The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea
by Alfred Ollivant · English · Gutenberg #8396 · 550,877 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea
Author: Alfred Ollivant
Release date: June 1, 2005 [eBook #8396]
Most recently updated: December 26, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8396
Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, William Flis, Jerry Fairbanks, Mary Musser, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GENTLEMAN: A ROMANCE OF THE SEA ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, William Flis, Jerry Fairbanks, Mary Musser,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE GENTLEMAN
A ROMANCE OF THE SEA
BY ALFRED OLLIVANT
AUTHOR OF "BOB, SON OF BATTLE" AND
"REDBOAT CAPTAIN"
1908
TO
THE NAVY
CONTENTS
JULY 1805
BOOK I _THE LITTLE TREMENDOUS_
I
THE DEATH OF BLACK DIAMOND
Chap.
I. THE MAN ON THE GREY
II. THE GALLOPING GENT
III. THE GUNNER OF THE SLOOP
IV. OLD DING-DONG
V. REUBEN BONIFACE'S STORY
VI. THE LUGGER _KITE_
VII. THE MAN IN THE LUGGER
VIII. THE SCENT-BOTTLE
II
MAGNIFICENT ARRY
IX. THE TWO PRIVATEERS
X. THE MAIN-DECK
XI. COMMODORE MOUCHE
XII. BOARDERS
XIII. AFTER THE FIGHT
III
UNDER THE CLIFF
XIV. SUNDAY EVENING
XV. THE VOICE FROM THE POWDER-MAGAZINE
XVI. MAGNIFICENT ARRY GOES ALOFT
XVII. THE GRAVE OF THE LITTLE _TREMENDOUS_
XVIII. OLD DING-DONG'S REVENGE
XIX. OLD DING-DONG HOMEWARD-BOUND
BOOK II
_BEACHY HEAD_
I
THE GAP GANG
XX. THE LAST OF A BRITISH SEAMAN.
XXI. KIT STARTS ON HIS MISSION
XXII. FAT GEORGE & CO
XXIII. THE CLIMB
XXIV. THE CLIMB
II
THE MAN ON THE CLIFF
XXV. THE GENTLEMAN BOWS
XXVI. THE DEAD WOMAN
XXVII. THE HOLLOW IN THE COOMBE
XXVIII. ON THE TOP OF THE WORLD
III
ABERCROMBY'S BLACK COCK
XXIX. THE FLAG OF HIS COUNTRY
XXX. AN OLD SONG
XXXI. THE MAN WITH THE SWORD
XXXII. THE BROKEN SQUARE
XXXIII. FIGHTING FITZ
XXXIV. THE FACE ON THE WALL
IV
THE GARRISON
XXXV. THE SOLDIER'S MOTHER
XXXVI. THE FIGHTING MAN
XXXVII. THE SAINT
XXXVIII. THE SIMPLETON
XXXIX. THE FLAP OF A FLAG.
V
THE BOARDING OF THE PRIVATEER
XL. THE SWIM IN THE DARK
XLI. PIGGY, THE PRIVATEERSMAN
XLII. THE MAN IN THE BOAT
XLIII. A BLACK BORDERER TO THE RESCUE
BOOK III _FORT FLINT_
I
BESIEGED
XLIV. THE ENGLISHMAN
XLV. THE PARSON AT HOME
XLVI. THE PARSON'S STORY
XLVII. THE DESPATCH-BAG
XLVIII. THE DOXIE'S DAUGHTER
II
THE SALLY
XLIX. MAKING READY
L. IN THE DRAIN
LI. VOICES OF THE LOST
LII. HARE AND HOUND
LIII. OLD TOADIE
LIV. THE PARSON'S AGONY
LV. PRETTY POLLY-KISS-ME-QUICK
LVI. THE RACE FOR THE COTTAGE
III
THE SHADOW OF THE WOMAN
LVII. THE PARLEY
LVIII. THE PLANK CAPONIER
LIX. MISS BLOSSOM
LX. THE TWO PRAYERS
LXI. KNAPP'S RETURN
LXII. THE PARSON MUSES
IV
THE GENTLEMAN'S LAST CARD
LXIII. NELSON'S TOPSAILS
LXIV. RUMBLINGS OF THUNDER
LXV. THE DOINGS IN THE CREEK
LXVI. BUGLES
LXVII. THE ACE OF TRUMPS
V
THE FORLORN HOPE
LXVIII. THE BLESSING
LXIX. THE PARSON'S SORTIE
LXX. THE LAST OF OLD FAITHFUL
LXXI. ON THE SHINGLE-BANK
LXXII. THE RACE FOR THE LUGGER
LXXIII. _NOBLESSE OBLIGE_
BOOK IV _NELSON_
I
H.M.S. _MEDUSA_
LXXIV. NATURE, THE COMFORTER
LXXV. ON THE DECK OF THE _MEDUSA_
LXXVI. IN THE CABIN OF THE _MEDUSA_
LXXVII. THE _MEDUSA_ GOES ABOUT
LXXVIII. NELSON'S HEART
LXXIX. IN THE CABIN AGAIN
LXXX. THE _MEDUSA_ DIPS HER ENSIGN
II
KNAPP'S STORY
LXXXI. THE RETURN
LXXXII. BACK TO THE DOOR
LXXXIII. PIPER PRAYS
LXXXIV. IN THE COTTAGE
III
THE WISH AT EVENING
LXXXV. THE SANCTUARY
LXXXVI. TWILIGHT
LXXXVII. HIS CAUSE
LXXXVIII. THE ADVENTURER
LXXXIX. THE LAST POST
SEPTEMBER 1805
The introductory poem appeared originally in the _Pall Mall
Magazine_, and is re-published by permission of the Editor.
OUR SEA
The Sea! the Sea!
Our own home-land, the Sea!
'Tis, as it always was, and still, please God, will be,
When we are gone,
Our own,
Possessing it for Thee,
Ours, ours, and ours alone,
The Anglo-Saxon Sea.
The stripped, moon-shining, naked-bosomed Sea.
No jerry-building here;
No scenes that once were dear
Beneath man's tawdry touch to disappear;
Always the same, the Sea,
Th' unstable-steadfast Sea.
'Tis, as it always was, and still, please God, will be,
When we are gone,
Our own,
Vice-regents under Thee,
Ours, ours, and ours alone,
The Anglo-Saxon Sea.
The mighty-furrowed, moody-minded Sea.
New suns and moons arise;
Perish old dynasties;
For ever rise and die the centuries;
Only remains the Sea,
Our right of way, the Sea.
'Tis, as it always was, and still, phase God, will be,
When we are gone,
Our own,
Our heritage from Thee,
Ours, ours, and ours alone,
The Anglo-Saxon Sea.
Our good, grey, faithful, Saxon-loving Sea._
JULY 1805
"Succeed, and you command the Irish Expedition," said the squat fellow.
"My Emperor!" replied the tall cavalry-man, saluted, and clanked away
in the gloom.
* * * * *
A sweet evening, very fresh, the tide crashing at the foot of the cliff.
In the twilight, above Boulogne, a man was standing, hands behind him.
The moon lay on the water, making a broad white road that led from
his feet across the flowing darkness West.
The dusk was falling. About him the earth grew dark; above him all
was purity and pale stars.
Only the tumble of the tide, white-lipped on the beach beneath, stirred
the silence; while one little dodging ship, black in the wake of the
moon, told of some dare-devil British sloop, bluffing the batteries
upon the cliff.
The rustle of the water beneath, its crashing rhythm and hiss as of
breath intaken swiftly, soothed him. He fell into a waking dream.
It seemed to his wide eyes that the sea rose, heavenward as a wall;
its foot set in foam, its summit on a level with his face. Against
it a silver ladder leaned. He had but to mount that ladder to pluck
the island-jewel, the desire of his heart these many years.
He reached a hand into the night as though to realise his wish; and
even as he did so, the sloop barked.
A mortar hard by boomed; the sea splashed; the sloop scudded seaward,
laughing; and the dreamer awoke.
Behind him, hutted on the cliffs, lay the Army of England: [Footnote:
The Army of England was Napoleon's name for the Army of Invasion.]
such a sword, now two years a-tempering, as even he, the Great
Swordsman, had never wielded.
Beneath him in the dimming basin huddled 3000 gun-vessels, waiting
their call.
Before him, across the moon-white waste, under the North star, lay
that stubborn little land of Bibles and evening bells, of smoky cities,
and hedge-rows fragrant with dog-rose and honeysuckle, of apple-cheeked
children, greedy fighting-men, and still-eyed women who became the
mothers of indomitable seamen--that storm-beaten land which for so
long now, turn he where he would, had risen before him, Angel of the
Flaming Sword, and waved him back.
Between him and it ran a narrow lane of sea, the moon-road white across
it: so narrow he could almost leap it; so broad that now after years
of trying he was baffled still.
Could his Admirals only stop the Westward end of that narrow lane for
six hours, that he and his two-hundred-thousand might take the moon-road
unmolested, he was Master of the World.
But--they could not.
In his hand, fiercely crumpled, lay the despatch that told him
Villeneuve was back in Vigo, shepherded home again.
And by whom?
That little one-eyed one-armed seaman, who for ten years now had stood
between him and his destiny.
One man, the man of Aboukir Bay. [Footnote: On August 1, 1798, Nelson
destroyed the French fleet in Aboukir Bay at the Battle of the Nile.]
BOOK I
_THE LITTLE TREMENDOUS_
I
THE DEATH OF BLACK DIAMOND
CHAPTER I
THE MAN ON THE GREY
The man on the grey was in a hurry.
The stab of his backward heels; the shake and swirl of his bridle-hand;
the flog of his arm in time with the horse's stride, told their own tale.
A huge fellow, his face was red and round as a November sun. Hat and
wig were gone; and his once white neck-cloth was soaked with blood.
He came over the crest of the Downs at a lurching gallop; down
the ragged rut-worn lane, the dusty convolvuluses glimmering up at
him in the dusk; past the squat-spired Church in the high Churchyard
among the sycamores; down the rough and twisted Highstreet of Newhaven
in the chill of that August evening, as no man had ever come before.
A bevy of smoke-dimmed men in the bar of the Bridge, discussing in
awed whispers last night's affair of the Revenue cutter off Darby's
Hole, hushed suddenly at the clatter and rushed out as he stormed past.
He paid no heed. Those staring eyes saw nothing but the brown street
sliding under him, a pair of sweating ears, a flapping mane, and before
him a tumble of old roofs; while beyond in the harbour, the spars of
a sloop of war pricked the evening.
Clear of the little town huddling on the hillside, he drove along the
bank of the slow green river, flogging still.
One thing was clear: the grey was dead-beat.
He was roaring like a furnace, and straight as a rail from tail to
muzzle. Black and white with sweat, he jerked along at a terrible toppling
stagger. Only those vice-like legs and hands plucking, plucking, kept
body and soul together.
Where the river widened, and the sea gleamed misty across the
harbour-mouth, as though he knew his mission was fulfilled, up went
his head, and he fell in thundering ruin.
Where he fell he lay, lank-necked.
The tail twitched once; the body trembled; the great heart broke.
CHAPTER II
THE GALLOPING GENT
I
A boat had just put off from the bank, a tall lad steering. The great
red horseman, strangely active for so huge a man, flung himself clear
of his horse, snatched a pistol from a holster, and came floundering
down the cobbled river-bank, his coat-tails floating.
"Put back, sir!" he bellowed in husky fury. "Put back, my God! or I'll
fire."
He was standing, the water to his tops, with heaving shoulders.
"Don't shout; don't shoot; and don't swear," replied a voice, pure
as a lady's. "And perhaps I'll oblige."
The boy edged the boat into the bank. The huge fellow, in too great
a hurry to wait, floundered out, clutched her by the stern, and scrambled
in.
"My God, sir!" he panted, thrusting a dripping face into the boy's.
"D'you know who you're a-talking to?--I'm a ridin-officer on Government
business."
"And d'you know who _you're_ a-talkin to?" replied the boy, cold as
the other was hot. "I'm a King's officer on King's business. Remove your
face, please. Sit down. And don't shake so, or you'll spill us.--I'm a
midshipman going aboard my ship."
"Then you're just in time for warm work, Mr. Milkshipman," panted the
other.
He bumped down on the thwart opposite the waterman, and thrust
at the oars.
"Row, man, row!" he urged. "The Gallopin Gent's got through."
II
The colour of apple-blossom, coming and going in the lad's cheek, died
away, and left him pale.
He was a splendid stripling, sun in his hair, sun in his eyes; with
something of the lank grace of the fawn about him.
The face was fine almost to haggardness; with long chin, delicate nose,
and eager eyes, very shy.
The boy had broken through the chrysalis of childhood, and not yet
emerged into the fighting male. There was no down on his chin; the
radiance of his cheek was yet undimmed. The soul, rosy behind its clouds,
still tinged them with dawn-lights.
He was a Boy, sparkling Boy; Boy at the age when he is Woman, and Woman
at her best, the playfellow, the tease, the inspiration; free of limb,
as yet untrammelled of mind; with passionate hatreds and heroic adorations.
He was steering now, his eyes on the battered topsails in the mists
before him; and in those eyes a glitter of swords. Had his mother or
Gwen been there, they could have told from that frosty calm, those
jealous-drooping lids, that Master Boy meant mischief.
And so it was.
This fat fellow with the heaving shoulders on the thwart before him,
this chap with the crease across his bald neck, and the black sweat
trickling from his hair, had insulted him.
As woman, he was bent upon revenge; as man, he would go warily, striking
only to strike home.
"That was a fine horse you flogged to death," he began tranquilly,
trailing his fingers in the dead green waters.
"Yes, sir," panted the other, thrusting at the oars. "I don't spare
spur when I'm ridin agin the French. I'm a man, and an Englishman--not
a pink-faced, girl-eyed booby togged out in a cocked hat and a tin
dagger, calling meself a King's officer."
"I guessed that you were not one of us," replied the boy delicately.
"Your manners are too distinguished. But tell me a little more about
your ride. You seemed in rather a hurry. I take it you were riding
for a drink."
The great man swung round. His whole life seemed to have stopped short,
and now hung behind his eyes--an appalling shadow.
For one swift moment the boy thought he would be struck.
Then the big man spoke; and his voice was measured and very still.
"If you think I burst the gamest eart that ever beat in an orse's ide
for a drink, why then, sir," with crushing simplicity, "you think wrong."
He resumed his rowing, and continued with the same surprising dignity.
"I bred that orse; I broke that orse; I loved that orse."
The tide of the boy's being set back with a shock.
"O!" he cried. "O ... I didn't mean ... I really...."
"That's all right, sir," came the other's smothered voice. "I know
you didn't."
He swallowed, and his face grew rigid. Then a light broke all about
it.
"But there!" with husky pride. "He won't bear me no grudge--will
you, old man?" with a hoarse burst of tenderness, flinging his arm
towards the bank, where the dead horse's girths glimmered still in
the dusk. "He know'd I wouldn't have asked it of him, only I had to.
That's my old orse! that's my Robin!--Never asked no questions. Just
took and died and did his duty without the talkin. Maybe some of us
might learn a bit from him."
Taking a great bandana from his pocket, he blew his nose like the report
of a pistol.
"A'ter all," he said, with touching solemnity, "he died for his country,
did my Robin--same as Abercromby at Alexandrya."
III
Behind them on the hill a clock struck eight.
The riding-officer held up his hand.
"Ark!" he cried. "It was going seven in Ditchling as I pelted down
the Beacon. Gallop! gallop! gallop! There's ne'er another orse in England
could ha done it, with big Jerry Ram bumpin on his back all the way;
danged if there be!"
He thumped his knee.
"King George ought to know on it! He died for him. Fair lay down to
it, belly all along the ground. Might ha know'd he was on the King's
business, and the Gentleman with two minutes' start streakin away for
Birling Gap like a bullet from the bow."
"Aw, he'll be out again than?" drawled the waterman, sleepy and Sussex.
"Out again!" shouted Big Jerry, and clapping the handkerchief to his
ear, thrust it beneath the other's eye of mildew. "What's that?--blood,
ain't it?--whose?--mine.--How?--The Gentleman."
"You'll ha met him than, I expagt?" cooed the waterman in his cautious
way.
"He met me more like," replied Big Jerry with the grim humour of the
whole-hearted man, who gives hard knocks and takes them all in good part.
"Not but what we was expectin him, you'll understand."
"You knaw'd he was comin than surely?" came the waterman's slow musical
voice.
"Know'd it!" roared the other. "O course we know'd it. Why's the
_Kite_ been layin in Cuckmere Haven since night afore last?--why
was the Gap Gang strung out all the way from Furrel Beacon to Beachy
Head all day yesterday?--Why was Black Diamond mouchin round in Lewes
this morning?--Why?--why?--why?"
"Why?" asked the boy, breathless.
"Because the Gallopin Gent was comin down with despatches for Boney,
and they were keepin the road for him. That's why," screamed the big
man, bumping up and down in his excitement.
"Only question was which way. Ye see it's most in general all ways
at once with him. Up and down, day and night, all over Sussex, these
weeks past. No stoppin him; no coppin him; no nothin him. Always the
same chap--gentleman, mighty gay, bit o red riband in his button-hole,
and blood chestnut with a white blaze between his knees. Always the
same tale--gave em the go-by somehow. No sayin where or when--only
just when you're least expectin him, then you can make sure of him.
And when you are ready for him, seems he's readier for you."
He mopped his forehead, the laughing puckers gathering about his eyes.
"Look at us this evenin. There we was ridin easy up the Beacon, me
and the orse-patrol--_lookin for him_. Just as we tops the brow
who pops over the wall like a swallow but the Gentleman himself on
his chestnut?"
He threw back his head and chuckled.
"There!--I can't ardly elp laughin. The cheek o the chap!"
"Did he run?" asked the boy, all eyes.
"Run!" snorted the riding-officer. "No run about _im_.... Rode
at us like a rigiment of cavalry, swinging his sword, and laughin fit
to bust himself.... Half the boys bolted--and I don't know as I blame
them: they swear he's old Nick. Dick Halkett, old Job, and me, we stood
it.... Bang he rides at old Job and bowls him over a buster; runs young
Dick through the body; slops me over the pate a good un; and steals
away down the hill, waving his hand and crying--'Adoo! adoo! adoo!
remember me!'--as if we was likely to forget him!"
The big man mopped his bloody ear with a quizzical grin.
"I know'd it was no good follerin. Nothing foaled o mortal mare can
collar that chestnut, once she's away. So I bangs my hat down, catches
the old orse by the ead, and rams him down the hill for Newhaven."
He began to push at the oars again.
"For there's two roads to Birling Gap, my lad: one by land, and one by
sea. We've missed him by land. Now we'll see what the Jack-tars can do."
IV
The boy said nothing. His eyes were on his ship, dim above him in the
mist.
She was in rags and tatters: so much he could see, and little
else. Yet to him she seemed to glow in the dusk. He saw her through
blurred eyes in a cloud of glory, and his heart thrilled to her.
She was his ship; that ship of which he had dreamed ever since he could
dream, this boy born to the sea.
And was he not proud of her?
Shivering like a lover, he brought up alongside; and as he did so he
thrust out a hand to feel the wooden ribs which covered that heart
of valour.
For was she not the little _Tremendous_, of whom the heroic tales
were told!
CHAPTER III
THE GUNNER OF THE SLOOP
Swiftly and silently the _Tremendous_ spread her wings in the dusk.
The riding-officer was going over the side.
"Good luck, sir!" he said. "Make a cop; and Pitt'll thank you on his
knees."
For all answer the block-of-granite little man by the wheel
turned his back.
"Cut the cable!" he barked. "Set studdin-sails alow and aloft! Inboard
side-lights! Boniface, take a party of small-arm men forrad, and keep a
sharp look-out!"
Before the riding-officer had dropped into the dinghy, the
_Tremendous_ began to slap the water, shaking out ragged topsails
as she slid out of the harbour, a misty rain shrouding her.
"There's a row-boat coming up astern, sir," ventured the boy--"rowing
like mad."
"I have ears, sir, and I'm usin em," snapped the other, and stumped
forward, leaning heavily on a stick, thick and surly as himself.
They were the first words he had spoken to the lad, this block-of-granite
little man, across whose knees his father had died at St. Vincent;
and the boy did not find them encouraging.
"Send im victoriush,
Appee and gloriush,
Long to reign o er--i--ush,
Goshave----
"Uncle George!" bawled a bibulous voice. "Row, ye devil, row!--or I'll
split y'up, and chuck y'overboard."
A boat pelted up under the counter of the sloop. The singer rose suddenly,
clutched at a man-rope, and came swinging up the side.
The light of the binnacle-lamp fell upon him.
He was a tall fellow, with bushy black whiskers, a long tallowy nose
that in some old-time battle had been broken, and eyes with a wild
wet gleam in them. Now he sheered up against the bulwark, waving riotously.
"Three cheers for the lirrel _Tremendous_! Ooray! ray! ray!--We're
alf our ship's company short. There's only old Ding-dong left on the
quar'er-deck. I'm drunk as David's sow. And we're off to cur out the
Grand Armee. Ooray! ray! ray!" and he fell hiccoughing away into foolish
laughter.
"Hadn't you better go below?" said a pure treble at his side. "You're
beastly drunk."
The man pulled himself together, and stared through the gloom.
"Lumme!" he whispered. "A tottie!--a tottie for Lushy!... Lemme cuddle
ye, darlin, _do_."
"I'm a midshipman," said the boy briefly. "Shut up; and behave yourself."
The man tried to stand up, and swept off his hat.
"Ow de do, sir? Ow de do? By all means ow de do? Lemme introjuice you all
round. I'm Mr. Lanyon, commonly called Lushy, because? one? me failins:
Gunner aboard this packet by rights, and Actin Fust Lieutenant by the
grace o God--there bein no one else to act, see? This ere," he continued,
smacking the bulwark, "is His--Majesty's--ship--_Tremendous_, well
known and respected between the Lizard and the Nore. Not lookin her
sauciest just now, I grant you: shrouds tore to tatters, mizzen spliced,
bowsprit splintered, plugged fore and aft, and alf her weather bulwark
carried away. But that's _ex tempore_, as the sayin is. We only put
in at dawn to refit, and land wounded."
"Where's she been?" asked the boy.
"Been!" cried the other with rollicking laughter. "That's a good un.
Ere's a kid ain't eard where we been. Been!" the sudden thunder in
his voice. "Why, in Boulong Arbour among Boney's craft. H'in and h'out,
under Nap's nose. Stormed the Arbour Battery; set the gun-vessels afire;
and came out under their guns, colours at the truck, and the bosun's
boy in the mizzenchains singin--
O it's a snug little island,
A right little tight little island."
He clutched the boy's shoulder, and thrust flaming eyes into his.
"Old man's got a game leg since Camperdown. Fust Lieutenant led the
landin party--Mr. Wrot. Dessay you've heard tell of him. Dry Wrot,
they called him. Tubby little bloke, all belly and big voice. Fine
chap to fight, though, be God--only so thirsty, same as me. He took
it in the tummy, crawlin through the embrasure--hand-grenade, I fancies.
