Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 Part 4

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN UNWELCOME GUEST.--DRAWN BY H. P. SHARE.]

[Begun in HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE No. 31, July 13.]

THE STORY OF THE AMERICAN NAVY.

BY BENSON J. LOSSING.

CHAPTER III.

"North African pirates are out on the Mediterranean Sea; our budding commerce there is in danger; we _must_ have a navy to protect it," wrote a distinguished American in Europe to Alexander Hamilton. President Washington called the attention of Congress to the matter, and in the spring of 1794 he was authorized to have six frigates built, each carrying not less than thirty-two cannon. The keel of the _Const.i.tution_ (yet afloat) was soon laid at Boston, and so the creation of the Navy of the United States was begun.

To the heroes of the Continental Navy the people looked for commanders of the new frigates, and Barry, Nicholson, Talbot, Barney, Dale, and Truxton, all of whom had done gallant service in the war for independence, were chosen.

The building of the frigates was unwisely suspended in the fall of 1795.

"Pay me so many hundred thousand dollars every year, and I will let your ships alone," said the piratical ruler of Algiers. The terms were agreed to. Congress seemed to think that now all danger to commerce was overpast, and a navy would be an extravagant toy. But when, not long afterward, French cruisers seized American ships, and English cruisers claimed the right (and exercised it) to take seamen from our vessels without leave, Congress perceived the folly of their humiliating action.

War with France was threatened in the spring of 1798. The startled Congress ordered the six frigates to be finished, and more to be built or purchased. A Navy Department was organized, and a Secretary of the Navy appointed. Recruits were called for. The navy became very popular, and the ships were soon filled, with the sons of the best families in the land holding the rank of midshipmen.

The first vessel of the new navy that went to sea was the _Ganges_, twenty-four guns. She was to protect the ports of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore against French cruisers. Toward midsummer (1798), Congress authorized the seizure of French armed vessels found prowling along our coasts. For this purpose Truxton, with the _Constellation_, and Decatur the elder, with the _Delaware_, immediately went to sea. Decatur soon returned with the French cruiser _Le Croyable_ as a prize. She was added to the navy, named _Retaliation_, and put under the command of Lieutenant Bainbridge. Captain Barry, with the frigate _United States_, soon followed, with many young men who afterward became distinguished in their country's service. Before the end of the year nearly the whole American navy was among the West India Islands, engaged in convoying merchantmen to and from the United States.

This sudden appearance on the sea of a new naval power astonished the English and the French, and made both more cautious.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGHT BETWEEN THE "CONSTELLATION" AND "LA VENGEANCE."]

Early in 1799, Truxton, with the _Constellation_, captured the famous French frigate _L'Insurgente_, near the island of Nevis, after a severe battle for an hour. This triumph made Truxton famous. His praises were on every lip. A song called "Truxton's Victory" was sung everywhere in public and private. A year later his fame was increased by his combat with another French frigate, which he had searched for among the islands of the West Indies. Off Guadeloupe he fell in with a large French vessel at twilight, and they fought desperately in the darkness that followed.

Suddenly the stranger disappeared in the gloom of night. Some time afterward Truxton learned that the ship was the very one he was searching for--the frigate _La Vengeance_; that he had shattered her terribly; and that she ran away in the darkness to a friendly port to save her life.

These victories made the navy very popular. Truxton was the hero of this war with the French on the ocean. It soon ceased, and the little navy found ample employment in the Mediterranean.

In the year 1800 Bainbridge was sent, in command of the _George Washington_, to pay tribute to the Algerine ruler. The Dey, as he was called, commanded the Captain to take an Amba.s.sador to Constantinople.

Bainbridge refused. "You pay me tribute, and are my slave," said the haughty Dey; "you must do as I bid you;" and he pointed to the guns of the castle. The Captain was compelled to obey. The Sultan received him kindly, for the crescent moon on the Turkish banner, and the stars on the American flag, seemed to prophesy good-will between the two nations.

He gave Bainbridge an order that made the insolent Dey tremble. With it in his hand, the Captain said to the turbaned ruler, "Release every Christian captive you have, without ransom." The astonished and humbled Dey obeyed, and Bainbridge sailed away with threescore liberated captives under the American flag.

Meanwhile the rulers of Tunis and Tripoli--other North African robbers--had exacted and received tribute from the United States. The treatment of Bainbridge made the latter resolve to pay tribute no longer, but to humble the piratical powers. In the spring of 1801 Commodore Dale was sent with a squadron on that errand. He captured a Tripolitan pirate ship, and appeared before Tunis, where the flag-staff before the house of the American Consul had been cut down. Dale threatened the ruler with chastis.e.m.e.nt. He was astonished and perplexed.

