e better than none. Your
standing idle in a fight must be trying work!"

Marble and I conversed a little longer on this subject, when a gun fired
from the upper-deck gave us notice that the game was about to begin. Each
hastened to his intended post without more words. When I reached the
quarter-deck, everything denoted the eve of a combat. The ship was under
short canvass, the men were at quarters, the guns were cast loose, and
were levelled; the tompions were all out, shot was distributed about the
deck; and here and there some old salt of a captain might be seen
squinting along his gun, as if impatient to begin. A silence like that of
a deserted church reigned throughout the ship. Had one been on board her
intended adversary, at that same instant, be would have been deafened by
the clamour, and confused with the hurried and disorderly manner in which
preparations that were long before completed on board the British, were
still in progress on board the Frenchman. Four years earlier, the same
want of preparation had given Nelson his great victory at the Nile. The
French, in order to clear their outer batteries, had lumbered those
in-shore; and when half their enemies unexpectedly passed inside, they
found their ships were not prepared to fire; ships that were virtually
beaten, before they had discharged an effective shot.

"Wallingford," said my old friend the captain, as soon as I approached
him, "you have nothing to do here. It would not be proper for you to take
a part in this action, and it would be folly to expose yourself without
an object."

"I am quite aware of all this, Captain Rowley, but I have thought your
kindness to me was so great as to permit me to be a looker-on. I may be of
some service to the wounded, if to nothing else; and I hope you think me
too much of an officer to get in the way."

"I am not certain, sir, I ought to permit anything of the sort," returned
the old man, gravely. "This fighting is serious business, and no one
should meddle with it whose duty does not command it of him. See here,
sir," pointing at the French frigate, which was about two cable's-lengths
distant, with her top-gallant-sails clewed up and the courses in the
brails; "in ten minutes we shall be hard at it, and I leave it to yourself
to say whether prudence does not require that you should-go below."

I had expected this; and, instead of contesting the matter, I bowed, and
walked off the quarter-deck, as if about to co