noisy ones,” he said, glancing at Justin.
So we went and sat down where some bushes screened us and yet left us a
view of the trap. After half an hour Justin curled up and went to sleep.
The breeze was cool and the grass was soft, and soon I followed his
example.
I was awakened by a bell-like call from the forest. The captive rooster
was dancing at his stake. Presently he flapped his wings and stood on
tiptoe and answered scornfully. They challenged back and forth till
at last, with a boom of wings, the wild cock, the very one I had been
dreaming of, dropped on the grass.
As he caught sight of the traitor he spread all his splendid plumage and
crowed again. And the red bird answered bravely. After all, it was not
his fault that he was a traitor.
The wild bird ran forward with a swift, steady gait very unlike the
awkward stride of his tame cousins, and lowered his head, and spread his
ruff. Then he stood up straight and scratched sticks and grass into the
air with a sturdy leg and crowed. The traitor kicked furiously at his
tether, but it held, and the wild cock advanced to the fence.
For a moment the two looked at each other with lowered heads, and then
they sprang. The traitor, of course, collapsed in an ignominious heap.
As the wild cock landed inside the fence, his foot barely touched the
ground. But the touch was enough. One of the little nooses tightened
about his legs, and as he sprang again he, too, came down with a jerk.
The birds were rising to face each other when we ran forward, and he
turned toward us at the noise. I expected to see him struggle madly to
escape. But the brave little fellow faced us, and flapped his wings and
stretched his neck, challenging us fearlessly. In a moment the old man
had tossed a handkerchief over his head and loosened the noose, and I
held him between my hands.
I could feel the little muscles taut as steel wires beneath my fingers,
and the heart beating furiously, but he made no sound and did not
struggle. I looked at the lustrous markings of his back and wings, and
the long, drooping tail-feathers, and then all at once came a picture of
the draggled, spiritless captive back in the old man’s yard. I plucked
away the handkerchief and tossed him into the air.
His wings beat very loud in the stillness, and we all started. Then I
looked round sheepishly. Tranquid was staring up stupidly, with his mouth
in a big, round O. Justin was laughing, but suddenly he pointed excitedly
to Tranquid’s mouth and shouted:
“Look, señor! I have found him. There he goes. Look! Look!” And it would
be hard to say whether the old man gazed at Justin or at me with the
deeper disgust.
THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY
By Edward Everett Hale
I suppose that very few casual readers of the _New York Herald_ of August
18th observed in an obscure corner among the “Deaths,” the announcement—
“NOLAN. Died, on board U. S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11´ S.,
Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May, PHILIP NOLAN.”
I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission-House
in Makinaw, waiting for a Lake Superior steamer which did not choose to
come, and I was devouring to the very stubble all the current literature
I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and marriages in the
_Herald_. My memory for names and people is good, and the reader will
see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember Philip Nolan.
There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at that announcement,
if the officer of the _Levant_ who reported it had chosen to make it
thus:—“Died, May 11th, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.” For it was as “The Man
without a Country” that poor Philip Nolan had generally been known by
the officers who had him in charge during some fifty years, as, indeed,
by all men who sailed under them. I dare say there is many a man who has
taken wine with him once a fortnight, in a three years’ cruise, who never
knew that his name was “Nolan,” or whether the poor wretch had any name
at all.
There can now be no possible harm in telling this poor creature’s
story. Reason enough there has been till now, ever since Madison’s
administration went out in 1817, for very strict secrecy, the secrecy
of honor itself, among the gentlemen of the navy who have had Nolan
in successive charge. And certainly it speaks well for the _esprit de
corps_ of the profession, and the personal honor of its members, that to
the press this man’s story has been wholly unknown—and, I think, to the
country at large also. I have reason to think, from some investigations
I made in the Naval Archives when I was attached to the Bureau of
Construction, that every official report relating to him was burned when
Ross burned the public buildings at Washington. One of the Tuckers, or
possibly one of the Watsons, had Nolan in charge at the end of the war;
and when, on returning from his cruise, he reported at Washington to one
of the Crowninshields—who was in the Navy Department when he came home—he
found that the Department ignored the whole business. Whether they really
knew nothing about it or whether it was a “_Non mi ricordo_” determined
on as a piece of policy, I do not know.
But this I do know, that since 1817, and possibly before, no naval
officer has mentioned Nolan in his report of a cruise.
