Chapter 75

"SINK, BURN, AND DESTROY."
Printed Admiralty orders in time of war.

Among innumerable "_yarns and twisters_" reeled off in our main-
top during our pleasant run to the North, none could match those
of Jack Chase, our captain.

Never was there better company than ever-glorious Jack. The
things which most men only read of, or dream about, he had seen
and experienced. He had been a dashing smuggler in his day, and
could tell of a long nine-pounder rammed home with wads of French
silks; of cartridges stuffed with the finest gunpowder tea; of
cannister-shot full of West India sweetmeats; of sailor frocks
and trowsers, quilted inside with costly laces; and table legs,
hollow as musket barrels, compactly stowed with rare drugs and
spices. He could tell of a wicked widow, too--a beautiful
receiver of smuggled goods upon the English coast--who smiled so
sweetly upon the smugglers when they sold her silks and laces,
cheap as tape and ginghams. She called them gallant fellows,
hearts of game; and bade them bring her more.

He could tell of desperate fights with his British majesty's
cutters, in midnight coves upon a stormy coast; of the capture of
a reckless band, and their being drafted on board a man-of-war;
of their swearing that their chief was slain; of a writ of habeas
corpus sent on board for one of them for a debt--a reserved and
handsome man--and his going ashore, strongly suspected of being the
slaughtered captain, and this a successful scheme for his escape.

But more than all, Jack could tell of the battle of Navarino, for
he had been a captain of one of the main-deck guns on board
Admiral Codrington's flag-ship, the Asia. Were mine the style of
stout old Chapman's Homer, even then I would scarce venture to
give noble Jack's own version of this fight, wherein, on the 20th
of October, A. D. 1827, thirty-two sail of Englishmen, Frenchmen,
and Russians, attacked and vanquished in the Levant an Ottoman
fleet of three ships-of-the line, twenty-five frigates, and a
swarm of fire ships and hornet craft.

"We bayed to be at them," said Jack; "and when we _did_ open
fire, we were like dolphin among the flying-fish. 'Every man take
his bird' was the cry, when we trained our guns. And those guns
all smoked like rows of Dutch pipe-bowls, my hearties! My gun's
crew carried small flags in their bosoms, to nail to the mast in
case the ship's colours were shot away. Stripped to the
waistbands, we fought like skinned tigers, and bowled down the
Turkish frigates like nine-pins. Among their shrouds--swarming
thick with small-arm men, like flights of pigeons lighted on
pine-trees--our marines sent their leaden pease and goose-
berries, like a shower