The fight grew weaker and weaker, and then all was still except the quick panting of Bill. At last with a deep sigh his chest relaxed, his hand gave up his prey, and a few bubbles showed where the bear sank. Slowly Bill made his way to where I was standing, and putting out his hand, said,
"Thank ye, boy; you had nerve to obey me, and that makes a good hunter."
He was pretty nigh exhausted and badly clawed. While I helped him to patch up his wounds temporarily I learned that the bear, evidently attracted by the trout, had sneaked into camp during the night and stumbled over Bill, who grabbed him. The next morning we fished him out of the water, and found him a large specimen and a foe well worth letting alone.
Hubert Earl.
[ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN NAVY.]
BY CAPTAIN HOWARD PATTERSON.
Every patriotic American is proud of our famous White Squadron, illustrating as it does to all the navies of the world the perfection of ship-building, motive power, ordnance and personnel. Although two or three other navies have a much longer list of men-of-war in their registers, there is not a foreign power that can show, class for class, anything superior in battle-ships, cruisers, and coast-defense vessels to those which float under "Old Glory," and it is not making a rash claim when it is asserted that in a competitive exhibition the laurel wreaths would in all probability be hung upon the mast-heads of the ships that belong to Uncle Sam.
And yet how weak and lowly in comparison was the birth of our navy!—but still a navy that even in its infancy humbled almost to degradation the strength and vanity and hauteur of that of the British, that mistress of the seas, against which for more than a century the most magnificently equipped and powerful fleets in Europe had hurled themselves, only to be beaten back from its "walls of oak," crushed and shattered.
On October 13, 1775, one hundred and twenty-one years ago, or nine months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, the representatives from the thirteen colonies authorized the building of two vessels, one to be armed with 14 guns and the other with 10 guns. When completed it was designed that these ships should escape through the English fleets blockading the coast, and then prey upon the commerce of the enemy. On October 30 Congress ordered the building of two additional cruisers, one to carry 36 guns and the other 20 guns. These measures so aroused the patriotic fire and zeal of hundreds of American seamen whose vessels were locked up in idleness in our seaports, owing to the embargo, that they petitioned Congress to provide ships and put them on board, so that they might go out against the enemy's vessels that tantalizingly kept watch before the approaches to our harbors. Appreciating the spirit of the petitioners, and realizing that a possible opportunity was offered them to deal a serious blow to the supremacy of the English along our line of coast, Congress ordered, on December 13 (or just two months, to the day, following the first authorization, for ship construction), the building of thirteen vessels of war, of which five were to carry 32 guns, five 28 guns, and three 24 guns.