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An army in line-of-battle awaiting attack, or prepared to deliver it, presents strange contrasts. At the front are precision, formality, fixity, and silence. Toward the rear these characteristics are less and less conspicuous, and finally, in point of space, are lost altogether in confusion, motion and noise. The homogeneous becomes heterogeneous.
Forming it into line-of-battle, Richardson orders it to charge through the woods upon the Enemy.
Irritated by this unjust treatment, I one day answered that I was a frigate midshipman, and hoped I could do my duty as well as any line-of-battle midshipman, of my own standing, in the service.
During the middle watch a ship was made out bearing down towards us; she was high out of the water, and was pronounced by many to be a line-of-battle ship. Sir Harry was on deck in an instant the private signal was made would it be answered? Yes; but there was no security in this, as, should the ship's company have mutinied, they would naturally have possessed themselves of it.
We kept in that quarter, and varied as necessary, a force capable of dealing with a naval raid as well as guarding the neighbouring lines of communication. In 1803 we had four ships of the line in the West Indian area. In 1804 we had six of the same class; and in 1805, while the line-of-battle ships were reduced to four, the number of frigates was increased from nine to twenty-five.
So, with helm amidships, the schooner drove languidly along with her head due east, lifting as ponderously as a line-of-battle ship to the floating launches of the high swell, and the albatross hung as steadfastly in the wake of my lonely ocean path as though it had been some messenger sent by God to watch me into safety.
Others, descending from on high, take root as soon as their extremity touches the ground, and appear like shrouds and stays supporting the mainmast of a line-of-battle ship; while others, sending out parallel, oblique, horizontal and perpendicular shoots in all directions, put you in mind of what travellers call a matted forest.
After all, it does not require much ingenuity to arrange some employment for them, even at first, provided their numbers be not so great that they stand in one another's way. Three or four youngsters, even though absolute novices, might always be kept well employed in a sloop-of-war, and perhaps twice that number in a frigate or line-of-battle ship fitting.
No thunder was at any time heard, and all agreed that even if the whole battery of a line-of-battle ship had been going off, the sound would not have been distinguished above the horrible roar and yelling of the wind and the noise of the ocean, as its tumultuous waves dashed on the shore, threatening every instant to sweep over the land and engulf all within their reach.
During the entire campaign I had been annoyed by guerrilla bands under such partisan chiefs as Mosby, White, Gilmore, McNeil, and others, and this had considerably depleted my line-of-battle strength, necessitating as it did large, escorts for my supply-trains.
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