high spirits over their capture. An officer, with his hair standing up
in tall curls over his forehead, sat in the stern-sheets bareheaded. He
was nursing a wounded hip carefully, and half leaning against a little
midshipman, who had his arm thrown about his shoulder.
Raising my eyes from the boat, I perceived that the frigate was drifting
with her topsail against the mast only a few hundred yards from us. I
began to feel a bitter hatred of her, and it gave me pleasure to see the
long white gashes in her sides, and to notice the effect of the gunnery
of the _Young Eagle_ plainly apparent.
"Halloa, Johnny Bull!" said some one behind me with a laugh, "I guess
you run against something, didn't you, a short while ago? Ship looks
kind of unhealthy, like a man's face with the small-pox."
I turned. It was Sutton, the foretopman, speaking. He did not appear to
be very much depressed by his surroundings, nor did he fear the result
of his impudence, to judge of his expression.
"Stow your jaw," answered one of the Englishmen. "There are worse things
than small-pox."
I noticed that the man's face was pitted deeply.
"That's so," Sutton replied; "there's the cat, for instance. I beg your
pardon for not thinking of it; I shouldn't slight an acquaintance of
yours for anything."
There was some more coarse badinage, not worth recording, and we were
under the shadow of the ship. Many faces lined her bulwarks, and a rope
being thrown to us, soon we were fending the boat off from the side.
Then a rope-ladder rattled down, and not without some difficulty those
in the bow began to clamber up.
Soon it was my turn. It was not until I reached the deck that I had any
idea of the effect of shot and splinter, but the dark stains, hastily
mopped up, had a reddish tinge that was suggestive, and the loose
running-gear that had fallen from aloft showed that Captain Temple must
have used some of the missiles condemned by the English--and here, let
me state, afterwards used by them, to which I can make oath.
As we were being hastened below many were the looks of hatred thrown at
us, and cutting taunts also in plenty. To all of these Sutton kept a
running fire of replying, in which he was ably seconded by one or two
others.
"Why, my old boiled lobster," he replied to a marine who thrust his
great face over the hatch-combing as we descended, "if I hadn't ketched
a crab, I believe we'd 'a' took you with the long-boat!"
A young officer was directing our guards where to stow us, and under his
orders we were huddled together in the fore-hold, near the cable tier,
where the only light and air that reached us came down through the
chain-hatch.
I looked about and saw that there were in our party six sailormen and
four landsmen who had been enrolled in our marine force. We presented a
sorry appearance sitting there in the dim light on a lot of spare cable,
the most uncomfortable thing to rest on that one can imagine.
What had become of the rest of us in the long-boat I did not know then,
but as I found out afterwards, I might as well tell of it here. There
had been nineteen in all when we started; seven reached the shore
safely, two were drowned--one of them, alas! the brave cockswain who had
been wounded, as I have stated. Now as there is no report of this action
to be found in the naval chronicles of Great Britain--at least I do not
know of any--it may be of interest to put down what we heard of it,
although it cannot be vouched for. From the talk we heard, I make out
that there were nine killed on board the _Acastra_ (for this was the
name of the vessel), and upwards of twenty wounded. There were two
killed on board the _Young Eagle_, and two wounded. In this, I think, I
am correct.
The groaning of the poor lad with the bloody head caused me to wonder
whether this was going to be our prison cell, or whether we were placed
there temporarily before moving to a better or a worse one. Sutton took
off his jacket, and we made Mackie, the man I had saved from drowning,
the wounded one, as comfortable as we possibly could; but it was not
long before he was wandering in his mind, and this depressed us all, for
there is nothing so apt to cut one's spirits as the watching of
suffering beyond the power of alievement.
We were sitting in silence when a voice broke upon us.
"Is there an officer down there?" it questioned. "I hear that one of you
is an officer."
"Yes," said Sutton, "there is."
Then he whispered to me, placing one hand on my shoulder, "Speak up,
lad; it will do no harm to play it so, and you may get a chance to speak
to some one higher than these hulk-scuttlers. Make a plea for Mackie, if
you can, or the boy will die down here in this rat-hole."
So I stood up on my feet, and gazing up at the circle of light through
which came the cable, I said, loudly, "What do you want of me?"
