The Man Without a Country

everknew of that voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done thecivil thing with the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leavingfor a long cruise up the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot ofEnglish books from an officer, which, in those days, as indeed in these,was quite a windfall. Among them, as the Devil would order, was the "Layof the Last Minstrel," [Note 7] which they had all of them heard of, butwhich most of them had never seen. I think it could not have beenpublished long. Well, nobody thought there could be any risk of anythingnational in that, though Phillips swore old Shaw had cut out the"Tempest" from Shakespeare before he let Nolan have it, because he said"the Bermudas ought to be ours, and, by Jove, should be one day." SoNolan was permitted to join the circle one afternoon when a lot of themsat on deck smoking and reading aloud. People do not do such things sooften now; but when I was young we got rid of a great deal of time so.Well, so it happened that in his turn Nolan took the book and read tothe others; and he read very well, as I know. Nobody in the circle knewa line of the poem, only it was all magic and Border chivalry, and wasten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read steadily through the fifthcanto, stopped a minute and drank something, and then began, without athought of what was coming,--

  "Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,"--

  It seems impossible to us that anybody ever heard this for the firsttime; but all these fellows did then, and poor Nolan himself went on,still unconsciously or mechanically,--

  "This is my own, my native land!"

  Then they all saw that something was to pay; but he expected to getthrough, I suppose, turned a little pale, but plunged on,--

  "Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand?-- If such there breathe, go, mark him well,"--

  By this time the men were all beside themselves, wishing there was anyway to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence ofmind for that; he gagged a little, colored crimson, and staggered on,--

  "For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite these titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self,"--

  and here the poor fellow choked, could not go on, but started up, swungthe book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, "And by Jove," saidPhillips, "we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make upsome beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return hisWalter Scott to him."

  That story shows about the time when Nolan's braggadocio must havebroken down. At first, they said, he took a very high tone, consideredhis imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and allthat; but Phillips said that after he came out of his state-room henever was the same man again. He never read aloud again, unless it wasthe Bible or Shakespeare, or something else he was sure of. But it wasnot that merely. He never entered in with the other young men exactly asa companion again. He was always shy afterwards, when I knew him,--veryseldom spoke, unless he was spoken to, except to a very few friends. Helighted up occasionally,--I remember late in his life hearing him fairlyeloquent on something which had been suggested to him by one ofFl?chier's sermons,--but generally he had the nervous, tired look of aheart-wounded man.

  When Captain Shaw was coming home,--if, as I say, it was Shaw,--ratherto the surprise of everybody they made one of the Windward Islands, andlay off and on for nearly a week. The boys said the officers were sickof salt-junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they came home. Butafter several days the "Warren" came to the same rendezvous; theyexchanged signals; she sent to Phillips and these homeward-bound menletters and papers, and told them she was outward-bound, perhaps to theMediterranean, and took poor Nolan and his traps on the boat back to tryhis second cruise. He looked very blank when he was told to get ready tojoin her. He had known enough of the signs of the sky to know that tillthat moment he was going "home." But this was a distinct evidence ofsomething he had not thought of, perhaps,--that there was no going homefor him, even to a prison. And this was the first of some twenty suchtransfers, which brought him sooner or later into half our best vessels,but which kept him all his life at least some hundred miles from thecountry he had hoped he might never hear of again.

  It may have been on that second cruise,--it was once when he was up theMediterranean,--that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty of thosedays, danced with him. They had been lying a long time in the Bay ofNaples, and the officers were very intimate in the English fleet, andthere had been great festivities, and our men thought they must give agreat ball on board the ship. How they ever did it on board the "Warren"I am sure I do not know. Perhaps it was not the "Warren," or perhapsladies did not take up so much room as they do now. They wanted to useNolan's state-room for something, and they hated to do it without askinghim to the ball; so the captain said they might ask him, if they wouldbe responsible that he did not talk with the wrong people, "who wouldgive him intelligence." So the dance went on, the finest party that hadever been known, I dare say; for I never heard of a man-of-war ball thatwas not. For ladies, they had the family of the American consul, one ortwo travellers who had adventured so far, and a nice bevy of Englishgirls and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton herself.

  Well, different officers relieved each other in standing and talkingwith Nolan in a friendly way, so as to be sure that nobody else spoke tohim. The dancing went on with spirit, and after a while even the fellowswho took this honorary guard of Nolan ceased to fear any _contretemps_.Only when some English lady--Lady Hamilton, as I said, perhaps--calledfor a set of "American dances," an odd thing happened. Everybody thendanced contra-dances. The black band, nothing loath, conferred as towhat "American dances" were, and started off with "Virginia Reel," whichthey followed with "Money-Musk," which, in its turn in those days,should have been followed by "The Old Thirteen." But just as Dick, theleader, tapped for his fiddles to begin, and bent forward, about to say,in true negro state, "'The Old Thirteen,' gentlemen and ladies!" as hehad said "'Virginny Reel,' if you please!" and "'Money-Musk,' if youplease!" the captain's boy tapped him on the shoulder, whispered to him,and he did not announce the name of the dance; he merely bowed, began onthe air, and they all fell to,--the officers teaching the English girlsthe figure, but not telling them why it had no name.

  But that is not the story I started to tell. As the dancing went on,Nolan and our fellows all got at ease, as I said,--so much so, that itseemed quite natural for him to bow to that splendid Mrs. Graff, andsay,--

  "I hope you have not forgotten me, Miss Rutledge. Shall I have the honorof dancing?"

  He did it so quickly, that Fellows, who was with him, could not hinderhim. She laughed and said,--

  "I am not Miss Rutledge any longer, Mr. Nolan; but I will dance all thesame," just nodded to Fellows, as if to say he must leave Mr. Nolan toher, and led him off to the place where the dance was forming.

  Nolan thought he had got his chance. He had known her at Philadelphia,and at other places had met her, and this was a Godsend. You could nottalk in contra-dances, as you do in cotillions, or even in the pauses ofwaltzing; but there were chances for tongues and sounds, as well as foreyes and blushes. He began with her travels, and Europe, and Vesuvius,and the French; and then, when they had worked down, and had that longtalking time at the bottom of the set, he said boldly,--a little pale,she said, as she told me the story years after,--

  "And what do you hear from home, Mrs. Graff?"

  And that splendid creature looked through him. Jove! how she must havelooked through him!

  "Home!! Mr. Nolan!!! I thought you were the man who never wanted to hearof home again!"--and she walked directly up the deck to her husband, andleft poor Nolan alone, as he always was.--He did not dance again. Icannot give any history of him in order; nobody can now; and, indeed, Iam not trying to.

  These are the traditions, which I sort out, as I believe them, from themyths which have been told ab
out this man for forty years. The lies thathave been told about him are legion. The fellows used to say he was the"Iron Mask;" and poor George Pons went to his grave in the belief thatthis was the author of "Junius," who was being punished for hiscelebrated libel on Thomas Jefferson. Pons was not very strong in thehistorical line.

  A happier story than either of these I have told is of the war. Thatcame along soon after. I have heard this affair told in three or fourways,--and, indeed, it may have happened more than once. But which shipit was on I cannot tell. However, in one, at least, of the greatfrigate-duels with the English, in which the navy was really baptized,[Note 8] it happened that a round-shot from the enemy entered one of ourports square, and took right