A MAN-OF-WAR’S-MAN SHOT AT.
There was a seaman belonging to the fore-top—a mess-mate, though not a
top-mate of mine, and no favourite of the Captain’s,—who, for certain
venial transgressions, had been prohibited from going ashore on liberty
when the ship’s company went. Enraged at the deprivation—for he had not
touched earth in upward of a year—he, some nights after, lowered
himself overboard, with the view of gaining a canoe, attached by a rope
to a Dutch galiot some cables’-lengths distant. In this canoe he
proposed paddling himself ashore. Not being a very expert swimmer, the
commotion he made in the water attracted the ear of the sentry on that
side of the ship, who, turning about in his walk, perceived the faint
white spot where the fugitive was swimming in the frigate’s shadow. He
hailed it; but no reply.
“Give the word, or I fire!”
Not a word was heard.
The next instant there was a red flash, and, before it had completely
ceased illuminating the night the white spot was changed into crimson.
Some of the officers, returning from a party at the Beach of the
Flamingoes, happened to be drawing near the ship in one of her cutters.
They saw the flash, and the bounding body it revealed. In a moment the
topman was dragged into the boat, a handkerchief was used for a
tourniquet, and the wounded fugitive was soon on board the frigate,
when, the surgeon being called, the necessary attentions were rendered.
Now, it appeared, that at the moment the sentry fired, the top-man—in
order to elude discovery, by manifesting the completest quietude—was
floating on the water, straight and horizontal, as if reposing on a
bed. As he was not far from the ship at the time, and the sentry was
considerably elevated above him—pacing his platform, on a level with
the upper part of the hammock-nettings—the ball struck with great
force, with a downward obliquity, entering the right thigh just above
the knee, and, penetrating some inches, glanced upward along the bone,
burying itself somewhere, so that it could not be felt by outward
manipulation. There was no dusky discoloration to mark its internal
track, as in the case when a partly-spent ball—obliquely hitting—after
entering the skin, courses on, just beneath the surface, without
penetrating further. Nor was there any mark on the opposite part of the
thigh to denote its place, as when a ball forces itself straight
through a limb, and lodges, perhaps, close to the skin on the other
side. Nothing was visible but a small, ragged puncture, bluish about
the edges, as if the rough point of a tenpenny nail had been forced
into the flesh, and withdrawn. It seemed almost impossible, that
through so small an aperture, a musket-bullet could have penetrated.
The extreme misery and general prostration of the man, caused by the
great effusion of blood—though, strange to say, at first he said he
felt no pain from the wound itself—induced the Surgeon, very
reluctantly, to forego an immediate search for the ball, to extract it,
as that would have involved the dilating of the wound by the knife; an
operation which, at that juncture, would have been almost certainly
attended with fatal results. A day or two, therefore, was permitted to
pass, while simple dressings were applied.
The Surgeon of the other American ships of war in harbour occasionally
visited the Neversink, to examine the patient, and incidentally to
listen to the expositions of our own Surgeon, their senior in rank. But
Cadwallader Cuticle, who, as yet, has been but incidentally alluded to,
now deserves a chapter by himself.