I was next man on the ladder." He was marching up and down, his hands
swinging, seeming to smoulder almost in the gloom.
"Pretty work in the battery, be God, as ever I see!--One time we was
bungin round-shot at each other across the casement, like marbles.
Give the Mossoos their due they fought like eroes; but not like h'us,
sir! not like h'us!"
He strode up and down, breathing flame.
"Ah, you should ha seen us. I were in me glory. A bloody massacree,
that's what it were. Bloody massacree. Enough to make a blessed saint
weep for joy. Pommesoul it were."
He turned in his stride, and the lamp showed the tears dribbling down
his face.
"And when we'd mushed up the blanky caboodlum: spiked the guns; sent
the gunners to glory; and blow'd up the battery, who led the boys out?"
He stopped dead.
"Old Lush!--Lushy, the Gunner, Gorblessim!" swelling his chest, and
patting it. "And why?--because there wasn't a quarter-deck officer,
not so much as a middy or mate, left to do it."
He resumed his strut with fighting hands.
"That's our sort aboard the _Tremendous_, sir. We're the
halleloojah lads to fight. And what we are, old Ding-dong made us."
"Who's old Ding-dong?" asked the boy, breathlessly.
The Gunner shot a finger at the block-of-granite figure forward.
"That's the man as won the battle o the Nile," he whispered with husky
magnificence. "And ere's the man that elped him."
He bowed with wide hands. Drunk as he was there was yet a dilapidated
splendour about the fellow as about an historic ruin. The boy felt it
through his disgust.
"I thought Nelson did a bit," he said.
"Nelson did much; I did more; _e_ did most," with a wave forward.
"Why!" shouting now. "Who was it led the line inside the shoal--creepin
it, leadsman in the chains, soundin all the way?--We _Thunderers_,
the _Goliath_ treadin mighty jealous on our heels. And who
commanded the _Thunderer_?--Old Ding-dong. And what did he get
for it?"
He smacked a hand down on the boy's shoulder.
"Broke him, sir!--broke him back to a sloop o war!--old Ding-dong,
the damdest, darndest, don't-care-a-cursest old sea-dog as ever set
his teeth in a French line o battle ship, and wouldn't let go, though
they fired double-shotted broadsides down his throat."
"But why did they break him?" gasped the boy. "It doesn't sound like
Nelson."
The other smacked his long nose with a finger mysteriously.
"I don't know what you mean," said the boy, short and sharp.
"Ah, and just as well you don't," replied the other loftily. "Some
day, Sonny, you'll know all there is to know and a leetle bit more--same
as me. Plenty time first though. If you've done suckin it's more'n
you look."
He began to march again.
"Yes, sir: he'd ha hoisted his broad pendant afore this, would old
Ding-dong, pit-boy and powder-monkey and all, only for that. And as
I'd ha gone h'up with him as he went h'up, so I goes down with him
when he goes down. I know'd old Ding-dong. He was the man for me. Talk
o fightin!--Dicky Keats, Ned Berry, the Honourayble Blackwood: good
men all and gluttons at it!--but for the real old style stuff,
ammer-and-tongs, fight to a finish, takin punishment and givin it,
there ain't a seaman afloat as'll touch our old man."
He spat over the side.
"Yes, sir, when he went, I went along, and never regretted
it--never. We've seen more sport aboard this blame little packet than
the rest of the Fleet together. Clear'd the Channel, be God, we
ave!--prowlin up and down, snow and blow, fog and shine, like a rampin
champin lion. Why, sir, we've fought a first-rate from Portland Bill
to Dead Man's Bay--this blame little boat you could sail in a babby's
bath! _Took her too!_ and towed her into Falmouth Roads, all standin,
like a kid leadin its mother by the and. Talk o Cochrane and the
_Speedy_!--Gor blime!--what's he alongside us?"
He steadied suddenly.
"Ush! ere comes the old man."
The boy could hear the stump of a stick on the deck.
"What's he wearin?" whispered the other, peering. "You can most always
tell the lay he's on by that. Pea-jacket means boat-work, cuttins out,
fire-ships, landin parties, and the like. If it's old blue frock
and yaller waistcoat, then it's lay em aboard and say your prayers.
And if it's cocked hat and chewin a quid, then it's elp you God: for
your time's come."
"You're a disgrace to the Service, Mr. Lanyon," came a curt voice.
"And you're a credit to it, sir," was the hearty retort.
"Go below."
"And just sposin I won't," answered the drunkard--"only sposin,
mind!--just for the sake of argyment, d'ye see?--what then?"
"Irons."
The drunkard folded his arms.
"And might I make so bold, Commander Ardin," he began elaborately,
"to ask who'll fight your guns, your Actin Fust in irons; and besides
yourself ne'er another officer on the quar'er-deck--only this ere squab."
"I'll fight em myself if needs be. Go below, d'ye hear?"
The Gunner stumbled away, roaring laughter.
"Sail the blurry ship; fight the blurry ship; sink the blurry ship;
and go to ell in the blurry ship. That's old Ding-dong."
CHAPTER IV
OLD DING-DONG
"They call you Kit?"
The boy started.
His name, his pet name that he had not heard for days, on the lips
of this block-of-granite little man, who had only spoken so far to
snub him.
"Mother does, sir--and Gwen."
There was silence; only the water talking beneath the ship's bows,
as she took the open sea and began to swing to it.
"Your father was my friend," continued the voice, less harsh now. "I
was a pit-boy; he was a gentleman: we was friends."
The voice was gruff again.
"Ran away to sea same night--he from the Hall; me from the pit-mouth.
Met under the old oak on the green.
"'Ready, Bill?' says he.
"'Right, sir,' says I.
"'Then forge ahead.'
"And forge ahead it was, and never parted, till the Lord saw good to
come atween us for the time bein at St. Vincent."
The voice in the darkness ceased and began again.
"Quiberon Bay was our first. Fifty-nine that were. I was powder-monkey
on the _Royal George_; he was Hawke's orderly midshipman. St.
Vincent our last. And a God's plenty in between. One time Dutchmen;
one time Dons; and most all the time the French. Yes, sir," with quiet
gusto, "reck'n we saw all the best that was goin in our time, and not a
bad time neether--for them as like it, that's to say: seamen and such."
He was silent for a time, chewing his memories.
And what memories they were!--Had he not sailed under Boscawen in the
fifties, when that old sea-dog stood between England and Invasion?
Had he not lived to see Napoleon's Eagles brooding over the cliffs
of France, intent on the same enterprise?--And between the two, what
men, what deeds?--Hawke smashing Conflans in a hurricane; Rodney,
gloriously alone, fighting his ship against a fleet; Duncan hammering
the Dutch; Sam Hood, Jack Jervis, Nelson, Cuddie Collingwood; and all
that grim array of big-beaked, bloody-fisted fighting men who for fifty
years had held the narrow seas against all comers.
"D'you remember your father?"
The old man brooded over the boy. In a dumb and misty way he was puzzling
out one of life's mysteries--this long stripling with the eyes sprung
somehow from that other long stripling with the eyes, whom he had followed
from the pit-mouth fifty years since.
"I just remember him coming into the nursery with mother and a candle
the night before he sailed the last time, sir, to join Lord Howe."
"Ah," mused the old man, "that'd be a week afoor the First o June;
and nigh three years afoor he died."
He paused again, rummaging in his memory.
"He was Post-Captain at St. Vincent; I was his First--aboord the old
_Terrible_, 74.... You'll ha heard all about _that_ tale.
[Footnote: Sir John Jervis crushed the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent
in 1797. In this action the Spanish fleet was in two divisions. In
order to prevent a junction between them Nelson drew out of the British
line and single-handed attacked the Spanish weather-division, including
the Spanish flag-ship and five other sail of the line. See Mahan's
"Life of Nelson."]
"'Plucky chap, Nelson,' says the Captain, as he tumbles to the little
man's game. 'Wear ship, and a'ter him.' So we hauls out? the line,
us and the _Culloden_--Tom Troubridge--and pushes up, all sail
set, to help him.
"By then we got alongside, the _Captain_--Nelson's ship she
were--was a sheer hulk. As we pass her, your father leans over the
rail.
"'Well done, _Captain_,' says he, liftin his hat.
"Nelson blinks his one eye up--I can see him now.
"'That you, Kit?' he pipes through his nose that way of is'n. 'You've
got it all your own way now. I'm a wreck. Good luck, _Terrible_.'
"So on we goes bang atween two Spanish Fust-rates--hundud and twenty
guns apiece. Had em all to ourselves, and asked no better.
"'Just your style, Bill,' says the Captain. He was pacing up and down
the lee of the poop with me. 'Pretty work, ain't it?'
"'Too pretty to last, sir,' says I; as our fore-mast went by the board.
"Just then up runs the carpenter's mate all of a sweat.
"'Well, Michael,' says the Captain, 'what is it to-day?'
"'Goin down with a run, sir,' pants old Chips. 'Twenty foot? water
in her well.'
"The Captain turns to me.
"'Where's the nearest land, Willum?' says he, with that twinkle of
is'n. Always called me Willum, when he meant mischief, did the Captain.
"'Why, sir,' says I, 'the bottom, I reck'n.'
"'Wrong again,' says he. 'That's the nearest land to me,' and he points
at the _Santy Maria_, Don Somebody Somethin's Flag-ship. 'Hard
a-starboard, if you please, Mr. Hardin,' says he. 'I'm a-goin to land.'
"So I luffs up alongside, and fell aboard Er Oliness--like a mighty
great mountain above us she was, all poop, and galleries, and Armada
fittins.
"When our bow scraped her quarter,
"'Anybody for the shore!' pipes the Captain; and he jumps into her
main-chain....
"Ah, but you should ha heard the men cheer!"
The old man paused, breathing deep.
"Ten minutes a'terwards he was dying acrost my knees on the spar-deck
of the Don.
"'Has she struck, Bill?' he whispers, coughing....
"'The three decker's struck, sir,' says I, 'and the four-decker's strikin.'
"He shuts his eyes.
"'Then I can depart in peace,' he sighs. 'Tell Marjory I done my duty.'
"And he up and died."
There was a cough in the darkness.
"So I calls a cutter away, and rowed aboord the _San Josef_, the
men blubberin like a pack o babbies, to break it to Nelson. Like twins,
them two, Nelson and your father: that like, ye see!
"Well, there was the Commodore on the Don's quarter-deck, Berry beside
him, the Spanish Captain afoor him, and behind him a British Jack-Tar
tuckin the Spaniards' swords under his arm like so many umberellas.
"I breaks it to him short and straight.
"'Captain Caryll's compliments, sir,' says I. 'And he's dead.'
"Nelson claps his hands to his face as though I'd struck him. Then
he falls on my neck afoor em all--Dons too.
"'O Ding-dong!' says he. 'I loved him.'--Just like that. 'I loved him....'
"Yes, that was Nelson all through: one alf woman, t'other alf hero.
"Then he pulls himself together.
"'But there!' he says. 'He lived like an English gentleman; and he
died like a British seaman. May I go that way when my time comes.'
And he sweeps off his cocked hat as though it might ha been to the
King, and--
"'God bless Kit Caryll,' says he."
The old man blew his nose in the darkness.
"Yes, sir," he continued, "that was your father and my friend," and
then suddenly gruff--
"D'you mean takin a'ter him?"
"I mean to try, sir," said the boy huskily.
In the darkness a hand gripped his.
CHAPTER V
REUBEN BONIFACE'S STORY
I
Clear of the harbour, the boy's hat blew overboard.
He tasted his lips, and found them salt.
Never at sea before, yet somehow it was all strangely familiar, and
strangely dear.
The feel of the ship, alive beneath his feet; the lift, the plunge,
the swaying rhythm of the bows; the roll of the masts against a patch
of stars--there was music in them all; a music that stirred his heart;
the music of inherited Memory.
The sea was in his blood; and his blood began to sing to it. Old voices
from the Past, that Past which is still the Present, woke within him.
Old memories, borne down the ages upon the dark river of race life,
haunted him dimly. Old and terrible experiences--murders and mutinies;
distresses on rafts; thirsts and screaming madnesses; naked men howling
on hen-coops under waste skies, sea-birds wailing desolately overhead;
great ships, man-forsaken, God-forgotten, wallowing blindly amid green
mountains that flowed and foamed upon them--shadows in shoals, they
rose, glimmered, and were gone in the twilight waters of returning
consciousness.
Sea-wolves in beaked ships from the Baltic; pirate-adventurers who
had sailed and sacked under the Conqueror; pioneers of new-found lands:
blood of his blood, and brain of his brain, they lived again, roused
from centuries of sleep by the stir and whiff and secret business of
the dark waters.
The mystery of it thrilled the boy: the blind night, the moving waters,
the wind in his hair, the crash of spray upon the deck--old friends
all, he recognised them as such, and found them beautifully familiar.
He was flowing down the River of Eternal Life and one with it. He was:
he had been: he always would be. There was no Death, no Time. Life
was One and Everlasting.
His nostrils wide, renewing old impressions, he walked forward, proud
and self-composed.
True son of the sea, yet he knew himself her master. She was his woman,
to be loved and lorded over. He found himself brooding over her dark
beauty with the stern pride of possession. Manhood was rushing in on
him: its passions, its power, its splendid cruelties. He began to tingle
to them.
They had not met, it seemed, to know each other, these two world-old
friends, for half a generation. Now once more they came together,
heart to heart, man to woman, loving faithfully as ever.
II
The wind freshened. The sloop began to feel the sea and swing to it.
She was a dark and secret ship: not a light save for the glare of the
binnacle-lamp; the only sound the creak of a block, the mutter of canvas,
and the chatter of waters.
It was a dirty night, a wet mist blowing landward. There was no moon;
only here and there a star pierced the cloud-drift.
The boy groped his way forward.
In the bows a dark lantern on the deck shone on a group of sea-boots.
"Pretty night for our work, sir," came a cheery voice. "Might ha been
made for us."
"Where are we?" asked the boy.
"Yon's Seaford Head, sir," as a great white dimness thrust out of the
mist towards them. "We're layin along close inshore. See that glimmer
forrad on the port-bow?--Ah, it's gone again! That's the Seven Sisters.
And between the last o them and Beachy Head lays Birling Gap. And
somewhere there or thereabouts, we'll make our cop, if a cop it's to
be."
"Who is it we're after?"
"Lugger _Kite, sir--Black Diamond's craft....
"Funny thing fortune, sir," the man continued after a pause. "Never
know how it's going to take you till you're took. Little thing sims
to sway it. At one day's time there warn't a smarter seaman afloat
than Bert Diamond. Might ha rose to the quarter-deck--just the sort;
got a way with him and that. Only one fault, sir--the sailor's failin."
"What's that?"
"Too lovin by fur....
"It's generally always his one fault capsizes a man," the seaman
continued. "And so it were with poor old Bert--he warn't Black at
that time o day, yo'll understand."
"What's the rights o that yarn, Reube?" grumbled a deep voice.
"I ca'ant rightly tall ye because I don't justly knaw, Abe. They said
this here Mr. Lucy--Love-me Lucy they called him in the ward-room--got
messin about a'ter Diamond's gal. But anyways there it were. Diamond
struck him--struck his officer."
"What happened?"
"Why, sir; flogged round the Fleet."
A man spat noisily on the deck.
"Maybe you've never seen a man flogged round the Fleet?"
"Never."
"Then heaven help you never may, sir. I'd liefer fight a gun in the
waist through farty Fleet-actions, than see one man go through
that--wouldn't you, Abe?"
"Ay, that I would," grumbled the deep voice.
"Ah; and so'd we all," came a windy chorus.
There was a stamping of feet: then the story-teller went on,
"I stood by the gang-way when he came up the side, a blanket across
his shoulders.
"'Ullo, Reube,' says he....
"That were all.... I said nawthing.... I saw his face....
"When he came out o the sick-bay three months a'terwards, with his kit
to go ashore--he was dismissed the Service, yo'll understand, sir--I
was on deck.... He limped across, and shook hands with me out o them
all.... We'd been like brothers, him and me.... Then he went down the
side and never a word.... Just as his head was on a level with the
deck, he stops. Good-bye all,' says he, with a laugh I never heard
him laugh before. 'The British Navy ain't eard the last o Black
Diamond.'... And nor we had, by thunder."
III
The _Tremendous_ thrashed into a swell. A spout of foam flung
up, and crashed down on the deck. When the last hiss of it had died
away, Boniface took up his tale.
"That was 99--after Acre. I was away nigh on six years, middlin busy
too. We'd the lot atop on us one time or t'other--French, Roossians,
Dons, Dutch, Swedes, Danes, and all; and Nap to thank for em....
"Last Spring I come home to find Black Diamond cock o the Gap Gang,
and better fear'd nor Boney's self in East Sussex. That'd be a day
or two after they'd done Mr. Lucy."
"What was that?"
"Why, sir, Mr. Lucy, he was Coast-guard Officer of this district.
One day his grey cob cantered into Lewes alone--no Mr. Lucy. Two night
a'terwards a keeper chap found his body in Abbot's Wood....
"They'd crucified him to a tree, and flogged him to the bone; then
stuck an ace o diamonds on to his back, and on it
_Returned with thanks_."
"And that warn't all," grumbled the deep voice.
"That it warn't," came the windy chorus. "Never is with them."
"But who'd done it?" cried the boy.
"Gap Gang, sir."
"Who are they?"
"Why, sir, Birling Gap Gang it should be by rights. That's where they
mostly lay rough when they're this side. And it suits them
to-rights--that lonely, you see: just naked hills, cliffs, badgers,
foxes, and the like.--And such a crew! God help the man or maid crosses
their hawse. Fear neither God nor Devil."
"Only Black Diamond," grumbled the deep voice. "Meek as milk with him."
There was a grim chuckle all round.
"Are they smugglers?" asked the boy.
"Call emselves smugglers," replied Reuben. "But they ain't the gentlemen
proper. For it's mighty little smuggling they do. Maybe run a cargo
every now and then to keep in with the folk on the hill--East-dean and
Friston way. But they're after bigger game, I allow."
"What's that?"
"Despatch-running for Little Boney, sir."
IV
The boy waited. There was more to come, he felt; and he was right.
In a minute Diamond's old ship-mate resumed his tale.
"Last July, I was on furlough at Alfriston. One evening I went for a
bit of a stroll on the hill. Up there, under the sky, top o Snap Hill,
was a look-out chap with a telescope. I knaw'd his back, and the high
way with his head at first onset. It was Black Diamond.
"'Hullo, Bert,' says I, coming up behind.
"Round he jumps, terrible dark.
"I'd hardly ha know'd him--toff'd out quite the officer, bits of
epaulettes, waxed moustachers, pistol and all. I'd never ha beleft it!
"'That Reube?' says he, at last, starin properly.
"'That's me, sir,' says I.
"His face cleared; and he shoved his pistol back.
"'Excuse me, Reube,' says he. 'Every man that wears that uniform is
unfriends with me, with one exception--and that's yourself,' and he
took my hand.
"'It's nice to look into a pair of eyes can look back at you,' he
goes on, very quiet, pumping my hand. 'How are you, old mate?--We're
quite strangers.'
"'I'm tidy middlin, thank-you, sir,' says I: must keep on a-sirrin
him somehow. 'How's things going with you?'
"'Why,' says he, with that terrible great laugh of his, 'like God
Almighty--slow but sure.'
"'Nice crowd you've got together by all accounts, sir,' says I.
"'All picked men,' says he, mighty grim. 'But drop your voice if you're
going to talk about the darlings: I've a dozen of em in the goss handy
by. There's not a man sails aboard the _Kite_ but swings in chains,
if he's copp'd. Makes em wonderful nippy at a pinch,' says he, with
that little smile o his. 'You wouldn't believe.'
"' Yes,' I says. 'Reg'lar man o war style aboard the _Kite_,
they do say. Trice em up, and flog em, if everything ain't just so.'
"'That's so,' says he. 'Duchess could eat her dinner off my deck--has,
too.'
"'Only wonder is they stick it,' says I.
"'Ah,' he says, 'they're my _men_, not my _mates_, see?--This
ain't a free-tradin show. We ain't partners, I pay em.'
"I looked him straight in the face.
"'And who pays you, old pal?' says I--'if you'll excuse the question.'
"'The Emperor,' says he, calm as you please. 'Nice feller, too.'
"I stared a bit.
"'Knaw him then?' says I.
"'Supp'd with him night afore last,' says he, matter-of-fact like;
and I knaw'd he warn't lying--'Me and the Emperor and another
gentleman.' He began to laugh. 'Rare sport he was too, the gentleman!
Hear him sauce the Emperor!' Then he takes a sweeping look through
his glass. 'Ye see we've a little bit o business forrard, me and him
and the Emperor.'
"Well, sir, I was gettin my monkey up, as you may allow. Here'd I been
tow-rowin up and down the high seas at tenpence a day these six years
past, doin my little bit to spoil Boney's game; and here was this
chap--dismissed with ignominy, mind!--toff'd out like a dandy Admiral,
flashin his French rings and sham Emperors in my face.
"Still I aren't no mug. So cardingly,
"'What's it all about, Bert?' says I, confidential-like.
"He didn't answer: kep on all the while a-squintin through the glass
towards the Forest.
"'You a blockade-man, [Footnote: The blockade-men were coast-guards.]
Reube?' says he at last.
"'No,' says I, 'I'm a liberty-man from the _Tremendous_.'
"'Ah,' says he, queer and quiet. 'I'm glad to hear that, Reube. Mighty
glad you're not a blockade-man.'
"'Why for?' says I, innocent-like.
"'Why,' says he, ''tain't healthy for blockade-chaps in these parts
just now.... You heard o poor Mr. Lucy?'
"'Yes, surely,' I says, pretty spiteful--'dirty business and all.'
"He dropped the glass.
"'What's that?' says he, short-like.
"So cardingly I told him _all_ about it.
"'That's my friend Fat George,' says he between his teeth.
"'I suppose it's news to you,' I sneers.
"He looks me in the eyes properly.
"'This is the first I've heard of it,' says he. 'Struth it is! No,'
he says, 'I gave him what he gave me, no more, and no less--five hundred,
_crossed_; while I lay among the blue-bells and counted em out
for him, same as he done for me. And when it was over--"And now," I
says, "to show you I'm a Christian, I'll leave the boys to put you
out of your pain; and that's more than ever you done for _me_."
And I strolled away. They must ha been up to their larks a'ter I
left--mucky gaol-birds!' he says. 'Funny thing they _can't_ be'ave
like gentlemen.'
"'Well,' I says, 'as to Mr. Lucy, he play'd it down a dog's trick on you;
and you got back on him. And man to man,' I says, 'no parsons bein by, I
don't say no to that. But if it comes to selling your country for money--'
"He swings round all black and white and lightning.
"'Money!' he snarls. 'Steady, Reube.'
"'What then?' says I.
"'Ah,' says he, drawing his breath like a cat swearin. 'As I just
told you, I'm a Christian; and I don't forget.'
"Talk o bitter!
"'Well,' I says, 'if it's revenge you're a'ter, sims to me you've had
a belly-ful.'
