On leaving the tea-table Max and Lulu had seated themselves in the porch, along with their father, and just as he went in search of his paper they were joined by Albert Austin.
“Ah, good-evening, Albert,” said Max, making haste to place a chair for him near his own, “I’m pleased to see you.”
“Thanks; I’m pleased to come,” returned the English lad, accepting the offered seat. “I was bored with listening to papa and some other gentlemen talking on some subject that didn’t interest me in the least, so I slipped away after telling papa where I could be found when wanted.”
“He doesn’t object to our society then?” remarked Max, in a playfully interrogative tone.
“No, indeed! I fancy he thinks I could hardly be in better company. He’s taken a strong liking to your father, and I think I may add to yourselves, also,” glancing admiringly at Lulu as he spoke.
“In spite of my not being an English girl?” she returned laughingly.
“Oh, assuredly, Miss Lulu! That could make no difference; in fact, I believe Englishmen are, as a class, great admirers of American ladies.”
“In which they show their good taste,” laughed Max. “My father says American ladies compare favorably with those of any other nation. I wish you could see Mamma Vi and Grandma Elsie.”
“Who are they?” asked Albert, with a puzzled look.
“Mamma Vi is papa’s wife; his second wife, while we are the children of the first. Her name is Violet; she isn’t old enough to be our real mother, so she told us to call her Mamma Vi. Grandma Elsie is her mother, and we call her that to distinguish her from an older lady whom we call grandma also.”
“Ah, yes, I think I understand. That’s one of your American ways, I suppose. And where are those ladies you would like to show me? not in this state, I fancy, as I remember seeing you on the cars long before we entered it.”
“Yes,” replied Max, with an amused look, “our home is so far away that we crossed several states in coming here. But this is not a state.”
“Isn’t? What then?”
“A territory.”
“Ah, excuse me, but I don’t know the difference.”
“I’ll try to explain,” said Max. “Papa has taken some pains to give us a clear understanding of our government and its workings.
“Each of the thirty-eight states has its own constitution, elects its own governor, legislators, and judges. It elects two senators to send to Congress, too, and from one to thirty-four representatives, according to its population.
“But the territories can send only one delegate to Congress, and he has no vote; they are governed by Congress, with a governor appointed by the president.”
“Ah, yes, I see the difference, and that the states have the best of it. The territories, I presume, look forward to becoming states?”
“Yes; but they must have a certain number of inhabitants before they can hope to be admitted into the Union?”
“Your father’s an army officer, isn’t he?”
“No; he belonged to the navy, but resigned not very long ago.”
“The American navy is quite small, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t so large as it ought to be,” returned Max shortly.
“Britannia rules the wave!” quoted Albert, in an exultant tone.
“Yes; when Columbia isn’t there to interfere with her,” retorted Max, a little mischievously.
“I’m thinking ’twill be a sorry day for Columbia when she attempts that,” sneered Albert.
“It hasn’t always been in the past,” remarked Max quietly.
“When wasn’t it?” asked Albert.
“When John Paul Jones in the Bon Homme Richard fought Capt. Pearson in the Serapis, for instance.”
“Well, yes; but that was a very close fight. Beside, you had six vessels and we only two.”
“Two of ours were pilot boats and kept out of the fight altogether,” said Max.
“So did the Vengeance; though she had been ordered to render the larger vessels any assistance in her power; she didn’t even try to overhaul the band of flying merchantmen.
“Then the Alliance, commanded by that bad-tempered Frenchman Landais, who was so envious of Jones, went into the battle only at the last moment, and instead of helping her allies, fired her broadsides into the Richard. The fight was between the Richard, with forty guns, and the Serapis with forty-four; the Pallas, twenty-two guns, and the Countess of Scarborough, with twenty-two. So there was no advantage on our side. If Landais had been in command of the Richard he wouldn’t have tried to fight the Serapis at all.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because, as he dashed past her in the Alliance, pushing ahead to reconnoitre, before the fight began, he cried out that if the enemy proved to be a forty-four, the only course for the Americans was immediate flight. He practiced on that idea, too, hauling off and leaving the Richard and the Pallas to do the fighting.
