entered one of our ports square, and took right down the officer of the gun himself, and almost every man of the gun’s crew.  Now you may say what you choose about courage, but that is not a nice thing to see.  But, as the men who were not killed picked themselves up, and as they and the surgeon’s people were carrying off the bodies, there appeared Nolan, in his shirt-sleeves, with the rammer in his hand, and, just as if he had been the officer, told them off with authority,—­who should go to the cock-pit with the wounded men, who should stay with him,—­perfectly cheery, and with that way which makes men feel sure all is right and is going to be right.  And he finished loading the gun with his own hands, aimed it, and bade the men fire.  And there he stayed, captain of that gun, keeping those fellows in spirits, till the enemy struck,—­sitting on the carriage while the gun was cooling, though he was exposed all the time,—­showing them easier ways to handle heavy shot,—­making the raw hands laugh at their own blunders,—­and when the gun cooled again, getting it loaded and fired twice as often as any other gun on the ship.  The captain walked forward by way of encouraging the men, and Nolan touched his hat and said,—­

“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; 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, he 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.