"'Ah, I ain't begun yet,' says he, breathing slow. 'That's my little
private account. There's the system to settle yet.'
"'What!' says I, coming closer. 'So you're going to fix up the British
Navy next?'
"'Goin to try,' says he, rollin out that tarrible great laugh of
his--'God helpin me.'
"That was a bit _too_ much.
"'Well, I'm a sailor myself,' says I, 'and an Englishman. So, mind
yourself!' And I goes for him blind.
"He never budge: just blew his whistle; and a dozen of em sprang out
o nowhere.
"'Unclasp his little arms,' says Diamond. 'He thinks I'm his lady-bird.'
"Just then a whistle sounded rithe away acrost the Weald. Another nearer
took it up, and another--like partridges callin on a summer's evening.
"'Here he comes,' says Diamond, glass to his eye. 'Reube,' says he,
'there's things good kids such as you are best not seein. Boys, take
him to the top o Deepdene, and give him a tilt down. Gently does it,'
says he. 'He's an honester man nor any o you.'
"So cardingly they march me away.
"But I hadn't gone above a dozen steps, when I heard him comin a'ter
me.
"'Reube,' says he, kind o shy-like, 'I suppose you won't shake with an
old ship-mate?'
"'No,' says I, 'I don't shake with no ---- traitors.'
"He drops his hand.
"'Ah, well,' says he, 'think the best you can o me. You're much the
man I'd ha been, if God had been gooder to me. Good-bye, Reube,' says
he. 'All the luck.'
"And somehow he seemed a bit o choky; and somehow I felt the same myself.
"So cardingly they march me away to the top o the coombe, where it's
steep as a ship's side, and gave me a shove.
"Down I sprawls, rolly-bowly, anyhow all among the jumping hares,
and brought up in the shadows at the bottom.
"And as I was feeling to see if my head still set on my shoulders,
a chap on horse-back comes cantering up the shoulder of the coombe
above me, black against the light....
"That was the first o this here Gentleman all the talk's on...."
V
The mist was blowing by in huge white puffs like the breath of a giant.
"That was the beginning," continued Reuben. "It warn't the end though
not by no means. Many's the time since then them words of his about
the blockade-chaps, and his queer way o sayin em's come back to me."
"Why?" asked the boy.
"Why, sir?--why, indeed?--Two days later a patrol was found at the
foot o the Devil's Chimney, heads bashed in. Blow'd over o course!--Week
a'terwards petty officer found drowned in dew-pond top o Warren Hill.
Accident o course!--Next day common seaman hung in his own braces
Jevington Holt. Suicide o course! And so it's been going on ever
since--blockade-men murdered; blockade-men missin; blockade-men washed
ashore--until last night."
"What then?"
"Ain't you heard, sir?" aghast. "Last night--eleven o'clock--full
moon--clear as crystal--Diamond laid the _Kite_ aboard the Revenue
cutter off Darby's Hole."
"Well?" breathlessly.
"Ah, well indeed, sir!--No one'll ever knaw the rights o that yarn.
Only one chap o the crew o the _Curlew_ left alive to tell the
tale--poor Alf Huggett here alongside o me. Stove in a water-butt and
hid in it--didn't you, Alf?"
There was a waiting silence.
"It's broke him up surely, sir," whispered Reuben. "And I don't wonder.
Saw enough through that bung-hole to keep him thinking for the rest
of his life."
"Fat George!" shivered a thin voice. "Fat George!"
"Ah!" came the windy chorus. "Him and old Toadie!"
"Anyways there it be!" continued Reuben. "At noon to-day the _Curlew_
drifted up against Seaford jetty, yards hung with her own crew, like
carcasses in a butcher's shop."
"Brutes!" gasped the boy. "But what's the meaning of it all?"
Reuben shrugged till his oil-skins crackled.
"No sayin, sir. Summat's up; summat big. Diamond wanted the coast
cleared; and he's cleared it--by thunder he has! Swep it up bald as
the back o my hand."
The mist blew away faint and thin. Through it the bowed crest-line
of a cliff loomed up to larboard.
"There's the last o the Seven Sisters!" said Reuben. "Birling Gap's
just here along." He moved among his men. "Stations, boys. It's here
or hereabouts...."
"Hush!" whispered Kit.
CHAPTER VI
THE LUGGER KITE
I
"D'you hear anything, sir?"
The boy made no reply, listening, listening.
Had he made a mistake?--was it only the swish of waters under the
keel? ... No!
_"There! there, in front!"_
This time there was no mistaking it--the noise of a boat's bow smashing
into seas.
Reuben brought his fist down with a thump.
"To the tick!"
Just then the cloud-drift parted. Through tatters of mist the moon
shone down.
II
Bowling out on the top of the tide came a lugger, the foam at her foot.
She was black in the moon, and barely a cable's length away.
"That her?" asked the gruff voice of the old Commander.
"That's the _Kite_, sir," answered Reuben. "Know her luff anywheres.
Foots it like a witch, and handles like a lady. A boy could sail her;
and she'll carry farty at a pinch."
The old Commander watched her across the glimmering waters.
"Means havin it," he said with a grunt half of admiration, half of
satisfaction.
"Ah, that's Diamond, sir!" answered the other. "God A'mighty couldn't
stop him once he's set."
The old Commander measured the lessening distance between him and his
prey.
"I shall keep as I go," he said deliberately. "Reck'n he'll do
the same. We oughter meet. But if he should scrape through, why let
him have it nice and hearty as he goes under my bows."
"Ay, ay, sir."
He stumped aft; while the men rammed down their sou-westers.
III
"I'll lay I bag Fat George in the belly," said one, spitting leisurely,
as he fingered his musket.
"I'll lay you don't then," retorted another.
"I'll lay you couldn't miss it," chipped in a wag.
There was a rumble of laughter, quickly hushed.
The boy among them sniggered, to vindicate his courage.
How brave they were! and what beasts! They made him sick, and filled
him with admiration. He should like to be like that--to feel nothing;
to see nothing; to loll up against the side and spit about, and make
bad jokes, a minute before he took the life of a brother man. That
was fine: that was manhood. One day, please God, he would be the same.
He peeped at the lugger. She was holding on, hard-driven, a long-boat
with high-cocked nose tearing astern.
The big ship was bearing down on her like a hawk on a sparrow. It was
bullying but O! was it not glorious? The old thrill, the thrill of
thrills, incomparable, made him tremble. He was manhunting once more.
"He'll carry the sticks out of her," muttered one of the men. "Crackin
along all sail--capsize or no."
"He may crack along," said another. "He's done. Black Diamond's done."
The sea flopped in the moon. Here and there a gathering swell hissed
into foam. The _Tremendous_ scarcely felt it; but the lugger lay
over on her side, seams dripping, and thrashed furiously along.
Her crew, squatting along the weather gunwale, turned bowed and shining
backs to the sloop.
Only the man at the tiller had seen her; and he made no sign.
The moon was on his face, black and white and bearded; and his eyes
on the sloop.
"Calm chap!" whispered one.
"Plucky meat," replied another. "Guts like a lion on him."
"Which is Black Diamond?" asked the boy.
"Him at the tiller, sir--moon on his face. He's seen us. 'Tothers
ain't--not yet."
The _Tremendous_ crashed into a sea. The aftmost man on the
lugger's gunwale turned.
He saw the Avenger towering over him, dark wings spread, snow-drifts
spurting before her.
An awful horror convulsed his face.
"King's ship!" came a ghastly-screaming treble. "Put back, Diamond!"
The man at the tiller never stirred. One lightning arm flashed forward.
"Down, George!" came a voice of thunder. "I'm going through."
There was a flash in the moon; the smothered crack of a pistol; and
a furious tumble of men aft.
"Gor! they're knifin him!"
"Their own skipper!"
"That's the Gap Gang!" rose in a groaning chorus from the bows of the
sloop.
IV
Splash followed splash.
The crew of the lugger were jumping for the long-boat.
The moon shone down mildly on savage waters, and a tumult of men.
All about the boat was a fury of fighting. Some were in it, some in
the water. Those within were slashing at the hands of those scrambling
in.
Every man was for himself, and every man against his neighbour. They
fought like beasts, beasts who could blaspheme.
Sin seen naked! Sin and its consequences!
Death-screams; bellowed blasphemies; howls for mercy rose as from the
pit.
"No room!--It's me, Joe!--Too many aboard!--Knife the ----!--I'm
done!--Elp us up!--Don't, George!"
Out of the torment of howls, oaths, prayers, came again the
ghastly-screaming treble.
"Cut the painter!"
A boy, the last on the lugger, afraid before to trust the water, jumped
now.
"Don't leave Jacky!" spluttered the thin boy's voice, tearful and
terrified; as the little shaven head bobbed up by the boat.
"Ands off!" screamed the treble. "We're sinkin a'ready. What, you
little ----! then ave it! ave it! ave it!"
A shrill squeal and then again that ghastly-screaming treble--
"Row, ye ----, row!"
Silence; tumbling waters; and the moon, sick with horror, darkened
suddenly.
CHAPTER VII
THE MAN IN THE LUGGER
I
The lugger came bowling on, one man in her stern.
"Diamond's bested em!" rose in a roar from the _Tremendous_.
And so it seemed.
The _Kite_ was making straight for the sloop, plunging giddily,
as though wounded.
"All hands aloft!" roared old Ding-dong. "Back tops'ls!"
There was a scamper of feet along the deck; and up the shrouds a scurry
of dark figures. Above was ordered bustle; from the deck a sounding
voice ruled all, as God rules the world.
"Canst use a pistol, lad?"
The words, swift as hail, smote Kit's ear.
"I don't know, sir," babbled the boy, sick with excitement.
A minute back Hell had yawned, and he had peeped in. He was still aghast.
"Then find oot!" fierce as a sword. "Joomp into t'mizzen-chains, and
pick off yon chap at the helm, as he cooms under ma counter."
He thrust a pistol into the boy's hands.
How limp the lad felt beside this masterful old man!
In another moment he was standing in the chains, the dark and giddy
waters swirling beneath him. The blood thumped in his temples.
Was it to be his St. Vincent? his chance?
The lugger came tearing up. He could hear the swish of the waters,
white at her foot; he could see the wet sail, the bucketing bows,
the fore-deck awash. She would pass bang beneath his feet. He could
see no man at the helm--only the jumping bowsprit, the thrashing foot,
and that huge lug-sail, bellying over the water.
Suddenly his mind flamed. In the white glare of it he saw the thing
to do, and had done it, before cold reason could check him.
He jumped.
The boat and giddy waters rose up to meet him. He fell as on to a
mattress, full of wind. It was the lug-sail he had struck. Down it
he sprawled to the deck, there to find himself upon his hands and knees,
something soft beneath him.
One man was in the boat; and that man was staring him in the face.
There was no mistaking him. He was black, with diamond eyes. The moon
was on his face; and about his lips a queer snarling smile.
Kit expected him to pounce; yet he did not, lolling back in the
stern-sheets, very much at his ease. The tiller under his arm wobbled,
and he wobbled with it. In spite of those staring eyes of his, there
was a dreadful unsteadiness about the man. Was he wounded?--was he
drunk?
Somehow the boy was not very much afraid. It was all too dream-like.
He heard his heart thundering far-away on the remotest shores of being.
He heard his own voice speaking, and was surprised at it--how steady
it was, and how small!
It was saying,
"I'm a King's officer. That's a King's ship. There are about a thousand
men on board. It's all no go. D'you give in?"
The man grinned sardonically. Then his head fell forward. He lurched
horribly. The tiller slipped from under his arm. The lugger fell away,
and lay on the water like a wounded bird.
Then Kit understood.
Black Diamond was dead.
II
The boy's mind relaxed like a burst bladder.
He began to laugh.
Where was he?
Alone on the deep with a dead man.
Well, well. It was not for the first time surely. A ghost, long-laid,
walked again. A sudden lightning had flashed upon his past. In it he
had seen and _remembered_. Something of a forgotten self floated
to the surface. In turmoil, his Eternal Mind had thrown up on the sea
of Time a memory from its imperishable hoard.
Slowly he recollected himself, and looked about him.
He was kneeling on something soft, and his hands were warm and slimy.
He looked down, and jerked back with a scream.
He was kneeling on a dead man, and his hands were crimson.
A gust caught the lugger: she staggered forward with a flap and swing
of her boom. Her master, her mate, was dead; and the spirit had gone
out of her.
No time for the horrors! he must be doing.
In a moment he was at work with his dirk. The great lug came down with
a rattle.
Forward under the boom, he cut the sheet of the jib. It fluttered
furiously, streaming lee-ward. Then he stumbled aft.
The murdered helmsman still lolled in drunken stupor, smiling inscrutably.
Astern the sloop lay with tall clothed masts, swaying, a phantom on
the troubled waters.
A boat had put off from her, and was bucking towards him.
"Lugger ahoy!" came a windy voice across the water. "Is that you,
sir?--all well?"
"I'm all right," cried the boy, and was ashamed to find his voice
cracked with emotion.
The boat bumped alongside. Reuben Boniface's face popped up over the
side.
"Plucky thing, sir!" he cried, bobbing with the boat; then seeing
the man at the tiller--"Ah, Bert! a fair cop."
"He's dead," said the boy with a sob.
"Dead!" cried the other, thrusting forward. "By thunder! so he is.
Boys, Black Diamond's dead!" He took the dead man by the hand. "Poor
old mate!" he continued in hushed voice. "Fancy that now. Diamond dead!"
Another head bobbed up.
"Did you kill him, sir?" asked an awed voice.
"No, I didn't. I think it was this man. He killed Black Diamond; and
Black Diamond killed him back."
His heart was swollen almost to bursting.
A row of heads now bobbed all along the side, staring at the dead man.
It awed them, this lay-figure with the dreadful stillness brooding
about it, rocking with the rock of the sea. They spoke of it with lowered
voices reverently.
"Funny thing--him so quiet. Don't seem nat'ral like."
"Warn't like that ten minutes since."
"That Black Diamond!--and can't lift his own hand now!"
"Ah, makes a change, Death, don't it?"
"One thing sure," ended a philosopher. "Like it or not--sooner or
later--in this world we all gets our desarts."
So these solemn children, big of the sea, brooded over the Great
Mystery. Here _they_ were in the dark, the night blind about them,
the old sea roaming round; and here was _It_. Dimly they tried
to apprehend _It_. Somehow _It_ made them feel strangely
small, and somehow strangely great.
Reuben was still pumping the dead man's hand up and down, the tears
coursing down his face.
"Poor old mate!" he kept saying. "He'd not ha been the same if things
had been different--would you, old mate?--I wish I'd ha shook hands
with you now, I do."
A shuddering voice spoke from the boat. It was the broken blockade-man.
"Ow much is he dead?" he asked.
"Why, dead as dirt," replied a matter-of-fact fellow, chewing his
pig-tail phlegmatically.
"Sure he ain't learying?" came the voice of the man with the shivers.
"You fear'd on him still, Alf?" asked one curiously.
"Fear'd on him?--No, I ain't fear'd on him!" came a ghastly titter.
"Got no cause, ave I?"
"He won't urt you," replied the other, soothingly. "He's dead all
right--ain't you, Diamond?--You can tweak his nose, see?--and then
go ome, and tell the gals what you done. Tweak Black Diamond by the
conk!"
"You let him be!" growled Reuben. "Time was you'd ha crawled
to him. Now any snotty little toad can make game on him."
Kit looked up at the rising voices.
A fellow had seized Diamond by the nose, plucking back his head.
The dead man's mouth gaped. Into the cavern of it shone the moon.
"One moment!" cried the boy; and hating himself, he thrust a finger
and thumb into the opening, and plucked out the thing which gleamed
within.
It was a cut-glass scent-bottle.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SCENT-BOTTLE
I
They came under the counter of the sloop, the boat towing the lugger,
and Black Diamond dead, the moon upon him.
A face, tallowy-nosed and black-whiskered, was leaning over the side.
"Say! was there a tall chap on a blood chestnut aboard?" asked a slushy
voice. "Andshomish feller--might be own brother to me. If so, pass
him up the side, there's a good biy. There's £1,000 on his head."
Kit went up the side, his heart beating high.
"Anything?" asked the old Commander shortly.
"Yes, sir."
He surrendered his treasure-trove.
"What! this all?" sniffed the old man, fingering the scent-bottle
contemptuously--"gal's fal-lal."
He stumped below.
The boy's heart was white-hot with indignation.
This then was his thanks!
Somebody tickled him under the arms.
"You're in the old man's good books, Sonny," said a hilarious voice.
"Wha d'you think he said when you plumped overboard?"
"I don't know. What?"
"'Nelson might ha done that,' says the old man--Bible-truth, he did."
And he shook out loose coils of laughter.
The compliment was so staggering that it humbled the boy.
A minute since he could have stabbed that old man with the stiff knee.
Now he could have kissed him.
"No! did he _really_?" he gasped.
The Gunner clutched the boy with one arm, and
tilting his chin, looked down at the uplifted face.
"There _is_ a look o the little man about the kid," he said--"kind
o gal-like look--all eyes, and spirit, and long chin. Funny thing!--I've
always noticed the best biys to fight are them as got most gal about
em."
The purser's steward tripped up.
"Mr. Caryll, sir, Commander Harding desires to see you in his cabin."
"Told you, Sonny," crowed the Gunner. "It's to give you a certificate
for valour, and a drop o brandy on a lump o sugar."
II
A purser's glim lit the cabin, bare save for a solitary print upon
the bulk-head.
Facing it stood the old Commander, broad as a wall, his hands behind
him, and the scent-bottle, unstoppered now, in one of them.
Kit recognised the face on the wall at once. It was Nelson's.
"That you, Mr. Caryll?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can ye read French?"
"A little, sir."
"Then what ye make o this?"
He thrust a hand behind him, never turning.
Kit took from it a tiny roll of tissue paper, and unfolded it.
"Shall I begin, sir?... It's headed _Merton, [Footnote: Merton was
at this time the seat of Lady Hamilton.] 17th, 2 a.m._, and goes
on--" he translated, stumbling--
_Everything is going beautifully. There is only one man for England
to-day; and for him there is only one woman. She is the absolute
master of her N., and he of Barham and the Board. The_ Victory
_is due to-morrow. She expects him here on Monday, and will do
all. The original plan holds good. He will be off Beachy Head
Thursday. The_ Medusa, 44.
_A.F._
_Keep the frigate cruising. I am off to Dover at dawn to square up
there. Diamond calls for me at the old rendezvous on Wednesday, and
puts me on board the frigate that I may be_ in at the death _as
our friends this side say._
The boy lifted dark eyes.
"It looks like a--"
The other cut him short.
"In our Service, sir, the Captain speaks when he's the mind; the First
Lieutenant all the time; and the midshipmen--_never_."
He snapped fierce jaws.
"What date, d'ye say?"
"Seventeenth."
"Seventeenth, _sir_.... That's to-day, ain't it?"
The old man grunted.
"Started this morning--sharp work."
"He was riding a thorough-bred ... sir."
"What's a furrow-bred?... plough-oss?"
"Plough-horse!" sparkling scorn. "It's the best sort of horse going."
"What if it be?--I'm a sea-man myself--not a postboy.... How d'ye know
he was ridin a what-d'ye-call-it?"
"He always does."
"Who does?"
"The man they call the Gentleman--the Galloping Gentleman."
"Who told you?"
"I picked it up, listening to the riding-officer."
The old man cocked an eye over his shoulder at the boy.
"I keep on a-listinin for that _sir_," he said. "Reck'n I'm hard
o hearin."
He resumed his study of the face on the bulk-head. A long while he
gazed: then smacked one fist into the other.
"That gal!" he muttered. "I always know'd how it'd be," and turned
at last.
Taking the paper from the boy, he packed it into the scent-bottle.
"When I've laid this here in Nelson's hands," he said deliberately,
"I'll be ready to say what your father said aboord the Don."
A curious smile made kindly wrinkles about his eyes: it was half
mischievous, half wistful: the smile of a child about to gratify an
innocent spite, long cherished.
Then he shoved the bottle into his breast-pocket, and looked up. The
light fell on his face; and for the first time Kit saw his Captain
fairly.
Square shoulders; square face; square chin; a square brow, strangely
white above the terra-cotta-coloured lower face; and blue eyes that
looked squarely into yours. All square, body and soul. A true man,
and a born fighter, the blue and white riband for St. Vincent at his
breast.
"When you joomped aboord the lugger, was you scared?" he asked curtly.
The boy looked him in the eyes.
"Yes, sir."
The old man's hand lay for a moment on his shoulder.
"So'd I ha been," he said, and went out, nodding.
III
On deck the dawn glimmered faintly.
On their lee, high in the heaven, a glowing smother hung in the dark
over a snaky brood, darting red tongues hither and thither.
"What's that?" growled old Ding-dong.
"The chaps as got away in the long-boat, sir. Set a light to the gorse
on Beachy Head. Signal. An old game o their'n."
The old man swung about.
As he looked, a blue light spurted seaward, and another answered it.
"Thought so," he muttered. "Burning flares."
Then he turned again.
"Bout ship!" he barked. "Make your course for Newhaven. Send a look-out
man aloft. And clear for action."
II
MAGNIFICENT ARRY
CHAPTER IX
THE TWO PRIVATEERS
I
A roll of thunder woke Kit.
Starting up on his elbows he looked about him.
Where was he?
Yesterday he had waked in the blue room at the White Cellar, the
sparrows chirping under the eaves, the smiling chamber-maid at the
door saying, "Half-past seven, sir," and the rumble of the Lewes
coach in the yard beneath.
It was an altogether different rumble that he heard now. He had never
heard it before; yet how well he knew it.
It was the roll of the drum, beating to quarters.
Across the sea a bugle answered it.
The boy thrust his head out of the port.
All about him lay a shining floor of sea, gently undulating and six
cable lengths away, bearing down upon the sloop, a black ship flying
the tricolour.
Across the bulk-head a sudden roaring voice boomed out an order.
There was the scuffle and scamper of naked feet; the noise of tackle
running, shot trundling along the deck, and the roll of guns.
Then all was silence but for the thumping of his heart, and the slop
of the water about her sides as the little _Tremendous_ footed
it into her last fight.
II
Kit rushed on deck.
The sloop, stripped to her topsails, was stirring the water faintly.
Only one man was on deck--old Ding-dong, conning the ship himself
bareheaded.
He was in a worn frock-coat, and faded yellow kerseymere waistcoat,
stained with soup and tar; and the hands on the wheel wore grimy kid
gloves.
There was such a dinginess about the old man's garments, and such a
dignity about his face, that Kit almost laughed to see him.
Last night the old Commander might have been a Channel pilot, in his
rough sea-jacket and sea-boots. Today he was a King's officer,
fighting a King's ship; and no mistaking it.
There was a change in his face too: something subtle, almost spiritual,
that the boy could feel although he could not define it. In fact the
explanation was very simple. Old Ding-dong was going into action,
and had brushed his hair first as was his invariable custom.
