The San Francisco call., 1897-07-25

Be a-rollin' an pitchin';
f we hang around much longer
This ERE navy-yard adornin'
Tn farmers in Their parors
viii our bloomin' selves be scornin.
The next stanza was devoted to the ad-
miraPs withering contempt for the scorn.
ers, couched in diction lurid as the flash
of ten-tonner, but Fisher considered that
the poem eliminated in grandeur with
Tn farmers in ther' parors,
And, moreover, was pretty bit of play to
put the hereditary traducer of the sailor in
such feminine locality as a parlor, from
which enfeebling vantage ground he could
hur his bucolic animadversions at the
noble mariner. So while the Benicia was
cutting the seas into foam with her sharp
forefoot and burying her lee cathead low
in the white smother, they sang Cook
Lind's stirring "homeward bound song
to the sound of drums and harpstrings
heard afar up in the deep bends Of the
wind-swolIen canvas; and TO that song
the waves broken at the bow dubbed and
swirled into the silver wake run ming bake
across the water till it blended with the
blues ana green's of the distant sea
"'F Old Gill can only hold toget her."
said Walker, captain of the malntop star
board, to the big hemp-sheet that held
down the after corner of the mainsail,
filled with the breeze and bending to the
rigidity of curved plate of steel. T hen
he his gaze mount to the far snowy
royal, billow ing out like fold of cloud in
the bue. Braced to a hair, in the flush of
the steady trade, not a shiver, not the
ghost Of a wrinkle was travelling over the
mar BILE hard surfaces of cloth. He looked
at the balloon-ljke studdlng canvas, and
saw that the wind was almost too much
for these light addenda of sails; but the
commander had vowed that he would
take the stiffness of the Asiatic winters
out of the booms, and he evidently was
doing so.
"'F old ] ack Gill can only hold toge-
ther," he repeated, and though satisfied
with his inspection on the main and of
the speed the ship was making, m uttered: {:
''but I'm damned if think he WILL"
Dunn, captain of the foretop, noting
Walkers close inspection OF matters on
the main, began investigating the be-
havior of his own canvas on the fore.
There is always a fierce rivalry between
the different parts the-shlp aboard
man-of-war in drill or in the ordinary
work of the vessel. But on this occasion
a different feeling impelled Dunn to send
his keen eye aloft among the hard hollows
of his sails, that like the others further
aft were vocal with the resounding thun-
der OF the pent-up winds. Then he echoed
Walkers words-"'F old Gill can only
hold together, but doubt it,
Dave Clark, the ships armorer, stood in
the door of his little arsenal, where the
line of FURNISHED musket- barrels showed
in their rack like the steel pipes OF war
organ. Ee looked up at the burdened
yards tugging bravely in their braces and
mu tered in his Neptune-like beard: "'F
Old Jack can only boP together" Quar-
ter-Gunner Johnson paused In his work of
oiling the compressor of q murderous
rapid fire rife and gave voice to the same
thought; and usually silent Mastman
George Romer, sitting among his ropes
tailoring into respectability much-worn
flannel shirt, gave utterance to the same
idea. When Bond, the Quartermaster of
the watch, came forward after heaving the
log and reported the ship throwing twelve
good honest knots out into her white rib
bon OF wake all the watch along the decks
thought of Old Gill and his ability to hold
together. Then they looked over the blue
knolls of surge that arose and receded on
the great liquid plain occasionally pitch
ing foam cap across the hammock net
ting as the Benicia bowed in her weather
roll to the oncoming sea, ana doubted.
Down in the sick-bay one OF the crew
law dying with his cot swaylng to the
swing of the plunging ship-himself a
pendulum marking off the hours of his
own life, flying. 1t was Old Gill home
ward bound. He had been a carpenters s
mate in the service some remote day near
the dawn OF the century, and Sake
pertaining to the lapses of time than the