CHAPTER LXXV.
"SINK, BURN, AND DESTROY."
_Printed Admiralty orders in time of war_.
Among innumerable "_yarns and twisters_" reeled off in our main-topduring our pleasant run to the North, none could match those of JackChase, our captain.
Never was there better company than ever-glorious Jack. The thingswhich most men only read of, or dream about, he had seen andexperienced. He had been a dashing smuggler in his day, and could tellof a long nine-pounder rammed home with wads of French silks; ofcartridges stuffed with the finest gunpowder tea; of cannister-shotfull of West India sweetmeats; of sailor frocks and trowsers, quiltedinside with costly laces; and table legs, hollow as musket barrels,compactly stowed with rare drugs and spices. He could tell of a wickedwidow, too--a beautiful receiver of smuggled goods upon the Englishcoast--who smiled so sweetly upon the smugglers when they sold hersilks and laces, cheap as tape and ginghams. She called them gallantfellows, hearts of game; and bade them bring her more.
He could tell of desperate fights with his British majesty's cutters,in midnight coves upon a stormy coast; of the capture of a recklessband, and their being drafted on board a man-of-war; of their swearingthat their chief was slain; of a writ of habeas corpus sent on boardfor one of them for a debt--a reserved and handsome man--and his goingashore, strongly suspected of being the slaughtered captain, and this asuccessful scheme for his escape.
But more than all, Jack could tell of the battle of Navarino, for hehad been a captain of one of the main-deck guns on board AdmiralCodrington's flag-ship, the Asia. Were mine the style of stout oldChapman's Homer, even then I would scarce venture to give noble Jack'sown version of this fight, wherein, on the 20th of October, A. D. 1827,thirty-two sail of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians, attacked andvanquished in the Levant an Ottoman fleet of three ships-of-the line,twenty-five frigates, and a swarm of fire ships and hornet craft.
"We bayed to be at them," said Jack; "and when we _did_ open fire, wewere like dolphin among the flying-fish. 'Every man take his bird' wasthe cry, when we trained our guns. And those guns all smoked like rowsof Dutch pipe-bowls, my hearties! My gun's crew carried small flags intheir bosoms, to nail to the mast in case the ship's colours were shotaway. Stripped to the waistbands, we fought like skinned tigers, andbowled down the Turkish frigates like nine-pins. Among theirshrouds--swarming thick with small-arm men, like flights of pigeonslighted on pine-trees--our marines sent their leaden pease andgoose-berries, like a shower of hail-stones in Labrador. It was astormy time, my hearties! The blasted Turks pitched into the old Asia'shull a whole quarry of marble shot, each ball one hundred and fiftypounds. They knocked three port-holes into one. But we gave them betterthan they sent. 'Up and at them, my bull-dog!' said I, patting my gunon the breech; 'tear open hatchways in their Moslem sides!White-Jacket, my lad, you ought to have been there. The bay was coveredwith masts and yards, as I have seen a raft of snags in the ArkansasRiver. Showers of burned rice and olives from the exploding foe fellupon us like manna in the wilderness. '_Allah! Allah! Mohammed!Mohammed!_' split the air; some cried it out from the Turkishport-holes; others shrieked it forth from the drowning waters, theirtop-knots floating on their shaven skulls, like black snakes onhalf-tide rocks. By those top-knots they believed that their Prophetwould drag them up to Paradise, but they sank fifty fathoms, myhearties, to the bottom of the bay. 'Ain't the bloody 'Hometons goingto strike yet?' cried my first loader, a Guernsey man, thrusting hisneck out of the port-hole, and looking at the Turkishline-of-battle-ship near by. That instant his head blew by me like abursting Paixhan shot, and the flag of Neb Knowles himself was hauleddown for ever. We dragged his hull to one side, and avenged him withthe cooper's anvil, which, endways, we rammed home; a mess-mate shovedin the dead man's bloody Scotch cap for the wad, and sent it flyinginto the line-of-battle ship. By the god of war! boys, we hardly leftenough of that craft to boil a pot of water with. It was a hard day'swork--a sad day's work, my hearties. That night, when all was over, Islept sound enough, with a box of cannister shot for my pillow! But youought to have seen the boat-load of Turkish flags one of our captainscarried home; he swore to dress his father's orchard in colours withthem, just as our spars are dressed for a gala day."