But, as I say, there is no need for secrecy any longer. And now the poor
creature is dead, it seems to me worth while to tell a little of his
story, by way of showing young Americans of to-day what it is to be A MAN
WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the “Legion of
the West,” as the Western division of our army was then called. When
Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in
1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the
Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow, at some
dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with
him, took him a day or two’s voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short,
fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor
Nolan. He occasionally availed himself of the permission the great man
had given him to write to him. Long, high-worded, stilted letters the
poor boy wrote and rewrote and copied. But never a line did he have in
reply from the gay deceiver. The other boys in the garrison sneered at
him, because he sacrificed in this unrequited affection for a politician
the time which they devoted to Monongahela, hazard, and high-low-jack.
Bourbon, euchre, and poker were still unknown. But one day Nolan had his
revenge. This time Burr came down the river not as an attorney seeking
a place for his office, but as a disguised conqueror. He had defeated
I know not how many district-attorneys; he had dined at I know not how
many public dinners; he had been heralded in I know not how many _Weekly
Arguses_, and it was rumored that he had an army behind him and an
empire before him. It was a great day—his arrival—to poor Nolan. Burr
had not been at the fort an hour before he sent for him. That evening he
asked Nolan to take him out in his skiff, to show him a canebrake or a
cottonwood tree, as he said,—really to seduce him; and by the time the
sail was over, Nolan was enlisted body and soul. From that time, though
he did not yet know it, he lived as A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.
What Burr meant to do I know no more than you, dear reader. It is none
of our business just now. Only, when the grand catastrophe came, and
Jefferson and the House of Virginia of that day undertook to break on
the wheel all the possible Clarences of the then House of York, by the
great treason-trial at Richmond, some of the lesser fry in that distant
Mississippi Valley, which was farther from us than Puget’s Sound is
to-day, introduced the like novelty on their provincial stage, and,
to while away the monotony of the summer at Fort Adams, got up, for
_spectacles_, a string of court-martials on the officers there. One and
another of the colonels and majors were tried, and, to fill out the list,
little Nolan, against whom, Heaven knows, there was evidence enough,—that
he was sick of the service, had been willing to be false to it, and would
have obeyed any order to march any-whither with any one who would follow
him had the order been signed, “By command of His Exc. A. Burr.” The
courts dragged on. The big flies escaped,—rightly for all I know. Nolan
was proved guilty enough, as I say; yet you and I would never have heard
of him, reader, but that, when the president of the court asked him at
the close, whether he wished to say anything to show that he had always
been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in, a fit of frenzy,—
“D—n the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States
again!”
I suppose he did not know how the words shocked old Colonel Morgan,
who was holding the court. Half the officers who sat in it had served
through the Revolution, and their lives, not to say their necks, had been
risked for the very idea which he so cavalierly cursed in his madness.
He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the midst of
“Spanish plot,” “Orleans plot,” and all the rest. He had been educated on
a plantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer or a French
merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, had been perfected
in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think he told me his father
once hired an Englishman to be a private tutor for a winter on the
plantation. He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting
horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him “United States” was scarcely a
reality. Yet he had been fed by “United States” for all the years since
he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to
be true to “United States.” It was “United States” which gave him the
uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. Nay, my poor Nolan, it was
only because “United States” had picked you out first as one of her own
confidential men of honor that “A. Burr” cared for you a straw more than
for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for him. I do not excuse Nolan;
I only explain to the reader why he damned his country, and wished he
might never hear her name again.
He never did hear her name but once again. From that moment, September
23, 1807, till the day he died, May 11, 1863, he never heard the name
again. For that half century and more he was a man without a country.
Old Morgan, as I said, was terribly shocked. If Nolan had compared George
Washington to Benedict Arnold, or had cried, “God save King George,”
Morgan would not have felt worse.
He called the court into his private room, and returned in fifteen
minutes, with a face like a sheet, to say,—
“Prisoner, hear the sentence of the court! The court decides, subject to
the approval of the President, that you never hear the name of the United
States again.”
Nolan laughed. But nobody else laughed. Old Morgan was too solemn, and
the whole room was hushed dead as night for a minute. Even Nolan lost his
swagger in a moment. Then Morgan added,—
“Mr. Marshal, take the prisoner to Orleans in an armed boat, and deliver
him to the naval commander there.”
The marshal gave his orders and the prisoner was taken out of court.
“Mr. Marshal,” continued old Morgan, “see that no one mentions the United
States to the prisoner. Mr. Marshal, make my respects to Lieutenant
Mitchell at Orleans, and request him to order that no one shall mention
the United States to the prisoner while he is on board ship. You will
receive your written orders from the officer on duty here this evening.
The court is adjourned without day.”
