Our ship sailed out through a narrow way, bordered by piers that swarmed
with people, and likewise by prodigious men-of-war of the fashion of a
hundred years ago. There were, perhaps, a dozen of the stately veterans,
these relics of an historic past; and not looking aged and seedy,
either, but as bright and fresh as if they had been launched and painted
yesterday. They were the noblest creatures to look upon; hulls of huge
proportion and great length; four long tiers of cannon grinning from
their tall sides; vast sterns that towered into the air like the gable
end of a church; graceful bows and figureheads; masts as trim and lofty
as spires--surely no spectacle could be so imposing as a sea fight in
the old times, when such beautiful and such lordly ships as these ruled
the seas. And how it must have stirred the heart of England when a fleet
of them used to come sailing in from victory, with ruined sides and
tattered spars and sails, while bells and cannon pealed a welcome!
One of the grandest of these veterans was the very one upon whose deck
Nelson himself fell in the moment of triumph. I suppose England would
rather part with ten colonies than with that illustrious old ship. We
passed along within thirty steps of her, and I was just trying to
picture in my mind the tremendous scenes that had transpired upon her
deck upon that day, the proudest in England’s naval history, when the
venerable craft, stirred by the boom of saluting cannon, perhaps, woke
up out of her long sleep and began to vomit smoke and thunder herself,
and then she looked her own natural self again, and no doubt the spirit
of Nelson was near. Still it would have been pleasanter to be on her
decks than in front of her guns; for, as the white volumes of smoke
burst in our faces, one could not help feeling that a ball might by
accident have got mixed up with a blank cartridge, and might chip just
enough off the upper end of a man to disfigure him for life; and,
besides, the powder they use in cannon is in grains as large as billiard
chalks, and it does not all explode--suppose a few should enter one’s
system? The crash and roar of these great guns was as unsettling a sound
as I have ever heard at short range. I took off my hat and acknowledged
the salute, of course, though it seemed to me that it would have been
better manners if they had saluted the Lord Mayor, inasmuch as he was on
board.