"Morn, Mr. Caryll," said the old man, never taking his eyes off his
topsails. "I was just going to send for you. You'll be my orderly
midshipman. We're in for a little bit o business. See them two?" He
jerked his head across the water.
Then Kit saw for the first time that two black monsters were sliding
down upon them over the shining waters, side by side. The nearer was
close on the larboard bow of the sloop; the other, on the same tack,
lay on her consort's far quarter. Their bows hardly rippled the water
as they stole forward. They seemed to flow with the flowing sea rather
than sail. Phantom-ships, they might have been creatures of the night,
surprised by day.
The boy could see nobody aboard. Save for the flapping of the tricolours,
and the occasional creak of a spar, they were still as death. The silence
and terror of their coming sickened the lad.
The voice of the old Commander, gruff and everyday at his elbow,
reassured him.
"Privateers," he growled--"old friends both. This'n's the _Cock-ot_.
Happen you've heard tell of her. That'n's the _Cock-it_.
Sister-ships. And 'ot and 'it they'll be afoor long if I can make em so."
He spun the wheel discreetly.
"At dawn I found em atween me and Newhaven. So I went about; I wasn't
on the fightin lay--half my ship's company short, and this here in
my pocket for Nelson." He tapped his breast.
"Thought I'd run for Dover. I was hardly off on that tack when I found
her"--with a backward jerk of his head--"athwart-hawse me."
Kit turned and saw a third ship, very tall, a league in their wake.
"Forty-four gun frigate," continued the old Commander. "Must ha given
somebody the slip. But what she's doin here along o them two pints
beats me."
"They must have been waiting to escort the lugger," ventured the boy.
"Happen so," said the other phlegmatically. "Well, they've got her
now--the husk, that is: I've kep the kernel," tapping his breast-pocket
once again. "I didn't want all three a-top o me at the first onset,
so I cut the lugger adrift, and set her bowling, helm lashd. As I reckoned,
the frigate stopped to pick her up. She won't be alongside for three
hours yet.... As to them two, we've been dodging about all morning,
but I reck'n we're about there now--just about. So-o-o!"
There was a roar and a huge splash beneath the stern of the
_Tremendous_. A cold avalanche sluiced the boy. He staggered
blindly back, something crashing on the deck about him.
"O!" he cried, and opened his eyes faintly, expecting to find himself
smothered with blood.
It was water, not blood, that was dripping from him.
The boy looked up in fear.
Old Ding-dong drenched too, the water trickling down his nose, still
nursed his ship tender as a mother.
There was not the ghost of a smile on his face, no curl of contempt
about his mouth.
Kit thanked him inwardly. After all the rough old fellow was a gentleman.
"Trying the distance with a bow-chaser," said the old man imperturbably.
"I'd have a lick back, only I can't spare no men for the deck carronades.
All below with Lanyon."
The tip of his tongue shot out, and made the journey of his lips,
cat-like. From behind that grim and weathered visage peeped the child,
arch, mischievous, infinitely cunning.
"Master Mouche, he _reckons_ I'm going to cross his bows and rake
him," he whispered. "He _reckons_ I'll keep my course to sarve
his consort the same. He _reckons_ to come up under my starn and
rake me fore and aft, while his consort wears ship and pounds me with
her broadside. That's his little game. 'Tain't mine though, ye know,
Mr. Caryll--'tain't mine." He rolled a blue eye on the boy; and in
that eye, twinkling cunning, bubbled the delight of a child about to
play a practical joke on an elder.
So unexpected was the effect, and so tickling--this grim old veteran
revealing in himself the Eternal Child who hides behind us all--that
the Frenchmen at their guns, hearing in the silence the sudden ripple
of a boy's laughter, whispered among themselves that the Englishman
had a woman aboard.
III
The breeze was very light and fast falling away. Old Ding-dong kept
one eye on his topsails, and one on his foe, sliding towards him across
the water.
"Like the Shadow o Death a'most, ain't she?" said the old man in hushed
voice--"so still-like and stealy." He dropped a kind eye on the boy's
face. "Makes ye think first time, don't it?--I mind Quiberon. Guts
feel fainty like."
He renewed his watch. The twinkle had left his eyes. He had withdrawn
deep down into himself. Somewhere in the centre of that square body
sat his mind, alert, cat-like, about to pounce.
The shadow of the _Cocotte_ fell across the sea nearly to their
feet. The wind breathed on the waters, dulling them. The languid topsails
swelled faintly.
The old man spun the wheel. The _Tremendous_ swung towards her
enemy.
Delicately across the glittering floor the two ships drew towards each
other, wary as panthers about to fight.
There was dead silence, alow and aloft. Only the tricolour at the enemy's
fore flapped insolently; and the red-cross flag, at the mizzen gaff
of the sloop, licked out a long tongue and taunted back.
"That's Mouche at the wheel," grunted the old Commander--"her skipper.
A fine fighter, but treecherous like em all.... Funny thing no one
on deck only him. Swarmin with men too, I'll lay."
The French skipper too was at the wheel: a dapper little personage,
black-a-vised, with fierce moustachios and eye-tufts.
He wore a huge tricorne, and vast tawdry epaulettes.
"How do you, sair?" he called, all bows and smiles and teeth, as the
two ships came within biscuit-toss. "Vair please to meet you once more."
"Queer lingo, ain't it?" muttered old Ding-dong. "All spit and gargle.
Comes from eatin all them frogs, I reck'n. Stick in their throats or
summat."
He raised his voice.
"Same to you and many on em," he growled. "I ain't seen that dirty
phiz o your'n in the Channel since our little bit of a tiff off the
Casquets last May. I yeard tell you was in the West Indies conwalescin
a'ter an attack o de _Tremendous_!" He chuckled at his joke.
The Frenchman shrugged and smiled.
"So I wass, sair, a while back. And now here--on express pisness; the
Emperor's pisness."
"What's up?" asked the Englishman bluffly. "Tired o waitin to wop
Nelson? Goin to embark the Armee o England straight off?"
"Not yet," replied the other, showing his teeth. "All in goot time,
my Captain. This first--this pit of pisness I do for my Emperor."
"Seems to me that Emperor o your'n must be put to the push if he's
druv to gettin a mucky little pirit like you to do his business," grumbled
the other.
The Frenchman waved the insult aside with utmost good humour.
"He send for me across the seas. 'I need my leetle Albairt,' he says.
'Come queegly.' So I spread my wings and come. And _La Coquette_
she slip out from Rochefort. And _La Guerrière_"-with a backward
jerk--"from Brest. Like swallows in April we flock to the
rendezvous--to meet the Queen of Hearts, is it not?"
He bowed low, hand to his bosom.
"And now you've come, sure I ope you'll stay," rumbled the grim old
seaman. "The trouble with you's always been your despart hurry to get
away."
"This time we stay," replied the Frenchman with a smirk--"all three,
for ever, if need be."
"We'll do our best to make you at ome, sir," grunted the Englishman;
and turning to Kit--
"Slip below and tell Mr. Lanyon to begin to talk when we're locked
fast--and not afoor."
CHAPTER X
THE MAIN-DECK
Kit scampered below.
The main-deck was clear as a room before a ball: bulkheads up; hammocks
slung. But for the sand on it, you might have danced there.
How big and sweet and clean it looked!--like the loft at home, where
he and Gwen and the black cat's kittens played on wet days.
But there was something other than the black cat's kittens to think
about now.
The sunshine poured in through the ports on the sleek guns crouching
ready. On the breech of one somebody had scrawled in chalk--
_God is Love. Hear me preach it:_
on others obscene mottoes, texts, and lines from patriotic songs.
About each gun clustered her crew, naked to the waist, black
handkerchieves bound about their foreheads. All had solemn puckers
about the brows; some were silent, some ghastly-joking in whispers,
and one, face averted, was obviously praying.
Up and down the sanded deck between the guns, picking his teeth,
strutted a tall and faded splendour.
His cocked hat was a-rake; his kid gloves white as his skipper's were
dingy; his whiskers, purple with dye newly applied, puffed out on
cheeks touched with rouge.
Could this dilapidated dandy, so alert, so nonchalant, be the drunkard
of last night?--
Yes. That tallowy nose, those eyes with the wild gleam in them, could
not be mistaken. It was Lushy Lanyon.
Somehow he had scraped up a First Lieutenant's uniform: bright blue
coat with long tails; white waist-coat, knee breeches, and stockings;
black hat cockaded, worn athwart-ships; and sword slung from a
shoulder belt. And the wonder was that it fitted and became him.
The boy gave his message.
The Gunner bowed ceremoniously.
"Be so good as to give Commander Ardin my compliments, and say I don't
pull a lanyard till I can see through her ports."
The other's formal politeness stirred the boy almost to laughter; yet
somehow the faded splendour of the man touched him too.
It was as when a great light seeks to shine through smoked glass. Last
night he had seen only the sodden body; now he beheld the soul, shining
dimly, it is true, but shining still through its sullied habitation.
The call to action had set it burning. It illuminated the blurred face,
notable still. In his youth the man must have been extraordinarily
handsome. Even now he was a noble ruin.
"Ah, you may stare, Mr. Caryll," said the Gunner, reading the other's
thoughts. "It was Lushy Lanyon last night; this morning it's _Me_!"
He swelled his chest, and stalked down the deck between his guns,
shooting his cuffs.
"Yes, sir. A fight's meat and drink to me. It pulls me together, and
makes me remember who I am." He threw back his head--"Magnificent
Arry, the man that's played more avock with earts in his day than any
other seaman afloat.... It's the whiskers done it," he added simply.
The two men in him were at war: the high and mighty fighting-man and
the confidential toper. Each came bobbing out in turns.
"And if you should want to see a main-deck fought as a main-deck should
be fought, why, sir, be good enough to take a seat."
He kicked a powder-monkey off his box, and offered it with a bow.
"Can't," said Kit, turning. "No time. See you again later."
The other stooped and peered out of a port.
"Doobious, I should say," he replied, picking his teeth. "Vairy
doobious. Ah! ----"
A great black shadow stole across the port. Its effect on the Gunner
was miraculous. He shot up like a flame. He was dark; he was terrible;
there was something of the majesty of Satan about the man. Some huge
sea of life seemed to lift him above himself, and land him among the
giants.
"Stand by the starboard battery!" he roared.
CHAPTER XI
COMMODORE MOUCHE
Kit ran up the ladder out of that bellowing Inferno.
The _Tremendous_ and her enemy lay side by side with locked spars;
the _Coquette_ becalmed beyond.
Then Kit understood the ruse of that wary old fighter, his Commander.
Old Ding-dong had placed the _Cocotte_ as a bulwark between him
and her consort. As he had foreseen, the wind, falling away this hour
past, had dropped to nothing now. The _Coquette_ could not bring
a gun into action.
Four hundred yards away, she might have been as many miles for all
the assistance she could render her sister-ship.
As the boy came up, the old Commander was leaning against the wheel,
bending towards his knee, and breathing hard.
There was a dark and peevish look about his face; and a trickle of
red was running down his white knee-breeches.
"Tell ye 'taint etiquette to have men in your tops only in general
actions and duels atween ships of the line," he was saying in slow
and painful voice, very querulous. "In all my fifty years' experience
o sea fightin, I never see sich a thing afoor, never! Dirty trick I
call it."
The little Frenchman across the narrow lane of water dividing
the ships, chattered excuses, all sympathy and shrugged shoulders.
"Ah, I so grieve. Pain! pain! terrible, n'est-ce-pas?--But what would
you, my Captain?--It is no fault of mine. The Emperor's orders. 'I
trust you, my Commodore,' says he. 'Coûte que coûte.'
"Emperor! about as much a h'Emperor as you are Commodore! And you're
welcome to tell him so with my compliments," snorted the old man.
He threw his eye aloft.
"Mr. Caryll, take a party o small-arm men aloft, and clear them sneakin
blay-guards out of her tops. Else they'll be boardin by the yards."
The boy rushed away.
Beneath his feet the deck staggered and shook. On the lower-deck of
the _Tremendous_ hell had broken loose, in flame and smoke and
horrible bellowings. The little ship was racked. In her agony she quivered
from truck to keel.
Suddenly the spars of the _Cocotte_ above him began to crackle and
blaze. Plip-plop-plank! the bullets smacked all about him. He was under
fire and he didn't like it. He wanted to dodge under the bulwark and lie
there; but he daren't. So he ran breathlessly, skipping as a bullet
spanked the deck at his feet.
They were in the enemy's main-top, swarms of them, tiny figures, crowding
along the spars, grinning at him, he thought.
How on earth with a handful of men, climbing up the rigging under a
pelting fire, he would ever clear that lot out!...
Even as he wondered the enemy's main-mast seemed to become alive. It
swayed; it shook; it almost danced; the taut shrouds sagged.
At first the boy thought that horror had turned his brain, and he was
going mad. He stopped dead and gazed.
Yes, it was coming down, coming towards him, towering, tremendous,
like a falling spire.
It came in jerks, tearing its way with a snapping of stays and crashing
of spars. Figures, like black birds, seemed to detach themselves, and
flop through the air. They were men, thrown clear, and falling with
floating coat-tails as they revolved.
One fell with an appalling bump on the deck of the sloop hard by the
wheel, a man in a red coat, bear-skinn'd and gaitered. He did not stir,
kneeling, his hands before him, head bowed, in attitude of adoration.
A sudden pool of scarlet seemed to spurt out of the deck and island him.
Kit, his work accomplished for him, ran back to the wheel.
"Reck'n that's the chap as got me," said old Ding-dong, nodding at
the dead man with a certain grim friendliness. "A red-coat, d'ye see?--Now
what's the meanin o that?--I never yeard tell of a privateer carrying
regulars afoor."
The old man was leaning against the wheel. His brow was puckered; and
there was a tense, breathless air about his face. It came to the boy
with a shock of surprise that a man hard-hit makes just the same sort
of face as a man who has got one on the funny bone at cricket.
"Are you hurt?" he asked anxiously.
"Nay, I'm none hurt, but I am hit. They've took fifty years doin it,
but they've done it at last. It was yon chap with the bashed skull.
Haul him alongside o me, wilta? I'll set on him--ease my old stumps!"
He lowered himself.
"I'll larn him shoot me," he said, arranging himself comfortably on
his corpse.
Kit giggled. Somehow this old man with the twinkle in his eye made
him feel at home among these screaming horrors.
"Lucky shot o Lanyon's," continued old Ding-dong. "There's a lot o
luck in fightin; and good job for us too. Luck's the favour o God.
He always favours us. We're straight, ye see."
He peered through the eddying smoke-drift.
"That there top-hamper o their'n makes a tidy bridge atween ships.
Now if they was to tumble to that, reckon they'd boord--and we'd be
about done."
Kit looked round.
The enemy's main-top had fallen across the deck of the sloop.
The lightning that is genius flashed in the boy's mind.
In a second he was across the self-fashioned drawbridge between the
two ships and on to the deck of the Frenchman. It was deserted save
for the dead men, red-coats all, flung from the falling top, and sprawling
broadcast everywhere. Even Mouche had disappeared.
Beneath him on the lower deck was the same bellowing Inferno as on
the _Tremendous_. He felt the privateer stagger and rend to a
broadside of the sloop, as though her bowels were being torn out. He
rushed to a hatchway belching smoke. In the pit below he could see
dim figures flitting about, and could hear the howls of those in torment.
Deafened, blinded, dizzied, he slammed the hatch upon them, clamping
it down. Swiftly he passed from hatchway to hatchway, making all fast.
With dancing heart, he ran back to the bridge.
As he did so a whimpering voice stayed him.
"O mon enfant!"
The French skipper was lying abaft the binnacle, a yard across his
lower body.
There was no make-believe about him now, no mockery. He was naked man,
stripped of his tinsel, and laid bare to the soul by the inexorable
Master, Pain. Across his chin, as though to mock him, lay his false
moustachios.
"Tuez-moi!" he whimpered hoarsely. "Tuez-moi!"
"I can't!" gasped Kit--"not in cold blood!"
The lad was face to face with one of the most appalling of God's
mysteries, and was unhinged by it. Gwen with the toothache had been
nothing to this.
The agonised man rolled his head from side to side.
"Sainte Mere de Dieu, intercédez pour moi!" he wailed.
Again that lightning flashed in the boy's mind.
The man's silver-mounted pistol lay on the deck beside him. He thrust
it into the other's hand.
"Here, sir!"
The man clutched it, as one dying in a desert may clutch the flagon
of water that means life to him.
The head ceased its dreadful weaving.
"Petit ange! petit Anglais!" he whispered, and tried to smile.
Kit ran for his bridge. Halfway across it, he heard a crack, and
looked back.
He could not see the French skipper; but what he could see made his
heart sick.
Boats, crammed to the teeth, were putting away from the
_Coquette_. Black and scurrying, they tore across the water
towards him, like rats racing for blood.
CHAPTER XII
BOARDERS
I
Kit rushed madly aft.
"Here they come, sir!" he screamed.
Old Ding-dong sat propped on his corpse, shaving a quid of tobacco.
"Who come?"
"The boats, sir--boarding."
"That's the game, is it?"
He shut his jack-knife deliberately, and arranged his plug in the corner
of his jaw.
"Fetch me that ere boardin-pike. Now give me a hike up. Then nip below
and pass the word to Mr. Lanyon."
As Kit turned, he heard the rip of the first boat under the counter
of the sloop and a sharp command in French, sounding strange and terrible
in his ears.
Furiously he sped along the deck. As he bundled down the ladder, he
caught a glimpse of the old Commander, braced against the bulwarks,
and spitting into his hands.
The boy dropped into hell.
Down there was no order. All was howling chaos. Each gun-captain fought
his own gun, regardless of the rest. Billows of smoke drifted to and
fro; shadowy forms flitted; guns bounded and bellowed; here and there
a red glare lit the fog.
Through the shattering roar of the guns, the rendings of planks, the
scream of round-shot, came the voices of men, dim-seen. Jokes,
blasphemies, prayers, groans, issued in nightmare medley from that
death-fog.
"Chri', kill me!--My God, I sweats!--Pore old Jake's got it!"
On mid-deck a shadow was pirouetting madly. Suddenly it collapsed;
and the boy saw it ended at the neck.
A dim figure lolled against an overturned gun. As the lad gazed, it
pointed to a puddle beside it.
"That's me," it said with slow and solemn interest.
The boy trod on something in the smoke. A bloody wraith, spread-eagled
upon the deck, raised tired eyes to his.
"That's all right, sir," came a whisper. "Don't make no odds. I got
all I want."
A hand out of the mist clutched his ankle.
"Stop this racket," gasped a voice, querulous and tearful. "I ain't
well." A stump flapped in his face.
A ghost, sitting up against the side close by, began to titter.
"Once I was mother's darling. Mightn't think it to see me now."
A shot, screeching past the boy's nose, took his breath away. He
staggered back, and brought up against a gun-captain, his shoulders
to the breech of the gun.
The man turned with a grin. It was the Gunner, naked to the waist,
and smoke-grimed.
"Sweet mess, ain't it?" he coughed. "How d'ye like your first smell
o powder, sir?"
"They're boarding!" panted Kit. "Quick!"
The man leapt up.
"Boardin!" he roared. "Board _ME!_ I'll give em board."
He snatched up a chain-shot, and raced down the deck.
"Up aloft the lot o you!" he howled. "Heaven waits ye there!"
II
As he flamed through the smoke-drift, the crew caught fire from him.
Behind him in roaring flood they poured--black men and bloody,
snatching each the weapon nearest to hand.
An aweful joy seemed beating up through mists in their faces. Time
and Eternity warred within them. Man, the creature, hideously afraid
for his flesh, strove with Man, the Creator, impregnable in his
immortality.
Kit, swept off his feet, was borne along with the flood.
The fury of enthusiasm, which the splendid drunkard had roused in the
hearts of his men, had seized him too.
His body was aflame; and his veins ran fire. Now for the first time
he knew what it was to be alive--Life spurting from his finger-tips,
making madness in his blood, issuing riotously from his lips. He sang;
he yelled; he laughed, battering at the lunatic in front. He caught
the blasphemies of his battle-fellows, and echoed them shrilly and
with joy. The light in his comrades' eyes revealed to him deeps of
being undreamed of before. His spirit was pouring through his flesh,
making glory as it went.
Uplifted as a lover, the wine of War drowned his senses. In the glory
of doing he had no thought for the thing done. His was the midsummer
madness of slaying. In that singing moment how should he remember the
bleak and shuddering autumn of pain inevitably to follow?--the winter
of clammy death?--the March-wind voices of distant women wailing their
mates?
"Jam, ain't it?" yelled a man in his ear, as they raced up the ladder.
"Glory! glory!" sang the boy, beside himself with passion.
III
Aft and alone stood the old Commander, a dead man at his feet.
Another swarmed over the side. The old Commander's boarding-pike met
him fair in the face. Back the fellow went into darkness and death.
"Good old Ding-dong!" came the Gunner's rollicking bellow, as he stormed
up on deck, swinging his chain-shot like a battle-axe. "That's your
sort!--bash em! blast em!--disembowl the ---- Turks!"
Behind him, out of the smoke, poured the men, red-hot and roaring,
like lava spewed up from the bowels of a volcano.
A stream of boarders, trickling over the bulwarks, raced across the
deck to meet them.
"Love and War! O my God, ain't they glory?" howled the Gunner, and
plunged into the opposing flood.
One man he felled with his chain-shot; then flung it aside.
"Naked does it!" he roared, and swept up a boarder in his arms. "Ow,
the luscious little armful! no good kickin, duckie! You've got to ave
it!" He rushed to the side, hugging his man, and screaming fearful
laughter.
"Love me and forgive me, pretty tartie!" he roared, and smashed
his burthen down over the side.
The fellow crashed into a ladder of boarders, swarming up one behind
the other. Back they hurled into the boats, a hurricane of men, one
on top of t'other. The boat rocked, crumpled up, and sank.
The tears were rolling down the Gunner's face.
"Quenched their little ardour!" he bellowed, leaping on to the bulwark.
"That's the style below there, boys! Go it, ye cripples! Give em the
little _Tremendous_!"
Beneath him the sea was black with boats. From the port-holes of the
main-deck the wounded were leaning out, hailing round-shot down into
the boats.
"Plug em! ply em!" roared the Gunner. "Red ot shot--cannister--case!
anything ye like only give em slaughter for eaven's sweet sake!"
He was back in the thick of it, raving up and down the deck, sowing
death broadcast, his great voice everywhere.
Not a man on board but seemed to have caught something of his heroic
fury. The purser's steward, primmest of Methodists, who was said to
pass his time in action converting the cook, came tripping out of the
galley, a black-jack of boiling water in his hand.
"Glory for you!" he screamed, and flung the contents in the face of
a boarder.
"There's the proper Christian!" gasped the Gunner, slammed
up against the main-mast. "Propagate the Gospel ow ye can!--bilin
bilge!--buckets o filth!--spit in his face if ye can't do no better."
A tall Frenchman pistoled the little steward.
The ship's cook, a flabby great flat-footed man, all in white, and
snorting strangely, bundled up with a poll-axe, and cleft the
Frenchman's skull.
"It a chap your own size!" he yelled, and felled from behind, went
down himself.
