Itwas early on the morning of one of those bright and bracing days in the beginning of October, when summer seems to return as if to say good-bye before giving place to winter with its wild winds, its stormy seas, its driving mist and sleet. TheTonnerairehad sailed in towards Havre on the previous evening. To put it in plain English, she was on the prowl. Jack had received word from a fisherman that lying at anchor was a very large store-ship belonging to the French, and he meant to cut her out or destroy her. Buteither the fisherman had deceived him or the vessel had sailed. He found no vessel that he could make a prize of, nor any foeman worthy of his steel.Having been up half the night, Jack Mackenzie was tired, and had lain down to sleep. The ship was under easy sail, and going to the north and west, right before the wind. Jack was dreaming about his old home of Grantley Hall. He was walking in the garden on a bright moonlight night with his sister and Gerty; but the sister had gone on, up the broad green walk, while the other two stopped beside the old dial-stone, the figures on which were quite overgrown with green moss and gray pink-tipped lichens.“See, see, Gerty,” he was saying, as he hurriedly cleared the stone, “the old time appears again, the dear old days have come once more. The figures were always there though we could not see them. Our old love, Gerty, like the figures in the dial, has been obscured, but never, never lost.” A bonnie blush had stolen over her face, and her long eyelashes swept her cheeks, as she glanced downwards at a bouquet of blue flowers Jack had given her. She was about to reply, when sharp as a pistol-shot on the quiet morning air rang out the voice of the outlook aloft,—“Sail ahead, sir; right away on the starboard bow!”Gerty with her flowers of blue, Gerty with the bonnie blush on her cheek and the love-light in her eye, Grantley Hall, green grassy walks, dial-stone, and all vanished in a hand-clap, and next moment Jack was hurriedly dressing to go on deck.She was a French sloop of war. Disappointed at his want of success on the previous night, Jack announced to Tom Fairlie his generous intention of blowing her sky-high.So all sail was crowded in chase.The sloop bore away before the wind. She knew, perhaps, her best course for safety and escape.It was very tantalizing but very exciting withal. She might have been a phantom ship, so steadily did she crack on all day long, Jack never getting a knot nearer, nor she a knot farther off. Stun’-sails were set and carried away, all was done that could be done; but when at last the crimson sun sank in a pink and purple haze, all on board could see that the sloop had won the race.But strange things happen, and but for this sloop Jack would never have had the honour of being at the battle of Camperdown. They had sailed veryfar north; and about five bells in the morning watch, while it was still dark, theTonnerairefound herself surrounded with mighty men-of-war. Now, if these were Frenchmen, the days and years of the swiftTonnerairewere assuredly numbered. But they were not. They were the ships of Britannia, who was even then ruling the sea—the fleet of bold Scotch Duncan, who had been refitting at Yarmouth, when he had heard that the great Dutch fleet of De Winter had at last crawled out of the Texel, and was on its way south to effect a junction with the French, then—Heaven help Britannia!“Going to join the French fleet De Winter is, is he?” Scotch Duncan said when he heard the news. Duncan never said a bad word, but on this memorable occasion he hitched up his Scotch breeks and added, “I’ll be dashed if he does. Make the signal ‘Up anchor!’” Having issued this order, he coolly entered his state-room to lock his drawers and put away his papers and jewellery, for he knew the ship would be knocked about a bit. As he did so he whistled “Johnnie Cope.”And now theTonnerairewas hailed by the flagship, and told to fall in with the fleet.Tom Fairlie rubbed his hands with delight,MʻHearty chuckled, and old Simmons rumbled out some remark to the effect that he knew Duncan well, and that “you youngsters” (that was Tom and Jack) “will soon have your fill of honour and glory.”So they did.And braver battle than Camperdown was never fought. Not only did our fellows exhibit the greatest of courage, but gallant De Winter as well.The Dutch had about twenty ships, and we nineteen in all. Since the suppression of the mutiny at the Nore, Duncan had regained all his fleet; and the men seemed determined to wipe out the stain that had blackened their characters. And right well they succeeded.You must go to history for a complete account of the battle. Suffice it for me to say that on coming up with the enemy’s fleet on the 11th of October, Duncan broke right through it and got inshore. De Winter could not have got away had he wanted to ever so much. The great battle was fought dangerously near to the coast indeed, for here were shoals and sands that were quite unknown to our fleet. The beach was lined with spectators, who must have been appalled at this terrible conflict of giants.TheTonnerairewas splendidly handled. Old Simmons himself took the wheel, and carried her grandly alongside a Dutchman nearly double her size, so close that the guns touched, and seemed to belch fire and destruction down each other’s iron throats. But Jack had no intention of stopping there to be blown out of the water by the Dutchman’s broadsides.