CHAPTER II
HIS LAST COMMAND
On the hill back of the Point, embowered on three sides in the trees,which had been cut away in front to afford a fair view of the ship,the Point itself, and the open waters of the lake beyond, stood an oldwhite house facing the water, with a long covered porch, high-pillaredand lofty, extending across its entire front. Old, yet young comparedto the ship. Overlooking the ship, on a platform on the very brow ofthe hill, a long, old-fashioned six-pound gun was mounted on a navalcarriage. Back of the gun rose a tall flag-staff, and from the topfluttered night and day a small blue flag with two stars, the ensignof a rear-admiral. There were no masts or spars upon the ship belowthe hill, of course, but aft from the mouldering taffrail a staff hadbeen erected, and from it flew the stars and stripes, for during thelast half of her existence the ship had rejoiced in a crew and acaptain!
Some twenty-five years since a quaint old naval officer had takenup his abode at the house on the hill. With him had come a youngsailor, who, disdaining the house, had slung his hammock aboard theship,--finding a place between decks which, after a few repairs, wouldshelter him from the storms. When the old officer came, he hoisted atthe mast which was at once erected in the yard the broad blue pennantof a commodore, and it was only after Farragut had made his splendidpassage up the Mississippi, and awakened the quiet shores of theFather of Waters with the thunder of his guns, so that the title ofcommodore became too small for him, that the old veteran had beenpromoted with other veterans--and with Farragut himself--to the rankof rear-admiral, recently established,--certainly a rank entirely inconsonance with his merit at least.
The old man had been practically forgotten, lost sight of, in theglory accruing to the newer names among the Civil War heroes; yet hehad been among the foremost in that great galaxy of sailors who hadmade the navy of the United States so formidable in the War of 1812.
Old men of the town, whose memories as children ran back beyond eventhe life of the ship, recalled having seen, in those busy, unforgottendays of 1814-15, many uniforms like to the quaint old dress which theadmiral sometimes wore on occasions of ceremony; and there were someyet living who remembered the day when the news came that the mighty_Constitution_ had added to her record the last and most brilliant ofher victories in the capture of the frigates _Cyane_ and _Levant_. Theman who had made the capture--who, when his wife had asked him tobring her a British frigate for a present when he set forth upon thecruise, had answered that he would bring her two, and who had doneit--was the man who had been stationed in the white house on the hillto watch over the old ship.
The battles and storms, the trials and cares, the sorrows and troublesof eighty-five years had beat upon that white head; and though he wasnow bent and broken, though he tottered as he paced up and down theporch after the habit of the quarter-deck, though his eye was dimindeed and his natural force greatly abated, he was still master ofhimself. When the Civil War broke out his brave old soul had yearnedto be upon a heaving deck once more, he had craved to hear the roar ofguns from the mighty batteries beneath his feet, to feel again thekiss of the salt wind upon his tanned and weather-beaten cheek. Hehad longed in the deadly struggle of '61-'65 to strike another blowfor the old flag he had done so much to make formidable and respectedon the sea; but it was not to be. Superannuated, old, laid up inordinary, he quietly watched over the rotting ship which was his lastcommand.
In some strange way, with a sailor's superstition, as the years hadpassed, as he had grown feebler and the ship had grown older, he boundup his own term of life with that of the vessel. While it stood heshould live, when it fell should come his end. He watched and waited.
When the night threatened to be wild and stormy, the report of theevening gun with which Captain Barry invariably saluted the flag erehe struck it would seem to him the sounding of his death-knell. Whenthe tempest howled around the old house, he could hear, in fancy,above its wild screaming the crashing of the timbers of the shipfalling in shapeless ruins on the mouldering ways. In the morning,after such a night, he would rise and creep to the door, totter out onthe porch with the aid of his cane, and peer down on the ship. Someportion of it might have been swept away, perhaps, but if it stillstood he would feel that he had a respite for another day.
Many a tall vessel had he commanded, many a gallant frigate or greatship-of-the-line he had driven through the tempestuous seas. Upon someof them, as on the _Constitution_, he had won eternal fame, yet neverhad he loved a vessel as his heart had gone out to the rotting mass ofthis incompleted ship.
