time, in a
community of pipes is a community of hearts! Nor was it an ill thing
for the Indian Sachems to circulate their calumet tobacco-bowl--even as
our own forefathers circulated their punch-bowl--in token of peace,
charity, and good-will, friendly feelings, and sympathising souls. And
this it was that made the gossipers of the galley so loving a club, so
long as the vapoury bond united them.

It was a pleasant sight to behold them. Grouped in the recesses between
the guns, they chatted and laughed like rows of convivialists in the
boxes of some vast dining-saloon. Take a Flemish kitchen full of good
fellows from Teniers; add a fireside group from Wilkie; throw in a
naval sketch from Cruickshank; and then stick a short pipe into every
mother's son's mouth, and you have the smoking scene at the galley of
the Neversink.

Not a few were politicians; and, as there were some thoughts of a war
with England at the time, their discussions waxed warm.

"I tell you what it is, _shippies!_" cried the old captain of gun No. 1
on the forecastle, "if that 'ere President of ourn don't luff up into
the wind, by the Battle of the Nile! he'll be getting us into a grand
fleet engagement afore the Yankee nation has rammed home her
cartridges--let alone blowing the match!"

"Who talks of luffing?" roared a roystering fore-top-man. "Keep our
Yankee nation large before the wind, say I, till you come plump on the
enemy's bows, and then board him in the smoke," and with that, there
came forth a mighty blast from his pipe.

"Who says the old man at the helm of the Yankee nation can't steer his
_trick_ as well as George Washington himself?" cried a sheet-anchor-man.

"But they say he's a cold-water customer, Bill," cried another; "and
sometimes o' nights I somehow has a presentation that he's goin' to
stop our grog."

"D'ye hear there, fore and aft!" roared the boatswain's mate at the
gangway, "all hands tumble up, and 'bout ship!"

"That's the talk!" cried the captain of gun No. 1, as, in obedience to
the summons, all hands dropped their pipes and crowded toward the
ladders, "and that's what the President must do--go in stays, my lads,
and put the Yankee nation on the other tack."

But these political discussions by no means supplied the staple of
conversation for the gossiping smokers of the galley. The interior
affairs of the frigate itself formed their principal theme. Rumours
about the private life of the Commodore in his cabi