“Away, boarders!” It was Jack’s own brave voice sounding through the trumpet, high over the din of battle.Then, ah then! a scene ensued that it may be just as well not to describe too graphically. Our marines and blue-jackets boarded pell-mell and together, and amid the roar of cannon from other ships, the incessant rattle of musketry from the tops, the hand-to-hand fight raged on, with shouts and groans and shrieks of execration. Hitherto no wounded man had been borne below to the cockpit, so that MʻHearty was idle as yet. He was on the rigging with the captain, from which they had a bird’s-eye view of the battle.“Look, sir, look, the captain of marines has fallen. Oh, I can’t stand this!”Next moment he had leaped below. Off went his coat and waistcoat and hat. He seized a cutlass, and in a minute more was on the Dutchman’s deck,flailing away like a perfect Wallace Redivivus. Many a head he broke, for he literally showered his blows like wintry rain.He saved the marine captain’s life, although that sailor-soldier was severely wounded. It is almost unnecessary to say that, under the circumstances, Captain Jack Mackenzie forgave the gallant doctor for leaving his ship without permission.But the toughest fight of all raged around Duncan’s flagship, theVenerable, when she tackled that of the Dutch admiral De Winter—namely, theVreyheid. Just as in days of long, long ago the chiefs of opposing armies used to delight to single each other out and fight hand-to-hand, so did bold Duncan keep his eye on the Dutchman, and as soon as the battle had commenced he went straight for her. As he bore down towards her, however, theStates-Generalpresented a target that he could not resist, for she was stern on to theVenerable. Murderous indeed was the broadside Duncan poured into her, raking her from aft to fore. This vessel soon after left the battle ranks, with a loss of over two hundred and fifty killed and wounded.“Bold Jack Crawford nailed the colours to the mast.”Page169.And now the great tulzie commenced in awful earnest, for Duncan ranged himself up against theVreyheidto the lee, while to windward of her was theArdent. But three mighty Dutchmen came down hand-over-hand to the defence of their brave admiral’s ship. So fearful was the fire of these latter that Duncan’s ship would speedily have been placedhors de combat, had not others come to his rescue and restored the balance. But nothing could withstand the fury of Duncan’s onslaught; and at last, with every officer dead or wounded, the brave Dutch admiral hauled down his flag. Twice during the terrible combat had Admiral Duncan’s flag been shot away. It was then that bold Jack Crawford, whose name indicates his Scottish origin, wrapped the colours round his waist, and providing himself with nails and a hammer, climbed nearly to the main-truck and nailed the ensign to the mast.Duncan received De Winter’s sword, and soon after the battle was over and the victory ours. A glorious day and a glorious victory, but, ah! how dearly bought. It gives us some faint notion of the pluck and go of our navy in those fighting days of old, to learn that theArdenthad her captain and forty officers and men slain outright, and no less than one hundred and seven wounded.The scene in the cockpit during a fight like this isone that genius alone could graphically depict. The centre-ground of the picture is the big table, around which the surgeons are at work, stripped to their shirts, their faces stained, their hands and garments dripping gore. The whole place is filled with stifling smoke, through which the glimmering lights are but faintly seen; but all around are ranged the wounded, the gashed, the bleeding, awaiting their turn on the terrible table. You can hear them if you cannot see them—hear them groaning, sometimes even shrieking, in their agony; and the mournful call for “Water! water!” is heard in every lull of the fight or momentary cessation of cannon’s roar. And bending low as they move among them are the stewards and idlers of the ship, serving out the coveted draught. But down the blood-slippery companion-ladder come the bearers incessantly, carrying as gently as a Jack can their sorely-stricken messmates. Verily a sad scene! On deck war is witnessed in all its pomp and its panoply, on deck is honour and glory; the dark side is seen in the cockpit—the sorrow, the despair, the hopelessness, the agony, the death.CHAPTER XX.NELSON AND THE NILE.