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Updated: June 26, 2025
This was a fine place for our captain to get rid of the remaining skulkers, and he left them behind, much to their annoyance, in the second battalion. From Cork we proceeded to the Cove to embark, after a stay in Ireland now of about three months altogether; and when all was in readiness on board the ships, we set sail for the West Indies.
The "skulkers" and "deserters" referred to were no doubt brave men who, having fought as long as there was hope, were not ambitious to sacrifice their lives to carry on the shameless bravado of the political leaders of the Rebellion. Mr. Hunter spoke with singular intemperance of tone for one who was usually cool, guarded, and conservative.
The lieutenant now ranged the press gang against the wall fronting the door, and stepping into the middle of the room, drew his pistol and cocked it. "Messmates," he sung out, as if addressing the skulkers in the other room, "I know you are here the house is surrounded and unless you open that door now, by the power, but I'll fire slap into you."
She withdrew her head, after twice being warned by Barnes not to reveal herself to the view of skulkers who might infest the wood beyond, and each time his reward was a delightfully stubborn shake of the head and the ruthless assertion that on such a heavenly morning as this she didn't mind in the least if all the spies in the world were gazing at her.
Hence it comes that the skulkers and scoundrels of all sorts in a man-of-war are chiefly composed not of regular seamen, but of these "dock-lopers" of landsmen, men who enter the Navy to draw their grog and murder their time in the notorious idleness of a frigate. But if so idle, why not reduce the number of a man-of-war's crew, and reasonably keep employed the rest? It cannot be done.
They went up higher, passing a crowd of skulkers, or men in reserve Grafton could not tell which and as they went by a soldier said: "Well, if I didn't have to be here, I be damned if I wouldn't like to see anybody get me here. What them fellers come fer, I can't see." The firing was still hot when the two men got up to the danger line, and there they lay down.
These skulkers flourish best in large and complex populations, where they may even masquerade as patriots of the kind so well described by Lincoln when he said how often he had noticed that the men who were loudest in proclaiming their readiness to shed their last drop of blood were generally the most careful not to shed the first.
Hunter made the naïve confession: "If our people exhibit the proper spirit they will bring forth the deserters from their caves; and the skulkers, who are avoiding the perils of the field, will go forth to share the dangers of their countrymen."
Similarly, he was able to identify the gray shadows slinking about the nearest trees, and his hands balled into fists as he looked wildly about him for some weapon. The bunk was under him and three of the four walls of the room enclosed him like a cave. But one of those gray skulkers had raised its head and was looking directly at him, its reddish eyes alight.
Learning that the general, in his impatience, had taken horse and galloped off to see what had become of his tardy commanders, I followed at full speed. "It was a wild, rough road, scarcely more than a lane through the woods; but Mayburn was equal to it, and like a bird carried me through its gloomy shades, where I observed not a few skulkers cowering in the brush as I sped by.
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