Evening Star Newspaper, December 31, 1922, Page 35

- FICTION - e '/ MAGAZINE SECTION = - The Sundiy Star. Part 4—8 Pages Strategy BY DR. R. W, SHUFELDT. GAD. how she rolls and how she pitches! And well she may, for there is a heavy sea on, follow- ing upon a thirty-mile gale off | the coast of Staten Island. The blue- | black waves rise and fall like young mountains, here and there topped off with a snow-white crest. It is the U. S Zunboat Proteus, and the harbor pilot, Jr. Metcalf, is just taking his leave of | her. Soon her commanding officer will | cpen the official envelope containing his | orders from the Navy Department and find that he is directed to report at Key West and join the East Gulf squadron, | where additional instructions will be | issued to him. i In due course this came about, and Yieut. Commander K. W. Shufeldt of was directed to cruise in the fexico and among the Baha- . with the view of engaging, should r of them, the far- the Alabama and and further to capture nk such blockade runners as the fell in with. Al this in the vhen the civil war was P and there was no telling how it was to terminate. 1 There had been built. fitted out and «ommissioned three or four gunboats of . xactly the same class as the Proteus, o one of them being of a model to cither chase or capture the best class «f blockade runners, s not one of them could make more than twelve knots and a short half an hour, while the aforesald privateers outclassed them Loth in speed and in fighting capacity, aithough in the latter particular our zunboat had a fair chance, but no more, «f coming out victorious in an encounter. | * % ¥ ¥ ’rm.: Proteus was full-officered. had a picked crew of two hundred men, ul. being a screw stcamer, stoutly huilt, she could carry a maximum bat- tory for her size. This last consisted + eight smooth-bore thirty-twos on the deck: a two-hundred-pound Parrot 1o amidships on the spar deck: two hirty-two-pound Parrot rifles, one on o forecastle and the other aft on the peop deck, and two twelve-pound brass She was two-masted—being fore and aft—with no par- tion save oukum bale: gangways opposite her Ylorida, Napeleons. iar prot placed in the Dbotlers. My father was her commanding offi- cer. and to the best of my recollec- tion I was between thirteen and four- teen years of age when he selected w6 as his sceretary and signal offi- cer. From the start 1 was treated as a man grown, aund In a very short Ume 1 quite lost sight of the fact that the captain of the Proteus was my father. Indeed, upon more than oRe occasion I was less favored than other officers in being selected for duties wherein the matter of danger had any part. I took the oath of al- legiance in the old Navy Department ouilding before Mr. Crosby, who was tiideon Welles' ieing Secretary of the Navy at time, in Lincoln's ‘cabinct. The executive officer of the Pro- teus was the late Admiral Bartlett J. Cromwell, and to the best of my belief I am the officer of her complement now living. with the pos- | sible exception of Admiral Hoff, who | was an ensign at the time of which I write. As already stated, our crew was a “well selected one, a fair proportion of | them being full scamen, about a third ordinary seamen, and the balance landsmen or recruits, most of whom 1A never been to sea before in their lives. Taken as a whole, some dozen or more nutionalities were represent- «d, including a Mohawk Indian, Chi-! namen and Japanese, with others from | nearly every country in Europe. Some liad been in the British and French | thers had histories that they themselves—but they were that were historfes, I be- -ve. One man, T well remember, had 4 his throat cut from ear to car, and the scar used to gap open every | time he threw his head back as he | pulled down on the brails. And as for | tattooing—well, some of the designs-| could hardly be deseribed. 4 i This crew of ours got a good rub the very commencement of our cruise, as may easlly be imagined | srom what I have said abova about the old Proteus tossing and pitch-[ historics at s WASHINGTON, SUNDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 31, 1922. Marked Struggle With Blockade Runners in Ci Some Stories Told by Youngest Officer of the Federal Gupboat Proteus—About a Third of Crew Consisted of, Ordinary Seamen, With Balance Landsmen or Recruits, Most of Whom Had Never Been to Sea Before in Their Lives—Dozen or More Natiopalities Represented—American Whaler, Mistaking Graft for the Florida, Used British Flag in Attempt to Evade Cap- ture—Crew of Capfured Jupiter Nearly Succeeds in Attempt at Mutiny—Rifles Thr_own Overboard in Straw Mats—Tale of Rotten Pumpkin Which Reached Its Mark With Disastrogs Effect. D. C, ! BOUT a week