I have always supposed that Colonel Morgan himself took the proceedings
of the court to Washington City, and explained them to Mr. Jefferson.
Certain it is that the President approved them—certain, that is, if I
may believe the men who say they have seen his signature. Before the
_Nautilus_ got round from New Orleans to the Northern Atlantic coast with
the prisoner on board the sentence had been approved, and he was a man
without a country.
The plan then adopted was substantially the same which was necessarily
followed ever after. Perhaps it was suggested by the necessity of sending
him by water from Fort Adams and Orleans. The Secretary of the Navy—it
must have been the first Crowninshield, though he is a man I do not
remember—was requested to put Nolan on board a government vessel bound on
a long cruise, and to direct that he should be only so far confined there
as to make it certain that he never saw or heard of the country. We had
few long cruises then, and the navy was very much out of favor; and as
almost all of this story is traditional, as I have explained, I do not
know certainly what his first cruise was. But the commander to whom he
was intrusted—perhaps it was Tingey or Shaw, though I think it was one of
the younger men—we are all old enough now—regulated the etiquette and the
precautions of the affair, and according to his scheme they were carried
out, I suppose, till Nolan died.
When I was second officer of the _Intrepid_, some thirty years after, I
saw the original paper of instructions. I have been sorry ever since that
I did not copy the whole of it. It ran, however, much in this way:—
“WASHINGTON (with a date, which
must have been late in 1807).
“SIR—You will receive from Lieutenant Neale the person of
Philip Nolan, late a Lieutenant in the United States Army.
“This person on his trial by court-martial ‘expressed with an
oath the wish that he might never hear of the United States
again.’
“The court sentenced him to have his wish fulfilled.
“For the present, the execution of the order is intrusted by
the President to this Department.
“You will take the prisoner on board your ship and keep him
there with such precautions as shall prevent his escape.
“You will provide him with such quarters, rations, and clothing
as would be proper for an officer of his late rank, if he were
a passenger on your vessel on the business of his government.
“The gentlemen on board will make any arrangements agreeable
to themselves regarding his society. He is to be exposed to
no indignity of any kind, nor is he ever unnecessarily to be
reminded that he is a prisoner.
“But under no circumstances is he ever to hear of his country
or to see any information regarding it; and you will specially
caution all the officers under your command to take care, that,
in the various indulgences which may be granted, this rule, in
which his punishment is involved, shall not be broken.
“It is the intention of the government that he shall never
again see the country which he has disowned. Before the end of
your cruise you will receive orders which will give effect to
this intention.
“Respectfully yours,
“W. SOUTHWARD,
“For the Secretary of the Navy.”
If I had only preserved the whole of this paper, there would be no break
in the beginning of my sketch of this story. For Captain Shaw, if it
were he, handed it to his successor in the charge, and he to his, and I
suppose the commander of the _Levant_ has it to-day as his authority for
keeping this man in this mild custody.
The rule adopted on board the ships on which I have met “the man without
a country” was, I think, transmitted from the beginning. No mess liked
to have him permanently, because his presence cut off all talk of home
or of the prospect of return, of politics or letters, of peace or of
war,—cut off more than half the talk men liked to have at sea. But it
was always thought too hard that he should never meet the rest of us,
except to touch hats, and we finally sank into one system. He was not
permitted to talk with the men, unless an officer was by. With officers
he had unrestrained intercourse, as far as they and he chose. But he
grew shy, though he had favorites: I was one. Then the captain always
asked him to dinner on Monday. Every mess in succession took up the
invitation in its turn. According to the size of the ship, you had him
at your mess more or less often at dinner. His breakfast he ate in his
own state-room—he always had a state-room,—which was where a sentinel
or somebody on the watch could see the door. And whatever else he ate
or drank, he ate or drank alone. Sometimes, when the marines or sailors
had any special jollification, they were permitted to invite “Plain
Buttons,” as they called him. Then Nolan was sent with some officer, and
the men were forbidden to speak of home while he was there. I believe the
theory was that the sight of his punishment did them good. They called
him “Plain Buttons,” because while he always chose to wear a regulation
army-uniform, he was not permitted to wear the army-button, for the
reason that it bore either the initials or the insignia of the country he
had disowned.
