that after the loss of the Alabama, many of them came and begged him to procure another ship. I do not find re- lated of him, however, any incident so touching as that told by his first officer. Lieutenant Kell, — too simple and too human to have been invented, by Kell, at any rate, — of the dying seaman, who, as his superior was leaving the Alabama, then about to sink, " caught my hand and kissed it with such reverence and loyalty — the look, the act, lingers in my memory still." 21 Surely they were not all infernal rascals on board that pirate.
If we look at Semmes, for a moment, in other concerns of life besides the official, we shall find much that is at- tractive to complete the picture of him.
So far from having anything of the typical pirate's mercurial affections, he seems to have been a man of peculiarly domestic habit, much attached to his wife and to his children. The temporary presence of children and their mothers on the Alabama is referred to in his book with great feeling: "When I would turn over in my cot, in the morning, for another nap, in that dim conscious- ness which precedes awakening, I would listen, in dreamy mood, to the sweet voices over my head, . . . and giving free wing to fancy, I would be clasping again the absent dear ones to my heart." 22 L^gg literary, and therefore even more convincing, are the little touches of tender- ness interspersed among the scientific observations and political discussion of the log-book. ** The governor sent me off a fine turkey, and some fruit, and his lady a bou-
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