The bell struck in twin notes eight on board the frigate, echoed 180 back from the pigmy schooner in a faint, double succession of tinkles; the whistles resounded from deck to deck in ear-splitting notes, surging and chirruping all together, and then suddenly ceasing with a rattling beat of a drum and a short bellow of “Grog, ho!”
Between the guns of the main deck, and about the spar-deck battery forward of the main-mast, sat five hundred lusty sailors on the white decks around their mess-cloths, bolting hot pea soup after their grog, and chatting and laughing in a devil-may-care sort of a strain, as if the grub was good and the timbers sound, as they were, of the stanch frigate beneath them. No noise, no confusion, but just as polite and courteous, in their honest, seamanlike way, as half a legion of French dancing-masters, they whacked off the salt pork before them with their sheath-knives, munching the flinty biscuit, and all as happy and careless of the past and future as clams at high water. Ay, there they clustered, those five hundred sailors, in their snowy duck trowsers and white, coarse linen frocks, with the blue collars laid square back over their broad shoulders, exposing their bronzed and hairy throats, wagging their jaws, and ready at any moment, at the tap of the drum, day or night, to spring to the guns, and make the battery dance a jig as the solid iron food went amid sheets of flame toward a foe. Yes, and ready, too, in the gentle breeze or the howling tempest, to leap at the shrill pipe of the whistle from the busy deck or their snug hammocks, and, like so many monkeys, jump up the shrouds, lie out on the enormous yards while the frigate was plunging bows under in the tumultuous seas, grasp the writhing canvas in their sinewy paws, and wrap it up close and tight in the hempen gaskets. Man-of-war sailors, for battle, or gale, or spree, every one of them.
On board that little consort near were about forty more of the same sort, only older, more bronzed, and more deliberate and methodical in manner, sipping their pea pottage after blowing away the steam, cutting their pork after much reflection, and cracking their biscuit tranquilly. Their conversation, too, was slow and dignified, each word well considered before it came out, and never interrupting one another in a yarn, as did the younger harum-scarum chaps in the big ship near. But yet those weather-beaten old sons of Neptune, who had each one of them seen sights that would make your hair stand on end to think of, could handle that schooner when her low deck was buried waist-deep to the combings of the main hatch in angry water, and make that Long Tom amidships there spin round on its pivot, and never threw away idly one of its solid globular messengers. Ay, trust them for that.
Then honor to them all, those gallant tars who have fought the battles of our country by sea and lake, and upheld those Stars and 183 Stripes until they are respected to the uttermost ends of the earth! Glory to them, ye wise legislators, who sit in council upon the nation’s wealth and grandeur! Think of the fearless arms that have shielded your otherwise unprotected shores when circled in a ring of dreadful fire from the guns of a haughty foe.
THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE “MONONGAHELA.”
And you, too, ye rich traders! whose valuable cargoes roll hither and thither over the trackless deep, cared for by those toiling tars who fight and bleed for the flag that waves o’er your treasure––in stinging gale, with frozen fingers, or under burning suns, with panting breasts––think of them when your noble ships come gallantly into your superb ports, and unlade their floating mines of wealth into your spacious warehouses, while you in your lordly mansions sip your wine! Think of those arms grasping the shivering sail in the mighty tempest, in the black night, and the coarse fare they eat, the sometimes putrid water they drink, and the hard beds they lie upon, while you are reposing on downy pillows with your wives and little ones beside you! Ah! take pity on the sailor, and scatter your shining gold over him in his distress.
When the time comes, as come it may, when the cannon of a hostile fleet are thundering at your ports; when your lumbering craft are flying before the rapacious grasp of quick-heeled cruisers, and fiery bombs are hissing through the pure air, bursting in your marble palaces and blasting your stores of wealth to dust, then you will turn with blanched faces to the sea, and wonder why you have so long forgotten the noble hearts and stalwart arms that once were thrown around you. But not before.
On the flush quarter-deck of the frigate, by the raised signal lockers abaft, stood a bronzed old quarter-master, a spy-glass resting on his arm, through which every minute he peered around the harbor, giving an eye, too, occasionally to the half-hour glass, whose sands dribbled steadily into the lower bulb on the locker beside him.