Forty years ago Harry Taylor and Bob Evans were boys together in Washington. They were school-mates and chums, fighting each other’s battles and longing for the day when they would be old enough to go to the Naval Academy and fight for their country. They were both lively, active lads, Taylor perhaps the quieter of the two.
As their characters developed, Taylor became more of a student than Evans, and that became the distinguishing feature of their entire careers. While Captain Taylor has been the student of books, Captain Evans is known throughout the navy as a student of men and a “man’s man” in the best sense of the term. The friendship of youth continued without break throughout their young manhood and prime. The bond was strengthened when Evans, at the close of the Civil War, married his chum’s sister.
They were both in the famous three-year class which was admitted to the Naval Academy in 1860. They had hardly entered on their careers long enough to get the smell of the brine into their nostrils when the Civil War broke out. Here was the very chance they were longing for. But they ruefully saw two upper classes go out, and they knew that fighting of the larger sort was not yet for them.
For two years they were kept at their books, when finally the welcome news came that they would be graduated in three years instead of four, if they could pass the examinations. In spite of their many disappointments, there was a wild whoop of joy up and down the corridors, and they set about their work in earnest, studying with a concentration which no diversion could dissipate.
Taylor and Evans both left the Academy before having been graduated, and were ordered to duty with the blockading squadrons along the Gulf and Southern coasts. They went to their ships gleefully, bearing the proud titles of “acting ensigns,” but in reality merely midshipmen of three years’ standing,—destined, however, to do the duties and have the responsibilities of men many years their seniors in theoretical and practical service.
HOW CAPTAIN EVANS SAVED HIS LEG
Evans was in both attacks on Fort Fisher, and in the second fight he was shot twice. The wounds were severe, and he was sent into hospital. His leg was shattered badly, and after examining it carefully the doctors told the young sufferer bluntly that they would be obliged to amputate it.
When they went out Evans made a resolution that his leg was not to be cut off. He came to the conclusion that he would rather quit right there than to go through life one-legged. It was his own leg anyhow, and nobody had a better right to decide the question than himself.
By some means he got hold of one of the big navy revolvers, and had it secreted under his pillow when the surgeons, with a blood-curdling array of knives and saws, made their appearance on the scene and began preparations to carry their threat into execution. But when the chief surgeon turned to the bed to examine the wounds he found himself looking into the black barrel of young Evans’s navy revolver.
