no doubt, if the order were, “Poets to the front!” “Painters present arms!” “Sculptors charge bagonets!” a baker’s dozen out of every company would respond.
Well, to go on with their story, — when they had taken their prize, they drove her straight downstream to Annapolis, the nearest point to Washington. There they found the Naval Academy in danger of attack, and Old Ironsides — serving as a practice-ship for the future midshipmen — also exposed. The call was now for seamen to man the old craft and save her from a worse enemy than her prototype met in the “Guerrière.” Seamen? Of course! They were Marblehead men, Gloucester men, Beverly men, seamen all, par excellence! They clapped on the frigate to aid the middies, and by and by started her out into the stream. In doing this their own pilot took the chance to run them purposely on a shoal in the intricate channel. A great error of judgment on his part! as he perceived, when he found himself in irons and in confinement. “The days of trifling with traitors are over!” think the Eighth Regiment of Massachusetts.
But there they were, hard and fast on the shoal, when we came up. Nothing to nibble on but knobs of anthracite. Nothing to sleep on softer or cleaner than coal-dust. Nothing to drink but the brackish water under their keel. “Rather rough!” so they afterward patiently told us.
Meantime the Constitution had got hold of a tug,
