However, after all is said and done, Christmas is the rarest day in the naval calendar, the celebration in American fashion being never neglected on a United States man-of-war in port or at sea. The ship is dressed fore and aft with banners, and in port her decks are piled with green stuff. In any of the ports in low latitudes, like Callao or Montevideo, the mass of palms and ferns distributed on Christmas on the spar deck of a warship gives the vessel a lovely holiday appearance. Bluejackets always hang up their socks on Christmas eve. Each takes a new pair out of his ditty bag and strings it to the foot last of his hammock. Examined in the morning, they are commonly found filled with fine, dusty coal, lumps of salt-water soap or pieces of broken candle, but their owners hang them up from year to year, willing to sacrifice a pair of socks to the perpetuation of the custom. On Christmas day there are all manner of games on the spar deck. They are for the most part humorous games and are devised chiefly for the amusement of the men who through misconduct are not permitted to spend the day ashore. In the evening there is always some good music in the forecastle or on the berth deck. On some ships the bluejackets essay the most ambitious airs, and if the bandmaster takes care to put the singers of the crew on the right path one of their Christmas night concerts is worth going a long way to hear.
CHAPTER IV SOLDIERS WHO SERVE AFLOAT
Soldiers who serve afloat—such are the men composing the United States Marine Corps. Lack of military qualities in the sailor led to the corps' formation in the first days of the navy, nor has the passing of the years wrought any material change in the character of Jack Tar. Formidable in impetuous assaults, he lacks the steadiness and discipline necessary in sustained conflicts and in the effective use of the rifle, and so with the navy's growth the Marine Corps has come to constitute one of its most important branches.
The marines are useful in times of peace for police duty in the navy yards and on shipboard, but it is when the country is engaged in war that they most fully justify their existence. Then it is their duty to man the rapid-firing guns of our warships, fill vacancies at the other guns, with their rifles scour the decks of the enemy from the tops, the poop and the forecastle, cover boarding parties with their fire and repel boarders with fixed bayonets. Should the enemy gain a foothold they must gather at the mainmast, so as to command the deck. They must make the small arms effective and disable the enemy's men while the great guns, with which the marines have nothing to do save in case of emergency, play havoc with his ship.
However, all naval fighting, as recent events have proved, is not done on the decks of men-of-war; the surprise of camps or posts and the escalade of forts frequently render shore operations necessary, and at such times picked men are sent with the attacking sailors, known as pioneers, while the rest of the marines form a supporting column to cover the retreat and embarkation of the sailors in case the undertaking fails. In times of fire on shipboard the marines guard the boats' falls and officers' quarters, prevent panic or pillage, compel compliance with orders of officers and allow no one to throw overboard any property or fitting or abandon the ship until duly authorized. Finally a frequent duty of the marines abroad is to guard the American legations and consulates and the interests of American citizens in times of revolution or public disorder.
With duties so varied and exacting ahead of him, the making of a marine is a process well worth studying. Recruits for the corps come from all stations of life. In its ranks may be found well-educated men, now and then a college graduate among them, who have become reduced by misfortune or bibulous habits, country boys who have left the farm for the city to seek their fortunes and found want instead, and men who have lost their occupations. All find a refuge in the corps, provided they are physically and mentally sound, at least five feet six inches in height, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, unmarried and of good habits.
The recruit as an essential part of his training must learn how to do well many different things. He begins, if a stranger to military science, by mastering the drills and manual of arms and every evolution possible to a body of men on foot, since he must leave the ship when there is work to be done and be able to move quickly and with precision under the most galling fire. The ax, the shovel and the pick must also become familiar tools in his hands, and that he may fight to the best possible advantage he is taught to delve and heap until a breastwork is built. After that he must accustom himself to the dragging straps of a light artillery piece and learn how to haul it at a breakneck pace down into the ditch he has dug and up on the other side to the crown of the intrenchment. Then, as no one else comes up to load, aim and fire it for him, he must learn all that a field artilleryman knows and become skillful in the handling and quick and sure in the aim of his howitzer.