the blessing of Heaven, not so much injured but what she’d float, and off we pushed for the Niagara—the Commodore standing with his motto flag under his arm; but as soon as the enemy caught sight of us, they delivered a whole broadside directly at the boat—and then peppered away so briskly, that the water all around us bubbled like a duck-pond in a thunder shower. There Perry stood, erect and proud, in the starn sheets—his pistols strapped in his belt, and his sword in his hand—his eyes bent upon the Niagara,—as if he’d jump the distance,—never heeding the shot flying around him like hail. The men begged him to sit down—they entreated him with tears in their eyes—but it was not until I dragged him down by main force,—the men declaring that they would lay upon their oars and be taken—that he consented.

“There’s them as says the Niagara _wouldn’t_ come down, and there’s them as says she _couldn’t_—all _I_ knows is, that when our gallant young Commodore took the quarter-deck, she walked down into the thickest of it quick enough—my eyes! how we did give it to ’em, blazing away from both sides at once. We ran in between the Detroit and Charlotte, our guns crammed to the muzzle, and delivered both of our broadsides into them at the same time—grape, cannister and all,—raking the others as we passed; and the Niagara lads showed it wasn’t no fault of their’n, that they hadn’t come earlier to their work. I never know’d guns sarved smarter, than they sarved their’n, till the end of the action—nor with better effect. We soon silenced the enemy, and run up the stars again on the Lawrence as she lay a complete wrack, shattered and cut up among them, for all the world like a dead whale surrounded by shirks. They struck one after another, much like you may have seen the flags of a fleet run down after the evening gun; and as the firing ceased, and the heavy smoke bank rolled off to leeward, shiver my timbers! but it was a sight for a Yankee tar to see the striped bunting slapping triumphantly in the breeze over the British jacks at their gaffs.

“If there’s any man, tho’, as says that their Commodore wasn’t a man every inch of him, aye! and as good a seaman, too, as ever walked a caulked plank, there’s one here, and his name’s Bill Kennedy, as will tell him, that he’s a know-nothing, and talks of a better man nor himself. Aye—aye—scrape the crown off his buttons, and he might mess with Decatur and Lawrence, and splice the main-brace with Stewart and Hull, and they be proud of his company. He was badly cut up, tho’, and I have hear’n tell, that when he got home to England, he wouldn’t go for to see the lady what he’d engaged to marry, but sent her word by a friend—I don’t know who that friend was—but suppose it was his first lieutenant, in course,—he sends her word that he wouldn’t hold her to her engagement—cause why, says he, ‘I’m all cut to pieces, and an’t the man I was, when she engaged for to be my wife.’ Well, what d’ye think the noble girl says, when she hearn this;—‘Tell him,’ says she, ‘as long as there’s enough of him left to hold his soul, I will be his.’—I say, Master Tom, that’s most up to the Virginny gals. Well—well—there never was but one, as would have said as much for Bill Kennedy, and she, poor Sue—she married curly-headed Bob, captain of the main-top in the Hornet,—in a pet, and was sorry when it was too late. She was a good girl, though—and I’ve lent her and her young ones a hand once’t or twice since in the breakers.”

OLD KENNEDY, THE QUARTER-MASTER.

(Chesapeake and Shannon—Boat Fight on Lake Ontario.)

No. IV.