IV
Up and down the deck the battle raged: here a scrimmage; there a single
fight; men at hand-grips; men hurling round-shot. They swayed, they
staggered about in each other's arms; they shocked, parted, came together
again. Dead men lay in the scuppers; wounded men crawled the deck;
and up and down among them the living reeled. One man, turned cur,
crouched under the bulwark with ghastly face uplifted, and met his
death, whimpering. Another, strangely quiet amid the dance of devils,
stood against the foremast, nursing a broken arm. Nobody heeded him.
They were too busy.
To Kit a sudden madness seemed to have possessed the world. The deck
danced before him. He was bumped; he was battered; he was hurled to
and fro--a twig in a torrent.
All was dreadful; all was dizzy. Strange faces with appalling eyes
rose before him; men breathing terribly flitted past. There was a smell
of blood and sweat in his nostrils; a sound of panting and blasphemies
in his ears.
This then was a battle--not much like the stories! All the same he
wished they wouldn't tread on his toes so.
Blindly the boy slashed about him. Whether he killed them, or they
killed him, he hardly knew, and didn't greatly care. A sort of instinct
told him the men to stab at--the dirty beasts in shirts who showed
their teeth. The naked men were his own lot.
Once he heard a voice beside him.
"Go it, little un! you're almost a man!"
Then the Gunner staggered by, all black eyes and straining face, his
arms about a huge boarder, his teeth deep in the fellow's shoulder.
"Rip this ----'s backside up!" came a gurgling voice.
His hand went up automatically; automatically his dirk came down.
A mountain fell on top of him....
As he crept out a voice panted hard by,
"Old man's down."
Dizzily he saw the old Commander sprawling to a fall, a man on top
of him. The boy heard him grunt as he fell. That grunt angered him.
"I'm coming, sir!" he cried, and ran wrathfully with bloody dirk.
_"Beast!"_ he yelled. _"Leave him alone!"_
There was no need for him to cry.
The old man had done his own work from underneath with the jack-knife.
Out poked his badger-grey head from under his man, much as the boy
had often seen a ferret from beneath the body of a disembowelled rabbit.
"So fur so good," grunted the old man, crawling out on hands and knees,
the scent-bottle between his teeth. "How's things forrad?"
Forward the deck was all but clear.
The remnant of the boarders, jammed up in the bows, were being hammered
to death. A last fellow in a red night-cap, swarming out on the bowsprit,
plumped into the sea.
The Gunner leapt on to the bulwark.
"Cleared, be God! alow and aloft!" he roared, swinging his chain-shot
about his head. "Ats off all!--
_God save h'our gracious King._"
A bandaged head poked out of the hatchway.
"They're swarmin in through the port-holes!" came a husky scream.
Old Ding-dong lifted on his elbows.
"Leave the quarter-deck to me and the boy!" he roared. "Clear the
main-deck."
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the Gunner, racing for the ladder. "Back to
hell, the leetle beetches!"
The old man looked up.
"Any more for us, Mr. Caryll?"
A boat swept under the stern.
"Here's another of them, sir!"
The boy staggered to the side. A grappling iron swung from beneath
almost struck him in the face.
He seized the cook's poll-axe, and hacked away at the bulwark. Then
he put his shoulder to a carronade and shoved.
"H'all together eave!" whispered the dying cook, and lent a feeble
hand.
Over went the carronade with spinning wheels. It caught the boat
fair amidships, and broke it up like matchwood.
The boy leaned over. Beneath him in the green and sucking waters amid
a litter of wreckage one or two heads showed, swimming faintly.
Pale and panting, he turned.
"I think that's the last, sir," languidly.
The old Commander removed the plug from his mouth.
"There's two things go to make a British seaman," he growled--"guts
and gumption. Maybe you've got both, as your father had afoor you.
We're like to see e'er the day's out."
He wiped his jack-knife on his breeches, and began to carve his plug
again.
"Now run below and see how things are going with Mr. Lanyon."
The boy went. His passion had long passed. He was sick and weary.
Head and heart ached.
With shaking knees, he tottered below. Had a party of jabbering
Frenchmen met him, he wouldn't have minded. He was too spent.
But no.
All below was calm now and silence; smoke-drift and dying men.
The Gunner was standing at an open port, directing operations.
His passion too had passed. The giant-hero of a few minutes' back
seemed almost small now. And a strange figure he made.
The sweat had coursed through the rouge on his cheeks; and the dye
on his whiskers had run, dripping on to neck and shoulders. He was
naked still, save for his trousers, but wearing his cocked hat a-rake.
The man at his side heaved a French corpse through the port.
"That's the lot," said the Gunner, picking his teeth, and turned with
black and grinning face to the boy.
"Well, sir, what d'ye think? me?--earty fighter, ain't I?"
CHAPTER XIII
AFTER THE FIGHT
I
All was very still on the deck of the _Tremendous_; and those
quiet men lolling in the sun added to the hush.
They sprawled about in all attitudes--on their faces, on their backs,
in each other's arms, as though snoozing. And the snoring noise that
came from one or two of them enhanced the illusion. Only the blank
unwinking eyes of those upon their backs, the expression of the upturned
faces, and the wet red stuff smeared everywhere, showed that they were
not holiday picnickers.
Aft by the binnacle a man sat up against the side watching with appalling
solemnity the blood pat-pat-patting down from a wound in his side.
He dabbed a finger in the mess, and scrawled his name on the deck,
Tom Bleach. R.I.P._
"Tom Bleach--Remember Im Please," he repeated, nodding his head with
portentous gravity.
A white and crimson huddle beside him groaned.
The man of letters frowned at it.
"How d'ye feel, cookie?" he asked.
"Mortal queer," whispered the dying man.
"It do feel queer, dyin," admitted the other solemnly.
A French officer close by opened glazed eyes.
"I too I die," he announced. "What then will I do?"
"Why, pray God forgive you bein French," growled old Ding-dong,
propped against the wheel. "That's your worst crime."
II
The boy came up from below, deathly pale, the wind lifting his hair.
He crossed to the old Commander, reeling faintly among the dead as
he came.
"Lanyon alive?"
"Yes, sir. All well below," in thin and ghostly voice.
The old man nodded satisfaction.
"Starry fighter, ain't he?--Wonderful gift that way. Don't know as
I ever saw his ekal at a pinch."
He looked up at the lad, swaying above him.
"Feel funny?"
The boy did not reply, leaning against the side, a far-away look in
his eyes.
Then he burst into tears.
"There, there!" said the old man soothingly. "Sure to come a bit
okkud-like first start-off. It's been a nasty beginning for you
too--messy fightin, I call it. Look at my quarter-deck! More like a
slaughter-house nor a King's ship."
He mopped at his leg.
"And all the shore-goin folk on their knees in Church all the
time!--Funny to think on, ain't it?"
III
The Gunner came up the ladder.
A sack was cast about his naked shoulders; his cocked hat was on the
back of his head; and a tooth-pick between his lips.
He strolled to the side.
Beneath him the _Cocotte_, smoking like a damped furnace,
the blood trickling from between her seams, was settling fast.
"Got her bellyful all snug," said the Gunner complacently, picking
his teeth.
He strolled off to old Ding-dong, propped on his corpse beside the
wheel.
"Well, sir, you play a pretty stick with a handspike still!--how's
yerself?"
"Tidy," grunted the veteran. "How fur's yon frigate yet? I can't
see over the side, settin on my little sofia."
"Within random shot, sir. She's got a slant of wind, and is crowding
all sail to get alongside."
"Then we'd best be sturrin. How are we ridin?"
The Gunner looked over the side.
"Why, middlin deep, sir."
"Then cut the boats away, and the anchors. Stave in the water-casks.
Heave all spare shot and tackle overboard--we need nowt but the boards
we stand on and the guns we fight; and make what sail you can on
her.... I shall bear away for the shore. Don't mean bein took at my
time o life."
IV
A breeze light as a lady's kiss smote the water. The topsails of the
sloop began to fill and flutter.
Deep in the water as a barge, she drew away from her floundering
antagonist. As she did so, the privateer, as though loth to let her
depart unsaluted, barked a sullen farewell.
A roar of triumph from the _Coquette_, clearing now on the
port-bow and a fainter shout from the frigate to starboard, told
their own tale.
The mizzen, struck twenty foot above the deck, came down with a
crash. With it fell the red-cross flag, and the faces of the crew.
"Hand me that striped petticut!" roared the Gunner, pointing to the
tricolour lying entangled in the ruins of the privateer's main-top
on the deck of the sloop. "I want to blow me nose."
He leaped on to the bulwark, flag in hand; and staying himself by
the shroud, blew his nose boisterously on the enemy's colours.
The crew, busy clearing the wreckage of the mizzen, roared delight.
The Gunner jumped down, and spread the flag over the old Commander's
feet as he lay.
"There's the first on em, sir. There's two more to follow."
"Make it so," said the old man grimly.
He was chewing a quid, and a battered cocked hat tilted over his eyes.
V
The Gunner marched away, eyes to his right, eyes to his left. And as
he marched, he swept off his cocked hat.
"Chaps," he called to the remnant of the crew gathered grimy about
the after-hatch. "I thank my God for this booriful sight. Frenchman
to port!" shooting his left arm. "Frenchman to starboard!" shooting
his right. "Frenchman astarn!" with a backward toss. "And God A'mighty
aloft. What more can a Christian ask?"
A shot from the frigate splashed under the bows of the sloop, sluicing
her deck.
"There she spouts!" roared the Gunner, and clapping on his hat ran,
kicking his heels behind him. "Come along, the baby-boys!--the last
fight o the little _Tremendous_--and the best."
III
UNDER THE CLIFF
CHAPTER XIV
SUNDAY EVENING
It was evening.
The little _Tremendous_ lay under the cliff, pounding gently,
gently, on a reef. Her back was broken, she had a heavy list to
starboard, and her bulwark was awash.
The mainmast had gone by the board. The quarterdeck carronades,
loosed from their moorings, sprawled in the wash of the water, a
dead man floating amongst them. The deck was a tangle of wreckage
and bloody sails. From a splintered stump, more like a shaving-brush
than a mast, the red-cross flag still flapped.
Astern of her, in the deep water, lay her enemies in smoking ruins.
The privateer, her foretop in flames, was dishevelled as a virago
after a street fight; while great white clouds puffing out of the
frigate's quarter-gallery told that she was afire.
The sea wallowed about the sloop, green and sleek and greedy. There
was scarcely a ruffle on the water; only a huge slow heaving, as of
some monster breathing deeply, and licking its lips before an orgie.
Firing had long ceased.
Kit, squatting, his back against the mizzen-stump, was coming to with
splitting head.
All through that golden summer afternoon the sloop had drifted
shoreward, privateer and frigate hammering her from either side.
Towards evening, her last shot spent, the frigate boarded. The
Gunner, hoarse as a crow, bloody as a beefsteak, had brought up the
weary remnant of the crew to repel the attack, Kit aiding him
manfully.
Men had been dancing idiotically about the boy; he had heard the
Gunner's raucous voice close in his ear,
"Gad, you're a game un!" and had run at a nightmare man with goggle
eyes.
Then something had happened.
Now all was calm and sunset peace, and dew on the deck among the
blood stains.
And how beautiful it was, this strange twilight quiet, after the howl
and torment of battle!
Warily the boy opened eyes and ears. He was not dead then, not even
wounded, only horribly parched, and how his head ached!
Before him the cliff fell sheer and blank--a white curtain dropped
from heaven.
Over it sea-gulls floated on dream-wings. While from some
remote Down village, church bells swung out the old song--
_Come to Christ,
Come to Christ,
Come, dear children, come to Christ._
The boy, lying on the bloody deck, his feet cushioned on a dead man,
listened with closed eyes to the old call.
Last Sunday at that hour, the blackbirds hopping on the lawn without,
the swifts screaming above, he and mother and Gwen had been singing
hymns together in the schoolroom--rather chokily indeed, for it was
his last Sunday at home.
All that was ages and ages ago. He had lived and died a hundred times
since then.
Now....
There by the wheel, in a puddle of his own blood, lay old Ding-dong,
grey and ghastly. His eyes were closed; his cocked hat with a rakish
forward tilt sat on his nose. He lay with shoulders hunched, his legs
spread helplessly along the deck before him, stubborn chin digging
into the breast of his frock-coat.
One grim fist was frozen to the shattered wheel; the other, grimmer
still, clutched the scent-bottle.
CHAPTER XV
THE VOICE FROM THE POWDER-MAGAZINE
I
A bosun's whistle sounded.
On hands and knees the lad crept along the tilted deck past the old
Commander.
"That you, Mr. Caryll?" came a husky voice. "I canna see over plain."
The old man had not moved, but one eye had opened and was glaring up
from under the eaves of his cocked hat.
"Yes, sir."
"Are they coomin?"
Kit threw a glance seaward.
"The frigate's piped her boats away, sir."
The old man's head, still forward on his breast, did not move; he did
not seem to breathe. All of him was dead save that little eye, cocking
up at the lad from under the tilted hat.
"Canst walk?"
"Yes, sir. I'm not wounded, only stunned."
"Then run below to Mr. Lanyon, and tell him to bide my whistle."
"Where is he, sir?"
"Where he ought to be," growled the old man--"powder-magazine o coorse."
The eye closed: the little ray of soul, still haunting the body, seemed
quenched for ever; but it was not.
"And bring along a brace o round-shot when ye coom back, wilta?" came
the painful voice out of the deeps.
II
Kit slid down the companion ladder.
The lower deck was half awash, and foul with smoke. There was a stink
of dead men, bilge, and powder.
But what a change from when he was last here!
Then sights so ghastly that he dared not recall them: screams of torn
men, rending of torn planks; howling terrors on every side, shattering
his head, bursting his heart, dissipating his mind.
Now silence everywhere, beautiful silence, the silence of Death.
And those leaping devils with the hoarse throats, who had barked
themselves red-hot then, were strangely hushed now. Loosed from their
moorings, they huddled, together beneath him half under water, like
so many great black beasts, cowed, it seemed, almost ashamed; here
a huge breech showing, there a blunt snout, and again a thrusting trunnion.
As he crawled along in the gloom among blackened corpses he thanked
God for the stillness. It was comforting to him as water in the desert
to a man dying. He drank it in gulps.
A sound in the darkness and silence stopped him.
Out of the deeps a shuddering voice rose up to him, mumbling a Litany
of the dead,
"Lord ha mercy on me a sinner--
Lord ha mercy on me a sinner--
Lord ha mercy on me a sinner."
The boy crept to the forehatch and peered down.
One tiny yellow star flickered in the pitch blackness beneath.
"Mr. Lanyon!" His voice was frightened of itself. "Is that you?"
The Litany ceased. Some one cleared his throat.
"That's me, sir," came a voice from the pit. "I'm back where I belong--in
her bow'ls."
The Gunner was squatting in a powder barrel, a lighted purser's glim
between his teeth, and a pistol in one hand. Kit caught the glimmer
of naked shoulders, the wet gleam of eyes, and the shine of sweat on
a face black as a sweep's.
"I was ummin all the bawdy bits I know to keep me company," called
up a voice husky as a ghost's and cheery as a robin's: "It's lonesome-like
kickin your heels in the dark against the powder bar'l you're goin
to ell in next minute. Not that it's ell I mind. Ell's all right once
you're there. It's the gettin there's the trouble--the messin about
and waitin and that."
"You won't have to wait long now," replied Kit in a voice so still
and solemn that he hardly recognised it himself. Nothing was very real
to him. Even the words he uttered were not his own: they were machine-made
somehow.
"They'll be alongside in a minute. Commander Harding says you're to
wait for his whistle. Then--"
"Amen. So be it. God save the King."
The Gunner dropped his voice to a whisper, rolling up his eyes.'
"Say, Sonny, are you afraid?"
"No. I can't take anything in."
"Nor'm I; and ain't got no cause neether," came the voice from the
darkness, defiant almost to truculence. "I only ad but the two
talents--lovin and fightin; and they can't say I've id eether o them
up in a napkin. They can't chuck that in me face."
He spat philosophically between his thighs.
"On'y one thing I wish," he continued confidentially. "I wish all the
totties was settin atop o that clift to see Magnificent Arry go aloft.
Ah, you mightn't think it to see me now, Mr. Caryll, squattin
mother-naked in this bar'l, but I been a terror in me time. Sich a
way with em and all!"
"You might think about something more decent just now," said the boy
coldly. "Good-bye. I'm afraid you haven't lived a very good life."
As the boy groped his way back, the parched voice pursued him from
the nether hell.
"My respects to the old man. We seen a tidy bit together, him and me;
but reck'n this last little bust-up bangs the lot. I'd ha gone through
a world without women for its sweet sake, blest if I wouldn't.... And
now," came the voice in a sort of chant, "avin lived like a blanky
King I'm goin to die like a blanky cro. Arry the Magnificent always
and for h'ever!"
CHAPTER XVI
MAGNIFICENT ARRY GOES ALOFT
Old Ding-Dong lay as the boy had left him.
"Got them round-shot?" hoarsely.
"Yes, sir."
"Stuff em in my tails then."
The boy obeyed.
"Ah, that's better," sighed the old man comfortably. "No fear I shall
break adrift o my moorings." He slipped the scent-bottle into his
breast-pocket and patted it. "She'll lay snug along o me, she will."
He closed his eyes.
Kit, kneeling at his side, held a pannikin to his lips.
"Water, sir. Will you have a drop?"
"Nay, thank ee, ma lad. I'll bide till t'other side. Shan't be long
now."
Kit drank greedily. He could hear the oars of the approaching
boat; he had at the most some two minutes of life, but O! the delight
of that draught.
A hand grasped his.
"Mr. Caryll," said the old Commander in strange and formal voice, "I've
sent for you upon the quarter-deck to thank you for your gallantry
in your first action, which is also, I fear, your last.... Can you
swim?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, then, slip overboard, if you've a mind, and make shift for
yourself."
"No, sir, thank you. I'll stand by the ship."
The old man grunted satisfaction.
"Then say your prayers."
He put the whistle between his teeth.
The flag he had kept flying, nailed to the splintered mizzen, curled
languidly above his head.
The old mail, dying in its shadow, eyed it with silent content.
"Are they coomin, Mr. Caryll?"
"Yes, sir--near now."
"Lay low," whispered the old man, "and we'll bag the lot, God helpin
us."
The sound of oars ceased. Out of the silence a voice hailed.
"Any one alife on board?"
Old Ding-dong hearkened, his cocked hat far over his eyes.
That look of the Eternal Child, arch and mischievous, played among
the wrinkles about his eyes.
"Cuckoo!" he muttered. "Cuckoo!"
Kit giggled.
He knew the ship was about to be blown up; but he didn't take much
interest in it himself. It didn't seem to affect him. Somehow he was
so far away. All that was happening was happening in a dream-world
of which he was a spectator only. True he felt a vague discomfort at
the heart; but he knew that in a minute he should wake up--to find
mother's eyes smiling into his, and her laughing voice saying,
"My dear boy, what _have_ you been dreaming about?"
The boats were drawing nearer again, wary as hunters drawing on a
dying lion.
Old Ding-dong heard them, and smiled.
The little _Tremendous_ was a sheer hulk; her back was broken;
her crew were dead--and still they feared her!
The old seaman's heart warmed within him. That one sweet moment paid
him generously for fifty years of toil, of battle, of chagrin.
And as though thrilling to the emotion of the man who had loved her
for so long, the little ship trembled as she settled deeper.
The old man patted the deck.
"There! it wonna urt you, my dear," he said soothingly. "Too suddint."
A tricorne rose over the bulwark.
An officer cast his eyes up and down the deck, swift and alert as a
bird.
"Anybody alife on board?" he repeated, and in the vast silence
his voice came small and very shrill.
He clambered over the bulwark, and came up the steep deck monkey-wise.
At the foot of the mizzen he paused.
Kit, crouching in a heap close by, noticed his boots, old, split across
the toe, dingy white socks showing through. He found himself wondering
whether the man had corns.
Clinging to the stump the Frenchman drew his sword, and looked up at
the red-cross flag flapping sullen defiance overhead.
"Dans le nom de l'Empereur!" he cried pompously.
A whistle, swift as the arrow of death, pierced him to the heart.
CHAPTER XVII
THE GRAVE OF THE LITTLE _TREMENDOUS_
I
A roar drowned the boy's senses, sweeping his mind away on a
mountainous billow of sound.
Earth and sea were a bubble beneath his feet, swelling and sailing;
and he was walking on the bubble, and toppling backwards as he walked.
He felt himself smiling in a foolish way. There was no pain then about
dying, he thought with a pleased and remote surprise--only this silly
smiling content.
Things hit him outside. He was aware of them; but they did not hurt.
His body was wood, dull to sensation. He himself was within somewhere,
snug and safe. He had heard the parson at home talk about eternal life.
Now he knew what the man meant. To be alive yet above pain, to be dead
yet dimly comfortable--that was the heavenly life. It was very curious,
and not half bad.
And--he had been there before. When and where, he could not recollect.
But all was friendly, all familiar.
Suddenly there came a change, and for the worse. A great wet cloud
swamped him. The light went out. All about him was cold, and dark,
and clinging. Was this the grave and gate of Death?
He shuddered, and yet was not greatly afraid.
Everything was so far away, on the circumference of being, as it were;
and he at the centre, safe and warm, was mildly interested--little
more.
Somehow he knew he was in the sea, walking dream-waters; whether
conscious, or unconscious, in the spirit or out of it, he knew not,
and didn't greatly care.
Grotesque yet beautiful impressions of things familiar flitted across
his mind. He saw his mother in a cocked hat; Cuddie Collingwood, his
pet canary, strutting the maindeck and picking his teeth; and Gwen
with a tarred pigtail, her brawny bosom tattooed with dancing-girls.
She was making faces at him, the faces that none but Gwen could make;
and he was about to shoot his tongue back brotherly, when there came
another change, terrible this time.
There was a singing in his ears; a sense of suffocation and appalling
impotence. He was rushing back to the world of sense and pain--in time,
no doubt, to die, when he thought he was through that trouble. Just
his luck!
He was throttled, battling, distraught. About him was the rush and
smother of waters. A secret power clutched him about the waist and
tugged him back. For the first time in his life he felt the aweful
and inexorable grip of Necessity; and his heart screamed.
Then with a bob and a gasp, he was up; the water in his nostrils; and
his hands clinging to a spar.
II
About him was a fog of smoke, and the throes of water in torment,
sucking, spewing, pouncing.
Then a great swell, roaring into foam, lifted him. He was swung out
of the stinging smother, away from the shock and battle of waters,
out and out under the calm sky.
Beneath him a sheer white wall rose. There was no top to it, and no
bottom. He could have screamed. It was so huge, so blank, so
incomprehensible. It fell from heaven. Was it the skirt of God?
Then he saw the dark crest miles overhead, and knew it for a cliff.
He was right beneath it, and swinging towards it.
Suddenly he became aware of a badger-grey head bobbing beside him
on the spar.
"Hullo, sir!" he gasped.
A voice spluttered,
"Pockets sprung a leak!--tailor! ruffian!"
