paniards checked by the great abattis, through which
flashed, fierce and fast, the fire of the French. Waving his hat, he
shouted to the Spaniards to "follow him," and, putting his horse at the
abattis, at one leap went headlong amongst the French. There is a
swift contagion in valour. He was only a light-haired lad, and the
Spaniards with one vehement shout for "el chico blanco"--"the fair
lad"--swept over abattis and French together!

FAMOUS CUTTING-OUT EXPEDITIONS

"We have fed our sea for a thousand years,
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there's never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead;
We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' paid in full!
* * * * *
There's never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we manned;
There's never an ebb goes seaward now
But drops our dead on the sand.

We must feed our sea for a thousand years,
For that is our doom and pride,
As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind,
Or the wreck that struck last tide--
Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef
Where the ghastly blue lights flare.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha' bought it fair!"
--KIPLING.

As illustrations of cool daring, of the courage that does not count
numbers or depend on noise, nor flinch from flame or steel, few things
are more wonderful than the many cutting-out stories to be found in the
history of the British navy. The soldier in the forlorn hope,
scrambling up the breach swept by grape and barred by a triple line of
steadfast bayonets, must be a brave man. But it may be doubted whether
he shows a courage so cool and high as that of a boat's crew of sailors
in a cutting-out expedition.

The ship to be attacked lies, perhaps, floating in a tropic haze five
miles off, and the attacking party must pull slowly, in a sweltering
heat, up to the iron lips of her guns. The greedy, restless sea is
under them, and a single shot may turn the eager boat's crew at any
instant into a cluster of drowning wretches. When the ship is reached,
officers and men must clamber over bulwarks and boarding-netting,
exposed, almost helplessly, as they climb, to thrust of pike and shot
of musket, and then leap