For an instant I thought that I was going to be made the victim of a
joke, as the man did not reply, but talked to some one evidently
standing over him.
"Yes, sir," he said, "there's an officer, a midshipman, I dare say, down
there with them."
In a few minutes we heard the drawing of the heavy bolts that held the
door through the bulkhead into the mid-hold, and some one said, "Let
that young man who spoke come here."
I stepped out. The door was closed behind me, and I saw it was guarded
by two marines with muskets. Stumbling over barrels and boxes, I
followed the three figures ahead of me up the ladder at an order from
one of them, and soon I found myself on the berth-deck. We were
evidently crowding on all sail, for the frigate heeled over to such an
angle that the half-ports had been closed for comfort, but the water
dashed in through several rents in her top sides. A shiver passed over
me, for the idea suddenly came that I was going to be hanged or thrown
overboard, and this was emphasized by the sight I caught of four sailors
carrying a limp dead Englishman up from the cockpit--that he had died
under the surgeon's knife was evident.
From the deck above came the sound of shouting and hurrying. The frigate
came up into the wind, that must have freshened, and swung off on the
other tack. As soon as this had occurred, I noticed that some one was
coming down the ladder near where I stood. As he stooped under a beam
and approached us, I perceived that the man was in a handsome uniform,
with great epaulets and much gilt braid.
"One of the Yankee pirates, eh?" he said, but despite the import of the
words his voice had a fine ring to it, and at one glance into his face I
saw here was a man who would stoop to no mean revenge. His light blue
eyes were almost kindly were it not for the bent brows above them; his
face was extremely handsome and well moulded.
"Are you an officer of that brig?" questioned the tall man, who I now
made out must be the Captain of the frigate.
"I am," I replied, drawing myself up, and making a salute with my elbow
at right angles and my fingers at my forehead.
With a quick glance at my position the Captain made this statement:
"An officer, eh? But _you_ are no sailor; you may be a soldier, though."
I almost faltered in my reply.
"I am instructor in cutlass drill and small arms," I said.
The Englishman half smiled at this.
"A nautical maitre d'armes?" he asked.
"Oui, monsieur," I returned.
"And speaks French in the bargain, by St. George! Well, well! What is
the name of that vessel you belonged to?"
"The _Young Eagle_."
"Privateer, eh? I thought as much."
At this he called up the ladder to the spar-deck.
"Oh, Mr. Vyse!" he said. "It was a Yankee privateer, and not the _Wasp_
or the _Hornet_, or any of their navy."
I was tempted to reply something about _stinging_, nevertheless, but I
held my tongue.
"What's your Captain's name?" was the next question.
I gave it, and the names of the three other officers, but I was
interrupted.
"Well, you can tell Captain Temple, with Captain Hilton's compliments,
that he is the most impudent and most reckless scamp unhanged," said the
tall man, quietly.
"When shall I see him, sir?" I asked.
"Lord knows. Not for some time, I judge," was the answer. Then Captain
Hilton turned. "Take him below again," he ordered to my guards.
They stepped forward, and each laid a hand on my shoulders. I pushed
them off.
"One moment, sir," I began. "There is a member of our crew badly wounded
below with us. He will surely die unless something is done for him."
As I was speaking an officer had descended the ladder from above. I had
seen the heels of his boots as he stood on the top step for some time.
He was short and thick-set, with a mottled reddish face.
"Mr. Vyse, you heard what this lad said. Pray see that this wounded man
is attended to in accordance with his hurt, and his place of confinement
changed if necessary."
"Very good, sir," the short man answered, but he had such a mean look on
his face that I took a distrust against him.
When I reached the hold again and was thrust in once more among my
companions, there was a deal of questioning.
"You should have said you were a Lieutenant," said Sutton.
"It would have made no difference with a privateer officer," put in
another seaman, Edward Brown, a Long-Islander. "They'd hang us all if
they dared; and, mark me, they won't pamper us."
I did not tell of my military salute, that was so involuntary, having
betrayed me, but of course I can see it was the reason of the Captain's
quick statement.