A great following swell lifted them.
"Hold fast, sir!" called Kit. "This'll throw us up."
The swell drove forward, toppling to a fall; curled, and crashed down.
Kit found himself on hands and knees, banged, dripping, dizzy, in a
hiss and turmoil of waters. The backward sweep of the waves almost
carried him with it. But his hands were in the shingle up to the wrist,
anchoring him. The body of water passed him. A thousand tresses of
foam reminding him of his Granny's hair swept across his fingers.
He looked up. He was kneeling on a tiny strip of beach at the foot
of the cliff. On his left sprawled the old Commander. His knees, cocked
by the receding wave, swayed and toppled now; the legs wooden and
dreadful as a dummy's.
Kit crawled towards him.
"Are you hurt, sir?"
The old man answered nothing. His eyes were shut, his arms wide. He
lay upon his back on the wet and running shingle, his white knee-breeches
sodden and rusty with blood, the square chin heavenward.
Another of those sleek green monsters stole towards them out of the
smoke.
In an agony the lad tried to drag the old man back under the cliff.
He might as well have attempted to lift a cask of lead.
"O, what shall I do?" wailed the boy to heaven.
"Why, cut and run," answered the voice from earth.
Then the wave was on them, swooping, worrying, white-toothed.
Kit did his best. Kneeling behind the old man, he heaved him into a
sitting position, and propped him there, as the tumult of waters
sluiced about them. Over the limp legs, up the great chest, the wave
swept greedily; but the badger-grey head stayed above the flood.
Then the water withdrew, blind and baffled.
Kit lowered the grey head.
"Thank ee," grunted the old man, and seemed to sleep.
Kit made no answer. He was watching the sea with dreadful anxiety.
Was it coming up? Was it going down? Were there to be more of those
smothering floods? If so, they were lost. He knew he could not
lift again that leaden old man.
No. The worst was over. A lesser wave swept towards them. It tossed
those wooden legs, dreadfully sporting with them, and fled, snarling.
The boy bent with thankful heart.
"That's all, sir. It won't come again. It's the swell made by the
explosion--not the tide."
"Ah," said the other sleepily; and opened his eyes.
Seaward hung a huge toad-stool of smoke. Out of the heart of it came
the clash and cry of torn waters. All else was still, save for the
scream of disturbed sea-birds.
Through the frayed and drifting edge of the smoke could be seen the
frigate and the spars of the privateer; and sticking out of the water,
a jagged mizzen--all that was left of the little _Tremendous_.
As his eye fell on the splintered stump the old Commander lifted a
hand to his forehead.
"Plucky little packet," he muttered. "Plucky little packet."
CHAPTER XVIII
OLD DING-DONG'S REVENGE
Old Ding-dong lay at the foot of the cliff among the chalk boulders,
his limp white legs glimmering in the twilight.
To Kit, kneeling at his side, it seemed that only the old man's slow
blinking eyelids were alive. The horror of it thrilled the boy, and
woke the woman in him. He was not repelled; he was drawn closer.
Taking off his coat, he rolled it, sopping as it was, and stuffed it
beneath the other's head.
Propped so, the old man lay in the falling gloom, head quaintly cocked,
and chin crushed down on his chest.
"Are you comfortable, sir?"
"Comforubble as a man can be that canna feel," the other grunted.
"My back's bruk. I'm dyin uppuds."
Stealthily the boy took the old man's hand in his. A faint tightening
of the clay-cold fingers surprised him.
The dusk was falling fast. At their feet the sea still crashed uneasily.
Above them the cliff showed white. Under the moon one red star sparkled.
From out of the smoke they could hear the sound of oars and voices.
Boats were searching amid the wreckage.
"Ay, you may sarch," muttered the grim old man. "It's little you'll
find but your own carpses."
He rolled his head round. Kit marked the shine of his eyes, the blink
of pale lids, and the glimmer of his face.
"Look in ma breast-pocket. It's there."
The boy's scared fingers travelled over the other's sodden coat. It
was like searching a drowned man.
"Yes, sir. Here it is."
"Hod it oop."
The boy held the scent-bottle before the other's eyes. The old man
gazed at it, licking his lips.
Then he rolled his eyes up to the boy's.
"Kit Caryll," came the squeezed voice suddenly,
"are you your father's son?"
"I hope so, sir."
There was a thrilling silence.
"Then take charge."
Slowly the boy received the trust into his soul.
"Very good, sir."
He slipped the scent-bottle into his pocket.
"It's all in there," continued the ghastly voice. "It's a plot, see?--to
kidnap Nelson. There's a gal in it--o coorse. Thinks she can twiddle
the A'mighty round her thumb because her face ain't spotty. Lay that
in Nelson's hands--and we'll see."
The dusk was falling fast; the sea stilled; a breathing calm was
everywhere.
"This here's Beachy Head. Birling Gap's yonder--where there's a last
glimmer yet. Don't go that road. Soon as the tide's down, round the
Head, and climb t'other side. It falls away there. Make for Lewes along
the top o the Downs. There's a camp o soldiers there. Soldiers ain't
much account, but they'll serve to see you through to Merton. And once
there, and that in Nelson's hands--I ain't died in vain."
The hoarse voice grew hoarser.
"And mind! trust no one; don't go anigh farm, cottage, or village.
It's an enemy's land all this side o Lewes. Gap Gang country,
the folk call it. They're all in it--up to the neck."
"I'll do my best, sir," said the boy, licking up his tears.
"And not a bad best eether, as I know," came the squeezed voice.
"And when you've won through to Nelson, as win through it's my firm
faith you will--and laid that there in his hand"--his voice came in
pants, and pauses, and with little runs--"tell him I sarved him all
I was able and give him--my kind dooty--old Ding-dong's dooty."
There was a gasping silence.
"That's my revenge. He'll understand."
CHAPTER XIX
OLD DING-DONG HOMEWARD-BOUND
The light was ebbing fast, and old Ding-dong with it.
All was silence and a few pale stars.
The old seaman began to wander.
Scenes near, scenes far, drifted across his fading mind. Now he was
a tiny lad babbling in broadest dialect to his mother at the washing-tub;
now he was a pit boy yelling at Susannah, the one-eyed pit pony; anon
he was on the spar-deck of the Don, holding by the hand the father
of the boy who now held his.
Then there came a silence, and out of it the words, clean and quiet:
"I'm the old man Nelson never forgave for doin of his dooty."
His brain seemed to clear. He began to tell a story half to himself,
half to the stars--the story of the incident of his life.
"A'ter the Nile [Footnote: It was after the battle of the Nile, on
his return to Naples, that Nelson succumbed to the fascination of Lady
Hamilton.] it were--when we got back to Naples. Things got bad, very
bad. At last Tom Troubridge wrote to him--I saw the letter. Tom and
he'd been very thick--till then. Things got worse. It was in the papers
and all. Somebody had to tackle him. Nobody durst--only old Ding-dong."
The wind gathered round to listen. A few curious stars pricked the
darkness above. The old man's voice was gaining strength as he went on.
"So I goes aboord the _Vanguard_, and there in his own state-room
I says the thing that had to be said and I says it straight."
Kit was listening intently. The strange blurred voice coming to his
out of the darkness moved him to his deeps.
"Ooop joomps Nelson, raving mad. 'My God, Hardin!' he screams--'Ger
off o my ship!--_Ger off o my ship!_ GER OFF O MY SHIP!'
"'Pardon, my lord,' says I. 'I've done my dooty as a man, though I
may have exceeded it as a sailor!'
"He called me a blanky pit boy.
"'A pit boy I was, my lord,' says I, 'and not ashamed on it; and
powder-monkey to Hawke afoor your lordship was born. For nigh on
fifty years I've touched the King's pay, and ate the King's salt.
I'm the Father o this fleet, and all for the Service, as the sayin
is. And I can't stand by and see the first officer in the British Navy
lowerin himself in the eyes of Europe without a word.'"
The darkness hushed; the moon stared; the stars crept closer.
"He struck me. Nelson struck me in the mug. I wiped the blood away
with my cuff. 'That's not the Nelson I know, my lord,' says I, and
stumps out. And I never seen him from that day to this."
The boy could hear the old man's breath fluttering in the darkness.
"He was mad, ye see. She'd gone to his head; and she's stayed there
ever since. Mad--as a man. As a sailor he's still Nelson--the first
seaman afloat, ever was, or will be."
There was a thrill in the fading voice; a thrill of devotion
to the man who had destroyed him.
"So he broke me, Nelson did, and I don't blame him: discipline is
discipline, all said. Told the Admiralty they could choose between
him and me--between Lord Nelson of the Nile, that is, and old
Ding-dong, who'd climbed to the quarter-deck through the
hawse-holes.... So they chose."
The sea rustled; the night was sprinkled with stars.
"But I've paid him now," ended the old man comfortably. "Reck'n I've
paid him now."
Kit had heard the tale with puzzled but passionate interest.
"What was it all about, sir?" he asked at last in awed voice.
"Why; what it's always about," grunted the other. "One o them gals."
He coughed faintly.
"Thank the Lord there's been nobbut one woman in ma life, and that's
the one a man can't help.
"What did I want with a pack?--trashy wives?... Nay. Fear God; fight
to a finish; and steer clear o them gals--that's been old Ding-dong's
rule o life: and it's the whole duty of a British seaman."
The old man's hand stirred in the boy's.
"In ma breech-pocket you'll find a Noo Testament and the Articles o
War--all my readin these forty year; and all a sailor needs. Take em
and study em. It'll pay you. Happen they run a bit athwart here and
there; but that makes no odds, if you keep your head. There's always
light enough to steer by if your heart's right. 'Christ's my compass,'
your father'd say. 'He don't deviate.'"
The old man lay back, his eyes shut, the light on his uplifted face.
About him was stillness, hushed waters, and the moon a silver bubble.
In the quiet cove, beneath the quiet stars, after sixty years of
storm, his soul was slipping away into the Great Quiet.
"I like layin here," came the ghostly voice. "So calm-like a'ter
the trouble."
The cold fingers grew stiff; the eyes closed.
Kit laid a hand on the old man's forehead, and stroked his hair.
"I'm a-coomin," came a tiny chuckle as of a sleepy child--"Billy's
coomin."
Seaward something flapped.
The boy turned.
At first he thought the Angel of Death was hovering over the white
waters on sable wings.
Then he recognised what he saw for the flag on the splintered mizzen
of the _Tremendous_ saluting solemnly the dying seaman.
Old Ding-dong saw it too.
He raised his head. The moonlight was on his face, and the hand in
Kit's quivered.
"Them's my colours," he whispered. "I never struck em."
BOOK II
_BEACHY HEAD_
I
THE GAP GANG
CHAPTER XX
THE LAST OF A BRITISH SEAMAN
I
The dawn-wind blowing chilly on the boy's skin roused him.
All night he had slept like a child far from the world and its
terrible distresses. The weary body had brought peace to the worn
mind. The two had merged in sleep, neither demanding aught of the
other except to feed and to refresh.
He was coming to himself with a sore throat and a shiver.
His bed was hard; the bed-clothes had slipped off. He tried to pull
them round him. His groping hand found nothing but impossible lumps,
and stuff that trickled between his fingers. Why was he naked? where
was his night-shirt? and what was this small hard thing he clutched in
his hand?
With a puzzled frown he opened his eyes.
Overhead rose a dim white wall, a thin curtain swaying before it. At
first he took it for the white-washed wall of his attic at home, the
lace-curtains at the head of the bed blowing in the wind. Then a
slow-winged shadow, passing between him and the ceiling with puling
cry, startled him to the truth.
The memories surged back on him. He knew.
That white wall sheer above him was the cliff; that swaying curtain
was the mist; that passing shadow a sea-bird. The hard something he
was clutching so jealously was the scent-bottle; this still thing at
his side was--
The thought stabbed him awake. He sat up with a start.
About him drifted a white and waving mist. It shrouded him, chilly as
a winding-sheet. There was no shore, no sea--only a hiss and rustle in
the silence; and this still thing at his feet.
"Sir!" he gasped.
The still thing did not answer him.
The body leapt to his feet. He was alone; alone for ever in a blank
universe where nothing was--but the still thing!
A sodden heap of clothes caught his eye. Last night; he had doffed
them, dripping as they were, and slept naked beside _that,_ his
head pillowed on a chalk boulder. The huddle of clothes, sprawling
there so unconcerned, comforted him. _They_ weren't afraid:
_they_ took it calmly enough. Hang it! he was as good a man as
they.
And after all the old man was dead; and so long as he stayed dead the
boy didn't mind. It was the chance of his coming to life again, of his
stirring, winking an eye-lid, speaking, that he feared.
At length he dared to look at the old man's face. A sand-fly was
crawling on his nose. The boy sighed. He wasn't quite alone then: the
fly was there, and the fly was alive. His courage returned to him with
a leap. He flicked the fly off with joyful indignation. They knew no
reverence, these beastly little beasts! The old man lay upon his back, a
rusty stream running down his white shorts. The salt had dried in
scurfy ridges on hair and face. His head had slipped off Kit's coat;
the little tail of neat-tied hair peeped from beneath; the eyes, wide-
open, stared skyward.
Kit closed them; and the action cost him more than all his valours of
the day before. Almost he expected to hear the old man's harsh voice--
"Now then!"
The deed done, it seemed to the boy as if his action had eased the
dead man. The look of strain on the set and yellowing face passed. The
old man was tired: he had done with the world; he would shut his eyes
for ever on it. The kind wrinkles, deep-puckered about his mouth,
seemed to gather into a smile.
Lying there with set mouth, and stubborn chin, in death, as in life,
he was old Ding-dong still.
II
Kit could not bury the old man: he had no tools. He could not stay
with him: time pressed. What he could, he did with the tenderness of a
woman, and the respect of a midshipman for the bravest of the brave.
He arranged the body orderly, straightening the legs and pulling down
the coat.
As he did so, he felt something bulky in the flaps. He looked. It was
a little old leather-bound New Testament, sea-soaked; and between the
leaves of it the Articles of War.
The book fell open at the fly-leaf. On it three names were written,
each in a different hand.
_Horatio Nelson,
Christopher Caryll,
William Harding._
A bracket bound the three, and opposite the bracket, in the same hand
as the first name, the words,
_England and Duty_.
The date was a week before St. Vincent.
The fly-leaf turned. On the back of it, in the great vague hand of a
peasant-woman, rheumatic-ridden,
_bili from mother
Xmas_ 1755
_be a good boy_.
Kit read the inscription with full throat. In his chest, awaiting him
at the Bridge at Newhaven, there was such another book, with such
another inscription, from such another mother--given him the night
before his setting out on his life's voyage, she sitting on his bed
with rather a rainy smile.
The old man had left him that little sea-worn book with his last
breath; but he could not take it, perhaps the last gift from mother to
son. It had seen the old man through his life; in it were to be found
the Fighting Instructions which had led him on through fifty years of
battle to the last great Victory; in death the two should not be
divided.
He laid the book on the old man's breast, and his sword beside him, as
he remembered his mother had done when Uncle Jacko Gordon died.
What more could he do?
It seemed an ill thing to desert the old man; to leave him alone among
the sea-birds. Yet he must.
Putting his arm round the other, he raised his head; then thrust a
boulder between the dead man's shoulders to prop him.
A moment he knelt beside the old Commander with closed eyes. Then he
bent and kissed the chill forehead.
"Good-bye, sir," he said in breaking voice, and rising to his feet
saluted.
III
Old Ding-dong was left alone: his back against the white cliffs for
which he had lived and died; his head with a skyward cock; his gaze
seaward to where, when the mists rose with the morning, he would see
the Colours of his Country waving above those waters that he, and his
peers, had made hers for ever.
The old man asked no more.
Tired now, he wished to be alone with his sword, his Bible, and his
memories.
CHAPTER XXI
KIT STARTS ON HIS MISSION
The boy blew his nose, and set off along the foot of the cliff, the
scent-bottle in his hand.
Beneath the chalk boulders that strewed the bottom of the cliff, weird
in the white gloom, a band of shingle ran like a road before him. He
took it, the shingle crunching beneath his feet.
The tide was rising: he could hear its stealthy rustle beneath him. He
must reach the Head and round it before the water; and how far off the
ultimate point might be, he did not know, and could not see.
Once round it, if he had understood the old man aright, the cliffs
fell away. There he would climb them; and he hoped to be on the top of
the Downs before the mist rolled away and the frigate, were she still
lying off the wreck, could send boats to search the beach.
He was very hungry; but his heart soared. Youth, the great healer, had
done its work. Already the terrors of that fierce yesterday, the
tendernesses of that solemn night, were far away.
He laboured on as rapidly as the backward drag of the shingle would
permit; at every stride clutching the scent-bottle to make sure of it.
His was a tremendous mission.
Yet surely it was not for the first time he had set out on such an
errand? alone, journeying through perilous lands, the fate of the
world on his shoulders. No, no, no. Somewhere, somewhen.... He had
forgotten; yet somehow he remembered.
Well, he had won through then: he must have--else he would not be here
now. Yet not in this little life, these fifteen years of home-
experience. Death then, perhaps a thousand deaths, must have
intervened between him--and him. Such a strange mystery!--What was the
answer to it?--Was death a sham? was there no such thing?--did He, the
real He, go on for ever not merely in heaven, as the parsons affirmed,
but on earth? was this life of his One, One reiterated, One to
Everlasting, a tide ebbing and flowing between the night of Time and
the day of Eternity? these recurring deaths only barriers blocking off
terms of his Eternal Self?
Digging his toes into the shingle, he marched on, his heart strangely
uplifted, the sense of his immortality strong on him.
And besides, the darkness and danger lay behind. Discretion, sharp
eyes, and a nimble pair of feet should do the rest. Above all, his
experience of the last thirty-six hours had given him confidence, the
mother of success. He began to be aware of his own power. Action had
revealed him to himself. Responsibility now confirmed him. The boy was
merging in the man with extraordinary swiftness. There was in his soul
an aweful joy, the joy of dawn, the dawn of holy manhood.
Rejoicing in his newly found strength, he laboured on gallantly. With
luck, he would be in Lewes before the coach left; in London before
night; and at Merton before Nelson sat down to breakfast to-morrow
morning.
His, his, his, to save Nelson!
And O, mother? would not her heart be proud?
The mist grew thin before him, as though lace curtain after lace
curtain was being swept back by unseen hand. The sun, the colour of a
shilling, and as round, glimmered above the horizon. At his feet he
could distinguish the sea silvery-twinkling; and not a hundred yards
away the Head, bluff as a wall, loomed before him.
His heart leapt.... Hurrah!... Once round that....
He began to run with noisy feet.
A shadow stooping on the edge of the tide sprang up.
"_Hell_!" came a sudden scream.
CHAPTER XXII
FAT GEORGE & CO.
Kit's heart brought up with an appalling jerk.
He dropped behind a boulder.
A filthy little scarecrow of a man, trousers rolled about his knee,
was standing in the sea, holding some one by the hand not ten yards
away.
In the mist Kit thought at first that he was paddling with a child.
Then he saw his mistake. The scarecrow was holding a bare arm by the
hand. That arm thrust up horribly from the water: the body to which it
belonged was beneath the surface. Between his dirty teeth the man held
a knife. His business was obvious. He was spoiling the dead.
A huge fellow with a tawny beard spread fan-like on his chest strolled
round the Head, a musket beneath his arm.
"What, Dingy! got the jumps aboard again?" he growled.
"I thart I yeard a chap a-walkin," trembled the scarecrow.
He let the dead man's hand flop into the water.
"Plenty o chaps--not much walkin," chirped a voice of one unseen.
A treble laugh greeted the sally.
Round the Head a boat came paddling.
In it was a man fat as a sow, and not unlike one. Honey-coloured
ringlets hung down to his neck. He had slits for eyes, and the great
face, dough-like, was set in an ogreish smile.
Kit saw before him in the flesh the worst of the nightmare imaginings
of his nursery days. He began to dither like a monkey in the presence
of a snake. There was a horror of the unnatural about the man that
turned him faint. Here was Mammon, Mammon in the flesh; and so close
that the boy could smell him.
"Belike it's Black Diamond come after you, Jow!" wheezed the fat man--
"to pay you for what you done to him night afore last." The shrill
voice, squeezing from that vat-like carcass, added to the terror of
the man.
'"Twarn't me, I tall you!" screamed the scarecrow.
"It were you, Fat George; and now you're for puttin it on me."
The fat man backwatered in-shore; the smile set and horrible on his
face.
"None o that, my lad, if you please," he husked--"that's to say if
you're wishful to stay friends with George--ole George, who don't
forget."
Dingy Joe began to whimper.
"I suppose it were me flashed my knife on the Gentleman too?"
The fat man leaned on his oars.
"Now," he said with manly frankness, "that _were_ me. Every man
answers for his own work in this gang, and none needn't go short. I
faced the Gentleman plucky, didn't I, Bandy?"
"You faced him plucky from behind," chirped the voice of the man
unseen.
Hoarse laughter from behind the Head told that the shaft had gone
home.
Fat George held a deprecating hand to heaven.
"Now eark to that, my God!" he squeaked. "I risk my blessed neck for
em. I'm the only man o the lot got the guts to stand up to him. I
tells him straight, I says--'We've lost our leader and our lugger in
your service, my lord,' says I, 'and now you got to--well square
it.'"
"'--well square it!'" snorted the giant. "That's a pretty way to talk
to a gentleman, ain't it?"
Fat George pointed a derisive finger at him.
"Can't forget he was a gamekeeper!" he tittered. "Touch his at and
all, didn't you, Red Beard?"
"And wish I'd never stopped touchin it!" shouted the giant. "Blasted
young fool that I were!--Thought I'd take a short cut to fortune, same
as the rest.--And where's it landed me?"
He swept his hand around.
"Heark to Red Beard!" giggled Fat George. "Quite the Methody man,
ain't he?"
A gust of passion darkened the giant's face. He surged through the
water towards the boat.
"--well square it!" he foamed. "I'll--well square _you_, you lump o
lard with the heart of a maggot!" He stopped, steadying down to a
fierce scorn.
"And he would ha--well squared it only for you messin about with that
blasted knife o your'n be'ind him."
"He would ha--well squared it only for you knockin the blasted knife
up!" shrilled the fat man. "That's the best _you_ can do. Pretty
set for a man to be 'sociated with."
He bent over his hand; his locks fell about his face; and he rocked to
and fro like a weeping woman.
The sound of angry voices brought others trooping round the Head. Some
slopped along in the water, others trailed along the edge. The eyes of
all were down, hunting for prey.
Kit, watching them with shuddering heart, recalled that passage in his
mother's favourite Sunday book where Christian, at the mouth of Hell,
heard a company of fiends coming to meet him.
He found himself envying Christian. An honest fiend was an honest
fiend; but these were men! It was their humanity, the sense of his
kinship with them, that seemed to make his heart collapse.
And their names!
Toadie, the squat brute, with the front teeth; Whitey, the albino,
peering and prying; One-eye, Humpy, Bandy and the rest--all labelled
like dogs from some physical deformity.
