We went round the Navy Yard with
Percival and Commodore Downes, the latter a sailor and a gentleman too,
with rather more of the ocean than the drawing-room about him, but
courteous, frank, and good-natured. We looked at ropewalks,
rigging-lofts, ships in the stocks; and saw the sailors of the station
laughing and sporting with great mirth and cheerfulness, which the
Commodore said was much increased at sea. We returned to the wharf at
Boston in the cutter's boat. Captain Scott, of the cutter, told me a
singular story of what occurred during the action between the
Constitution and Macedonian, --he being powder-monkey aboard the former
ship. A cannon-shot came through the ship's side, and a man's head was
struck off, probably by a splinter, for it was done without bruising the
head or body, as clean as by a razor. Well, the man was walking pretty
briskly at the time of the accident; and Scott seriously affirmed that
he kept walking onward at the same pace, with two jets of blood gushing
from his headless trunk, till, after going about twenty feet without a
head, he sunk down at once, with his legs under him.
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