“Our French allies did us more harm than good in the naval battles of the Revolutionary War. If Captain Landais wasn’t crazy, he must have been one of the greatest scoundrels that ever trod a quarter-deck.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Lulu, “when I read about his firing into the Bon Homme Richard—when the poor fellows on it had been fighting so hard and long, so many of them dreadfully wounded, and the ship almost sinking already—I felt as if I could hardly stand it to think he escaped being well punished for it. He ought to have been hung; for his fire killed some of our poor fellows.”
“So he ought, the miserable coward!” assented the English lad. “I’m not partial to the French anyway,” he added. “Of course my own countrymen come first in my estimation, but I put the Americans next. We’re a sort of cousins, you know.”
“Yes,” said Max. “But wasn’t it a crazy idea that this great big country should go on being ruled by that little one across the sea? Most absurd, I think.”
“At the beginning of the trouble between them it must have looked like great folly for the thirteen weak colonies to go into the fight with England,” remarked Albert.
“Particularly to the English, who didn’t know how in love with liberty, and determined to keep her, the Americans were,” said Max. “Papa says we triumphed at the last because our cause was the cause of right, and God guided our counsels and gave success to our arms.”
“I don’t believe I’m as well-read on the subject as you are,” remarked Albert. “I presume I would naturally take less interest in it than you would.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” replied Max. “I’ve studied the history of the United States, my native land, a great deal, especially in the last year or two, and have had many talks with papa about the events, and especially the doings of the navy; they interested me more than any other part; first, because papa was a naval officer, and then because I’m hoping to go into the navy myself.”
“And those studies didn’t increase your love for us—the English, I mean?” said Albert interrogatively.
“No, not a bit,” returned Max with a slight laugh. He paused a moment, then went on more gravely.
“The treatment they gave the Americans they took prisoner, was simply barbarous; unworthy of a civilized—not to say Christian—nation.”
“Yes, perfectly dreadful!” chimed in Lulu.
“Now I really don’t remember any such barbarity,” remarked Albert, rather apologetically. “But you know the Americans were considered rebels, and I—suppose the British officers may have thought it a duty to—refrain from coddling them.”
“Coddling indeed!” exclaimed Max. “Do you remember about the ‘Old Jersey’ prison-ship?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“It was a dismasted hulk—an old sixty-four gun-ship moored in Wallabout Bay, near New York City. She was so old and worn-out and rotten that she wasn’t fit to go to sea; so they used her as a prison for Americans whom they captured, and starved them and treated them so horribly in every way, that eleven thousand died in her.”
“Wouldn’t it be charitable to suppose the starving may have been because of an unavoidable scarcity of provisions?” queried Albert mildly.
“There was no such unavoidable scarcity,” asserted Max, “yet the poor prisoners were sometimes so hungry as to be glad to eat cockroaches and mice when they could catch them.”
“On that vessel?” asked Albert.
“I think it was on that very vessel,” said Max musingly; “but possibly I might be mistaken; there were other prison-ships, but the Old Jersey was the worst. But I’m certain it was American prisoners in the hands of the British near New York. A piece of wanton cruelty the jailors were guilty of, was bringing in a kettle of boiling soup, or mush, and setting it down before those starving prisoners of war, with never a spoon or anything to dip it up with.”
“Yes,” said Lulu, “and another time they marched some prisoners for four days without a mouthful to eat, then rolled out barrels of salt pork for them to eat raw. And another time, when they were exchanging prisoners with the Americans, they put pounded glass into the last meal’s victuals they gave to the American soldiers before they let them go.”
“Well, if they did that ’twas mean and wicked enough,” admitted Albert. “But don’t you think the world has grown a little better since those days, and that then other nations were quite as cruel, if not more so? always excepting the Americans, of course,” he added, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
“I believe that’s so,” admitted Max.
“And some Americans—the Tories—were worse than the British,” said Lulu; “some of their deeds were perfectly dreadful, shockingly wicked and cruel! beside, it was so contemptible in them to turn against their own country and ill-use—even to robbing and murdering—their own countrymen.”
“Well, yes,” said Albert, “but then, we must remember that the way they looked at it ’twas only being loyal to their king.”
“The English king, you mean,” she retorted. “But most of them—the Tories—were low, mean, wicked fellows that really cared for neither king nor country, and were only glad of an excuse to rob wherever they could.”
“Then please don’t blame my country with what they did,” said Albert.
“No; it isn’t worth while; she has sins enough of her own to answer for,” returned Lulu demurely. “And then she’s so little, poor thing!”
