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Waikato Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 2929, 23 April 1891, Page 4

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L\ .Mr Robert C. Leslie's now work, '• Old Sen Wings, Ways, and Words in tlw: Days of Oak and Hemp," there occurs tho following word picture of the naval engagement, fought by Ilodney in 1780 Imagine, then, the brat of drum to quarters, and what a scone it must hare produced on the night in which Rodney engaged the Spanish Hoot. Tlw men from below all hurriedly tumbling upone after another, with hammocks hastily rolled together for stowing ; the mugazines dimly lighted through iron barrel sliding scuttles from certain adjourning den*, known as "liglitrooms,'' by light borrowed from which cartridges are being filled and handed tip by powder monkeys to the fighting decks above, along which are ranged at intervals "match tubs," with scores in their brims to reciove the slow matches used in tiring the guns; the lighted ends us they hang in these scores all reflected in the water washing to and fro in the bottom of the match tubs. Then by l.'interii light, hung from beams barely sft. fiin. from the deck, the men are loading the great guns; und as the order from those on deck, watching tho .ship's roll, comes to fire, broadside after broadside is poured in upon tho (Spaniard's passing ships. All this, too. on alee shore, an enemy's const.in a gale of wind and dark night; and tin whole pack of twenty ships of the line kept in hand by tho will of one man—Rodney (he went to sea from Harrow School at twelre.) It was a hard life; but what a splendid scene of fire-lighted wave, and smeike driven by the gale, must he have overlooked from his lofty poop, as each of liis great ships opened her fire upon the enemy tint, stormy night. Then, while all this is passiug above, on tho fighting decks, the surgeons their mates and loblolly boys, away below amidst the roar of the battle, are at work in the cock-pit, manufacturing, by unsteady lantern-light.us best they can, in an air heavy with fnines of sulphur and rolling bilge-water, those one-legged and one-armed pensioners, many of whom were still with us at. at Greenwich less than foity years ago.''