what means have been employed to cow him or constrain him, or to repress his ferocious instincts, he remains at bottom the same wild animal, the same untamable beast of prey in human shape, ready for a new outbreak the instant he thinks the vigilance of his conqueror relaxed, or the heavy hand lifted for a moment from his neck. The English system of blowing Oriental fanatics from the muzzles of cannon, and the Dutch system of emasculating them, are based, not upon a refinement of cruelty, as is often supposed, but upon a deliberate selection of exemplary punishment, calculated to appeal most effectively to the superstition and sense of horror of those with whom they have to deal. In all the Oriental creeds, Musselman and Pagan alike, the doctrine is universal that no man whose organs have been mutilated can enter the kingdom of heaven. This effect is produced by both the English process of blowing from the cannon's mouth, and by the simpler and more direct surgery of the Dutch. In the estimation of the Oriental Moslems and Pagans it, therefore, amounts to eternal punishment. Simple death, either in battle or by ordinary modes of execution is not dreaded by these people. But they do dread and shrink from mutilation or defilement of the body, which in their creed is held to deny all hope of happiness in the next world. In short, nothing in the punitive way can appeal to the Malay sense unless it be Death is Not something, that from his point of view, is more horrible than the devices of his own savagery. A quaint instance in proof is related in an old scrapbook of "Anecdotes of the Whale Fishery," compiled by one of my Nantucket ancestors. Along in the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s of this century, the last years of the whaling industry, whaleships operating in the Indian and West Pacific Oceans used frequently to recruit their crews in the Malay Islands. These recruits were principally drawn from Timor, the easternmost island of the Javan archipelago, because that island lay in the track of whalers passing from one ocean to the other through the Straits of New Guinea, and its harbors-Coupang, etc. were the best in that part of the world. The Malay of Timor has long been noted as the most perfect specimen of his race, physically and mentally, and he is the best seaman of any race not Caucasian. Early in the '30s the whaleship "Phoenix," of Nantucket, Captain Gardner, having spent a season in the Indian Ocean, ran up through the narrow seas of New Guinea, bound for the Japan whaling ground. The crew being reduced by sickness, Captain Gardner touched at Coupang and shipped nine Malays, most of whom had already sailed in American or English whalers. They soon proved to be an exceptionally hard lot, one in particular being almost constantly refractory. Finally, one day the first mate, William Starbuck, of Nantucket, chastised this Malay with a rope's end. Well aware of the treacherous and revengeful character of his customer, Starbuck kept his weather eye on the man. One day not long afterward, while the first mate's watch was washing down decks after cutting up a sperm whale, the Malay, seeing Starbuck's attention directed to something aloft, whipped a short "creese knife" from his shirt and darted a stab at the mate's back. The knife found its mark, but glanced along a rib without penetrating the body. Quicker than thought Starbuck whirled around, seized the Malay's right wrist with one hand and his shoulder with the other and threw him to the deck. Starbuck had two loaded pistols in his belt and might easily have blown the Malay's brains out. But he knew the breed too well for that. To kill him in that manner would only invite vengeance from the other Malays. It was necessary to give him something that in the Malay estimation would be more horrible than sudden death. So "Bill" Starbuck, a giant in strength, took the Malay's right arm, placed his knee against the elbow and deliberately broke it backward, "the bones and tendons," says the old scrapbook, "of the doomed limb snapping like so many pine twigs as the joint yielded to the Samson-like strength of the pitiless mate. With one long howl of rage and anguish the Malay quivered convulsively and fainted. Rising to his feet Starbuck ordered a couple of buckets of water thrown over the quivering wretch and walked away, remarking, "The mud-colored devil will have to stab left-handed hereafter." How Starbuck Subdued a Malay. "The Malay came to out of his faint," pursues the old book, "but he never recovered. An attempt was made to straighten the arm and put it in splints, but the torn flesh and broken bones and tendons were past healing. The shock proved too much for the victim's system, and gangrene soon set in. The wretched Malay lingered for about four weeks in horrible agony and then died. It was fearful discipline, but nothing short of it would have sufficed. During the rest of the voyage, about fourteen months, the other eight Malays were as docile as rabbits. None of them wanted their elbows broken across Bill Starbuck's knee!" The lesson of this anecdote is of historical value just now. Unlike General Otis, Bill Starbuck understood the natives. He knew how to "conciliate" them, though his method was doubtless radically different from that contemplated by our President. The reason why the other eight Malays in the "Phoenix's" crew were conciliated was because Bill Starbuck, from their point of view, was a fiercer and crueler savage than any Malay ever dared be, and because his exhibition of physical prowess had stricken them with awe and terror. The prospect of dealing with such savages in the hope of educating them up to the point at which they may comprehend the meaning of government by the consent of the governed, is not an inviting one. At present they have no conception of any meaning to the word "government," except as a synonym of organized plunder or systematic rapine. In dealing with such a race it is much easier to "take up the white man's burden " at the wrong end than at the right end. The captain of the "Phoenix " was Paul Jones Gardner, youngest son of Henry Grafton Gardner, who served five years in the Revolution under Paul Jones, and was acting gunner of the "Bon Homme Richard" when she took the "Serapis" in 1779, while Bill Starbuck, then not more than twentythree or twenty-four years old, was a grandson of Owen Starbuck, who was quarter gunner in the "Ranger" under Jones when she took the "Drake " off Carrickfergus in 1778. UNDER TWO FLAGS. A Hero of the Blue and the Gray. BY AN OLD COMRADE. ORNE