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Updated: May 18, 2025
Well, sir, his dead-lights were bugged out like tompions; and his mouth stood that wide open that you could have laid a ham in it without him noticing it." There was great applause at the conclusion of the old captain's story; then, after a moment's silence, a grave, pale young man said: "Had you ever met the governor before?"
Such was the feeling of an English commander towards me. I should not have condescended to notice this occurrence but for the bravado shown by the same officer on a previous occasion, by casting loose his guns, with their tompions out, when my flag-ship entered the roads; thereby either intimating that he considered me a pirate, or that he would so treat me, if he had an opportunity.
'There is no saying, sir; you know what a character he has; and some say there are three hundred men on board, which is equal to our ship's company. Or perhaps, sir, he will pass to windward of us, and give us a broadside, and be off in the wind's eye again. 'At all events we will have a broadside ready for him, replied the captain. 'Clear away the starboard guns, and take out the tompions.
I hanged my best friend for croaking, John Hawkins, may God forgive me if I was wrong, and I threatened a week after to hang thirty more; and I'd have done it, too, if they hadn't clapped tompions into their muzzles pretty fast." "You'm right, Frank. Who com'th here now?" "Captain Fleming, as I'm a sinner." "Fleming? Is he tired of life, that he com'th here to look for a halter?
The great guns of an armed ship have blocks of wood, called tompions, painted black, inserted in their muzzles, to keep out the spray of the sea. These tompions slip in and out very handily, like covers to butter firkins.
As if to defy the powers of that deathly realm, M. de Radisson had the more logs heaped on our hearth and doubled the men's rations. On Christmas morning he had us all out to fire a salute, Ben Gillam and Jack and the two Fur Company spies disguised as usual, and the rest of us muffled to our eyes. Jackets and tompions were torn from the cannon. Unfrosted priming was distributed.
Our task was soon done; the tompions were got out, the guns cast loose, ammunition was brought up, and a stand of grape was put in over the shot in every piece in both batteries. As the men were told the motive, they worked like dray-horses; and I do not think we were ten minutes before the ship was ready to go into action, at a moment's notice.
But could we expect a solid, substantial, enduring peace, in which the grass would have time to grow in the war-paths, and the bruised arms to rust, as the old G. R. cannon rusted in our State arsenal, sleeping with their tompions in their mouths, like so many sucking lambs? It is not the question whether the same set of soldiers would be again summoned to the field.
I had given Smudge a segar too, to put him in good humour, and I had also taken the liberty to light one for myself. Our guns had all been primed, levelled, and had their tompions taken out the night before, in readiness to repel any assault that might be made. I had only to remove the apron from the after-gun, and it was ready to be discharged.
The traitors knew, that, so long as the Colonel was here, these black muzzles with their white tompions, like a black eye with a white pupil, meant mischief. To him and his guns, flanking the approaches and ready to pile the moat full of Seceders, the country owes the safety of Fortress Monroe. Within the walls are sundry nice old brick houses for officers' barracks.
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