It was pitch-dark down in our dank, bilge-smelling hole, and long after
we stopped talking I could not fall asleep. The ridges of the cable
worked into my flesh, and the muttered complaints of the others as they
tried to make themselves comfortable and found they could not, mingled
with the light-headed ramblings of poor Mackie, and a sound suspiciously
like weeping from the corner in which lay one of the young landsmen, all
combined to add to the misery.
Mr. Vyse had failed to carry out his superior's instructions, and there
had been no one to look after the wounded man, nor had we been given so
much as a pannikin of water, and we were all suffering from thirst.
Morning came slowly down to us after an apparent year of night, and with
it some relief, for we were given something to eat and drink. Weevilly
bread, greenish salt-horse, and water that smelt unhealthy do not make a
meal that is inviting, but we ate it. After it had been passed in to us
through the entrance we heard a banging and clattering, and found they
were nailing up this mode of ingress. Our next meal was lowered to us
through the circular opening overhead. It was but a foot or so in
diameter, and thus we were bottled up, as it were, like flies in a jug.
On this day Mackie was very low, and we all thought like to die. I doubt
very much if any of us could have lived many days in that foul, close
place, but we had to stand it some time longer, and the way out of it
was like this: The third day, at about noon, we heard the stirring and
trampling of feet and the confused muttering of voices. I swarmed up the
cable until my head was close to the opening, and there I listened. They
were casting loose a gun and dealing out powder and shot--I could make
that clearly out. But now I heard the sounds of conversation close to
me.
"It's the _Constitution_," said a voice; "at least they say so up on
deck."
"Then we're in for it," was the reply. "I've heard tell, messmate, that
she's a sixty-gun ship in disguise."
"How far off is she?" was the question.
"About six miles off the larboard bow. Here, you can see her from the
port."
"What's going on up there?" asked Sutton from below.
"They say we have sighted a ship, the _Constitution_; and they're
clearing decks for action," I answered.
"The _Constitution_!" exclaimed Brown. "Then we're free men. Cheer up,
my hearties!"
Sutton's reply to this startled me so that I almost slid down the cable.
Three roaring huzzas broke from him, in which the others joined. Soon I
felt the swaying of my support, and I saw that the quarter gunner was
climbing up to me. It was a crawl of some ten feet.
"It's a good thing, Debrin, that we are below water if we get to
bandying shot, I tell you. See how she raked the _Guerrière_." Sutton
chuckled.
But we could understand nothing from the confusion of sounds, until all
at once I heard a voice I recognized speaking close to me. I knew the
tones before I caught the words. It was Captain Hilton. In whatever he
was saying I interrupted him.
[Illustration: "OH, CAPTAIN HILTON," I CRIED. "WE'VE A DYING MAN DOWN
HERE."]
"Oh, Captain Hilton," I cried, "for Heaven's sake, help us! We've a
dying man down here."
"Who's that speaking?" questioned the Captain.
"The prisoners in the chain-hold, sir." I heard the answer given in a
gruff tone, but most politely.
"That is no place for them," said Hilton, angrily, "and I thought I gave
orders--"
The rest of his speech I did not catch, for a roller hand-spike rumbled
on deck in such a way as to drown it, but I thought I detected some
expostulation from the other voice.
We slid down, Sutton and I, to the others. Mackie was conscious, but so
weak from his fever and suffering that he could not lift his head. When
we told him the news he drew a long breath.
"It's too late, messmates," he whispered. "I'm done for, I fear me."
We sat there now with courage growing, waiting to cheer at the first
gun-shot; but all was silence from above. This continued for full ten
minutes; then we heard the sound of laughter, and caught the words:
"The signal of the day, eh? I know her; it's the _Pique_."
Sutton, who had understood, struck out with both feet and arms,
muttering to himself.
"It's one of their own vessels," he cried. "Did you ever see such luck?"
But my cry for succor, heard by the English Captain, had done us good,
and that afternoon the barriers were broken down from the entrance, and
we were transferred to a more comfortable place of confinement under the
steerage bulkhead, where at least we could sleep on hard boards, and we
were given a blanket apiece.
