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"Now look 'ee here, my sons," said Un' Benny Rowett: "if I was you, I'd cry to the Lord a little more an' to County Council a little less. What's the full size ye reckon a school o' pilchards, now one o the big uns?
"What I say," pursued Mr Pamphlett, shaking a forefinger at the group, "is that Rowett may be his own master, but the rest of you mustn't take it into your heads that because our country happens to be at war you've an excuse to be idle. 'Business as usual' that's my motto: and I doubt if Rowett here will find you a better-paying one, however long you listen to him."
About 11 a.m., Colonel Redfield, of the Thirty-ninth Iowa, was killed, and Colonel Rowett was wounded, but never ceased to fight and encourage his men. Colonel Tourtellotte was shot through the hips, but continued to command. General Corse was, at 1 p.m., shot across the face, the ball cutting his ear, which stunned him, but he continued to encourage his men and to give orders.
"It does 'em good, too, to take a rest now an' then, an' smoke a pipe, an' praise the Lord that made 'em Englishmen." Mr Pamphlett detested Un' Benny's conversation. It always struck him as significantly meaningless. Again he addressed himself to the other men. "What Rowett says about the fish is true enough, I dare say. When they hear all this noise "
Shall we walk out to the cliffs for a sight of her?" "Boo-oom!" echoed Un' Benny Rowett on the Quay, mocking the noise of the cannonade. "War bloody war, my hearties! There goes a hundred pound o' taxpayers' money; an' there go all our pilchards for this season, the most promisin' in my recollection."
I esteemed this defense of Allatoona so handsome and important, that I made it the subject of a general order, viz., No. 86, of October 7, 1864: The general commanding avails himself of the opportunity, in the handsome defense made of Allatoona, to illustrate the most important principle in war, that fortified posts should be defended to the last, regardless of the relative numbers of the party attacking and attacked . . . . The thanks of this army are due and are hereby accorded to General Corse, Colonel Tourtellotte, Colonel Rowett, officers, and men, for their determined and gallant defense of Allatoona, and it is made an example to illustrate the importance of preparing in time, and meeting the danger, when present, boldly, manfully, and well.
"Well, and so I did," Miss Oliver admitted defiantly. "But I didn't ask you to make yourself conspicuous." Then he would descend on the town and work through it from door to door as Un' Benny Rowett put it, "like a cross between a ferret an' a Passover Angel."
As for the fish, the boats had made small catches dips among the straggling advance-guards of the great armies of pilchards surely drawing in from the Atlantic. "'Tis early days yet, hows'ever time enough, my sons plenty time!" promised Un' Benny Rowett, patriarch of the fishing-fleet and local preacher on Sundays.
And again," continued Un' Benny Rowett, "Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest." If pressed in argument he would entrench himself behind the wonderful plenty of john-doreys: "Which," he would say, "is the mysteriousest fish in the sea and the holiest. Take a john-dorey or two, and the pilchards be never far behind.
"Who was that tall chap I see'd 'ee in talk with, up by th' Peak?" asked Un' Benny Rowett later in the day. "A Cap'n Something-or-other," answered Seth; "I didn't catch his full name." "Walked over from Troy, I s'pose? Queer how these ship-cap'ns enjoy stretchin' their legs after a passage the furriners especially. But there! 'tis nat'ral." "He wasn' a ship-cap'n."
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