Once and for all they slew in the boy's mind the Romance of Crime. Now
he understood what the old Book meant about the Wages of Sin. Death
indeed; death in life. He read it in their faces. Yes; it was all
true. These men _had_ done evil, and they _had_ come forth
unto the Resurrection of Damnation.
And not so very long ago he had wished to be one such!--a highwayman,
a smuggler, a gentlemanly villain of some sort, very devil-may-care
and gallant, robbing the rich, helping the poor, waving a scented
handkerchief to the ladies as he rode to Tyburn, debonair to the last.
Now he was face to face with criminals in real life. And what was
their distinguishing feature?--_Filth_.
They had not shaved for days, nor washed for years. The stink of them
blew off the clean sea towards him. It seemed to his imagination that
the water curdled with disgust as the brutes slushed through it.
A phrase of his laughing mother's occurred to him--_no soap, no
soul_. True too.
He would have given all he had for a look at one clean-fleshed, clear-
eyed Englishman, smelling of earth and honest tobacco.
"Listen to im!" grumbled Red Beard. "Might be Cock o the Gang the way
he carries on."
The fat man tossed back his locks.
"All mighty fine!" he shrilled. "But if you'd follow'd me, where'd you
be now?--why back in Boulon. And cause you didn't, where are you?--why
hung up on a dead foul leeshore: Diamond dead, lugger gone, the hue-
and-cry up after you--"
"And our only ope in eaven," chimed in Bandy of the chirpy voice.
"And how'd stickin the Gentleman elp us?" grumbled the brutal Toadie.
"I'd stuck him fast enough if I'd twigged that!"
Fat George leaned forward.
"What's the reward out agin him?--Thousand guineas, ain't it?"
"Go on!--We'd never ha took him alive. You know his hackle."
"Ah!" interposed the fat man, "but what d'ye think his corpse'd ha
been worth to the British Government? him _and_ the papers on
him, to say nothin o pickins for pore men, what nobody needn't know
nothin about--them rings, that pin, and the bundle o notes in his
tail-pocket." He combed his fingers through his locks. "What'd that ha
been worth? I'll tell you." He wagged a fat finger. "A free pardon to
h'every man h'all round, a free pass back to Boulon--"
"And the thanks o Parlyment for what we done to the crew o the
_Curlew_!" piped Bandy.
"It's God's truth, I'm talkin!" screamed the fat man. "And there's the
man what stood between you and it!" He flung a fat hand at Red Beard.
The giant turned.
"What, sell him!" he drawled. "Sell the man that made you; that
trusted you; that never turned his back on a rat yet--much less a
pal." He spat into the sea curling at his feet. "What was it old
Diamond says?--'We're all--traitors,' says he, poor old horse; 'but we
are men, only Fat George. And he's a--sow without a soul."
A murmur of approval ran round.
"You're right, Red Beard."
"The Genelman were a genelman."
"That he were!" came a chorus from the maingy crew.
"Gentleman!" put in Bandy. "He were better. He were a--lord. I ought
to know seein I rode for one--afore my misfortune."
The boat had drifted sea-ward, the fat man giving an occasional sly
dig.
Suddenly he flung back into the oars.
"Ave it your own way," he sang out. "Ole George ain't good enough for
you, I see. I'll say good-day."
The giant jerked his musket to his shoulder.
"Come in!" he thundered. "Or I'll plug a hole through that great
paunch o your'n."
The fat man saw himself covered. He paddled back, grinning ghastly.
"Avast there, Red Beard!" he tittered. "You're that asty. Can't you
take a little joke?"
"I can take one o your little jokes about as easy as you can take one
o my little bullets in the belly," rumbled the giant. "Come in now.
Get out o that boat. You'd sell us as you sold the Gentleman. That bit
o wood's all that stands atween us and Kingdom Come."
"Easy all," chimed in Bandy Dick. "Only one thing's sure in our
present interestin sitiwation; and that is if we don't ang together,
we'll ang separate."
CHAPTER XXIII
THE CLIMB
I
Crouched behind the boulder, Kit listened.
Surely they must hear his heart! It was thumping so that he took his
hand off the boulder before him lest it should betray him by its
shaking.
Black Diamond!--Fat George!--the Gentleman!
There could be no question as to the identity of these kites. They
were the Gap Gang, and in desperate plight. Their lugger was gone, and
their leader dead. At sixes and sevens among themselves, they had
quarrelled with the only man who might somehow have saved them. Behind
them lay the gallows; before them the sea--and nothing to cross it in
but the lugger's long-boat, and that water-logged.
Their condition was desperate; but what about his own?
He could not round the Head. They stood between him and his goal.
Could he go back along the bay? He glanced back at the line of
headlands, shimmering in the sun. The tide in places already lapped
the foot of the cliff. And even as he pondered, a chill something
startled his feet. He looked down. It was the water, stealing in upon
him, quiet as a cat. He could not stay where he was. To do so was to
drown.
There was but one thing for it--to climb.
He glanced up. Things were not so hopeless as he had feared. The mists
were drifting seaward. He could see the dark crest of grass rimming
the cliff-edge above him.
Thank heaven!--this was no longer the blank and aweful wall, hundreds
of feet high and sheer as a curtain, which he had found above him last
night. The cliff must have fallen away towards the point. That dark
crest of grass, shivering in the wind, was not so far away; and the
cliff itself was by no means sheer.
The tide was already lapping the point. The smugglers had drifted away
before it. He could hear their voices on the other side. Now was his
chance.
II
On tiptoe he crept off the betraying shingle, and began to climb, the
scent-bottle in his mouth.
A recent fall of cliff helped him, making a ramp. Up it he went, a
tiny trickle of dislodged shale dribbling away beneath his feet.
At the top of the fall a mat of weeds had grown. On this he stayed.
The cliff arched out blue-white over him like the inside of a shell.
There was no hope there.
He looked about him. On his right a narrow ledge, grass-grown,
trickled darkly across the face of the cliff, inclining upwards and
out of sight. It would give him foothold, and no more.
He took it tremblingly, sidling along, his face pressed close to the
cliff, his hands finding finger-hold on the ridges and irregularities
above his head.
The track led up and up. He dared not look down: all there was sheer
now, he knew, and the sea lapping among the dead bones of the cliff.
He could not look up: to have done so, he must have craned backwards;
and little thing as that might seem, it would have been enough to
upset his balance on that skimpy track.
Up and up he sidled to the noise of trickling chalk, his eyes glued to
the white and callous cliff. His hands were damp and chill; his back
set against nothingness; his long eyelashes swept the chalk-surface.
He had a sense that the cliff was swelling itself to thrust him off.
It was alive; it was hostile. The leer he detected in the great blank
face pressed against his own roused his anger. He clung the more
tenaciously because of it, snarling back. G-r-r!--it shouldn't beat
him--beast!
All the same his fingers were getting tired and sore. He was
whimpering as he went. The great horror was overwhelming him. He shut
his mind against it: still it crept in. Head swirled: brain lost grip
of body: all was dissipation.
O--o--oh!
The voice of one of the Gang rose to his ears. It steadied him;
recalling all that hung on him ... old Ding-dong's trust ... Nelson
... Duty....
The track led round a corner--and ran away into nothing.
Retreat along that path or headlong death--these seemed his
alternatives. Of the two the latter appeared just then least horrible,
as swifter, and more certain: he had no need to look down to make sure
of that.
Biting his nails, he listened to his own breathing. A tiny shell had
become incrusted in the great blind face, so close to his own. Putting
out his tongue, he licked it, and hardly knew he had.
Suddenly he saw his mother. She was sitting in her particular little
low chair beside the fire in the Library, reading aloud a favourite
passage from her favourite Sunday book, Gwen sprawling at her feet.
_To go back is nothing but Death_, came the familiar voice, pure
and tranquil; _to go forward is fear of Death, and life everlasting
beyond it. I will yet go forward_.
The book snapped softly; his mother's eyes lifted to his as she
repeated,
_I will yet go forward_.
III
Yes, if there's a way!
On his right, some ten feet distant, a little table-land of grass
projected from the face of the cliff--the green top of a flying
buttress, as it were.
Once there he could at least lie down and recover himself. And, unless
he was mistaken, the cliff above there was no longer sheer.
But how to get there?--a ten-foot jump to be attempted off one leg at
a stand and sideways.
Half-way between him and the plateau a bush with feathery green plumes
grew out of a crevice overhead. Those green plumes stirred deliciously
in the breeze; the little stem, thick as his wrist, and reddish of
hue, thrust out sturdily over the sea. It was three feet out of reach,
and above him.
He scanned the distance. Without wings he certainly could not do it.
A butterfly settled on a purple sea-thistle close to his head. It
poised there with fanning wings, so languid, so unconcerned. _It_
didn't mind.
A bitter anger surged up in the boy's heart. It was sitting there
flopping its wings out of swagger--to show it had them. He'd teach it
to swagger!
He put up his thumb to crush it.
Then he remembered himself. He must be just in this that might be his
last moment on earth. After all the butterfly couldn't help itself. It
was made that way; and perhaps it didn't mean it. To kill it was
spiteful--worthy of a girl, worthy of Gwen, as he would have told her
had she been present. That would get Gwen into one of her states. His
eyes twinkled, and grew haggard again.
He observed the butterfly with extraordinary intensity. Its body and
wings were the colour of the sea; the undersides of the wings a
silvery-brown. The face was white, with large black eyes, and long
antennae. Lovely furry down clothed body, thighs, and lower wings. On
the nose two tiny horns stuck up....
He would have given all he possessed to be that butterfly just then.
Yet after all--could the butterfly venture for his country?--and would
he if he could?
Suddenly the boy's soul broke through the darkness shrouding it, and
bubbled up, a sea of twinkling, tumbling light. Standing there,
clawing the cliff, death at his feet, Eternity within touch of him, he
laughed.
At the crisis his humour, heaven's best gift, had saved him.
_I will yet go forward._
A knob of chalk, swelling out of the side of the cliff, caught his
eye. He saw it, and too wise to pause for thought, sprang. His foot
touched the knob. He thrust back. As he thrust, it gave beneath him,
and fell with a resounding splash into the sea.
But it had done its work; and he was swinging with one hand on the
stem of the green-plumed bush....
Curiously familiar this swinging in space with fluttering heart....
Was it only in dreams?...
The splash of the falling boulder set the gulls screaming.
"_There!_" shrilled a voice, faint and far beneath. "_What did
I tell you?_"
"_Take the boat, Red Beard, and have a look._"
Kit, swinging, heard the dip of oars. Another second and the boat
would be round the Head, and he, hanging there, black against the
white cliff, as easy to kill as a fly on a window-pane.
He reached up his left arm, swung once and again, and loosed his hold.
He flung through the air, the sea glancing sickeningly miles below,
and landed on hands and knees on the green carpet.
_Hallowed be Thy Name._
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CLIMB
I
_"There's nowt here,"_ called a voice from below. _"A fall of
the cliff belike."_
The boat put back.
Kit stayed on hands and knees on the grass plateau, his forehead bowed
to the ground in attitude of prayer.
He was sick with humility and thankfulness.
Already the boy began to have that sense which distinguishes the great
man from the herd, swinging him over obstacles to others
insurmountable, the sense that God is with him, and therefore he
cannot fail.
A fly was buzzing somewhere near. It comforted him amazingly. It was
earthy and every-day, that solid buz-z-z-z; reminding him of the
kitchen at home, fat Maria kneading dough, and the smell of fly-
papers. It steadied him as a feast of bread and meat steadies a man
heady with long fasting.
Rolling over on his back, he lay flat, panting.
How good it was to feel the earth beneath him once more! Faithful old
thing! she wouldn't give way beneath her child. He hammered her with
his heels; he patted her with his hands; he wriggled his shoulders
into her: all massive, all motherly, all good.
Turning on his side, he kissed her.
A while he lay there, arms and legs wide, eyes shut, breathing in
security and peace. Angels fanned him; strong arms held him up. Yes,
yes. It was all true. He _was_ loved.
The sea rustled beneath him, flowing on and on. How happy it was in
its work! He could have listened to it for ever. The sun, labouring
too, was climbing upwards in a shroud of glory. It stared him fiercely
in the face, bidding him rise and get to business.
He sat up and looked round.
It was as he had thought. He was on a flying buttress of the cliff, at
his feet a floor of water, silvery-ruffled.
On his right cathedral cliffs blocked out the light. Mighty-towering,
they made a white and awful gloom between him and heaven. The shadow
of them darkened his heart. Crouching fly-like there, he cowered as he
peered up at them. They were terrible: so stern, so white, so
inexorable. Had he wronged them?--They seemed to stand over him in
fearful and affronted majesty. Yet with the awe there came a pride,
the pride of possession. They were his, these tremendous battlements;
they were England's. With what a high and massive steadfastness they
challenged France! Surely they knew themselves impregnable.
Beneath him the sea, a vast plain of silver-blue, merged in a sky
white as diamonds. The one drifted, the other was still; the one
sparkled, the other shone: for the rest there was no distinction, no
dividing line. Each ran into the other; and all was splendid with
light and life.
Below, those dark dead men still scavenged on the edge of the tide. He
could have dropped a pebble on them. Dingy Joe's whine floated up to
him....
"_This cove's rings won't come off._"
"_Ain't you got a knife, then?_" growled the brutal Toadie--
"_talks like a Miss._"
"_Say! look at this chap's lady-bird._"
Bandy Dick held something aloft.
"_He won't want no lady-bird no more. She'll ave to get another
fancy-man._"
Followed filthiest jests on women ... love.... Such love!
Pah!--Were they men?--The beasts were purer.
The boy straight from his own white home and gayhearted mother
sickened as he heard.
Hell?--What need of Hell hereafter for these men, when they had
plunged into it on earth?
The words of a greater than Bunyan rang in his ears--
_Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin._
Servants! slaves rather; slaves of themselves.
From his perch in the high heavens the boy looked down on them as an
angel may look down on souls in torment.
An aweful anger seized his heart. He longed to do God's work for Him--
to avenge.
"_Vengeance is mine_," came a voice. "_I will repay._"
He started back, amazed.
Had he spoken? had the Lord?
The lightning words flashed down out of the heavens on the self-damned
below.
Dingy Joe flung up a ghastly face, screamed, and falling on his knees
in the water, began to babble about his Redeemer.
Fat George took to his heels. Furiously he splashed along, yellow
locks flopping. Kit could hear him snorting as he ran. All his life
the fat man had been running away from God, the Great Enemy; and still
He was there. Some day He would catch him--Fat George never doubted
that ... some day ... but not while he had legs.
How should he know that as he ran, God ran with him?
The others huddled together like thunder-frightened cattle. Bandy Dick
cocked a scared snook, while Red Beard was man enough to loose his
musket at the zenith.
"_Not yet, Governor!_" he shouted with a roaring laugh--"_not
yet!_"
Fools!--they were living in the Hell they feared. Their punishment was
_now_. They had long been damned. While they lived God, the
Avenger, would punish them inexorably. When they died, God, the
merciful Saviour, would take them and make them clean.
Death, the death they feared and fled from, would be their Salvation,
as it is every man's.
II
_I will yet go forward._
Kit turned to a reconsideration of his enterprise.
The top was far yet, but the cliff was no longer sheer; a precipitous
slope rather, patched with grass.
On hands and knees he set out. The grass trickled down like a dark
torrent from above, cutting as it were a channel between two bastions,
sheer on either side of him, and naked as the moon.
Up that dark trickle he climbed, and the sun climbed with him.
The grass gave him hand-hold. The chalk was rough and shale-like. He
dug knees and toes into it. There was a constant dribble of stuff away
from beneath his feet, and once a little land-slide, slithering
seaward.
Beneath was nothing but a shining waste, waiting for him. He rather
felt than saw it: for he dared not look down. He must think of what
lay above. Therein was his hope. He clung to it, as he clung to the
cliff-face, desperately.
The sun blazed on his back. The sweat trickled down his face. He kept
his mind to his work, and his nose to the cliff. A bee with an orange
tail sucked at a purple thistle. Butterflies chased, loved, and sipped
all round him. O for Gwen, and her killing-bottle!
Up and up; the sun fierce upon his back; the earth bulging beneath his
nose, the splash and ripple of the sea growing fainter and more faint
below.
Blue above him, blue beneath, blue in his brain, blue everywhere, save
for this dull leprous white beneath his nose--blue emptiness, calling
him, clutching him, waiting for him. Would it never end?
Once he looked up.
He was climbing into heaven.
The cliff bluffed up into the sky. He could see the bearded crest dark
against the light. Up there a pair of kestrels floated--two living
cross-bows bent above him. They were almost transparent and very
still: a tremble of the wings, a turn of the broad steering tail, a
motion of the blunt head, a swoop and a sway and a glint of russet
back.
They had wings too! Everything in the world had wings but himself, the
only one who really needed them.
Once he slipped, and hung sprawling over Eternity. The grass, tough as
wire, and wound about his hands, stood his friend. He recovered
foothold.
On again with battering heart. The top was not far now.
Hope began to flutter in his breast. It seemed to heave him upwards.
The way grew steeper and more steep. The stream of grass, faithful so
far, ended abruptly five feet below the top. Those feet were sheer,
the chalk darkening to the blackness of soil, and the crest of grass
making a rusty _chevaux-de-frise_ at the summit.
Cautiously he crept on, his hands feeling the blank wall. Now his
fingers touched the top.
He drew himself up.
His struggling toes found some sort of foot-hold. The wind blew on his
wet forehead. His eyes were on a level with the summit.
He could see over.
A man was sitting by the edge.
Kit could have stroked his back.
II
THE MAN ON THE CLIFF
CHAPTER XXV
THE GENTLEMAN BOWS
I
The man was babbling French and weeping; weeping over a dead woman.
So much was clear.
His back was against the light. He wore no hat; and here and there a
hair caught the sun and flashed like the sword of a fairy.
The dead girl must be lying with her head in his lap.
Unaware of anybody by, the young man poured out his heart: the dead
woman was his little one, his darling of the chestnut hair, his petite
pit-a-pat.
There was something so desolate about the grief of man, perched up
there between sea and sky, nobody near but a floating sea-gull, that
Kit almost wept to hear him.
But he had his own affairs to think about.
The man was a Frenchman: therefore an enemy.
What should he do?
As often happens, the question was decided for him.
Suddenly the projection on which his feet had found resting-place gave
way.
A lurch, and he was dangling at arms' length. His toes could find no
foothold. To drop even an inch or two was certain death: for he would
land on a slope almost sheer; and the impetus must carry him--down--
down--down....
"Sir!" he gasped.
II
A face flashed over the cliff, eagle-beaked and beautiful.
A young man knelt above him.
"Hullo!" he said in voice of quiet amusement, peering down at the boy
beneath him. "May I ask what you are doing here?"
If he was a Frenchman, he spoke English without a trace of accent.
"Hanging on for dear life!" gurgled Kit, the scent-bottle between his
teeth.
The young man broke into a ripple of boyish laughter.
"Flew so far: then the wings gave out, eh?"
He rose to his feet, and Kit saw he was wearing buck-skin breeches and
top-boots.
Bending, he grasped the boy's wrists.
"One--two--and--h'up she comes!"
He staggered back, and fell with a gay laugh, the boy on top of him.
"Thank you," said Kit between his teeth. "Let go my wrists, please."
The man, lying on his back, smiled up at him.
How strong he was! how young! and how handsome!
Tears still bedewed his lashes, and his eyes had the sparkle and
colour of the sword he wore at his side.
"What have you got between those nice milk-teeth of yours, Little
Chap?"
"Nothing for you," stammered the boy. "That is--only eggs. I've been
birds-nesting. Let go, please. I must get home. I'm late. I'll get
into a row as it is."
The other loosed his wrists suddenly; a long arm swept about him; the
thumb and forefinger of a hand like a steel-vice pressed his jaws
asunder.
"Parrdon," said a voice, half tender, half teasing, the roll of the r
for the first time betraying an alien strain.
Perforce the boy must open.
The scent-bottle rolled out upon the grass, and trundled towards the
edge.
Lithe as a panther, the young man pounced and snatched it.
As he did so, Kit leapt on his back.
"Give it up or I dirk!" he panted.
For all answer the man fell back on top of him with the merriest
laughter.
The boy's breath was shaken out of him. Two hands loosed his; and he
was left gasping on his back.
"I say! did I hurt you?" came an anxious voice.
Kit scrambled to his feet.
"Give it up!" he cried passionately, thrusting out a hand. "It was
given me. It's a trust."
"It's only eggs," the other reminded him, twinkling.
"I don't care what it is!" cried the boy. "It's mine!"
He was almost in tears, stamping his foot, much as in old days when
Gwen, a born tease, had stolen his woolly bear, and refused to give it
up.
The man made him feel like a baby--he, a King's officer.
"Forgive me," replied the other. "It is mine."
"Finding's keeping, I suppose!" sneered the boy, ablaze. "You take it
by brute force--you steal it--and it's yours! And I daresay you call
yourself a gentleman!"
"When I said it was mine," replied the other with the grave tenderness
of a gentleman dealing with an angry woman, "I meant it was mine. It
was given me by a lady. These are her initials on the stopper--E.H.,
d'you see?--If I was to surrender this bottle to you, two things would
happen. My work of weeks past would be undone, and a noble woman would
be hung unjustly." He put the bottle into his pocket. "And now to
prove to you that it really is mine I will tell you what it contains,
shall I?--A letter on tissue paper signed A. F. Is it not so?"
The flames in the boy's soul were beaten back.
"How d'you know?" sullenly.
"I wrote it."
Breathing through his nostrils, Kit eyed him.
"Then you're the Gentleman."
The young man bowed with an action that was altogether French.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE DEAD WOMAN
I
He stood bareheaded in the sun in long black riding-coat and muddied
boots and breeches.
"What's that red riband in your button-hole?" asked the boy in a kind
of awe.
"That! that's the Legion of Honour." He came a step forward. "Put your
finger on it. That little bit of riband once lay upon the heart of
Napoleon."
The boy began to tremble. That tiny square of red from which he could
not take his eyes had once throbbed to the heart-beats of the Arch-
enemy!
"D'you know him?"
"Little Boney!" laughing. "Yes, I know him."
The boy listened without hearing. It was all too dreamlike.
"D'you--d'you like him?"
The other chuckled.
"_Like_ him?--I don't know that I exactly _like_ him. You
see he's not what you and I should call a gentleman. Still he serves
me, so I serve him."
The boy's thumb was to his mouth, baby-like. All his anger had passed.
He was gazing at the other with brooding admiration.
This was the man who had kept three counties agog these two months
past!
He was an enemy, but O! he was a hero.
Strangely young too, almost a boy; tall and slight as his own sword,
the grey eyes big under dark brows, the face sun-golden and lean
almost to gauntness.
"How _did_ you do it?" murmured the boy.
The other's eyes clouded; the lids fell.
"I could not have done it but for her," he said.
Then for the first time the boy remembered the dead woman.
II
But it was no dead woman the Gentleman was standing over now; it was a
chestnut mare, the sun glistening on a coat that shone like a girl's
hair. She lay along the turf with lank neck, belly exposed, and shoes
flashing; strangely pathetic as a horse seen in such position always
looks.
