en, a rear-admiral's salute. When she had finished,
the _Shenandoah_ took up the tale, followed in turn by the _Oneida_
and _Iroquois_, the mournful cadence thus covering almost the whole
period up to the customary volleys over the graves. As saluting was
the first lieutenant's business, I had remained on board to attend to
it; and consequently, from our closeness to the land, had a more
comprehensive view of the pageant than was possible to a participant.
Our ships were nearly stripped of their crews; the rank of the admiral
and the number of the sufferers, as well as the tragic character of
the incident, demanding the utmost marks of reverent observance. As
the march was taken up on shore, the British seamen in blue uniforms
in the left column, the American in white in the right, to the number
of several hundred each, presented a striking appearance; but more
imposing and appealing, the central feature and solemn exponent of the
occasion, was the long line of twelve coffins, skirting the sandy
beach against a background of trees, borne in single file on men's
shoulders in ancient fashion, each covered with the national colors.
The tokens of mourning, so far as ships' ensigns were concerned,
continued till sunset, when the ceremonial procedure was closed by a
simple form, impressive in its significance and appropriateness.
Following the motions of the American flag-ship, the chief mourner,
the flags of all the vessels, as by one impulse, were rounded up to
the peaks, as in the activities of every-day life; that of the dead
admiral being at the same time mast-headed to its usual place. By this
mute gesture, vessels and crews stood at attention, as at a review,
for their last tribute to the departed. The _Hartford_ then fired a
farewell rear-admiral's salute, at the thirteenth and final gun of
which his flag came down inch by inch, in measured dignity, to be
raised no more; all others descending with it in silent haulage.

Admiral Henry Bell, who thus sadly ended his career when on the verge
of an honored retirement, was in a way an old acquaintance of mine. It
was he who had refused me a transfer to the _Monongahela_ during the
war; and he and my father, having been comrades when cadets at the
Military Academy in the early twenties of the last century, had
retained a certain interest in each other, shown by mutual inquiries
through me. Bell had begun life in the army, subsequently quitting it
for the navy for reasons wh