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At the beginning of the fray, before the ships interlocked, in the intervals of smoke which swept over the ships as mist over mountain-tops, affording open rents here and there the gun-deck of the Serapis, at certain points, showed, congealed for the instant in all attitudes of dauntlessness, a gallery of marble statues fighting gladiators.
A hideous wreck above her gun-deck, with funnel pierced, both masts tottering to their fall, guns dismounted, and planks stained red with the life-blood of many a gallant Chinaman, the Chih' Yuen quickly gathered sternway, piling the water up in a white, foaming mass under her round counter, while the vengeful guns of the Japanese squadron never ceased to thunder their hatred of the destroyer of two of their ships.
You may as well say there should be no Sundays in churches; for is not a ship modeled after a church? has it not three spires three steeples? yea, and on the gun-deck, a bell and a belfry? And does not that bell merrily peal every Sunday morning, to summon the crew to devotions? At any rate, there were Sundays on board this particular frigate of ours, and a clergyman also.
He had seized the iron bar in one hand, a tiller-rope with a slip-noose in the other, and jumped, down the hatchway to the gun-deck. Then began an awful sight; a Titanic scene; the contest between gun and gunner; the battle of matter and intelligence; the duel between man and the inanimate.
One of these missiles reached the lower gun-deck of the Serapis, and there setting fire to a quantity of exposed cartridges, produced a destruction of life, an offset to the fearful loss of the Richard by the bursting of her guns in the opening of the engagement.
In the after part of the ship was a handsome cabin, a dining-room, and a trade-room, fitted out with shelves, and furnished with all sorts of goods. Between these and the forecastle was the ``between-decks, as high as the gun-deck of a frigate, being six feet and a half, under the beams.
Here I must needs pause, for, dim though it was, the light from the open scuttle nigh blinded me. In a while, my eyes growing strong, I got me to the main-deck, where again I must stay to shade my eyes by reason of the radiance that poured through an open gun-port. Glancing around after some while, I saw no one and wondered, for here was the main gun-deck.
Still another mode of passing time, was arraying yourself in your best "togs" and promenading up and down the gun-deck, admiring the shore scenery from the port-holes, which, in an amphitheatrical bay like Rio belted about by the most varied and charming scenery of hill, dale, moss, meadow, court, castle, tower, grove, vine, vineyard, aqueduct, palace, square, island, fort is very much like lounging round a circular cosmorama, and ever and anon lazily peeping through the glasses here and there.
I was dreadfully wet and cold, and my teeth chattered most woefully; so I made towards the gun-deck, some portion of which was allotted for the soldiers. There the heat was suffocating, and the stench intolerable.
Hence the term gun-room, occupied by lieutenants or gun-room officers; indeed, the lowest deck of every ship is called the gun-deck. The quarter of a ship is that part of the side which lies towards the stern, and hence that part of the deck is called the quarter-deck, in reference to that portion of the ship's length over which it originally extended.
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