lay a lengthy part in "teasing time." One
verse, however, is enough to show the manly, if perhaps unreasoning,
pride the blue-jackets took in the triumphs of the navy.

But the time of the sailors on this closing cruise of the war was not
destined to be spent in sport and singing alone. The noble frigate was
not to return to the stagnation of a season of peace in port, without
adding yet another honor to her already honorable record. On the
morning of the 20th of February, as the ship was running aimlessly
before a light wind, some inexplicable impulse led Capt. Stewart to
suddenly alter his course and run off some sixty miles to the
south-west. Again the "Constitution's" good luck seemed to justify the
sailors' belief, for at noon she ran into a group of vessels. The
first vessel was sighted on the larboard bow, and, as the frigate
overhauled her, proved to be a full-rigged ship. Soon after a second
sail, also a ship, was sighted; and a few minutes more sufficed to
show that both were men-of-war. The one first sighted was the
frigate-built corvette "Cyane," of thirty-four guns; and the second
was the sloop-of-war "Levant," of twenty-one guns. For either of
these vessels singly, the "Constitution," with her fifty-two guns and
crew of four hundred and fifty men, was more than a match. Yet to
attack the two was a bold movement, and this Stewart determined to
undertake. Hardly had the character of the strangers been made out,
when the corvette was seen making signals to the sloop; and the two
vessels, then about ten miles apart, made all sail to get together
before the enemy should overhaul them. This juncture was precisely
what Stewart wished to prevent; and in a trice the shrill notes of the
boatswain's whistle sent the sailors in swarms into the rigging, and
the frigate was as if by magic clothed with a broad expanse of canvas.
Quickly she felt the effect, and bounded through the water after the
distant ships like a dolphin chasing a school of flying-fish. The old
tars on the forecastle looked knowingly over the side at the foamy
water rushing past, and then cast approving glances aloft where every
sail was drawing. But their complacency was shattered by a loud crash
aloft, which proved to be the main royal-mast which had given way
under the strain. Another spar was rigged speedily, and shipped by the
active tars, and soon the snowy clouds aloft showed no signs of the
wreck. At sundown the three vessels were so near eac