william osborn stoddard

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CHAPTER I.

THE WAR SPIRIT.

"She's grand!" exclaimed Ned, enthusiastically. "Uncle Jack, the Kentucky could knock any other ironclad in all the world!"
"Perhaps she could," growled Uncle Jack, somewhat thoughtfully. "I'm glad she is out of range of them, just now, though. I like her looks as she is. It is best for them, too."
They were standing near the head of Pier Number One, North River, gazing at the great line-of-battle ship as she steamed along slowly up the stream.
"Those double turrets make her as tall as a house," said Ned. "There's nothing else like her! See the long noses of those big guns!"
"That's what I came for," replied Uncle Jack. "I wanted to see her, and now I have seen her I am more opposed to war than ever. I'm going to join the Peace Society."
"I'd rather join the navy," said Ned. "But if a shell from one of those guns should burst inside of another ship it would blow her sky-high."
"No!" responded his uncle, with firmness. "She would not go up to the sky, she would go down to the bottom of the deep sea."
"She could do it, anyhow," said Ned, not explaining which of the two ships he referred to.
It was evident that Uncle Jack was too deeply interested in the Kentucky to care for general conversation. For fear, however, that he might not have read the papers, his somewhat excited nephew told him that the steel-clad wonder of the sea had at least twelve thousand horses in her steam engines. He also said that she was of twelve thousand tons burden, but did not say whether that was the load she could carry or whether it might be supposed to be her fighting weight.
"I wish I were captain of her," he declared, at last. "I'd like to conquer England."
"I felt just so once," responded Uncle Jack. "There is more in England that is worth capturing than there is anywhere else. You would need more than one ship, though. I tried the experiment, but the English beat me."
"Oh!" exclaimed Ned. "I know how you tried it. You went alone, though, and without any Kentucky."
"No," said his uncle, "I didn't go alone. Your aunt went with me. So did thousands of other brave Americans. They try it every year, and they always come home beaten."
"Yes, sir!" said Ned. "They spend all their money, and are glad to get back. They say the English can whip anything in all the world except Americans. I'm going there, some day. I don't believe there is any British ship that can whip the Kentucky."
"She certainly is magnificent," replied his uncle. "She is a tremendous war machine. What we are ever to do with her, however, I don't care to think of. I want her never to fire one of those guns. After all, Ned, if one of her great steel bottom plates should get shaken loose and drop out, that vast leviathan would sink, with all on board."
"I guess not," said Ned. "They would get away in the boats. Besides, she isn't going to fall to pieces right away."
"All right," said his uncle. "We've seen her. Now let's go home."
They turned away and walked on across what the people of New York call the Battery.[15] They do so because here was a fort once. Part of it, nearest the water, was made there two centuries ago. Another part, more like a modern fort, was made later, and it was distinguished for having been surrendered, back and forth, without firing one of its guns in defence, more times than any other military post in America. It was given up once by the Dutch, twice by the British, and once by the Americans. That was by General Washington, when the English troops drove him and his ragged rebels out of New York. None of the fighting that was done then was anywhere near the Battery.

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