CHAPTER XLVII.
DEVOTION.
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“To walk together to the kirk, And all together pray, While each to his Great Father bends–– Old men and babes, and loving friends, And youths and maidens gay!” “Farewell! farewell! but this I tell To thee, thou wedding-guest, He prayeth well who loveth well Both man, and bird, and beast!” |
Sunday morning in Kingston harbor. The deep-toned bells from cathedral and church were wafted off from the town; the troops at Park Camp marching with easy tread to their chapel; matrons and maidens, with bare heads, fans, and mantillas, going along demurely; portly judges, factors, and planters trudging beside palanquins of their Saxon spouses; negroes in white; Creoles in brown, cigarettes put out for a time; while swinging censers and rolling sound of organs and chants, or prayers and sermons from kirk and pulpits, told how the people were worshiping God according to their several beliefs.
On the calm harbor, too, and in Port Royal, lay the men-of-war, the church pennants taking the place of the ensigns at the peaks, the bells tolling, and the sailors––quiet, clean, and orderly––were attending divine service.
On board the “Monongahela” the great spar-deck was comparatively deserted––all save that officer with his spy-glassing old quarter-master, and the sentries on gangway and forecastle. The ropes, however, were flemished down in concentric coils, the guns without a speck of dust on their shining coats, the capstan polished like an old brass candlestick, and every thing below and aloft in a faultless condition.
As Harry Darcantel came rather languidly over the gangway, and went down to the main deck, where the five hundred sailors in snowy-white mustering clothes were assembled, Commodore Cleveland beckoned to him with his finger as he stood talking at the cabin door to his first lieutenant.
“Hardy, I do not feel well this morning; make my excuses to the 271 chaplain, and go on with the service. Come in, Harry. Orderly, allow no one, not even the servants, to enter the cabin––except Dr. Darcantel, in case he should come on board.”
The stiff soldier laid his white-gloved finger on the visor of his hat. Then the chaplain, standing on his flag-draped pulpit at the main-mast, with those five hundred quiet, attentive sailors seated on capstan-bars and match-tubs between the silent cannon, and no sound save his mild, persuasive voice, as he read the sublime service from the good lessons before him. Then, after a short but impressive sermon, adapted to the comprehension of the honest tars around him, with a kindly word, too, for the sagacious officers who commanded them, he closed the holy book and delivered the parting benediction.
As he began, a shore boat, in spite of the warning of the sentry at the gangway, came bows on to the frigate’s solid side, and as she went dancing and bobbing back from the recoil of the concussion, a tall, powerful man leaped out of her, and, by a mighty spring, caught the man-ropes of the port gangway, and swung himself through the open port of the gun-deck. Bowing his lofty head with reverential awe as the last solemn words of the benediction were uttered by the chaplain, he joined, in a deep, guttural voice, the word “Amen,” and strode on and entered the cabin.