Cyrus Townsend Brady

“ Rust consumed the bolt-heads and slowly ate up the metal that held her together. Yet in spite of all she still stood, outwardly indifferent alike to the attack of the storm or the kiss of the sun,—a mighty monster towering high in the air, unfinished, incomplete, inchoate, disintegrating, weaponless, but still typifying strength and power and war. In spite of her decay, in spite of her age, she looked the masterful vessel she was designed to be.
The waves broke in winter in icy assault upon the rocky shore on the seaward side, as if defying the ship to meet them. ”

“ She saw him again, as he struck prompt to defend her honor in the hall, resenting a ruffian's soiling hand stretched out to her; she saw him lying wounded and senseless there at her feet. She saw him stretched prone on that shattered deck, on that ruined ship, pale, blood-stained, senseless again, again unheeding her bitter cry. She would have called once more upon him, save that she knew humanity has no voice which reaches out into the darkness by which it may call back those who are once gone to live beyond. ”

“ It must have been a proud moment for the man who had hoisted the pine-tree flag for the first time on the Alfred; for the man who had been the first officer of the American navy to receive promotion; for the man who had first flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze from the masthead of a ship; for the man who, in his little vessel, trifling and inconsiderable as she was, was yet about to maintain the honor of that flag with unexampled heroism in the home waters and in the presence of the proudest, most splendid, and most efficient navy of the world. ”

“ To hear the fire crackle and roar through a doomed ship, to lord it over shiploads of terrified men and screaming women, to be sated with carnage and drunk with liquor, to dress in satins and velvets and laces, to let the broad pieces of eight run through his grimy fingers, to throw off restraint and be a free sailor, a gentleman rover, to return to the habits of his earlier days and revel in crime and sin—it was for all this that his soul lusted again. ”

“ Once a man who loved the strife, noble or ignoble, of the madding crowd, he had grown accustomed to silence, habituated to solitude. Winter and summer alike he roamed the mountains, delving into every forest, exploring every hidden cañon, surmounting every inaccessible peak; no storm, no snow, no condition of wind or weather daunted him or stopped him. He had no human companionship by which to try his mettle, but nevertheless over the world of the material which lay about him he was a master as he was a man. ”

“ Seymour, sir, where is he?" said the deep voice of the boatswain, as he advanced farther into the room. The light fell full upon him. He was a splendid specimen of athletic manhood; tall, powerful, long-armed, slightly bent in the shoulders; decision and courage were seen in his bearing, and were written on his face, burned a dull mahogany color by years of exposure to the weather. He was clothed in the open shirt and loose trousers of a seafaring man, and he stood with his feet slightly apart, as if balancing himself to the uneasy roll of a ship. ”

“ The gentle wind whispered of love. The curling, lipping waves caressed the keel with sounds like kisses, and to it all their hearts kept time. It was a respite,--a lull between two phases of the conflict; there was love and there was peace in the little boat, and war and tumult were far off on the horizon.
By and by Elizabeth slipped down from the thwart, and crouched down in the boat at his feet. O'Neill held the tiller with one hand; the other lightly stroked her golden head. She was perfectly content; everything was out of her heart but he and the present; she was very still. ”

“ Eyes sparkled in some faces, brimmed with tears in others, cheeks paled on one hand and flushed upon the other; breaths came quicker, a low murmur ran through the room—almost terrible in its meaning.
"The Eagle of the regiment, messieurs," said old Lestoype solemnly, breaking the silence.
"Vive l'Empereur!" suddenly exclaimed a veteran port-aigle, or standard bearer, in a low but tense voice, and the mighty battle-cry swept softly through the room from man to man, in low notes, in broken whispers like a great wavering sigh from a multitude of throbbing hearts. ”

“ Oh, Sonny Boy, to lose you, to—your little old mother is breaking her heart! Be assured of one thing, my son, I love you and I have loved you better than any one in the whole world will ever love you"—these were the words she had whispered to me on her death-bed—"no matter how much joy you may have, how much happiness, no matter where you may go, whom you may meet, what they may say, no one in this world will ever love you as I have. No one will ever think of you as your mother." ”

“ It was not enough that the Spanish soldier of that day was a bulldog for strength and courage, or that his armor was proof against stone arrows and lances, or that he wielded a Toledo blade that could cut through silken cushions, or that his arquebus and cannon were not only death-dealing weapons but objects of superstitious awe. More potent than all else together were those frightful monsters, the horses. Before these animals men, women, and children fled like sheep, or skulked and peeped from behind their walls in an ecstasy of terror. ”

“ A few lingering sparks of the manhood and courage of the past that not even his crimes had deprived him of still remained in his being, however, and he strove as best he might to control the beating of his heart, to still the trembling of his arms and legs which shook the chains against the stone face of the rock making them ring out in a faint metallic clinking, which was the sweetest music that had ever pierced the eager hollow of the ear of the silent listener and watcher concealed in the thicket. ”

“ The sight brings back old days and brave days of hard fighting and true comradeship and great adventure on that far-off island set in that tropic sea under those blue skies. And I love her better than when in the diamonds and powder and silk and brilliant array with which nowadays beauty obscures itself under the demand of fashion. ”

“ Smaller hands than ours write letters to Santa Claus and hear the story, the sweetest story ever told, of the Baby who came to Mary and through her to all the daughters and sons of women on that winter night on the Bethlehem hills.
And we thank God for the children who take us out of the past, out of ourselves, away from recollections that weigh us down; the children that weave in the woof and warp of life when our own youth has passed, some of the buoyancy, the joy, the happiness of the present; the children in whose opening lives we turn hopefully to the future. ”

“ There had been no earthquake, no storm, the mountains had not heaved beneath her feet, the great and strong wind had not passed by, the rocks had not been rent and broken, yet Enid caught herself listening as if for a Voice. The thrall of majesty, silence, loneliness was upon her. She stood—one stands when there is a chance of meeting God on the way, one does not kneel until He comes—with her raised hands clasped, her head uplifted in exultation unspeakable, God-conquered with her face to heaven upturned. ”

“ Something heavy and solid, thrown upward by the tremendous force of the discharge, struck the rail with a mighty crash at the moment of the explosion, just at the point where Katharine, wide-eyed, petrified with horror, after that one vivid glance in which she apparently saw her lover dead on his own quarter-deck beneath her, stood clinging rigidly to the bulwarks as if paralyzed. It was the body of a man; instinctively she threw out her strong young arm and saved it from falling again into the sea on the return roll of the ship. ”