Chapter 69

PRAYERS AT THE GUNS.

The training-days, or general quarters, now and then taking place in
our frigate, have already been described, also the Sunday devotions
on the half-deck; but nothing has yet been said concerning the daily
morning and evening quarters, when the men silently stand at their guns,
and the chaplain simply offers up a prayer.

Let us now enlarge upon this matter. We have plenty of time; the
occasion invites; for behold! the homeward-bound Neversink bowls
along over a jubilant sea.

Shortly after breakfast the drum beats to quarters; and among
five hundred men, scattered over all three decks, and engaged in
all manner of ways, that sudden rolling march is magical as the
monitory sound to which every good Mussulman at sunset drops to
the ground whatsoever his hands might have found to do, and,
throughout all Turkey, the people in concert kneel toward their
holy Mecca.

The sailors run to and fro-some up the deck-ladders, some down--
to gain their respective stations in the shortest possible time.
In three minutes all is composed. One by one, the various
officers stationed over the separate divisions of the ship then
approach the First Lieutenant on the quarter-deck, and report
their respective men at their quarters. It is curious to watch
their countenances at this time. A profound silence prevails;
and, emerging through the hatchway, from one of the lower decks,
a slender young officer appears, hugging his sword to his thigh,
and advances through the long lanes of sailors at their guns, his
serious eye all the time fixed upon the First Lieutenant's--his
polar star. Sometimes he essays a stately and graduated step, an
erect and martial bearing, and seems full of the vast national
importance of what he is about to communicate.

But when at last he gains his destination, you are amazed to
perceive that all he has to say is imparted by a Freemason touch
of his cap, and a bow. He then turns and makes off to his
division, perhaps passing several brother Lieutenants, all bound
on the same errand he himself has just achieved. For about five
minutes these officers are coming and going, bringing in
thrilling intelligence from all quarters of the frigate; most
stoically received, however, by the First Lieutenant. With his legs
apart, so as to give a broad foundation for the superstructure of his
dignity, this gentleman stands stiff as a pike-staff on the quarter-
deck. One hand holds his sabre--an appurtenance altogether unnecessary
at the time; and which he accordingly tucks, point backward, under his
arm, like an umbrella on a sun-shiny day. The other hand is continually
bobbing up and down to the leather front of his cap, in response to the
reports and salute