Dale cruised in the Mediterranean until fall, effectually protecting American commerce, for the half-barbarian powers were made timid and cautious.

The following year a relief squadron was sent to the Mediterranean under Commodore Morris. The _Constellation_ blockaded the harbor of Tripoli. A flotilla of Tripolitan gun-boats tried to drive her away, but failed. At one time the _Constellation_ successfully fought seventeen of them, as well as troops of cavalry on sh.o.r.e. The other vessels of the squadron cruised along the northern sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, effectually protecting American commerce; and in January, 1803, all the vessels collected at Malta. In the spring they appeared off the ports of the Barbary States, as these African provinces were called, and effectually imprisoned their corsairs, or pirate ships, in their harbors. In May the _John Adams_, which had been blockading the harbor of Tunis, had a severe combat with Tunisian gun-boats and land batteries, and was much bruised. Very soon Tripolitan and Algerine corsairs appeared, and the whole American squadron was compelled to abandon the blockade of the African ports, after they had destroyed a cruiser from Tripoli. The squadron left the coast, the Africans regained their spirits, and very soon American commerce was again suffering from the depredations of corsairs.

The government of the United States, annoyed by the failure of this naval campaign in the Mediterranean, resolved to act with more vigor in that direction. A squadron of seven vessels was placed under the command of Commodore Preble, and sent to the Mediterranean in 1803.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

THE STORY OF THE DAISIES.

BY MRS. MARGARET EYTINGE.

Daisies, golden-hearted, star-like, smiling daisies, all over the fields and meadows, all along the highways and by-ways--bonny wee flowers looking bravely up at the dazzling sun, and giving with child-like generosity their beauty to the loneliest spots and most desolate places.

Close up to a fence that surrounded a garden where bloomed hundreds of rare and lovely blossoms they crowded, praising with sweet artlessness the grace and fragrance of their more precious sisters, and wondering every morning when the gardener came out at early dawn and collected many young plants together, and gathered roses, and pansies, and gladioles, and verbenas, and pinks, and other flowers by the basketful, to carry away, where he took them and what became of them.

"I will tell you," said a tall, graceful white lily that grew near the garden gate, one day, as she inclined her fair head toward them. "I have been where they are going--I and the tuberoses over yonder. (We are growing in pots sunk in the ground, and therefore can be taken up and moved from place to place without harm.) Once I helped deck a large, sunshiny room--I was a very young bud then--where a great many little children, looking like flowers themselves in their gay dresses, sang, and played, and laughed, and danced for joy, because a baby friend was three years old that day; and once I stood at the right hand of a gray-haired minister, in a crowded church, and heard him say, 'Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' But, dear, simple, wee things, you don't understand that, do you? I forgot to whom I was talking. They go to a large city, where nothing is seen but brick and stone buildings and hosts of people, and nothing is heard but the sound of voices and footsteps, and the ringing of bells, and the tramping of horses, and rolling of wagons, and where there are no bees, nor b.u.t.terflies, nor birds, save canaries that live in cages, and sparrows that can live anywhere."

"But the daisies are never taken to the city," said the daisies, after a short pause, "and they are flowers as well as the verbenas and pinks."

"Bless your innocent little hearts! I know they are," said the lily.

"But the fact is, no one cares to buy daisies."

"So n.o.body cares for us in the big city," said the daisies to each other, "and yet the b.u.t.terflies and birds tell us we are very pretty."

But the lily was mistaken, for the very next morning the gardener came out into the meadow with a trowel in his hand, and digging up some of the largest daisy plants, replanted them in a large flower-pot.

"Somebody wants us after all," they called to the gra.s.s, and the dandelions, and the other daisies, as they were carried away, "and we shall see the fine houses, and perhaps live with lilies, roses, and geraniums all the rest of our lives. Good-by, dear friends, good-by."

In a short time the daisies found themselves in a market-place--not among cabbages and tomatoes, but at the end of a row of blooming plants from the garden at which they had so often peeped through the fence. But they had scarcely had time to look about them when they saw a shabbily dressed boy coming slowly toward them--slowly, poor fellow, because one of his feet was sadly misshapen, and in his arms he carried a heavy bundle of newspapers. He looked eagerly at the gardener as he came near.