after her capture, I was on deck one dark, drizzly ! night, and standing near the smoke- = | stack. Some eight or ten men were | huddled together in its deep shadow. They were earnestly whispering among themselves and, unnoticed, I drew near with the {object of our chase hull up, and her we discussing. Fortunate it was for us | lookouts quickly rccognized us as & that I did so. I at once discovered that ]Ya.nkcas gunboat. She was a long, rak- it was the entire bunch of the Jupi- l;fih-hmkifl: thing—a side-wheeler, paint- ter's crew--our prize crew—plotting a | ed a pale blue-gray. Fore and aft sails, { mutiny. They named quite a number | schooner rig, with short masts far apart. of our own men who were in it, and | We crowded her out to sea, where she | they even designated thosc among them- {lost speed through her wheels being not | selves who were to assassinate our |always fully under water as she rose different officers. They planned to cap- [Py A, N / /; = > W (/7’}// —_— e 2 | 1485y |ture the ship; take her to Galveston, o {and fit her out as a rebel privateer. {I slipped away unseen, and brought {the whole matter to the attention of minutes. !ited at first, but, to the best of recol- | lection, another officer was directed to overhead, or anything that would con- firm it. He soon returned to the cap- tain's cabin and reported that my ob- servations were entirely true. Capt. North, however, knew nothing of the scheme, while all the others were soon in double irons, including some undesir- able characters of our own crew. They received their full deserts on our ar- rival at Key West. When they were leaving us, Capt. North, just as he was going over the side, had an epportunity to speak to We !and fell "on the waves. fired a { blank cartridge to bring her to, but it | did not stop her. She then flew a Brit- “THE BOARDERS SWARMED ABOARD, MOST OF THEM WITH PISTOL IN HAND AND CUTLASS IN TEETH." e ew of listening to what they | |the captaln within the next fifteen My report was hardly cred-| see if he could overhear what I had | vil War !around us &nd singing, at the top o | their voices, such songs as “The Lons Star of Texas” “Dixie” and other { Confederate songs of the day. Mr ]P!erce. the officer of the deck, asked permission to turn the bilge-hose oy them, but the request was not grant- ed. | \ * * x ¥ ‘WAS standing near the wardroom i1 hatchway watching the perform. {ance. The mate was standing up on the after seat of the boat—a big man, | with no hat on—with arms akimbq <| and singing 2 most vulgar song, quite | derogatory to the United States Navy |and the federal government. One of | our men came cauttously up out of the berth-deck hatch, forward.- He {carried an immense pumpkin, which | he was balancing in his right hand, and one side of it was quite rotten and soft. He braced himself for a shot—and that pumpkin, in the next , minute, like the shell from a ten- pound mortar, traveled through the air, the curve of the trajectory being | most accurately calculated. To tha surprise of all who witnessed it, the | huge vegetable, rotten side down, 1it | with tremendous force directly on top | of the head of the Inate, who was still standing up in his boat. Down he {went as though hit with a sledge- hammer, and the crew pulled away from us as fast as their oars could nake it. None of us cheered or sang a lne: but “Hail Columbia” would have come in there quite appropriate- Next day the Diario, the leading newspaper In Havana, came out with 2 flaring editorial, describing the In- cident in words to the effect that & “boat from the Confederate steamier Frances _was pulling around the : Yankee gunboat Proteus last evening, and, for entertainment, her crew wae innocently singing some Christian hymns, when a lJow-down savage, a4 member of the crew of the Proteus, fired a great, rotten pumpkin at the mate in the boat, hitting him on the head, nearly breaking his neck, and instantly putting an end to the sing- ing. The world may now know some- & of the class of ruffians who are fending the Yankee government.” That pumpkin may stand as a fitting period to the present stors. —_— How Large Are Atoms? | *CIENCE informs us that all bodies S are composed of atoms and molt- cules, atoms being the smallest par- ticles into which matter in gemerai can be divided, and molecules the wmallest particles into which any narticular body can be divided with- out losing its identity. For instance | the smallest particles of salt which are able to Tetain the properties of salt are molecules, but such moic- cules may be split up into particles composed of sodium zrd particles composed of chlorine, a.. these ele- mentary prticles, which cannot again be divided, are atoms. But