engaged in scenes of wild
magnificence and fierce confusion, while at the next they revert to the
most familiar duties of humanity. The crews of the whole fleet now
retired from the guns, and immediately after they were seated around
their kids, indulging ravenously in the food for which the exercise of
the morning had given keen appetites. Still there was something of the
sternness of battle in the merriment of this meal, and the few jokes
that passed were seasoned with a bitterness that is not usual among the
light-hearted followers of the sea. Here and there, a messmate was
missed, and the vacancy produced some quaint and even pathetic allusion
to his habits, or to the manner in which he met his death; seamen
usually treating the ravages of this great enemy of the race, after the
blow has been struck, with as much solemnity and even tenderness, as
they regard his approaches with levity. It is when spared themselves,
that they most regard the destruction of battle. A man's standing in a
ship, too, carries great weight with it, at such times; the loss of the
quarter-master, in particular, being much regretted in the Plantagenet.
This man messed with a portion of the petty officers, a set of men
altogether more thoughtful and grave than the body of the crew; and who
met, when they assembled around their mess-chest that morning, with a
sobriety and even sternness of mien, that showed how much in the
management of the vessel had depended on their individual exertions.
Several minutes elapsed in the particular mess of the dead man, before a
word was spoken; all eating with appetites that were of proof, but no
one breaking the silence. At length an old quarter-gunner, named Tom
Sponge, who generally led the discourse, said in a sort of
half-inquiring, half-regretting, way--

"I suppose there's no great use in asking why Jack Glass's spoon is idle
this morning. They says, them forecastle chaps, that they see'd his body
streaming out over the starboard quarter, as if it had been the fly of
one of his own ensigns. How was it, Ned? you was thereaway, and ought to
know all about it."

"To be sure I does," said Ned, who was Bunting's remaining assistant. "I
was there, as you says, and see'd as much of it as a man can see of what
passes between a poor fellow and a shot, when they comes together, and
that not in a very loving manner. It happened just as we come upon the
weather beam of that first chap--him as we winged so handsom