Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/570



INENESS of grain is the distinctive quality of the American naval officer. He is brave as a matter of course, and his intrepidity is supplemented with quiet determination, unostentatious readiness for emergency, alertness and incisiveness of mind. He not only has the fighting strain that has been carried in the blood from the days of Paul Jones and Decatur and Hull, but he fills the definition of a gentleman given by Oliver Wendell Holmes the younger: "One who is willing to die for little things." Commander Craven, who went down to his death with his ship "Tecumseh" in the battle of Mobile Bay, was a prototype of the American naval officer of to-day. The monitor was sinking beneath him when he and the pilot, John Collins, met at the foot of the ladder leading to the turret. Both men hesitated, and Craven stepped back politely. "After you, pilot," he said. Collins mounted the ladder and was saved; there