Albert looked nettled at that. “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” he said, straightening himself proudly. “And, big as your country is, I don’t believe either her army or navy can compare with ours.”
“Yes, our regular army is small, I know,” admitted Max; “but we have a great army of militia, and all so devoted to their country that they make splendid fighters when called on to defend her. Our navy’s small, too, but compares better in size with yours than it did at the beginning of the war of 1812–14, and it came out of that with flying colors.”
“Really, I don’t remember what was the difference then, or just what the fight was about,” acknowledged Albert modestly.
“Don’t you?” asked Max, in some surprise. “Well, I shouldn’t either, if papa hadn’t turned my attention to such subjects and talked with us about them in such an interesting way. He says he wants his children to be well acquainted with history, especially that of their own country. That’s how I happen to be posted on those questions.
“When the United States declared war against England in 1812, our navy consisted of twenty vessels, the largest carrying forty-four guns, most of the others rating under thirty, while England had over a thousand ships on the rolls of her navy, two hundred and fifty-four of them ships of the line, mounting over seventy-four guns each.
“It really wasn’t much wonder the British laughed at the idea of our attempting to fight them; especially as Britannia had ruled the wave up to that time.”
“Yes; the Americans must have been a plucky little nation to try it,” laughed Albert, “they must have been desperately angry about something.”
“They were, and with good reason,” returned Max. “Oh, such wrongs as our poor sailors had endured for years from British naval officers! It makes my blood boil just to read, at this late day, of their arrogance and injustice, and the dreadful cruelties they were guilty of toward Americans they kidnapped from our vessels.”
“Kidnapped?” repeated Albert.
“Yes; what else could you call it when a British man-of-war would stop an American merchant-vessel on the high seas—in time of peace—board her, order the crew mustered aft, pick out any man they chose to say was an Englishman, and carry him off to their own vessel against his will?”
“Oh yes, I see you refer to the right of search.”
“Right of search, indeed!” exclaimed Max hotly, “there was no right about it, it was all an outrageous wrong. The British had no more right to search our ships than we had to search theirs.”
“But deserters should be caught and punished,” said Albert.
“Perhaps that’s so,” said Max: “I don’t say it is, or it isn’t; but they often and often took native-born Americans, asserting, without a shadow of proof, that they were English. American captains said they always chose the most ship-shape sailors in the crew, and, of course, those wouldn’t always be the Englishmen, supposing there were any Englishmen among them.
“One can imagine that it was exceedingly exasperating to be forced in that way into foreign service, especially that of a nation their own country had been having a bloody war with only a little while before; under the red flag of England, too, instead of the beautiful Stars and Stripes they loved so well.
“And if one of them showed any unwillingness to serve his kidnappers, he was triced up and flogged till his back was cut to ribbons, and the blood spurted at every blow.
“Of course they detested the service they had been forced into, and that was made so dreadful to them, would desert whenever they had a chance; and if they were caught again they were speedily hung at the yardarm.”
“It was hard when a mistake was made and a real American impressed,” conceded Albert, “but, of course, the English government had a right to take her own men wherever she could find them.”
“I have no objection to Englishmen submitting to such tyranny, if they choose,” sneered Max, “but Americans are made of different stuff; they are free and glory in their freedom, and never would, and never will, put up with such treatment. And I say again, British officers had no right to board our ships without leave or license, and forcibly rob them of part of their crew. It was an abominably cruel and tyrannical thing for them to do, even before the Revolution, and most outrageously insulting beside, after the war when we were no longer colonies of Great Britain, but free and independent states.”
“I don’t recall the occurrence you refer to,” said Albert, “but surely before the war they had the same right to impress American subjects as they had to take their fellow-subjects of Great Britain.”
“Let me recall one incident to your memory, and see if even an Englishman can approve of it in these days,” said Max.
“In 1764—eleven years before the beginning of the war, you will remember—the British man-of-war ‘Maidstone’ lay in the harbor of Newport. It was a time of peace, and the officers had nothing to do; so they amused themselves sending out press-gangs to seize any luckless American sailor who happened to be on shore, and force him into his Majesty’s service aboard their vessel.
“The life on board a British man-of-war was a dreadful one in those times, for any sailor; the cat-o’-nine-tails was flourished so often, and for such slight offenses, and even a boy midshipman could order a poor fellow to the grating to have his back cut to ribbons.
