From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—
Despite those titles, power and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self”—
Here the poor fellow choked, and could not go on, but started up and flung the book into the sea and fled to his stateroom. It was two months before he dared join the men again.
There was a change in Nolan after this. He never read aloud from anything unless he was sure of it, like the Bible or Shakespeare. He was always shy afterwards, and looked like a heart-wounded man.
Sometimes he tried to trap people into mentioning his country, but he never succeeded; his sentence was too well known among the men who had him in charge. I think there was only one day that he was really happy except when he knew his lonely life was closing. Once, during the war of 1812, the ship on which he was staying had a fight with an English frigate. A round shot entered a port and killed the officer of the gun and many of the gun’s crew. The surgeon’s people carried off the wounded and then Nolan appeared in his shirt-sleeves with a rammer in his hand and took command. He finished loading the gun with his own hands, aimed it and bade the men fire. There he stayed until the enemy struck, getting that gun loaded and fired twice as often as any other gun on the ship. The old Commodore thanked Nolan publicly, gave him his own sword, and mentioned him in the dispatches.