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Updated: May 18, 2025
Then, upon mustering the men, and calling the quarter-bills by the light of a battle-lantern, many a wounded seaman with his arm in a sling, would answer for some poor shipmate who could never more make answer for himself: "Tom Brown?" "Killed, sir." "Jack Jewel?" "Killed, sir." "Joe Hardy?" "Killed, sir."
"What's your name? Are you down in the ship's books, or at all in the records of nature?" "My name, sir, is Peter Perkins," said Israel, thinking it most prudent to conceal his real appellation. "Certainly, I never heard that name before. Pray, see if Peter Perkins is down on the quarter-bills," he added to a midshipman. "Quick, bring the book here."
And opposite all these poor fellows' names, down would go on the quarter-bills the bloody marks of red ink a murderer's fluid, fitly used on these occasions. It was the morning succeeding one of these general quarters that we picked up a life-buoy, descried floating by. It was a circular mass of cork, about eight inches thick and four feet in diameter, covered with tarred canvas.
On the quarter-bills, these men were stationed at none of the great guns; on the station-bills, they had no posts at the ropes. What, then, were they for? To serve their country in time of battle? Let us see. At close quarters, their muskets may pick off a seaman or two in the rigging, but at long-gun distance they must passively stand in their ranks and be decimated at the enemy's leisure.
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