“So no wonder American sailors dreaded being forced into it; they had no peace of their lives with those press-gangs roaming the streets in search of them every night, and breaking into the taverns where a group of them might be smoking and chatting together, to seize and carry them off.
“But the incident I was going to speak of was this: One day a brig came sailing up the bay into the harbor of Newport. She had been on a long voyage—to the west coast of Africa—and the poor fellows aboard of her were just wild with joy to think they had reached home at last and were going ashore presently to see their mothers and wives and sweethearts, and all the rest of their dear ones they had been separated from so long, and who had crowded on the dock to watch the brig coming in.
“Oh, I can imagine how they felt! for I remember how glad we always were when papa’s vessel came in from a long voyage, and we knew that he’d be with us presently; and so I know something of how terrible, how perfectly unbearable, it must have seemed to them, when just as their ship was anchored, a couple of longboats from the man-of-war came pulling up alongside of the brig, and two or three officers and a lot of sailors climbed on board, and the head one ordered the American captain to call his men aft, saying ‘His Majesty has need of a few fine fellows for his service.’
“It was bad enough when they thought he was going to take some of them, each poor jackie fearing he might be the unfortunate one, yet hoping he might not; but just think of it! the officer ordered every one of them to go below and pack up his traps.
“The American captain expressed his astonishment and indignation, saying that the poor fellows were just home from a long voyage and hadn’t seen their families yet. But it did no good; every man jack of them was carried off to the man-of-war and forced to serve aboard of her.
“It was such acts of tyranny as this that drove the colonies to rebel, and finally to be determined to be free and independent.”
“And that drove them into the war of 1812, too,” said Lulu, “Oh, the States, I mean; they were not colonies then, though the British did not seem to have found it out.”
“It was a plucky little nation to declare war with England,” again remarked Albert good humoredly. “I don’t know how they ever got up courage to pit their twenty vessels against her thousand.”
“Love of liberty, and self-respect, and abhorrence of insult and tyranny nerved them to it,” said Max. “Do you remember that affair of the Chesapeake and Leopard?”
“Not at all; if I ever heard of it, it must have made but little impression on my mind.”
“Well, I suppose it would naturally make a deeper one on an American boy’s,” said Max.
“It happened in 1807, when we were at peace with England, and it seems to me the most insulting thing ever heard of.
“The Chesapeake, an American man-of-war lying at the navy-yard at Washington, was put in commission and ordered to the Mediterranean to relieve the Constitution.
“It took nearly a month to get her ready, and while that was being attended to the British minister informed our naval authorities that three deserters from His British Majesty’s ship ‘Melampus’ had joined the crew of the Chesapeake, and asked to have them given up.
“Our government was willing to do it, but on inquiring into the matter found that the men were really native-born Americans who had been impressed by the British and forced into their service. They were able to prove it. So, of course, they weren’t given up.
“The facts were stated to the British minister, and as he didn’t protest any further, it was supposed he was satisfied.
“A few weeks after this the Chesapeake left the navy-yard and dropped down the river to Hampton Roads. There she stayed for some days, taking on guns and stores and adding to her crew till she had three hundred and seventy-five men; then she weighed anchor and started on her voyage.
“But she started before she was in really proper condition. A quantity of things, such as stores, ropes, lumber, trunks, and furniture, were piled on the decks, instead of being stowed away in their proper places. Somebody was to blame for that, of course, though papa says it was not Commodore Barron, who was in command, and nobody could have dreamed of the mischief the confusion was to cause, remembering that it was in a time of peace, and right on our own coast.
“But there were four English men-of-war lying quietly at anchor in Lynn Haven Bay, and as our ship passed out into the ocean there was a stir on their decks; then one of them weighed anchor, set her sails, and started in pursuit. The Chesapeake had to tack frequently, on account of a stiff breeze that was blowing, and the American officers noticed that the Leopard—the British ship—did the same, and kept right in their wake; but it never occurred to them that she had any but peaceful intentions. The ship kept on her course, and the sailors set busily to work putting the decks in order.