no one has ever been able to sce, or distinguish, a molecule or an atom. Yet the possibility of their be- ing rendered visible has more than once been discussed. Reasons have | peen offered for believing that mole- cules are nmot indefinitely small in comparigon with the wave length of light, which averages something like one-fifty-thousandth of an inch. | Some time ago a distinguished | gclentist inyestigated the question of { the actual size of atoms and mole- | cules and came to the conclusion | that, at the largest, they might be { one-twenty-five-millionth of an inch {in diameter. That would make them | 6o sma!l that 500 could lie in a Tow | within the length of a wave of light. It s difficult to imagine that par- ticles so minute should ever be ren- | gerea visible to human eves, and yet. as has just been remarked, the possi- bility of seeing them is occasionally | discussed by men of science. | “But if such 2 feat of seeing ever 18 | performed. it will certainly prove to | e something more than a mere grati- ification of curiosity. Many of the {most gecondite questions in sclence would b suddenly illuminated by the discovepy of @ means of watching an atom as we can now watch a rotifer under the microscope. )o e §ug in the heavy sea off the Staten D:land coast, shortly after nuslnz[her. We were out of-sight of land, | reman the boats. They had two pris- tirough “the Narrows Fortunately | in the Gulf of Mexico, when the vessel i oners with them, who, when they the rolling of a vessel in a heavy sea ! was sighted, and she was lying lO,]CflmB aboard, proved to be her cap- Y45 never affected me; so, during the | there being not a breath of a breeze | tain and first mate. They had taken #ale in question, T went below onto|at the time. Some smoke was scen us for the Florida, and iwere, nat- he berth deck to see what was going | coming up between the fore and main- ; urally, scared to the limit. on masts, and this we took as coming AS a matter of fact, she was an Most of the crew was there, and |from the telescoped stack, knowing, | Atnerican whaler, bound north, and e main hatch of the spar deck had | as we did, thatsthe Florida had that|the smoke we had seen was really Leen covered. The hatch of the gun| contrivancé. In fact, the entire craft | from the cauldron amidships, in deck immediately below it was open. | corresponded in all particulars with | Which they tried out her oil. Her 2t had a shot-rack about its coamings, { the photograph; and she had, from| Captain was an old-time whaler, and 1+ hold some two dozen thirty-two- {stem to stern, a mighty suspicious | his papers were all that they should yound shot, intended for immediate |look about her. be; but we didn’t drive the scare out vse in action. A dozen or more of| The order -was given to train all |Of him until he had drained the sec- these shot had jumped the rack and | three of the parrot guns upon her, | °%d drink. were loose on the deck, rolling from | the pleces being loaded with percus- | Weldippedicolorshtoliim andistetin; ~ide to side us the ship rolled. Then, |sion shell. On the berth deck our |61 8Way in search of more profitable 90, a thirty-two-pound gun had part- | crew was cager for the engagement, cratt, which came imuch Svoner than o from its bearings, and some of the | and the four 32s were run out, loaded | W© xPected. and at a time when we 0 seamen were endeavoring to]with molid shot T heard the arder|MersicEulsing in and out/amone the yic0r It s It swing round and atound | iven to train on her water line, Then | B2IamY Ialands, in_ smogth water 1% most dangerous fashion. Many | came the order to me from the officer | Be¥Ond & rather heavy feb was KA ot {he Tandsmen were scasiok: a4lite| o0, |the deci | onl the jbtidge 5 (o) BIMEINE CICICaY MAS gopdsendtne Geck was o slippery one could hardly I bend on the flags for a certain signal | SKY clear- We always kept a lookout at the e ni - | number, which, by chance, I ha; e S O % peened | (e truck i good weather—even at Jiing upon his side against a gunftoknow. o 1. | nignt. { arriage. when one of the bl thirty-; VIO are you? and show Your €ol"| officer of the sdeck thore!” That's two-pound shot came sliding “across. 3 % @) the lookout hallij the deck now. iie deck, landing in the middle of : Appafently no attention was pald| ... .