Your wife dejected sea-ward looks and sues, Come, master, heave ahead! or I will roam The deep without you, and bear tidings home 3065 That you from out the ship can not be got, While in the locker there remains a shot. Then farewell, shipmates! Thus the needle steers Master, hold on! mind, mind your weather-helm! LXVII. At length the full-gorg'd monarch of the main, 3375 3080 Rise from the deep, and minister their aid; Thus pour'd the boding accents of dismay : 3085 3095 What ails our sire! whence, bending down his head, 3105 The first Yankey trick on record is alluded to by Butler, in his facetious poem of Hudibras. Soon after the arrival of the first settlers in New England, a white man having killed an Indian, the whole tribe assembled and demanded the death of the criminal. But he being in the heyday of youth and strength, and consequently valuable to a rising state; the Colonists hanged instead of him, an old, superannuated personage, whom years and infirmities had reduced to crutches. The Indians, on detecting the ruse practised on them, called it a "Yankey Trick." gave Then thus the groom: (as to his mouth he 3115 Is this the first time-by some fifty score- 3120 3125 * The Quarterly Reviewers indulge only broad grins at the American Navy, but these grins, if persisted in by their successors, may, in the long run, become sardonic. A fleet composed of 12 American 74s, each ship vieing in tonnage with an English hundred gun ship, and manned with fully as numerous a crew, that is 1000 men, would in a line of battle be an object of derision only to fools or madmen. Twelve thousand prime yankey seamen fighting a proportionate number of cannon, and firing them more like riflemen than M 3130 Theu the king thus: I see how sits the wind ! 3135 artillerists, would peradventure make such men as the Quarterly Reviewers stop their ears at every broadside. It must likewise be taken into the account that British blood circulates in Jonathan's veins-that the great grandfathers of the aforesaid crews drew their first breath either in England or Wales, in Scotland or Ireland that they feed on beef and drink porter-and that they talk and, unfortunately, swear in English. The Quarterly Reviewers, by their misrepresen tations relative to America, and deceptions practised on their readers, have done more real injury to the common weal of England, than all the offenders, that, since the establishment of their Literary Inquisition, have been freighted off to Australasia. They may indulge their laughter, but they cannot alter the fact, that in the event of a future war with America, England would find the United States' Navy a respectable force. It would not be policy to send her channel fleet across the Atlantic, and she might require a fleet in the Mediterranean, or in the Baltic. She could attack the United States only by detachment; and a smaller armament than that she could detach would be rendered equal or superior on the part of the Americans by the celerity with which they could recover any check, whilst the dis asters of their enemy might be irretrievable. I see a cat's paw* yonder in the west, The rising gale will cool your fever'd breast. The haughtiest hearts at length their rage resign, 3150 Meantime our full throng'd yards display a host The car-borne god, on flaming wheels of gold, 3155 A cat's paw is a partial heaving of the sea's surface in a calm-the germ of the breeze. How often on the ocean have I heard the master of a ship, looking anxiously over the counter, exclaim, after an enduring calm, "Yonder is a cat's paw, at last!" |