I remember, soon after I joined the navy, I was on shore with some of
the older officers from our ship and from the _Brandywine_, which we
had met at Alexandria. We had leave to make a party and go up to Cairo
and the Pyramids. As we jogged along (you went on donkeys then), some
of the gentlemen (we boys called them “Dons,” but the phrase was long
since changed) fell to talking about Nolan, and some one told the system
which was adopted from the first about his books and other reading. As
he was almost never permitted to go on shore, even though the vessel lay
in port for months, his time at the best hung heavy; and everybody was
permitted to lend him books, if they were not published in America and
made no allusion to it. These were common enough in the old days, when
people in the other hemisphere talked of the United States as little as
we do of Paraguay. He had almost all the foreign papers that came into
the ship, sooner or later; only somebody must go over them first, and cut
out any advertisement or stray paragraph that alluded to America. This
was a little cruel sometimes, when the back of what was cut out might be
as innocent as Hesiod. Right in the midst of one of Napoleon’s battles,
or one of Canning’s speeches, poor Nolan would find a great hole, because
on the back of the page of that paper there had been an advertisement of
a packet for New York, or a scrap from the President’s message. I say
this was the first time I ever heard of this plan, which afterwards I
had enough and more than enough to do with. I remember it, because poor
Phillips, who was of the party, as soon as the allusion to reading was
made, told a story of something which happened at the Cape of Good Hope
on Nolan’s first voyage; and it is the only thing I ever knew of that
voyage. They had touched at the Cape, and had done the civil thing with
the English Admiral and the fleet, and then, leaving for a long cruise up
the Indian Ocean, Phillips had borrowed a lot of English 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 “Lay of the Last Minstrel,”
which they had all of them heard of, but which most of them had never
seen. I think it could not have been published long. Well, nobody thought
there could be any risk of anything national 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.” So Nolan was permitted to join the circle
one afternoon when a lot of them sat on deck smoking and reading aloud.
People do not do such things so often 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 to the others; and he read very well, as I
know. Nobody in the circle knew a line of the poem, only it was all magic
and Border chivalry, and was ten thousand years ago. Poor Nolan read
steadily through the fifth canto, stopped a minute and drank something,
and then began, without a thought 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 first
time; 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 something was to pay; but he expected to get through, 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 any
way to make him turn over two pages; but he had not quite presence of
mind 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, swung
the book into the sea, vanished into his state-room, “And by Jove,” said
Phillips, “we did not see him for two months again. And I had to make
up some beggarly story to that English surgeon why I did not return his
Walter Scott to him.”
That story shows about the time when Nolan’s braggadocio must have broken
down. At first, they said he took a very high tone, considered his
imprisonment a mere farce, affected to enjoy the voyage, and all that;
but Phillips said that after he came out of his state-room he never was
the same man again. He never read aloud again, unless it was the Bible or
Shakespeare or something else he was sure of. But it was not that merely.
He never entered in with the other young men exactly as a companion
again. He was always shy afterwards, when I knew him—very seldom spoke,
unless he was spoken to, except to a very few friends. He lighted up
occasionally—I remember late in his life hearing him fairly eloquent
on something which had been suggested to him by one of Fléchier’s
sermons—but generally he had the nervous, tired look of a heart-wounded
man.
When Captain Shaw was coming home—if as I say, it was Shaw—rather to the
surprise of everybody, they made one of the Windward Islands, and lay
off and on for nearly a week. The boys said the officers were sick of
salt-junk, and meant to have turtle-soup before they came home. But after
several days the _Warren_ came to the same rendezvous; they exchanged
signals; she sent to Phillips and these homeward bound men, letters and
papers and told them she was outward-bound, perhaps to the Mediterranean,
and took poor Nolan and his traps on the boat back to try his second
cruise. He looked very blank when he was told to get ready to join her.
He had known enough of the signs of the sky to know that till that moment
he was going “home.” But this was a distinct evidence of something he
had not thought of, perhaps—that there was no going home for him, even
to a prison. And this was the first of some twenty such transfers, which
brought him sooner or later into half our best vessels, but which kept
him all his life at least some hundred miles from the country he had
hoped he might never hear of again.
It may have been on that second cruise—it was once when he was up the
Mediterranean—that Mrs. Graff, the celebrated Southern beauty of those
days, danced with him. They had been lying a long time in the Bay of
Naples, and the officers were very intimate in the English fleet, and
there had been great festivities, and our men thought they must give a
great 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 perhaps
ladies did not take up so much room as they do now. They wanted to use
Nolan’s state-room for something, and they hated to do it without asking
him to the ball; so the captain said they might ask him, if they would be
responsible that he did not talk with the wrong people, “who would give
him intelligence.” So the dance went on, the finest party that had ever
been known, I dare say; for I never heard of a man-of-war ball that was
not. For ladies they had the family of the American consul, one or two
travellers, who had adventured so far, and a nice bevy of English girls
and matrons, perhaps Lady Hamilton herself.