Chapter 83 - Page 2

with a student's stoop in
his shoulders, and wearing uncommonly scanty pantaloons, exhibiting
an undue proportion of his boots. In early life he had been a cadet
in the military academy of West Point; but, becoming very weak-sighted,
and thereby in a good manner disqualified for active service in the
field, he had declined entering the army, and accepted the office of
Professor in the Navy.

His studies at West Point had thoroughly grounded him in a
knowledge of gunnery; and, as he was not a little of a pedant, it
was sometimes amusing, when the sailors were at quarters, to hear
him criticise their evolutions at the batteries. He would quote
Dr. Hutton's Tracts on the subject, also, in the original, "_The
French Bombardier_," and wind up by Italian passages from the
"_Prattica Manuale dell' Artiglieria_."

Though not required by the Navy regulations to instruct his
scholars in aught but the application of mathematics to
navigation, yet besides this, and besides instructing them in the
theory of gunnery, he also sought to root them in the theory of
frigate and fleet tactics. To be sure, he himself did not know
how to splice a rope or furl a sail; and, owing to his partiality
for strong coffee, he was apt to be nervous when we fired
salutes; yet all this did not prevent him from delivering
lectures on cannonading and "breaking the enemy's line."

He had arrived at his knowledge of tactics by silent, solitary
study, and earnest meditation in the sequestered retreat of his
state-room. His case was somewhat parallel to the Scotchman's--
John. Clerk, Esq., of Eldin--who, though he had never been to
sea, composed a quarto treatise on fleet-fighting, which to this
day remains a text-book; and he also originated a nautical
manoeuvre, which has given to England many a victory over her foes.

Now there was a large black-board, something like a great-gun
target--only it was square--which during the professor's lectures
was placed upright on the gun-deck, supported behind by three
boarding-pikes. And here he would chalk out diagrams of great
fleet engagements; making marks, like the soles of shoes, for
the ships, and drawing a dog-vane in one corner to denote the
assumed direction of the wind. This done, with a cutlass he
would point out every spot of interest.

"Now, young gentlemen, the board before you exhibits the
disposition of the British West Indian squadron under Rodney,
when, early on the morning of the 9th of April, in the year of
our blessed Lord 1782, he discovered part of the French fleet,
commanded by the Count de Grasse, lying under the north end of
the Island of Dominica. It was at this juncture that the Admiral
gave the signal