“Presently the Leopard bore down rapidly, and when she got near enough, hailed, saying that she had a dispatch for Commodore Barron. So the Chesapeake hove to and waited for a boat to be sent. Now the two ships were lying broadside to broadside, less than a pistol-shot apart. Still the commodore did not suspect any mischief. Some of the younger officers noticed that the Leopard had her cannon all ready to fire, and they ought to have told the commodore; but they didn’t.
“Soon a boat put off from the Leopard, bringing an English officer. One of the American officers received him and took him to the commodore’s cabin. There he produced an order from the British Admiral Berkeley, commanding all British ships to watch for the Chesapeake and search her for deserters.
“Commodore Barron said he didn’t harbor deserters, and couldn’t permit his crew to be mustered by an officer of any foreign power. Just then there was a signal from the Leopard recalling her officer. Then Commodore Barron came out of his cabin, and was much surprised to see that the Leopard was quite in fighting trim.”
Sandy McAlpine had drawn near the little group, and was listening with profound interest to Max’s story. “And did they have a fight between the two ships?” he burst out, as Max made a momentary pause in his narrative.
“A fight!” echoed Max. “No; there was a disgraceful, insulting attack by the Leopard, which the Americans had not power to respond to, because, though their guns were loaded and they ready to use them with a will, no matches, powder-flasks, wads, rammers or gun-locks could be found.
“While they were hunting for them, there was a hail from the Leopard. Commodore Barron shouted back that he did not understand. They hailed again:
“‘Commodore Barron must be aware that the orders of the vice-admiral must be obeyed.’
“The commodore again answered that he didn’t understand, and after another hail or two the British fired a gun at the Chesapeake, then poured in a full broadside. The heavy shot crashed through the sides of the American ship, wounding a number of men.”
“And they couldn’t fire back?” queried Sandy.
“For want of matches and the other necessary things that were not to be found, they had to let their guns keep silence, though they were filled with fury that they had no chance at all to defend themselves and show their insolent foe how American blue-jackets can fight. They heated pokers red-hot in the galley fire, but they cooled too much before they could get them to the guns.
“So for eighteen minutes the Leopard kept on firing at a helpless, unresisting foe. Then the Chesapeake’s flag was hauled down, two British lieutenants and some midshipmen came in a boat from the Leopard, boarded the Chesapeake, and again demanded the deserters.
“Of course, there was no choice but to give them up. Four sailors were seized and carried aboard the Leopard in triumph. One of them they hung, one died before he could escape, but five years later the other two got back to the Chesapeake.”
“Max, you are forgetting that one shot was fired from the Chesapeake?” said Lulu.
“Yes, you tell about it.”
“There was a Lieutenant Allen among the officers of the Chesapeake, who cried out in his anger, ‘I’ll have one shot at those rascals, anyhow,’ ran to the galley fire, picked up a live coal in his fingers, and, never caring for the pain, ran with it to one of the guns and fired it off just as the flag came fluttering down.”
“He was a brave fellow,” commented Sandy. “Well, I s’pose the British didn’t fire any more after they got what they wanted. But hadn’t their shot made some big holes in the Chesapeake?”
“I presume so,” replied Lulu. “Anyhow, she turned and went back.
“Everybody in the whole country was furious on hearing the news—which I don’t blame them for, I’m sure; but it was a great shame that the government punished Commodore Barron, by suspending him from the service, without pay, for five years. Papa says it was very unjust, for it wasn’t his fault that things were not in order on the vessel, but the fault of the fitting-out officers. And I feel perfectly certain that the commodore and everybody else on the Chesapeake would have fought bravely if they’d had half a chance, and whipped the insolent British well. Oh, I do wish they had had a chance!”
“Well, never mind,” said Max. “We whipped them well in the war that followed a few years later.”
“Now, if I remember right, the Americans didn’t always whip in that war either on land or on water,” said Albert.
“No, not always,” acknowledged Max, “but a good many times; and the war accomplished what we went into it for: putting a stop to their insolent claim to a right to search our vessels, and their impressment of our seamen.”
“Was that mentioned and given up in the treaty of peace?”
“No,” acknowledged Max, “but they haven’t tried it since, and they’d better not, as I guess they know.”
“Perhaps you mightn’t have fared so well if we hadn’t had another war on our hands at the same time,” retorted Albert.
But just here the talk was interrupted by Captain Raymond and Mr. Austin joining them, the former coming from his interview with Mrs. McAlpine in the sitting-room, the latter entering from the street.