~ . R ke AT T points off the starboard bow." 3:is stomach, and nearly knocking the | 9 this: S0 & blanj was fired from one This word spread through the silp like wildfire, for every soul of us knew ¢ our Napoleons. wind out of him; but he simply/ Eroaned and pushed it away with his | ;‘l‘:;';‘;' ,;:‘“"fi:',;fl ?::zy;h:::’ o Yiands. The whole scene was, indeed. | ooper blank was fired—when she sent | that dll the blockade runners were & most remarkable,one; and naturally ' obliged to burn English cannel coal, which gave off a long streak of black smoke, that showed up on the horizon £ ¥ % up to the mizzen-peak the British 10 brought up in my mind the same | n,; we were certain then that we gort of scene that Dumas described i nag the Tight ship, and we could sink §:. his novel “93." her before she'd have a chance to rup | Just so soon as any approaching vessel AN s = |ner battery out. I had a powerful | Was near enough to discern it. ] l'v'“}"‘"—nv we arrived in Keyifaid glass, but even with that Icould X xx West in due time, cleaned up|not detect any one aboard of her. In HE ship.was called to quarters in and stocked up in all par-|ghort time our boats reached her side, very short order, and was soon ticulars, and made ready to take our|and the boarders swarmed aboard, |making the best speed she was capable gart in what the east gulf squadron | most of them with pistol in hand and | of, that being about twelve and a half %:d before it. cutlass in. teeth.- % knots. My -place was on the quarter Our captain bad an excellent photo- | Everything remained - quiet, how- | deck, near the chests where the signals ~graph of the Florida, and upon one|ever, and in about ten minutes our | were kept. “There had been-two excel- ‘@ casion at least we thought we had men were coming over her side:to lent signal guartermasters ,detailed to T me (Bob Scott and Lewis Locke)—old seamen, with remarkable histories. Scott had a fine field glass, and mine was a still better one: with it I could read sig- nals at eight and ten miles. It belong- HERE is much {that is romantic in the history of the Bank,of England, sometimes called “The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.” Had it not been for & clever director, the bank would probably have suffered a fatal reverse about a century ago. A panic occurred among the bank- note holders and spread to an alarming | extent almost before the bank people | became \aware of what was going on. One morning, just before the open- | ing of the bank, an angry and ex-| cited crowd thronged the street de- manding cash for their notes. There was, It is said, actually double the money in notes in the hands of that mob than there was gold in the cof- fers of the bank, a circumstance that, naturally enough, presented a pre- dicament of a bad sort. Gold must be got for, every claimant, and tha would take time. The directors sent employes with notes into the crowd, whose claims were met first, each being pald in sixpence and shillings. It is sald that only one person has ever Succeeded in break!pg into the bank. Qne day, rather more than forty years ago, the directors received an anonymous letter stating that the writer thereof would meet any per- son the bank might designate in the bullion rooms at midnight, upon con- dition, however, that the individual so designated be not armed. At first, of course, it was thought that this’ ed, long ago, to Col. Makepeace of the British army, and through it ho had viewed the battle of Sebastopol during Parrot shell after her, which fell short by about a quarter of a mile. But we werc gaining rapidly, and the next shot —a short-fuse shell—burst to one side {me, as I stood near the gangway. He placed a sixpence in my hand for a !keepnke. R’pid Blueprinting. LUPPRINTS from drawingsgan be maae at a very rapid fire rate in Lbullion vaults thoroughly to satisfy | tors were staggered at receiving a the Crimean war. of her, sending up a great volume of It was not long beforo we had the! spray. The executive officer, Lieut. Cromwell,- was handling the gun—and he knew how. T heard him address the captain, who was on the bridge: “Shall I sink her, sir? She's within range.” “No; fire onc over her foremast, and load it with an empty shell with the plug out.” : . unique suggestion was a hoax, but, as a precaution, officers searched the that a “wildcat” locomotive would be:a themselves that nothing had chulcedlpenny whistle to in com n, and it that would enable any man to enter brought her to time in the trough of the those rooms. They waited thr\mgh-‘ua in short order. t, but ond a pec r : ::,:;:;; ’;,‘,:d, lm,b:h’;y" mm“,’m:,":o Dufing the last half hour of the chase rats, nothing of & suspicious nature was | “h® had been throwing her cargo over- heard or seen: [ board or else destroying it. Big straw A ‘week later, however,- the direc- | Mats kept flosting past us, and the alr 3 was €o thoroughly impregnated with “0Old Tom” gin that some one sald she was trying to get us all drunk. We were not long dn overtaking her as she slowed down, knowing full well what was to happen next. With my glass I could