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- 2641
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.270Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 2583
- text
- round my head in such an indiscriminate way. Besides, ours was a
flag-ship; and every one knows what a peculiarly dangerous predicament
the quarter-deck of Nelson’s flag-ship was in at the battle of
Trafalgar; how the lofty tops of the enemy were full of soldiers,
peppering away at the English Admiral and his officers. Many a poor
sailor, at the guns of that quarter-deck, must have received a bullet
intended for some wearer of an epaulet.
By candidly confessing my feelings on this subject, I do by no means
invalidate my claims to being held a man of prodigious valour. I merely
state my invincible repugnance to being shot for somebody else. If I am
shot, be it with the express understanding in the shooter that I am the
identical person intended so to be served. That Thracian who, with his
compliments, sent an arrow into the King of Macedon, superscribed “_for
Philip’s right eye_,” set a fine example to all warriors. The hurried,
hasty, indiscriminate, reckless, abandoned manner in which both sailors
and soldiers nowadays fight is really painful to any serious-minded,
methodical old gentleman, especially if he chance to have systematized
his mind as an accountant. There is little or no skill and bravery
about it. Two parties, armed with lead and old iron, envelop themselves
in a cloud of smoke, and pitch their lead and old iron about in all
directions. If you happen to be in the way, you are hit; possibly,
killed; if not, you escape. In sea-actions, if by good or bad luck, as
the case may be, a round shot, fired at random through the smoke,
happens to send overboard your fore-mast, another to unship your
rudder, there you lie crippled, pretty much at the mercy of your foe:
who, accordingly, pronounces himself victor, though that honour
properly belongs to the Law of Gravitation operating on the enemy’s
balls in the smoke. Instead of tossing this old lead and iron into the
air, therefore, it would be much better amicably to toss up a copper
and let heads win.
The carronade at which I was stationed was known as “Gun No. 5,” on the
First Lieutenant’s quarter-bill. Among our gun’s crew, however, it was
known as _Black Bet_. This name was bestowed by the captain of the
gun—a fine negro—in honour of his sweetheart, a coloured lady of
Philadelphia. Of Black Bet I was rammer-and-sponger; and ram and sponge
I did, like a good fellow. I have no doubt that, had I and my gun been
at the battle of the Nile, we would mutually have immortalised
ourselves; the ramming-pole would have been hung up in Westminster
Abbey; and I, ennobled by the king, besides receiving the illustrious
honour of an autograph letter from his majesty through the perfumed
right hand of his private secretary.
But it was terrible work to help run in and out of the porthole that
amazing mass of metal, especially as the thing must be clone in a
trice. Then, at the summons of a horrid, rasping rattle, swayed by the
Captain in person, we were made to rush from our guns, seize pikes and
pistols, and repel an imaginary army of boarders, who, by a fiction of
the officers, were supposed to be assailing all sides of the ship at
once. After cutting and slashing at them a while, we jumped back to our
guns, and again went to jerking our elbows.
Meantime, a loud cry is heard of “Fire! fire! fire!” in the fore-top;
and a regular engine, worked by a set of Bowery-boy tars, is forthwith
set to playing streams of water aloft. And now it is “Fire! fire!
fire!” on the main-deck; and the entire ship is in as great a commotion
as if a whole city ward were in a blaze.
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