Poor Mackie was taken to the sick-bay. It was evident that he was not
long for this world--and alas! and alas! in four days the news was
brought to us that our messmate had died; his skull had been fractured,
and the doctor wondered at his having held to life so long. He was
buried at sea, and I must say this, that Captain Hilton proved himself
to be a magnanimous, big-hearted gentleman, for we were allowed on deck,
and a passage of Scripture was read before they dropped the closed
hammock overboard into the great graveyard of the sailor.
As we went below to our cell, which was a partition of the after-hold,
as I have said, Sutton observed to me:
"We're steering to the eastward. Yes, and we'll see the inside of a
prison where men rot, if tales are true. We're bound for England, lad."
Now the time went by, and even the count of days was lost. We sang
songs, told stories, and played at draughts and other games that we
could manage in our limited room. I wish I had here space to record all
that passed. Some of the yarns spun would be worth the reading, and I
learned a great deal about the condition of affairs between America and
England, and that, as my friend Plummer said, "we had given the lion's
tail a twist, and a good one."
One of the songs that was most popular was "Hull's Victory," and a
rattling good sea song it was. I used to take the tenor, Sutton the
bass, in a way that would make the beams shake, and were it not that we
were on short allowance in the eating line we would have been quite
comfortable. Every day two of us at a time were allowed to take the air,
in charge of a marine. Sometimes it was Sutton and I who walked
together, and sometimes it was Brown or Craig, the landsman, who was my
companion. Poor Craig! His spirit appeared entirely broken. He had
behaved bravely in the long-boat, but now his lack of heart was pitiful.
He contributed little to our enjoyment, and the only person who ever
gave him a kindly word, I really think, was myself. He spoke to me often
of his home and of the sorrow it had given his mother to part with him.
I can vouch for this, that if he ever got back there, he would stay; for
all desire toward adventure and roaming was killed within him.
I have not mentioned the other seamen by name purposely, for, with the
exception of Brown and Sutton, they were an ordinary set of good and bad
who would have done well under competent leadership perhaps, but who
displayed no individuality; but they were all loyal to their flag, and
did not appear much cowed by their confinement. When I walked the deck
with Sutton I enjoyed it most. He was an old man-of-war's man, and
criticised the handling of the _Acastra_ in rather a superior manner.
Some of the foremast hands amongst the Englishmen were rather kindly
disposed toward us, and many bits of tobacco they gave out of sheer
kindheartedness to our forlorn little hand, some of whom had suffered
actually from being deprived of the stimulant.
It happened that Brown and I were walking the deck when the sound of
"land, ho!" came down from the mast-head. During the last day or so we
had sighted a number of sail, all English, but now this created some
excitement. There must have been a mist on the water that had hidden the
land as we approached it, for by the time our recreation was almost
ended we could spy it from the deck as we passed the gangway--tall white
cliffs showing above the horizon.
"That's Land's End," observed Brown, jumping up to look over the
bulwarks, for of course we were not allowed to approach near a port.
"Johnny Cutlass, my son, this voyage is over. In three hours we'll be in
the English Channel, and then for a little sojourn on board the hulks,
or maybe we'll be shipped direct to one of their land prisons, where
we'll find plenty of company, if I don't miss my reckoning; but keep up
courage--things might be worse."
We were the last to go on deck this day, but the news we brought down
with us started a great lot of talking. All showed interest but Craig,
who sat there in his usual position, with his forehead on his knees. But
a great change in our life was destined for the morrow.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
TYPICAL ENGLISH SCHOOLS.
BY JOHN CORBIN.
ETON.
Fifty years after William of Wykeham founded Winchester, King Henry the
Sixth founded a school at Eton, a little town across the Thames from his
great palace at Windsor. The rules he drew up for governing his
"college" he copied from Wykeham; and in order to give it the best
possible start, he took one-half the college at Winchester--the head
master, five fellows, and thirty-five scholars--and settled them at
Eton. For a hundred years or so Eton was a mere daughter of Winchester;
but as centuries passed it took a different character. Its site, in the
very shadow of Windsor Castle, naturally secured for it royal favor.