plainly see the faces of every one I sight aboard of her, and the.most amusing personage was the black cook—and he was black, the fact being emphasized by his haying partly telescoped three black plug hats, wearing the lowermost one. The whole headplece reared aboye .his head for some three feet or more. Her captain was a fat and rather jolly-looking Eng- lishman (Capt. North); her mate was a vicious-looking devil, some six feet in hefght, with a crew of =ik others, each and all the very types of men that man- ned blockade-runners in those days. In short order & prize crew was sent aboard box in which lay several securities from the bank ,vaults.s There was also a note stating that if the direc- tors woyld-send a man to the vaults at midnight the writtr ‘would meet them there after-having broken in from the outside. > So a number of bank employes went down into the vaults at the appoint- ed hour and waited. Finally the scraping noise was again heard and a light appeared st one ‘end of the vaults The light vanished, however, n- their approach. Then a.man’s voloe, issuing, as it seemed, from the und right under their feet, com- manded them to put out their lan- terns and the speaker would reveal himself. The lanterns were extin- guished -and & man carrying a dark lantern came on the scene. He ex- nlld.lned that he was a sewer cleaner an that he had a dis- used .drain which ran directly Intoiof her under the command of Gunner the bank vaults. He had stolen noth-| pjerce, and she steamed away to Key the bank gave him a reward, 1t 15 eai, ram 18to West for orders. Her captain and most ing, so which, i of hicr crew we tuvh aboad, - - the thou- sands. ; 2! a ¢ ra DI RS T L e L o AL L L P S a4 Away the missile went, making a noise | Lowering my voice to a whisppr, I said: “Capt. North, what did you have in those straw mats that you threw oven, board during the chase?” He smiled and said: *“I don't mind telling you, now— 6,000 English Enfield rifies. Then, too,” he gald, “we sent to the bottom a few barrels of rebel buttons, many bolts of gray cloth, weighted with telegraph wire, and some oth>r things.” Enough | sald. Our next capture did not amount to much—it was the schooner Anna Louise, with no cargo. She was painted gray as usual, with a small crew composed of a lot of tough Brit- ishers, of the kind that plied that sort of trade. One day, some months after this, when well across the Gulf of Mexico we sighted a suspicious-looking Steamer, nearly of our own size. We gave chase, but soon found that she was a very fast boat. We firea some fitty-six “ghells at her, but she kept pretty well out of range. At one time she swung around broadside to us, and holsted a ‘big Confed- erate flag—the white one that was used during the latter part of the war. We ran her into Galves- ton, whero she loaded up with 500 bales of cotton! And with tals mag- nificent cargo she steamed out ‘one dark night, cautiously making her trip to Havana. We went into the e port while she lay at anchor there In the bight south of the Morro. We were recognized, naturally. Just before sundown she manned her leunch and pulled up within speaking distance of us—her mate, a big six- footer, being in command. 1 They amused themselves pulling I I I l the perfected electric printing mj- chines. which aro fitted with arc lamps to do the printing. wkilz at the same time an electric motor drives the blueprint paper along with the traeings so that @oth move at a®§.pid rate in- front cif{ the powerful ‘erc lights. One of the machines in useat the offices of4an engjneering firm in Paris illustrs€es the method. At the top one can see the continuous roil of blueprint paper being fd into the machine, whide under it from time to time the sqgarate tracings are fed and are printed on the sensitized pa- per. - . This machine produces ubout 700 prints a day of three feet width. A stil] more elaborate device is*a com- bined arclight printer, washer and dryer known as the “hestel” also a Paris make. From 60 to 400 feet of paper an hour. can be turned out in this way, all dried and ready for use. Soldier Ants. BEFORE the biological soclety in London a naturalist described his studies of the African termites, or. white ants. Certain individuals in | every nest have no other apparent function except that of fighters or soldlers. Some have a long beak, from which they eject an acrié, cor- rosive fluid; others inspire terror by making a loud clicking noise with their mandibles; but they neither shoot nor bite. Qne singular observa- tion of the naturalist was that the soldler ants, which rush out to de- fend an attacked nest, do not return to the nest, but wander about and soon perish from cxposere to the oatside fatn .