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Babbitt, who was struck by a thirty-two-pound shot, which cut off his right leg below the knee, and hurled him through the wardroom hatch to the deck below, fracturing his wounded leg in two places. Shortly after, Decatur was knocked to the deck by a heavy splinter.
He had his conning-tower, in which, with a telescope through a slit in a steel plate, he could sweep the countryside. He had a fire-control station, executive offices, wardroom, cook's galley, his own cabin, equipped with telephones, electric lights, and running water. There was a carpet on the floor, a gay coverlet on the four-poster bed, photographs on his dressing-table, and flowers.
What happened then is best recalled in the simple words of Captain David Porter himself: I now sent for the officers of division to consult them and what was my surprise to find only acting Lieutenant Stephen Decatur M'Knight remaining.... I was informed that the cockpit, the steerage, the wardroom, and the berth deck could contain no more wounded, that the wounded were killed while the surgeons were dressing them, and that if something was not speedily done to prevent it, the ship would soon sink from the number of shot holes in her bottom.
As Forsythe and Daniels had found, there was nothing there more formidable than cutlasses, rifles, and torpedo heads; the pistols had been removed to some other place. So Denman went back and searched the wardroom, delving into closets and receptacles looking for arms; but he found none, and sat down on a chair to think.
With this injunction I was dismissed to the wardroom, where I found Chapman, Lewis, and Wise, dreadfully exercised at our profound secrecy.
Amongst the men on the lower deck, who have, as a rule, some pet nickname for most of their officers, especially those whom they may chance to like or dislike more than the rest, he always went by the sobriquet of "glass-eye"; and it was wonderful how this dandy chap who was so particular in his dress and would mince his words in conversation with his brother officers in the wardroom, speaking with a lisp of affectation and a languid air as if it were too much trouble to articulate distinctly, would, when the occasion arose, roar out his orders in a voice that could be heard from one end of the ship to the other and make the men skip about, like the young lambs mentioned by the Psalmist!
To think that it should come to this. Poor, poor old Puffin!" A few minutes later Falland, on his way aft to visit the captain, glanced into the wardroom. Pardoe still sat in the armchair muttering softly to himself with his head bowed down between his hands. The floor, the table, and the chair were littered with tracts of all the colours of the rainbow.
In daring, as in physical perfection, the wardroom of the Pennant considered that the daughters of the Irish squirearchy took some beating; and Radway had heard, no doubt, stories of many wayward and passionate episodes with which the hospitality of Irish country houses had been enlivened.
His jovial face, however, belied the threat, so it did not occasion me any alarm; and, bowing again politely to the three clerical gentlemen collectively, I bent my steps, on the grin all the way, to the door of the wardroom, which was opened and shut behind me by a marine standing without.
She'll be in session for an hour yet. She asked me to convey her apologies." He gestured toward the coffee urn. "But the coffee's all made, so you may as well have a cup." Mike was thankful he had not had a dozen cups in the wardroom. "I don't mind if I do, Doctor." He sat down while Fitzhugh poured a cup. "Cream? Sugar?" "Black, thanks," Mike said.
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