Union Flag over Ft. Pickens

APRIL 6, 1861.]

HARPER'S WEEKLY.

213

Water Battery near Fort McRae.

THE FLAG-STAFF BASTION AT FORT PICKENS, FLORIDA.—[DRAWN BY AN OFFICER OF LIEUT. SLEMMER'S COMMAND, MARCH 6, 1861.]

(Cont. from Previous Page)

hear exclamations of delight from our men on the ramparts. It was a grand, pleasing, but withal melancholy sight ; these white puffs of smoke shrouding different flags, and yet honoring one man. The guns, all harmless now, and speaking in thunder tones for him whom we all call Father, might, alas  on the morrow be shotted and worked by brothers against brothers. I am sure we all felt the better for this unexpected meeting on a common ground.

" Looking seaward, we saw the Brooklyn and St. Louis close together, and wrapped in a cloud of smoke, while the rapid, spiteful discharges brought most vividly to mind one's idea of a naval battle. The Sabine was further off, pounding away majestically by herself, which I think she is well able to do. After all was silent, and the eyes of friend and foe were turned to Fort Pickens, a long thirty-two opened seaward, and then the salute ran from gun to gun around the whole parapet, and thus ended the 22d in Pensacola harbor."

With regard to the other picture he writes, on 15th:

" Inclosed I send you a sketch of the Flag-staff Bastion of Fort Pickens. In my drawing of the fort last sent the flag appears on the northeast bastion. It has since been changed, and is now on the southwest, or diagonally opposite its former position, and in what may be called the rear. The staff is scarcely less temporary than the former, which was simply a long pole stuck up in the first hurry of occupation. The present one is a piece of joist propped up in the dirt of the parapet. The end of the covered way, with its buttressed traverse stairs leading down to the gallery, and the door to the gallery in the counterscrap, are all seen on the left, with the parapet of the covered way overlooking the beach, about two hundred yards distant.

" On the distant point on the other side of the channel is seen the water-battery of Fort M'Rae, which, by-the-way, has no guns. The fort itself is hidden from view by the bastion on which is seen the field-piece. To the left of the latter is a Columbiad pointing toward the hostile forces, and from the flank opposite to the one seen in the picture. The size and height of this gun renders it easy to see it over the intervening parapet. The two bastions represented are separated by a curtain. One embrasure of this curtain is seen beyond the nearest bastion. The face of the bastion to the left is loopholed for musketry.

" The two sail—one an English ship with painted ports, and the other a pilot-boat—are near the buoy in the Swash Channel."

GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

A NOVEL.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPTER XXIX.

AFTER well considering the matter while I was dressing at the Blue Boar in the morning, I re-solved to tell my guardian that I doubted Or-lick's being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham's. " Why, of course he is not the right sort of man, Pip," said my

guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head, "because the man who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man." It seemed quite to put him into spirits to find that this particular post was not accidentally and exceptionally held by the right sort of man, and he listened in a satisfied manner while I told him what knowledge I had of Orlick. " Very good, Pip," he observed, when I had concluded,

I'll go round presently, and pay our friend off." Rather alarmed by this summary action, I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might be difficult to deal with. "Oh no he won't," said my guardian, making his pocket-handkerchief point with perfect confidence ; "I should like to see him argue the question with me."

As we were going back together to London by the mid-day coach, and as I breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook that I could scarcely hold my cup, this gave me an opportunity of saying that I wanted a walk, and that I would go on along the London Road while Mr. Jaggers was occupied, if he would let the coach-man know that I would get into my place when overtaken. I was thus enabled to fly from the Blue Boar immediately after breakfast. By then making a loop of about a couple of miles into the open country at the back of Pumblechook's premises, I got round into the High Street again, a little beyond that pitfall, and felt myself in comparative security.

It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognized and stared after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of their shops and went a little way down the street before me, that they might turn, as if they had forgotten something, and pass me face to face—on which occasions I don't know whether they or I made the worse pretense; they of not doing it, or I of not seeing it. Still my position was a distinguished one, and I was not at all dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in the way of that unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy.

Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb's boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace, " Hold me ! I'm so frightened !" feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and, with every mark of extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.

This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I had not advanced another two hundred yards, when, to my inexpressible terror, amazement, and indignation, I again beheld Trabb's boy approaching He was coming round a narrow corner. His blue bag was slung over his shoulder, honest industry beamed in his eyes,

a determination to proceed to Trabb's with cheerful briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became aware of me, and was severely visited as before ; but this time his motion was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators, and I felt utterly confounded.

I had not got as much further down the street as the post-office, when I again beheld Trabb's boy shooting round by a back way. This time he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the mariner of my great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement toward me on the opposite side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young friends to whom he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, " Don't know yah !" Words can not state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy, when, passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants, " Don't

know yah, don't know yah, 'pon my soul don't know yah !" The disgrace attendant on his immediately afterward taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with crows as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country.

But unless I had taken the life of Trabb's boy on that occasion, I really do not even now see what I could have done save endure. To have struggled with him in the street, or to have ex-acted any lower recompense from him than his heart's best blood would have been futile and de-grading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could hurt; an invulnerable and dodging serpent who, when chased into a corner, flew out again between his captor's legs, scornfully yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr. Trabb by next day's post, to say that Mr. Pip must decline to deal further with one who could so far forget what he owed to the best interests of society, as to employ a boy who excited Loathing in every respectable mind.

The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up

"HOLD ME! I'M SO FRIGHTENED!"