He did not dream, when he came there twenty-five years before--an oldman then--that either he or the ship would last so long; yet therethey both stood; older, weaker, feebler, more broken, and breakingwith every passing hour, but still a ship and still a captain.
During the years of their association the admiral had unconsciouslyinvested the ship with a personality of its own. It seemed human tohim. He dreamed about it when he slept. He was never so happy as whenawake he sat and watched it. He talked to it like a friend when theywere alone. Sometimes he reached his old trembling hand out to it ina caressing gesture. He had long since grown too feeble to go downto it; he could only look upon it from afar. Yet he understood itslonging, its dissatisfaction, its despair. A certain sympathy grew upbetween them. He loved it as it had been a woman. He would fain havekissed its keel.
Yet the devotion the admiral felt for the ship was scarcely greaterthan that which had sprung up in the heart of the old sailor who livedaboard it.
Old John Barry had been a quartermaster on the _Constitution_, and hadfollowed the fortunes of his captain from ship to ship, from shore toshore, until he died. After that the duty of looking after the captaindevolved upon his son, young John Barry; and when the commodore hadbeen ordered to Ship House Point, more with the intention of providinghim with a congenial home for his declining years than for any otherpurpose, young John Barry had followed him.
Young John Barry he was no longer. He was fifty years old now, and,like the admiral, had unconsciously made the life of the ship standfor his own life as well. The witchery of disappointment and regret,pregnant in every timber, bore hard upon him also. He had been a gay,dashing, buoyant, happy-go-lucky jack-tar in his day; but, livingalone on that great old ship, some of the melancholy, some of thedissatisfaction, some of the longing, some of the futile desire whichfairly reeked from every plank had entered his own rough and ruggedsoul.
The bitter wind had sung through the timbers of the ship too manytales of might-have-been, as he lay in his hammock night afternight, not to have left its impression upon him. He became asilent, taciturn, grave old man. Of huge bulk and massive build,his appearance suggested the ship-of-the-line,--strength in age,power in decay. He loved the ship in his way even as the admiraldid.
Risking his life in the process, he climbed all over it, marking withskilful eyes and pained heart the slow process of disintegration. Hedid not kiss it,--kisses were foreign to his nature, he knew nothingof them,--but he laid his great hands caressingly upon the giantframes, he pressed his cheek against the mighty prow, he stretchedhimself with open arms upon the bleaching deck, as if he would embracethe ship.
When the storms beat upon it in the night, he sometimes made his wayforward and stood upon the forecastle fronting the gale, and as thewind swept over him and the ship quivered and shook and vibrated underthe tempestuous attack, he fancied that he felt the deck heave as itmight under the motion of the uptossed wave.
He dreamed that the ship quivered in the long rush of the salt seas.Then the rain beat upon him unheeded. Wrapped in his great-coat inwinter, he even disdained the driving snow, and as he stood by theweather cathead, from which no anchor had ever depended, and peeredout into the whirling darkness, he seemed to hear the roar of abreaker ahead!
The ship was his own, his property. The loss of a single plank, thegiving way of a single bolt, was like the loss of a part of himself.With it he lived, with it he would die. Alone he passed his
nights inthe hollow of that echo of the past. Sometimes he felt half mad in therotting vessel; yet nothing could have separated him from the ship.
The little children of the adjacent village feared him, although hehad never harmed any of them, and was as gentle as a mother in hisinfrequent dealings with them all; but he was so silent, so grave, sogrim, so weird in some way, that they instinctively avoided him. Theirlight laughter was stifled, their childish play was quieted whenCaptain Barry--so they called him--passed by. He never noticed it, or,if he did, he gave no sign. Indeed, his heart was so wrapped up in afew things that he marked nothing else.
The old admiral, whom he watched over and cared for with the fidelityof a dog,--nay, I should say of a sailor,--was the earliest object ofhis affections. To look after him was a duty which had become thehabit of his life. He cherished him in his heart along with the ship.When the others had gone to their rest, he often climbed up on thequarter-deck, if the night were still, and sat late in the eveningstaring at the lights in the house on the hill until they went out,musing in his quaint way on the situation. When the days were calm hethought first of the admiral, in stormy times first of the ship. Butabove both ship and captain in his secret heart there was another whocompleted the strange quartet on Ship House Point,--a woman.
Above duty and habit there is always a woman.