There was not a stain of sweat on her coat, not a trace of froth about
her muzzle. A plain snaffle bridle lay beside her. Her head was bare
and fine as a lady's; the eyes wide, the nostrils still.
Strangely like somehow, mare and man; and about both faces something
of the length and strength of the eagle.
There was one marked difference. In the man life still rippled
gloriously; the mare was quiet for ever.
Born to the saddle as to the sea, the boy's eye ran over her.
"What a beauty!" he gasped.
"I couldn't have attempted it but for her," replied the other quietly.
"When the Emperor asked me to undertake it--'Sire,' I said, 'if I may
take my Bonnet Rouge!'... I tell you," he cried, turning almost
fiercely on the boy, "I've left Merton as the first star peeped, and
seen the sun rise out of the sea from here!... But I forgot...."
III
A cold shadow swept over him. Kit could feel the change--it was like
passing from day to night; and it chilled the boy's heart.
Up there in the lonely stillness, sea beneath, heaven above, earth
around, the two faced each other.
All the laughter had ebbed from the man's being. He was still and cold
as his sword.
"D'you know what is in here?" tapping the scent-bottle.
His eyes, frosty now, seemed to bore down to the boy's soul.
Kit froze too.
"Why?"
"Because if you will give me your word that you do not know, I will
let you go."
Those eyes of his were terrible.
"Will you give me your word?"
The boy was pale as ice.
Death in cold blood here on the quiet hillside--death like a pig's in
a sty.... Ugh!...
"No, thank you."
"Then prepare to meet your Maker."
He turned and fiddled with a pistol, snapped it, cursed in an
undertone, and thrust it back in his pocket.
Then he turned again.
The boy stood before him with dark eyes. Slight as a lily, and the
colour of one, he seemed to sway in the breeze.
"Give me your word not to speak of what you know till after Thursday
next--and you may go."
The boy shook his head.
"I mustn't."
The man flashed the hue of lightning.
"Then I must."
An arm swept about the boy. A hand at his waist was fumbling for his
dirk.
For a second the lad struggled: then he felt himself helpless as a
rabbit in a python's grip, and lay back quite still.
Once face to face with God, his heart calmed strangely.
There was a horrible breathing in his ear.
A face, all eyes, was bending over him.
"_My God_! _how like a girl he is_!" came a far whisper.
"Go on, please, and don't insult me," gurgled the boy. And as he said
it, his mind flashed back to Gwen: Gwen with her pride of sex,
standing before him, fists closed, challenging him to fight--"cad!"
"What are you chuckling about?"
"Gwen--my sister.... She thinks a girl's as good as a boy.... Go on."
The hand upon his forehead quitted its hold.
"I can't," said the Gentleman.
The arm about the boy relaxed.
Kit stood up.
"Thank you," he said, and readjusted his collar.
The Gentleman rippled off into laughter.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE HOLLOW IN THE COOMBE
For the first time Kit glanced round him.
On the top of the cliff, they were by no means on the top of the
Downs. A great dun wave of earth, patched with gorse, surged up into
the sky before him.
It flopped and flowed down to the edge of the cliff, swelling up round
and steep towards the brow, a quarter of a mile back from the sea. He
was standing at the foot of a prominent shoulder, curving away above
him. On the right was a deep coombe, the hill at the blind-end of it
sheer-seeming. On his left the jagged edge of the cliff ran up and up
and out of sight. Beneath him the sea was a sparkling plain.
The Gentleman was kneeling beside his dead. He closed her eyes, and
kissed the cold muzzle.
_"Adieu, ma mie,_" he whispered. "_L'Irlande n'oubliera
jamais."_
Then he put on his hat, and braved the sunshine.
"Take my arm, Little Chap."
So the two faced the hill.
A question bubbled to the lad's lips. At last it blurted out.
"How did they catch you, sir?"
"They didn't catch me. They murdered her."
The arm within the boy's trembled, but the voice continued quietly.
"Yesterday I had words with some old friends of mine in the Gap
yonder. We parted in a hurry, and I rode up to the Head to watch the
fight--your fight."
He flashed his grey eyes on the boy.
"You were in it, weren't you?"
"Yes--a bit."
The other drew a sighing breath.
"I'd have given all I had to have been there....
"From noon to sundown I watched the fight, and never stirred. My body
was asleep. I was aware of nothing but those three black dots, miles
beneath me on that plain of silver, spurting flame at each other.
Bonnet Rouge grazed beside me. And when she heard the guns, she
neighed, shaking her bridle. For she loved brave men and War, and knew
it too. Yes, she led the Green Brigade at Marengo."
He came to a halt.
"When they came right under the cliff, I couldn't see from the top. So
I came down here."
He lifted his face to the sun.
"And that was how they caught me--cornered me here--while I was
watching--the sea on all sides but one--and they on that."
His face was dusky now.
"Her whinny was the first thing that woke me. I turned to see her
coming towards me at a stumbling canter--like a hurt child running to
its mother."
His eyes were shut, his voice strangely still.
"They'd run her through--a lady--who thought them friends."
A great vein stood out blue on his temple.
"I wouldn't have believed it of an Englishman."
He sighed profoundly.
"But they paid for it."
Slanting off the shoulder, he led down towards the coombe on his
right.
The boy on his arm was trembling.
In the deep bosom of the coombe was a green hollow.
On the brink they paused. Above them a lark sang.
A little circle of men lay round the saucer in the sun, the flies upon
their faces. In front of the others a big man sprawled across a great
black horse.
He flung forward over the saddle-bow, face down. One fat hand was
crumpled on the turf. His bob-wig had slipped awry.
There was no mistaking that bald red neck with the crease across it.
It was Big Jerry Ram, the riding-officer.
The Gentleman toed the body.
"It was this carrion. 'Got you this time, sir,' said he, grinning his
fat beef-steak British grin. 'Clipped your wings at last, I guess.'
"I said nothing. I was mad....
"He was a brave man--an extraordinarily brave man. You English, you
are brave. But he was no soldier. He rode at me alone, handling that
sabre of his like a flail. We'd hardly crossed blades before he knew
his fate. 'You've got me, sir,' said he, splashing about with his
sword. I said nothing. 'Maybe I hadn't ought to ha stuck her,' he
gasped. He wasn't whining. He wasn't that sort. He knew he had to have
it. 'It was tit for tat: your blood-mare--my old Robin. 'Tain't
Christian, but 'tis sweet.' Then as he saw it coming--in a kind of
scream--'Through the heart if you're a gentleman, sir.'... So much I
permitted him. You see he was brave."
Kit's brow was dank. The man's calm terrified him.
"The others gave little trouble. They'd sabres; but only one had a
pistol, and it wouldn't go off--English-like....
"Then they formed a rallying group. Yes, they formed a rallying group.
You see they were afraid....
"It was no good. I walked round them with my pistols."
Shuddering, the boy saw it all: the group of ghastly men, back to back
in the hollow; silence, butterflies, and Death in breeches and boots
stalking round.
"Then they broke. They couldn't run: I could. I would have spared
them, mud that they were--but for her.
"You see," his voice was still again, "I loved her."
He dreamed, his eyes upon the hills.
"Yes," he said, "I was terrible."
CHAPTER XXVIII
ON THE TOP OF THE WORLD
I
The Gentleman led up the shoulder of the hill, the tails of his long
riding-coat flapping about his legs.
Kit, panting behind, admired him as he had never admired even Uncle
Jacko. The man seemed to know no fear, striding rapidly on, his enemy
behind him.
True, the boy's dirk still flashed in the other's hand; but the lad
had his jack-knife; and his eyes dwelt on the place where he could
plant it home and home in that black back--there by the seam, where it
was a little worn.
And the man had the scent-bottle!
Surely a fellow would be justified....
"Now's your chance, Little Chap!" came the gay voice.
Kit, betrayed to his own soul, sniggered and put the dark thought away
with shuddering disgust.
The man was a gentleman, the man trusted him. Once he had saved his
life; and once spared it. Should he pay his debt with the jack-knife?
The long-striding figure went up the hill as though on wings.
Kit clambered at his spurs.
Escape he knew was vain. As well might a canary attempt to escape a
hawk.
The scabbard of the other's sword poking and peeping between his tails
caught the boy's eye and fascinated it. It had seen plenty that sword,
he would bet! What tales it could tell!
How he should like to know!...
"Have you ever fought a duel?" he blurted out.
"Used to a bit. Not now."
"Why?--d'you think it wrong?"
The other flung back a merry laugh.
"No, my little Puritan. I gave it up, because it gave me up. You see,
I never quite met my match with the small-sword. Or rather I did meet
my match once, but the beggar wouldn't fight."
"Do tell," panted Kit, scenting a story.
"It was in Egypt--during the occupation. He was said to be the finest
sword in the British Army--Abercromby's Black Cock, they called him.
He'd a standing challenge out against any man of ours who'd take it
up. Killed seven of our fellows in seven days, a man a morning, in
single combat, between the outpost lines--all fair and square and
according to Cocker, and the staffs of both Armies looking on. Sounds
like a legend, don't it?--The eighth day I appeared to do battle with
him. I was twenty-one at the time, and looked seventeen. It was to
have been the great day of my life--and was the bitterest. Directly he
saw me--'I don't fight with children,' says he, high and mighty as a
turkey-cock, and turned on his heel. I wept." He laughed joyously at
the reminiscence.
"Curious how small the world is," he continued. "Five years passed--
five years full of things. Then one fine day, a few weeks back, I was
over yonder at Birling Gap, waiting for a friend, when who should come
strolling round the corner, smelling of roast beef and Old England,
but my old friend of the curly pate and ruddy cheeks. I'd a minute or
two to spare. So I introduced myself, and we adjourned to the beach at
once."
"What happened that time?" asked the boy keenly.
"Why, Fat George!" replied the other. "And deuced lucky for Master
Black Cock too. You see, he was fat and scant o breath."
II
They had climbed to the top of the world.
It lay spread before them, wide and wonderful; head in the heavens,
feet in the sea miles beneath on every side.
On the brow beside them the blackened skeleton of a building stood up
stark against the light.
The charred stump of a flag-staff pricked up out of the turf. On the
scorched grass lay a singed red flag and tattered pendant.
"What's this?" whispered Kit.
The ghastly desolation of the ruins amid the sea of light and living
green appalled him. Moreover he smelt death.
"Signal-station," said the Gentleman, hurrying by. "Black Diamond
stormed it at dusk on Saturday night--just before I came along. They
took it and burnt the men inside. Black Diamond did the storming--Fat
George the burning, he and old Toadie."
"Brutes!" hissed Kit.
"I don't much care for Fat George and old Toadie myself," replied the
Gentleman, rather white. "They seem to me scarcely--what shall I say?
--_spirituels_.... Black Diamond was quite a different pair of
shoes. A curious nature--three parts sheer devil, one part pure
gentleman. I could tell you some strange tales about him."
III
They had turned their backs on the dark scene.
Before them the land rolled away, fold upon fold, the sea encircling
it.
Big Jerry's coombe lay vast and vault-like beneath them on the right,
certain dark specks in the centre of it.
They were not sheep, those specks: Kit knew what they were.
Over the shoulder of the coombe, a great flat bay, the sea white along
the brown edge of it, swept away scimitar-wise into the mist.
The Gentleman stopped, his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"Pevensey Bay! That is where the first Frenchman who ever conquered
England landed. Hastings yonder! Battle Abbey over there!--my name on
its Roll. Such a wonderful old Church!"
He stopped abruptly.
A ship, lying inshore beneath him, tiny on the plain of sea, had
caught his eye.
He flashed round on the boy.
"What nationality?" fiercely, and with pointing finger.
Kit knew at a glance. Even at that distance the ship had something of
the dishevelled appearance of a virago after a street-fight. She was
the privateer.
"Double Dutchman."
A hand clutched his throat. Eyes of steel pierced him to the heart.
"Frenchman or English? tell, or take the consequences!"
"I couldn't tell you that," choking.
A python arm swept about him.
A face smiled into his.
"I knew you wouldn't. And I wouldn't have liked you if you had. But--"
The boy snapped his eyes. After all he couldn't blame the man!
It was no quick stab that he felt, no maddening darkness that drowned
him; but a swift forward thrust that shot him down the slope of the
coombe.
It was steep as the roof of a house. Down he pelted, headlong, his
legs attempting to catch up his falling body. In vain: head over
heels, rolling, bumping, tumbling, a ripple of mocking laughter
pursuing him.
There was no danger, he knew. The bottom of the coombe was flat as a
floor, the cliff running athwart it a quarter of a mile away.
At last he fetched up, battered and breathless.
Above him he could see the figure of the Gentleman tiny against the
sky.
"Forgive me, Little Chap," came a far voice. "I am in a hole, and have
to get out as best I can. _Il faut que je file_. Here is your
little prodder."
His arm swung. Something flashed in the sky, fell, always flashing,
and stuck in the hillside above him, quivering there.
It was the boy's dirk.
III
ABERCROMBY'S BLACK COCK
CHAPTER XXIX
THE FLAG OF HIS COUNTRY
I
The Gentleman had gone, and the scent-bottle with him.
The boy stood on a track that ran among the gorse, and looked about
him.
The wind was at his back, and the sun on his cheek. Above him the
brow, rough with gorse, swelled up against the light.
He rushed up the hill into the sky.
On the top, he hunted the landscape with anxious eyes. There was
nothing to be seen; no round but the zig-a-zig of the heartless
grasshoppers, merry all about him, and the thunder of his own heart.
He swung round. About him, above him, below him, dumb earth, blind
sea, deaf heaven.
What was his agony to them?
His hopes died, and he with them. Here was the end of his mission and
the end of him.
Old Ding-dong had trusted him--and now!
Mother believed in him--and now!
There would be no Lewes before breakfast; no London before night; no
Nelson to-morrow morning.
A jackdaw chuckled overhead; a far sheep bleated; a great beetle, with
black wing-cases flung back, roared by.
For the rest, all was silence and despair.
He had hoped greatly; he had tried hard; and failed utterly.
Above all he had not eaten for twenty-four hours.
The boy sat down and wept.
II
About him in the turf the grasshoppers kept up their accursed zig-a-
zig. Little cads! At least they might be gentlemen enough not to crack
their jokes just now.
The thought tickled him. He began to smile. Plucking a grass-blade, he
smote one of his annoyers across the tail. It hopped gloriously. The
boy laughed, and rose to his feet, his heart rising with him.
After all he had done his best. Now he must get to Lewes and make his
report.
He started.
About him the turf was bare and brown. Here a patch of tall thistles,
hoary-crowned, stood out among grey bents. There a clump of gorse and
bramble darkened the turf.
Before him a sea of long smooth hills, billow behind billow, rolled in
on him out of Infinity. It seemed to him that a giant wind had crept
beneath the carpet of green and lifted it. Smooth as water it flowed
down to the sea on every side. There were no trees, no hedges, no
habitations. It was the loneliest land he had ever seen, and one of
the loveliest. Here Earth, the Woman, rounded and beautiful, reclined
at her ease before him, naked as God had made her. How different she
was from that savagely shaggy man-land in the North whence he sprang!
But for a haystack like a hive on a far ridge, a fold in a hollow, and
the hillsides patched here and there with plough, it might have been
an uninhabited land.
Here he was alone with the Eternal.
A poet to the heart, the boy's soul rose within him. For the moment he
forgot his troubles. He was walking on the back of the world, his head
in heaven. Beneath him rose the sea, sheer as a wall. The sight of it,
dropped from heaven, as it seemed, filled him with awe. It was so
near, and yet so far.
The breeze had fallen; all was still. He could hear the rustle of the
tide, and the chuckle of jackdaws. Overhead a raven flapped by with
slow-skewing head.
Horror of loneliness swept upon the boy. He shrank into his body. The
windows of his spirit shut with a bang. Night came down.
All was darkness, mortality, and fear.
Somewhere at the bottom of the coombe beneath lay that ring of still
things. Behind rose the blackened skeleton of the signal-station--and
heaven knew what inside! He glanced back fearfully. They weren't after
him--yet.
He took to his heels, and ran, screaming.
A familiar face greeted him. In a flash he recognised it--a meadow-
brown come all the way from Northumberland to comfort him. That was
beautiful of the meadow-brown, it was Christian of the meadow-brown,
seeing the war to the death that he and Gwen had waged against it at
home.
The butterfly gave its message to the boy's heart and settling on a
blue flower, began to sip leisurely. Dash it!--the meadow-brown wasn't
afraid. Need he be?
His soul took charge again with a smile.
III
Over there on the left that sheer white bluff, thrusting out into the
sea, would be Seaford Head.
Beyond it lay Newhaven; behind it somewhere Lewes. To get there he had
only to keep along the highlands.
He held on at a steady jog-trot. The grass sparkled with dew; mushroom
bulbs shoved through the turf at his toes; above him and beneath all
was blaze.
He crossed a shoulder, threading the gorse; skirted the edge of
another huge coombe, troughed out beneath him; passed an ancient
withered elder, squatting crone-like on the brow, and climbed a knoll
that rose up bald out of the gorse.
He topped the crest, and stopped suddenly. A little dewy-eyed pond,
blue as the sky, was staring at him out of a saucer of green.
In a moment he was on his knees at the edge of it, and drinking
greedily. Then he took off his coat and laid it on the edge of the
saucer to dry.
That done he flung himself on his back to think.
After all there was no hurry. Young as he was, he knew his England
well enough to know the reception that awaited him at Lewes. He could
see them about him, that cluster of Army officers, as he told his
story--stonily incredulous, grimly silent, some sniggering, others
jeering openly. The boy's head had been turned by his first brush!--
You'd only to look at him to see his sort--the romantic sort, commonly
called liars! Great eyes like a girl! What did a chap with eyes like
that want in the Service?--Scent-bottle--loss of the _Tremendous_
--kidnapping Nelson! Lorlumme, what a yarn!
A clamour of feet close by startled his heart. He leapt up, expecting
cavalry.
But no: it was a patter-footed multitude of sheep, who welled in
staring yellow flood over the edge of the saucer and down to the pond.
Behind them stalked Abraham, a black and white bobtail at heel.
The patriarch wore a slouch-hat and old cloak, loose as a cloud. A
wild beard flamed all about him; and in his hand was a long crook. He
stood on the rim of the saucer and looked down at his drinking flock.
Kit expected him to raise his hands and bless somebody. Instead he
spat luxuriously, and addressed his dog in gibberish.
"Ge ou tha go!" he growled, and only the dog knew he was being desired
to get out of that gorse.
Kit watched the man placidly. Instinct, which is inherited experience,
reassured him. There was nothing to be feared from this chap, and
nothing to be got from him. Abraham was shaggy, he was unintelligible,
he was harmless.
In his few days' experience of life, the boy had already learned one
great truth: that every man is exactly what he _looks_. The face
always reveals or betrays. And in this face, wild with the wildness of
storms and skies, there was nothing but the stupid innocence of one of
his own sheep.
The man threw at the boy one shy glance of a woodland creature, and
then ignored him. Another moment and he was stalking on his way, with
floating cloak, tall crook, dog at heel, a mass of yellow backs
rippling along in front of him.
IV
The boy stood on the rim of the saucer and looked down.
Dim green lowlands lay beneath him, spurs of the Downs thrusting out
into them.
Beyond, the bay swept away saucer-wise, the sea white along its brown
edge. From his feet a shoulder, dark with gorse, plunged seaward.
Beneath the swell of it, a level plain ran away to the shore, heaving
up there in a little hillock that stood out from the beach as a bump
of green.
Off the hillock lay the privateer hove-to. Another boat hung at her
stern. The boy recognised it at once. It was the lugger _Kite_.
Behind the hillock, upon the plain, stood a solitary cottage.
At that cottage, lonely in a sea of turf, the boy stared long and
earnestly.
It was flying a flag out of the chimney.
And that flag--yes--no--yes--was the Union Jack.
CHAPTER XXX
AN OLD SONG
I
He was off the rim and rushing down through the gorse with thumping
heart.
True, Ding-dong had ordered him with his last breath to steer clear of
human habitation--"They're all in it," the old man had said. But then
he possessed the scent-bottle. Now he had nothing but his skin to
lose, and as things were he could afford to lose that. Here at any
rate was a straw to catch at. Moreover he was in no hurry to get to
Lewes to be called a liar.
Of course it might only prove to be some loyal old lady, flying her
colours dauntlessly in the face of the Frenchman. Just such a thing
his mother might do; and there were thousands of her like up and down
the country--thank heaven for it!
On the other hand it might be a temporary signal-station. After the
sacking of the station on Beachy Head, what more likely than that this
cottage should be seized for Government purposes and garrisoned?--his
own chaps too, sailors--not those swaggering snobs in red coats.
If so, he saw his course clear as day.
There was the privateer. Somewhere among these huge smooth hills
lurked the Gentleman, primed with his fatal message. Between the two
was one boat, and so far as he knew one only--the long-boat of the
smugglers.
If his surmise were correct, and this should prove a blockade-house,
he would take the garrison, though it consisted of only half-a-dozen
men, attack the Gang, and smash the boat at all costs.
II
The boy plunged down the hill.
The sun beat fiercely on his head, but he hardly felt it.
Along a track that snaked through the gorse, he pushed his way, flies
buzzing about him. A shining gossamer lay across his path, bosom-high.
From it a web swung in the wind. At the centre, where the threads met,
a black and yellow spider, marked like a man of war, waited its prey.
The lad brushed through it with a pang. The spider's work fell about
him in ruins: he rushed for the gorse, and hung there topsy-turvy, as
though heart-broken. Hard lines certainly! He had upset the spider's
apple-cart, as the Almighty had upset his. But he had _had_ to--
and so no doubt had the Almighty.
He turned as he ran.
"Cheer up, old chap!" he hollaed back to his friend, crouching among
the ruins of his home. "It'll all come out in the washing."
III
Fluffy thistle-heads, reminding him of Gwen's young chickens, stood up
out of the gorse all about him. The bunched blackberries were ripening
now: he almost expected to see Gwen's face, purple-mouthed, peering at
him from a bramble. All about him the silver-downed gorse-pods were
snapping like pistols. A stone-chat with ruddy breast spurted out of
the gorse, and flirted upwards.
The path broadened; the gorse grew scantier. His feet crushed
sweetness out of the thyme. Here and there a young ash thrust up
feathery.
Of a sudden he found himself again at the top of one of those almost
sheer descents to which he was becoming used.
At its foot grew a hanger of beeches, already bronzing to autumn.
Down he went, slithering on hands and tail, picked himself up towards
the bottom, and ran away into the shade of the wood to find himself
among silver-grey beech-stems.
How refreshing it was after the glare, how rich, how dark!
Till he was out of it, he had not known how hot it had been on the
bare hill-side. Now he was aware of the sweat on his forehead, and a
dripping shirt.
Beech-stems rose in stately columns all about him. The floor was red
and brown mosaic, the roof a tracery of leaves intertwined with light.
Eastward the sun flashed as through a window. Close by a wood-pigeon
was praying.
Out of the aisle once again
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