Note 27 — THE NAVAL OFFICER’S SPIRIT.

“Captain Scott of the cutter told me a singular story of what occurred during the action between the Constitution and Macedonian—he being powder-monkey aboard the former ship. A cannon shot came through the ship’s side, and a man’s head was struck off, probably by a splinter, for it was done without bruising the head or body, as clean as by a razor. Well, the man was walking pretty briskly at the time of the accident; and Scott seriously affirmed that he kept walking onward at the same pace, with two jets of blood gushing from his headless trunk, till, after going twenty feet without a head, he sunk down at once, with his legs under him.” Hawthorne Note Books. One seems to hear Mr. Burchell’s “fudge!” here.