to the battlefield one day on a litter because he was too sick to walk; climbing a tree another day like a schoolboy, in order to get a better peep at the enemy's Santiago intrenchments; incessantly on the go among his troops and officers, and filling up the few gaps of spare moments with first-class newspaper letters lauding the gallant work of his boys in the field-such are some telling snap shots at "Fighting Joe " Wheeler. He is a "steam engine in pantaloons," they say, and carries his sixty-three years as easily as he would a bamboo cane. By the side of the mammoth Shafter, nearly a 300-pounder, the little general's one hundred and fifteen pounds of very spare meat and small bones make him look like a pocket edition of a warrior. Next to General J. E. B. Stuart, Wheeler was by odds the best and nerviest cavalry leader on the Confederate side. He was one of the gallant "batch of Confederate devils," as Sherman called them, who made the latter's march to the sea such a thorny enterprise. He so distinguished himself that in 1865 he was appointed a lieutenant-general, and at the close of the war was in command of the cavalry operating with the forces of General Joe Johnston. of General Wheeler. The infantry of the Union armies in the West were more familiar with the names of Wheeler, Forrest and Morgan than with the names of any other Confederate generals. "They were nearly always where we didn't want them to be, and they gave us lots of The Dashing Raids trouble," says a retired Union major. "I never forgave General Wheeler for his raid around our army at Stone River. Just as we were having all we could attend to in front, Wheeler left the extreme right of the Confederate Army, made a dash to the rear of Rosecrans' army, captured and destroyed wagon trains, captured hospital trains with our wounded, burned everything burnable, evaded our own cavalry columns and in two days reached the left wing of the Confederate army, as one of the boys put it, fresh as a daisy." Wheeler was born at Augusta, Ga., and graduated at West Point in the class of '59. When the break came between North and South he resigned his commission in the United States army and was appointed colonel of the Nineteenth Alabama Infantry. He commanded a brigade at Shiloh. Next he was transferred to the cavalry, and in 1862 was placed over that arm of the service under Braxton Bragg, in the West. A major-general in 1863, he led the Confederate cavalry on the bloody and stubborn battlefield of Chickamauga. "The recognition of Joe Wheeler in the uniform of a United States general," said one of his old soldiers recently, "impresses all those who shared for years the hardships, privations and dangers which he underwent as a Confederate cavalry leader, as one of those incomprehensible events that the whirligig of time brings about." General Wheeler as he appeared during the Civil War was youthful, almost boyish, except for a heavy silken beard; neat and dapper in dress, as gentle mannered as a woman, refined in expression, never indulging in oaths or rude speech. I have seen him blush to the roots of his hair at the recital of some objectionable story or coarse remark of some rough officer, whom he valued for his zeal and courage. The Impersonation It was when the battle was joined, however, that Wheeler was seen at his best. Then it was that the little general, mounted on his big black charger, seemed to grow to the full stature of a cavalryman. The whole man, who but an hour ago was the of Daring. suave and courteous gentleman, became the alert and dangerous antagonist, regardless of bursting shells and singing bullets, looking intently for the opportunity to charge the columns opposing him. As he gave his orders, in his lisping speech, there was method and deliberation that comprehended the situation. The celerity of his movements and his restless activity gave his command but little repose. If it were not an attack that he was planning he was organizing a raid to burn bridges or tear up the railroads in the rear of the enemy. So that to ride with Wheeler was to live in the saddle, to sleep in the saddle, to be here to-day, but far away tomorrow. General Wheeler is a much older man now; his locks are white, but he is still vigorous and active, as keen for attack in his blue uniform upon the enemies of the Stars and Stripes as he ever was upon those of the stars and bars when he wore the gray. The little general is a bunch of alert, indefatigable nerves and fibres. He never rests. As a member of Congress from Alabama for seven terms he used to serve lazy members as a horrible example of industry. You never found him in the cloak room with his feet cocked up, taking it easy. He kept five secretaries on the go all the time hunting down facts and figures for speeches, and they found so much game in roaming through the department archives that "Fighting Joe" seldom let a day pass without firing some of his ammunition on the floor. They say he spreads over more space in the Congressional Record than any three men in the House. Alabama is kept flooded with his franked speeches and documents of that alluring character that burst in such a Johnstown avalanche from the government printing office. It is told that as the general was riding about his home district one day he overtook a mail carrier on foot. He took the fellow up in his buggy and asked him why he did not have a horse. "I did have one," he said, "but old Wheeler sent down so many documents from Washington that it killed him in trying to An Anecdote of deliver them." And it is added that the carrier soon afterward received a present of a new horse. The story inay be mythical, but when a member repeated it to the general he laughed and admitted that the statement was founded on fact. When the trouble with Spain began this fighting ex-Confederate was among the first to offer his services to the President, and they were at once snapped up with the hearty, unanimous approval of the nation. He was very proud, they say, when he got into the blue at Chickamauga Camp, among the scenes where he had fought so fiercely against the flag he is serving now. Restless till he got to the front, impetuously brave in action to-day, as he was a generation ago, respected and revered as soldier and gentleman by his entire command, and thoroughly enjoying the fullest confidence of the President and Congress, what finer object lesson can be found of the new-born patriotism that has thrilled and welded the country, than this hero of the gray leading regiments on the Cuban hills in the blue! |