In some strange way, to those who grew to know her, the ship seemed to live; they imbued her with personality, and congenial spirits seemed to recognize her yearning for a plunge into that all-embracing inland sea. She hung poised, as it were, like a bird ready for flight, and watchers standing within her shadow divined her longing for that mad first rush from the ways. The ripple of the water had never curled along that ship's massive keel; her broad bows had never buffeted a way through the thunderous attack of the storm-waves; she had never felt the ocean uplift; the long pitch and toss, the unsteady roll and heave which spoke of water-borne life had never been hers; yet, looking at the graceful lines, the mighty frames, the most unimaginative would have said that the old ship lusted for the sea, and, in futile and ungratified desire, passed her shore-bound days in earth-spurning discontent. CHAPTER II HIS LAST COMMAND On the hill back of the Point, embowered on three sides in the trees, which had been cut away in front to afford a fair view of the ship, the Point itself, and the open waters of the lake beyond, stood an old white house facing the water, with a long covered porch, high-pillared and lofty, extending across its entire front. Old, yet young compared to the ship. Overlooking the ship, on a platform on the very brow of the hill, a long, old-fashioned six-pound gun was mounted on a naval carriage. Back of the gun rose a tall flag-staff, and from the top fluttered night and day a small blue flag with two stars, the ensign of a rear-admiral. There were no masts or spars upon the ship below the hill, of course, but aft from the mouldering taffrail a staff had been erected, and from it flew the stars and stripes, for during the last half of her existence the ship had rejoiced in a crew and a captain! Some twenty-five years since a quaint old naval officer had taken up his abode at the house on the hill. With him had come a young sailor, who, disdaining the house, had slung his hammock aboard the ship,--finding a place between decks which, after a few repairs, would shelter him from the storms. When the old officer came, he hoisted at the mast which was at once erected in the yard the broad blue pennant of a commodore, and it was only after Farragut had made his splendid passage up the Mississippi, and awakened the quiet shores of the Father of Waters with the thunder of his guns, so that the title of commodore became too small for him, that the old veteran had been promoted with other veterans--and with Farragut himself--to the rank of rear-admiral, recently established,--certainly a rank entirely in consonance with his merit at least. The old man had been practically forgotten, lost sight of, in the glory accruing to the newer names among the Civil War heroes; yet he had been among the foremost in that great galaxy of sailors who had made the navy of the United States so formidable in the War of 1812.