"I've got your daisies, my boy," the man called, cheerily. "Here they are, still wet with the dew, as handsome daisies as ever I saw. You must keep them in the shade a day or two, giving them a drink now and then, and I don't doubt they'll do finely. Will you take them now?"

"Yes, sir, thank you," said the boy, his whole face lighting up, and his pale cheeks flushing, "if you will let me leave my papers here a few minutes until I can run home with them. But you've brought so many--and they're in a nice pot, too--I'm afraid I haven't money enough to pay for them."

"Five cents was the price agreed on yesterday," said the good-natured gardener, "and I always stick to a bargain. And if there's more than you expected, all the better for you--some of 'em'll be sure to thrive anyhow. As for the pot, you're welcome to that. A flower-pot more or less won't make me or break me."

The boy threw down his bundle, took the daisies with another "thank you," and hurried away as fast as his poor foot would let him to an old, queer-looking wooden house near the market, where, hugging his treasure closely to his breast, he mounted the shaky stairs until he reached the garret. Pushing open a door here, he entered a neat little room with only one window in it, but that a dormer facing the south. The floor of this room was bare, with the exception of two or three round rag mats, and the walls were decorated in the oddest manner with pictures cut from old papers and magazines, bits of colored gla.s.s, strips of glittering tin twisted into grotesque shapes, and red and green motto-papers fashioned into some semblance of flowers.

On a bed near the window lay a little pale-faced, brown-haired girl, with wistful gray eyes, and a smile like sunshine breaking through a cloud. In her hands she held a pair of knitting-needles, with which she was knitting with marvellous quickness some coa.r.s.e thread into wide, strong lace. Beside the bed stood a small table, holding a box of water-colors, a camel's-hair brush or two, a lead-pencil, a cup filled with water, and a piece of paper on which was a rude attempt at a painting of a bunch of daisies.

"See what I've brought you, Phemie!" cried her brother, joyfully.

"To-day's your birthday: thirteen years old--almost as old as I am. Bet you thought I'd forgotten it; but I didn't, dearie; no, indeed."

"Daisies! daisies!" cried the girl, with a sweet glad laugh, dropping her work, and holding out her pretty slender hands. "Oh, brother--dear, good, _darling_ brother--will they live and grow?"

"The gardener says they will, and he ought to know," answered her brother. "And now you needn't be aching your poor little head any more trying to think exactly how they look, for you can study them all day long. But, good gracious! I must go and sell my papers, or we'll have no berries for dinner, and that would be dreadful." And giving his sister a kiss, he hurried away again, as happy, I believe, as any boy in that great city on that pleasant summer day.

"I am so glad, so very, _very_ glad that you have come," said Phemie to the daisies as soon as he was gone, as she set them on the table, and gazed at them with tears in her eyes, "and I beg of you to live, dear daisies. I am a poor weak little girl, and I can sit up but a few hours each day. But a long while ago I could run about like other little girls, and I lived in the country, where thousands of daisies grew, and I have never forgotten them. Mamma was alive then, but she's dead now, and father left us here a year after she died, and we have never seen him since. He didn't care for daisies or us. How good of Brother Frank to bring you to me, daisies! I shall knit so much better and faster, and earn so much more money, with your bright faces smiling at me. And some day I shall make a picture of you--I have been trying to paint one from memory--that shall be almost as pretty as your own dear selves." And she leaned back against her pillow, singing softly to herself; and while her fingers plied the knitting-needles, her spirit, led by the spirits of the meadow flowers, wandered to green fields, and listened to the hum of the bees and the song of the birds, and grew lighter and happier every moment. And Frank, coming in quietly at noon, saw her with closed eyes and clasped hands, and heard her say, "Dear G.o.d, a helpless child thanks Thee for daisies!"

And the daisies all lived, and increased in numbers until the room overflowed with them. On floor and shelves they bloomed in cracked pitchers, broken jars, old fruit cans, everything that Frank could find to fill with them. And Phemie did paint a beautiful picture of them at last, and through this picture came much good fortune to that garret home. For Frank, showing it, in his brotherly love and pride, to a kind gentleman whom he served with papers, was surprised to learn that it was worth more than his sister knitting lace for three long months could earn.

And now to end the story. The very prettiest New-Year's card that appeared to celebrate the birth of 1880 was one on which the New-Year's greeting was printed on a ribbon encircling the stems of a bunch of daisies. Those daisies are Phemie's daisies. And the young flower painter, growing stronger day by day, is the happy mistress of two pleasant rooms and a mite of a studio.