CHAPTER XXXII.
A SPLICE PARTED.
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“Oh! for thy voice, that happy voice, To breathe its loving welcome now! Fame, wealth, and all that bids rejoice, To me are vain! For where art thou?” “What is glory––what is fame? That a shadow––this a name, Restless mortal to deceive. Are they renown’d––can they be great, Who hurl their fellow-creature’s fate, That mothers, children, wives may grieve?” |
The drum rolled, the marines presented arms, the boatswain piped, the side-boys and officers took off their caps; and as the colors dropped with the last ray of sunset from the peak, and the broad blue day-pennant came fluttering down from the lofty main truck, Commodore Cleveland and his friends stood on the splendid deck of the flag-ship “Monongahela.”
It must have been with conscious pride that the brave and loyal commander gazed around him on the noble frigate and her gallant crew. The white decks, the tiers of cannon polished like varnished leather, with the breechings and tackles laid fair and even over and around them; the bright belaying-pins, holding their never-ending coils of running gear––the burnished brass capstan––the great boom––board to the boats amidships with a gleaming star of cutlasses, reflecting a glitter on the ring of long pikes stuck around the main-mast near, all inclosed by the high and solid bulwarks; while towering above, like mighty leafless columns of forest pines, stood the lofty masts, running up almost out of sight to the trucks in the fading light, supported by stays and shrouds, singly and in pairs, and braided mazes––black, and straight, and taut––never a thread loose on rigging or ratlin––and spreading out as they came down in a heavy hempen net, till they disappeared over the rail, and were clenched and spliced, or seized and clamped to the bolts and dead-eyes of the chain-plates outside. Holding up too, in mid-heaven, on those giant trunks––like a child its toys––the great square yards of timber branches, laying without a quiver, in their black lifts and trusses, with their white leaves of sails crumpled and packed in 199 smooth bunts in the middle, and running away to nothing on either hand at the tapering yard-arms.
Grand and imposing is the sight. And well may you wonder, ye land lubbers, why all that mass of timber, sails, and cordage, with its enormous weight, does not crush with the giant heels of the masts through the bottom of the ship like unto an egg-shell, and tear the stanch live-oak frame to splinters!
The commander of the frigate saw all this, and he beheld at the same time the clusters of happy sailors, sauntering with light step and pleasant faces up and down the waist and gangways; and he heard, too, the scraping of a fiddle on the forecastle, the shuffling, dancing feet, and the least notion of a jovial sea-song coming up from the gun-deck. Yes, it must have been a glorious pride with which that gallant officer gazed around him from the quarter-deck of the magnificent frigate.
Did he say to himself, “I am monarch of this floating kingdom; my will is law; I say but the word, and those sails are spread and the ship moves to wherever I command. My subjects, too, who watch my slightest look and whisper, with that flag above, will pour broadside upon broadside––ay, they have!––from those terrible guns upon whoever dares to cross my track. Yes. They will fight for me so long as there is a plank left in this huge ship to stand upon, and while there is a rope-yarn left to hold the ensign––ay! even until my pennant, nailed to the truck, sinks beneath the bloodstained waves?” Did the commander think of all this? Perhaps he did.
And yet, in all the pride of rank and power, bravely won and maintained in many a scene of strife and deadly conflict, with visions of honest patriotism and ambition for the future, did his thoughts go back long years ago into the shadowy past, and was his spirit in the silent church-yard, where the magnolia was drooping over a grass-green grave? The sweet mother and her baby boy––the girl who had so fondly loved him, and the child who played about his knees––oh that they could have lived to share the wreaths of victory which were hung around his brow; that they could have lived to see the sword his country gave him, to twine but for one little moment their loving arms around his neck! No, the magnolia waves its white flowers over mother and boy, and they sleep on in their heavenly and eternal rest.
Did Commodore Cleveland, as a saddened flash of thought swept over his handsome face, while he stood on his quarter-deck, dwell on those scenes? Yes, we know he did. By day and night, in war and peace, in gale or calm, on deck or at banquet, in dream and action, the girl and mother he so dearly loved was close clasped to his heart, and the child still playing at his knee.
“Gentlemen, let me make you acquainted with the first lieutenant, 200 Mr. Hardy; and permit me also to present my nephew, Mr. Darcantel, captain, if you please, my friends, of the one-gun schooner ‘Rosalie,’ formerly the slaver ‘Perdita,’ cut out of a river on the Gold Coast by the young gentleman who stands before you.”