"Though you tormented the Turks at Navarino, noble Jack, yet you cameoff yourself with only the loss of a splinter, it seems," said atop-man, glancing at our cap-tain's maimed hand.
"Yes; but I and one of the Lieutenants had a narrower escape than that.A shot struck the side of my port-hole, and sent the splinters rightand left. One took off my hat rim clean to my brow; another _razed_ theLieutenant's left boot, by slicing off the heel; a third shot killed mypowder-monkey without touching him."
"How, Jack?"
"It _whizzed_ the poor babe dead. He was seated on a _cheese of wads_at the time, and after the dust of the pow-dered bulwarks had blownaway, I noticed he yet sat still, his eyes wide open. '_My littlehero!_' cried I, and I clapped him on the back; but he fell on his faceat my feet. I touched his heart, and found he was dead. There was not alittle finger mark on him."
Silence now fell upon the listeners for a time, broken at last by theSecond Captain of the Top.
"Noble Jack, I know you never brag, but tell us what you did yourselfthat day?"
"Why, my hearties, I did not do quite as much as my gun. But I flattermyself it was that gun that brought clown the Turkish Admiral'smain-mast; and the stump left wasn't long enough to make a wooden legfor Lord Nelson."
"How? but I thought, by the way you pull a lock-string on board here,and look along the sight, that you can steer a shot about right--hey,Jack?"
"It was the Admiral of the fleet--God Almighty--who directed the shotthat dismasted the Turkish Admiral," said Jack; "I only pointed thegun."
"But how did you feel, Jack, when the musket-ball carried away one ofyour hooks there?"
"Feel! only a finger the lighter. I have seven more left, besidesthumbs; and they did good service, too, in the torn rigging the dayafter the fight; for you must know, my hearties, that the hardest workcomes after the guns are run in. Three days I helped work, with onehand, in the rigging, in the same trowsers that I wore in the action;the blood had dried and stiffened; they looked like glazed red morocco."
Now, this Jack Chase had a heart in him like a mastodon's. I have seenhim weep when a man has been flogged at the gangway; yet, in relatingthe story of the Battle of Navarino, he plainly showed that he held theGod of the blessed Bible to have been the British Commodore in theLevant, on the bloody 20th of October, A. D. 1827. And thus it wouldseem that war almost makes blasphemers of the best of men, and bringsthem all down to the Feejee standard of humanity. Some man-of-war's-menhave confessed to me, that as a battle has raged more and more, theirhearts have hardened in infernal harmony; and, like their own guns,they have fought without a thought.
Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff andbody-guard of the Devil musters many a baton. But war at times isinevitable. Must the national honour be trampled under foot by aninsolent foe?
Say on, say on; but know you this, and lay it to heart, war-votingBench of Bishops, that He on whom we believe _himself_ has enjoined usto turn the left cheek if the right be smitten. Never mind whatfollows. That passage you can not expunge from the Bible; that passageis as binding upon us as any other; that passage embodies the soul andsubstance of the Christian faith; without it, Christianity were likeany other faith. And that passage will yet, by the blessing of God,turn the world. But in some things we must turn Quakers first.
But though unlike most scenes of carnage, which have proved uselessmurders of men, Admiral Codrington's victory undoubtedly achieved theemancipation of Greece, and terminated the Turkish atrocities in thattomahawked state, yet who shall lift his hand and swear that a DivineProvidence led the van of the combined fleets of England, France, andRussia at the battle of Navarino? For if this be so, then it led thevan against the Church's own elect--the persecuted Waldenses
inSwitzerland--and kindled the Smithfield fires in bloody Mary's time.
But all events are mixed in a fusion indistinguishable. What we callFate is even, heartless, and impartial; not a fiend to kindle bigotflames, nor a philanthropist to espouse the cause of Greece. We mayfret, fume, and fight; but the thing called Fate everlastingly sustainsan armed neutrality.
Yet though all this be so, nevertheless, in our own hearts, we mouldthe whole world's hereafters; and in our own hearts we fashion our owngods. Each mortal casts his vote for whom he will to rule the worlds; Ihave a voice that helps to shape eternity; and my volitions stir theorbits of the furthest suns. In two senses, we are precisely what weworship. Ourselves are Fate.