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Page 8
"I am showing them how we do this in the artillery, sir."
And this is the part of the story where all the legends agree; and the
Commodore said,--
"I see you do, and I thank you, sir; and I shall never forget this day,
sir, and you never shall, sir."
And after the whole thing was over, and he had the Englishman's sword,
in the midst of the state and ceremony of the quarter-deck, he said,--
"Where is Mr. Nolan? Ask Mr. Nolan to come here."
And when Nolan came, the captain said,--
"Mr. Nolan, we are all very grateful to you to-day; you are one of us
to-day; you will be named in the despatches."
And then the old man took off his own sword of ceremony, and gave it to
Nolan, and made him put it on. The man told me this who saw it. Nolan
cried like a baby, and well he might. He had not worn a sword since that
infernal day at Fort Adams. But always afterwards on occasions of
ceremony, he wore that quaint old French sword of the Commodore's.
The captain did mention him in the despatches. It was always said he
asked that he might be pardoned. He wrote a special letter to the
Secretary of War. But nothing ever came of it. As I said, that was about
the time when they began to ignore the whole transaction at Washington,
and when Nolan's imprisonment began to carry itself on because there was
nobody to stop it without any new orders from home.
I have heard it said that he was with Porter when he took possession of
the Nukahiwa Islands. Not this Porter, you know, but old Porter, his
father, Essex Porter,--that is, the old Essex Porter, not this Essex. As
an artillery officer, who had seen service in the West, Nolan knew more
about fortifications, embrasures, ravelins, stockades, and all that,
than any of them did; and he worked with a right good-will in fixing
that battery all right. I have always thought it was a pity Porter did
not leave him in command there with Gamble. That would have settled all
the question about his punishment. We should have kept the islands, and
at this moment we should have one station in the Pacific Ocean. Our
French friends, too, when they wanted this little watering-place, would
have found it was preoccupied. But Madison and the Virginians, of
course, flung all that away.
All that was near fifty year ago. If Nolan was thirty then, he must have
been near eighty when he died. He looked sixty when he was forty. But he
never seemed to me to change a hair afterwards. As I imagine his life,
from what I have seen and heard of it, he must have been in every sea,
and yet almost never on land. He must have known, in a formal way, more
officers in our service than any man living knows. He told me once, with
a grave smile, that no man in the world lived so methodical a life as
he. "You know the boys say I am the Iron Mask, and you know how busy he
was." He said it did not do for any one to try to read all the time,
more than to do anything else all the time; but that he read just five
hours a day. "Then," he said, "I keep up my note-books, writing in them
at such and such hours from what I have been reading; and I include in
these my scrap-books." These were very curious indeed. He had six or
eight, of different subjects. There was one of History, one of Natural
Science, one which he called "Odds and Ends." But they were not merely
books of extracts from newspapers. They had bits of plants and ribbons,
shells tied on, and carved scraps of bone and wood, which he had taught
the men to cut for him, and they were beautifully illustrated. He drew
admirably. He had some of the funniest drawings there, and some of the
most pathetic, that I have ever seen in my life. I wonder who will have
Nolan's scrap-books.
Well, he said his reading and his notes were his profession, and that
they took five hours and two hours respectively of each day. "Then,"
said he, "every man should have a diversion as well as a profession. My
Natural History is my diversion." That took two hours a day more. The
men used to bring him birds and fish, but on a long cruise he had to
satisfy himself with centipedes and cockroaches and such small game. He
was the only naturalist I ever met who knew anything about the habits of
the house-fly and the mosquito. All those people can tell you whether
they are _Lepidoptera_ or _Steptopotera_; but as for telling how you can
get rid of them, or how they get away from you when you strike
them,--why Linn�us knew as little of that as John Foy the idiot did.
These nine hours made Nolan's regular daily "occupation." The rest of
the time he talked or walked. Till he grew very old, he went aloft a
great deal. He always kept up his exercise; and I never heard that he
was ill. If any other man was ill, he was the kindest nurse in the
world; and he knew more than half the surgeons do. Then if anybody was
sick or died, or if the captain wanted him to, on any other occasion, he
was always ready to read prayers. I have said that he read beautifully.
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