George the Third and William the Fourth took a lively personal interest
in its welfare; and in late years members of the royal family, the sons
of the Duke of Connaught and the little Duke of Albany, grandchildren of
Queen Victoria, have come to Eton to prepare for the university. To-day
the school numbers over a thousand--twice as many as Winchester--and its
graduates include far more men of birth or genius than those of any
other public school. Just as Winchester raised the standard of
scholarship at Oxford, so Eton has made Oxford the university of the
English aristocracy.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF "HOUSES," THE CHAPEL IN THE DISTANCE.]
The most interesting part of the buildings are the school-rooms, which
stand to-day almost precisely as they were built. It gives you a queer
feeling to think how many boys and how many generations of boys have sat
on those benches at _Arma virumque cano_, or trying to drum the [Greek:
ho], [Greek: hê], [Greek: tó] into heads that are already overflowing
with dreams of fresh breezes on the river, and of the sound of the
cricket-ball on the playing-fields.
On the wood-work of the rooms you will find the names of the boys who
have studied here. On this post you can read H. Wesley, which, Etonians
will tell you, is the way Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, used to
write his name. Pitt carved his name twice, in modest little italics.
Charles James Fox sprawled his in bold capitals across a high rail of
the panelled wainscot. And here is Shelley. Each letter is quite
plainly, even boldly formed; and yet they all huddle together so
nervously that they seem to shrink from being seen. As you look at them,
you call to mind the courage and independence that made Shelley refuse
to be fagged, and then his pitiful plight when the fag-masters got up
"Shelley baits," and hunted him through the town;--you can almost see
his pale cheeks and his lustrous eyes. Many of these famous names stand
in a group of their school friends--a poet between a banker and a
soldier, all boys together--and among these many another, perhaps the
most popular of all the boys at school, of whom the world has never
heard. Gladstone's name is as correct as an epitaph. And so it is an
epitaph of the ancient custom of carving your own name, for since his
time you have to pay ten shillings when you leave school, and have a
carver do it for you. These carved names are still arranged in groups of
friends; and sometimes you will find a boy's name where his father and
grandfather placed theirs; but they are all as like as so many types in
a font; not one of them tells you a syllable about what kind of a boy
the owner was. It would be so much better to allow each boy a certain
space, and let him carve his own name the day he leaves.
[Illustration: THE LOWER SCHOOL, WITH CARVINGS ON SHUTTERS AND POSTS.]
Eton, like Winchester, has seventy scholars--"King's scholars," or
"collagers," as they are called--who are chosen by competitive
examination, and are supported by the funds of the foundation. Every
year four or five of these are awarded scholarships at King's College,
Cambridge, just as the best boys from Winchester go to New College,
Oxford. The rest of the boys, as at Winchester, live under the care of
masters in houses of about thirty-five boys each, scattered through the
town, and are called "oppidans." The oppidans call the collagers "tugs,"
a word which probably refers to their _togas_--that is, gowns. Not many
years ago the collagers were so poorly fed and housed, and so wretched
generally, that the phrase was "beastly tugs"; but of late this class
prejudice is dying out, and the fact that several of the collagers have
been great athletes and good fellows all round has worked wonders. One
still hears of "beastly tugs," and the prejudice against being supported
by the college is not yet dead; but one finds it mostly among the
younger boys, and even they do not feel it half so much as they pretend.
The government of the school is very like that at Winchester. The
Captain of the College has much the same duties as the Prefect of Hall,
and is aided by the other best scholars. The oppidans have also a
Captain, but he is under the Captain of the College. Besides this, the
houses have each a Captain, as the Winchester houses, have Prefects. Of
course it does not always happen that the man who leads his house in
scholarship is man enough to rule the rest; but if he is not, the
leading athletes step in and take matters into their own hands.
[Illustration: THE QUADRANGLE OF THE "COLLEGE."]
The punishment masters give for small offences is _poenas_--that is,
lines of Latin or Greek to write out. In extreme cases the head master
"swishes" a boy with a lot of birch twigs tied together. In time past
swishing seems to have been about the only means of discipline, and the
head master had a regular block for the purpose. One night a lot of old
Etonians, who had been celebrating a cricket victory, broke into the
room where the block was, and carried it off to London. There they
hired rooms and founded an Eton Block Society, to which no one could
belong who had not been swished on the block at school.