“Oh! what is so gay as a reefer’s life! With his junk and Jamaica by him, He cares not a fig for the morning’s strife. He seeks but the foe to defy him; He fights for his honor and country’s laws, He fights for the mother that bore him,— And the hireling slave of a tyrant’s cause Will quail, like a coward, before him. “The deep may unfetter its surges dread, The heavens their thunders awaken, The tempest howl as it sweeps overhead,— He smiles at all danger unshaken; With an unblenched eye, and a daring form He fearlessly gazes before him, Though he fall in battle, or sink in the storm, His country, he knows, will weep o’er him. “In her sun-lit vallies are daughters fair To greet us from battle returning, With their song and smile to banish each care By the hearth-fire cheerily burning. Oh! who would not fight for beings like these, For mothers, for grandsires hoary? Like a besom we’ll sweep the foe from the seas, Or die, in the strife, full of glory.” “Bravo! three times three!” and the triple sound rolled stunningly from our throats. “Hark! wasn’t that the boatswain’s whistle?” said I, and for a moment we paused in our applause to listen. But the tumult of the storm drowned everything in its fierce uproar. “Again, boys—hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!” and the cheers were renewed with redoubled vigor. “Gentlemen, all hands on deck,” said the quarter-master, opening the door at this moment. “Ay! ay! sir,” was the simultaneous response of every member of the mess, and in less than a minute our late noisy apartment was as quiet as the tomb, and we had each taken his post on deck. Such is discipline.