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When the second cutter pulled about among the ships,
dropping the surgeons aboard the American men-of-war here
and there—as a pilot-boat distributes her pilots at the mouth
of the harbor—she passed several foreign frigates, two of which,
an Englishman and a Frenchman, had excited not a little remark
on board the Neversink. These vessels often loosed
their sails and exercised yards simultaneously with ourselves,
as if desirous of comparing the respective efficiency of the
crews.

When we were nearly ready for sea, the English frigate,
weighing her anchor, made all sail with the sea-breeze, and
began showing off her paces by gliding about among all the
men-of-war in harbor, and particularly by running down under
the Neversink's stern. Every time she drew near, we
complimented her by lowering our ensign a little, and invariably
she courteously returned the salute. She was inviting
us to a sailing-match; and it was rumored that, when we
should leave the bay, our Captain would have no objections
to gratify her; for, be it known, the Neversink was accounted
the fleetest keeled craft sailing under the American long-pennant.
Perhaps this was the reason why the stranger challenged
us.

It may have been that a portion of our crew were the
more anxious to race with this frigate, from a little circumstance
which a few of them deemed rather galling. Not
many cables'-length distant from our Commodore's cabin lay
the frigate President, with the red cross of St. George flying
from her peak. As its name imported, this fine craft was an

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American born; but having been captured during the last
war with Britain, she now sailed the salt seas as a trophy.

Think of it, my gallant countrymen, one and all, down the
sea-coast and along the endless banks of the Ohio and Columbia—
think of the twinges we sea-patriots must have felt to
behold the live-oak of the Floridas and the pines of green
Maine built into the oaken walls of Old England! But, to
some of the sailors, there was a counterbalancing thought, as
grateful as the other was galling, and that was, that somewhere,
sailing under the stars and stripes, was the frigate
Macedonian, a British-born craft which had once sported the
battle-banner of Britain.

It has ever been the custom to spend almost any amount
of money in repairing a captured vessel, in order that she may
long survive to commemorate the heroism of the conqueror.
Thus, in the English Navy, there are many Monsieurs of seventy-fours
won from the Gaul. But we Americans can show
but few similar trophies, though, no doubt, we would much
like to be able so to do.

But I never have beheld any of these floating trophies
without being reminded of a scene once witnessed in a pioneer
village on the western bank of the Mississippi. Not far from
this village, where the stumps of aboriginal trees yet stand in
the market-place, some years ago lived a portion of the remnant
tribes of the Sioux Indians, who frequently visited the
white settlements to purchase trinkets and cloths.

One florid crimson evening in July, when the red-hot sun
was going down in a blaze, and I was leaning against a corner
in my huntsman's frock, lo! there came stalking out of the
crimson West a gigantic red-man, erect as a pine, with his
glittering tomahawk, big as a broad-ax, folded in martial repose
across his chest. Moodily wrapped in his blanket, and
striding like a king on the stage, he promenaded up and down
the rustic streets, exhibiting on the back of his blanket a crowd
of human hands, rudely delineated in red; one of them seemed
recently drawn.

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“Who is this warrior?” asked I; “and why marches he
here? and for what are these bloody hands?”

“That warrior is the Red-Hot Coal,” said a pioneer in
moccasins, by my side. “He marches here to show off his
last trophy; every one of those hands attests a foe scalped by
his tomahawk; and he has just emerged from Ben Brown's,
the painter, who has sketched the last red hand that you see;
for last night this Red-Hot Coal outburned the Yellow Torch,
the chief of a band of the Foxes.”

Poor savage! thought I; and is this the cause of your lofty
gait? Do you straighten yourself to think that you have
committed a murder, when a chance-falling stone has often
done the same? Is it a proud thing to topple down six feet
perpendicular of immortal manhood, though that lofty living
tower needed perhaps thirty good growing summers to bring
it to maturity? Poor savage! And you account it so glorious,
do you, to mutilate and destroy what God himself was
more than a quarter of a century in building?

And yet, fellow-Christians, what is the American frigate
Macedonian, or the English frigate President, but as two
bloody red hands painted on this poor savage's blanket?

Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary
has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilize civilization
and christianize Christendom?

p277-321

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