- end_line
- 5038
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.270Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4989
- text
- our gunner always wore a fixed expression of solemnity, which was
heightened by his grizzled hair and beard. But what imparted such a
sinister look to him, and what wrought so upon my imagination
concerning this man, was a frightful scar crossing his left cheek and
forehead. He had been almost mortally wounded, they said, with a
sabre-cut, during a frigate engagement in the last war with Britain.
He was the most methodical, exact, and punctual of all the forward
officers. Among his other duties, it pertained to him, while in
harbour, to see that at a certain hour in the evening one of the great
guns was discharged from the forecastle, a ceremony only observed in a
flag-ship. And always at the precise moment you might behold him
blowing his match, then applying it; and with that booming thunder in
his ear, and the smell of the powder in his hair, he retired to his
hammock for the night. What dreams he must have had!
The same precision was observed when ordered to fire a gun to _bring
to_ some ship at sea; for, true to their name, and preserving its
applicability, even in times of peace, all men-of-war are great bullies
on the high seas. They domineer over the poor merchantmen, and with a
hissing hot ball sent bowling across the ocean, compel them to stop
their headway at pleasure.
It was enough to make you a man of method for life, to see the gunner
superintending his subalterns, when preparing the main-deck batteries
for a great national salute. While lying in harbour, intelligence
reached us of the lamentable casualty that befell certain high officers
of state, including the acting Secretary of the Navy himself, some
other member of the President’s cabinet, a Commodore, and others, all
engaged in experimenting upon a new-fangled engine of war. At the same
time with the receipt of this sad news, orders arrived to fire
minute-guns for the deceased head of the naval department. Upon this
occasion the gunner was more than usually ceremonious, in seeing that
the long twenty-fours were thoroughly loaded and rammed down, and then
accurately marked with chalk, so as to be discharged in undeviating
rotation, first from the larboard side, and then from the starboard.
But as my ears hummed, and all my bones danced in me with the
reverberating din, and my eyes and nostrils were almost suffocated with
the smoke, and when I saw this grim old gunner firing away so solemnly,
I thought it a strange mode of honouring a man’s memory who had himself
been slaughtered by a cannon. Only the smoke, that, after rolling in at
the port-holes, rapidly drifted away to leeward, and was lost to view,
seemed truly emblematical touching the personage thus honoured, since
that great non-combatant, the Bible, assures us that our life is but a
vapour, that quickly passeth away.
- title
- Chunk 3