Southern Soldier Stories

by George Cary Eggleston

“But I have no skill or experience in the matter,” he replied. “The truth is I do not even know the nomenclature of a boat. I do know the bow from the rudder, but that is the extreme limit of my knowledge on the subject.”

This, from an ex-naval officer, was certainly rather odd, but I could not bring myself to question this modest gentleman further on the subject, or even to suspect his veracity, in which I had learned to repose the most implicit confidence.

He was not at all averse to boating duty in itself. On the contrary, when an oar was put into his hands, his supple muscles lent themselves with a will to the severe physical strain. The man seemed even to rejoice in the opportunity thus given him to bring his magnificent strength into play. When his fellows quitted the boats in utter weariness he, still fresh, would betake himself to a little shell and row her about for hours in mere wantonness of unexpended vitality.

But he knew nothing of boating. He was as awkward as possible at first. He learned rapidly, however, and soon became a graceful oarsman and an expert sailor.

I was puzzled. I could not reconcile the man’s stories of naval service with his evident ignorance of everything pertaining to a boat. Yet I could not doubt the truthfulness of any of his statements. Nobody who knew his gentleness, his modesty, and his translucent integrity as I did could possibly entertain doubt of his truthfulness. The man’s face was of itself a certificate of his entire trustworthiness. His conduct and his manners were unexceptionable always. The man himself was the embodiment of truth.

Accordingly, when I observed some tattoo marks on his arm one day, which he told me were put there while he was in the navy, it did not occur to me to question him as to the truth of that story. On the contrary, I thought at the moment of a possible explanation of the whole matter: Perhaps he had been a surgeon in the service, and if so his technical ignorance of boating was not altogether unaccountable. I was surprised, however, to see that the letters on his arm were not “W. R.” but “W. W.”—a fact of which he volunteered an explanation.

“My name is not Russell,” he said, “but Wallace. Though for a good many years I have preferred to use my mother’s rather than my father’s name.”

As a matter of course I asked him no rude questions. He was altogether too much a gentleman for me to think of such a thing. I accepted his explanation and respected his wish to be called “Russell” still. He imposed no pledge of secrecy upon me, but I kept his secret sacredly, respecting it as a confidential communication from one gentleman to another.

I had hardly settled it in my own mind that Russell’s connection with the navy had been in the capacity of a surgeon, when he came one day with the request that he might be allowed to go to Charleston for the purpose of standing an examination for admission to the navy as an officer.

This time, I confess, I was astonished. And so I went with him to Charleston and before the board. To my surprise, he passed his examination so brilliantly, that he was commissioned at once and put in command of a newly built gun-boat. Shortly afterwards he handled his vessel so well in a fight off the harbor as to secure an official compliment and a promotion.