“With one of his precious limbs shot away,Bold Nelson knowed well how to trick ’em;So, as for the French, ’tis as much as to say,We can tie up one hand, and then lick ’em.”Dibdin.THINGS in England began to look up. Those who preached revolution were forced to hide their heads with shame after the great battle of Camperdown. For this fight had completely restored confidence in our country’s powers, and for the time being the fears of invasion had fled far away.In many a lordly hall over all the land the feast was laid, on many a lofty hill the bonfires blazed; it was indeed a season of great rejoicing.In one of the window recesses of Mr. Keane’s somewhat lonesome and dreary suburban mansion, asthe shadows of evening fell on the almost leafless elms around the house, sat Gerty. She was looking out into the gathering night, looking out at the slowly-falling leaves; for though a book lay in her lap, it was almost too dark to read. By her side sat a beautiful deer-hound, with his muzzle leaning on her knee, and gazing up into her face with his brown earnest eyes, as if he knew there was sorrow at her heart.He—Jack—had given her that dog as a puppy, and no power on earth could make her part with him. As she turned her eyes from the window, she noted his speaking look, and as she bent to caress him, a tear fell on his rough gray neck.Presently there was a knock at the door, and in rushed Mary the maid.Mary seemed about half daft. She was waving aloft a copy of theTimes, and scarce could speak for excitement. But she managed to point to a certain column.“What is it, Mary? I cannot see.”“Which it’s our boy Jack as is mentioned for conspeakyewous bravery. Aren’t you glad and proud?”“Glad and proud? O Mary! silly child. And I am to be the bride of another. Nay, father insiststhat I shall give Sir Digby his answer to-night at the ball.”“An’ I should do it, missus; that I should. I’d put it in fine polite English, but I’d put it straight, all the same. When he knelt before me,—‘Jump up, old Granger,’ I should say. ‘Right about face. Shoulder hip. Quick march. I loves another, and I cannot marry thee.’”“O Mary,” said Gerty, smiling in spite of herself, “how you talk! Hush, child; not another word. I’m bound to make my father happy, and—I will.”The ball to which Gerty and her father were going that evening was Sir Digby’s. This gentleman possessed both a town and a country house; but if the truth must be told, he was at present absolutely living on his future prospects.“Well,” he told one of his chief cronies that evening before the arrival of the guests, “when my brother dies—and he is a terribly old buffer—I shall drop into a nice thing. But it is just like my confounded luck that he should linger so long. And to tell you the truth, D’Orsay, I’m a bit pinched, and some of the Jews are pressing.”“Why don’t you marry?”“Well, I’m going to. Ah! she’s a sweet young thing, Miss Keane; and though the father is a skinflint, he’s wealthy, and I’ll make him settle a bit before I give my ancient name away. Wager on that.”“Hold hard, Digby; I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t tell you.”“Didn’t tell me what?”“Why, man, haven’t you heard? The firm of Griffin, Keane, and Co. is ruined. ’Pon honour. South Sea biz, or something. Had it from a friend, who had it from one of the firm. It’s a secret, mind. But it is true.”“Good heavens, D’Orsay, you do not tell me so? Then I too am ruined!”“What! you haven’t proposed—you’re not tied?”“Nay, nay; all but. That is nothing, D’Orsay—nothing; but on the strength of this marriage I have borrowed thousands. Fleet prison is my fate if what you say is true.”“Look here, Digby,” said D’Orsay, after a pause, “you are a man of the world, like myself. Now if I were you, I should transfer my affections. See?”“In which quarter?”“Why, there is Miss Gordon; a trifle old, to besure, but positively rolling in wealth, and rolling her eyes whenever she sees you.”Sir Digby muttered something about a bag of broken bottles, but D’Orsay went on,—“I’d marryher; ’pon honour I should.”“Think of life with that old hag.”“Think of life in the Fleet, my friend.”Sir Digby winced, and for a time made no reply.“D’Orsay,” he said at last, “I am a man, and, I trust, a gentleman. I’d prefer to marry Gerty even—even—”“If she were a beggar. Bravo, Digby!” And D’Orsay laughed in the way men of the world do laugh.“I didn’t say that. I—I—’pon my soul, D’Orsay, I do not know what to do.”Miss Gordon was the belle of that ball, as far at least as dress and jewellery were concerned. She came of a noble family, too, and gave herself all the airs common in those days to ladies of title—hauteur, dignity, and condescension by turns. But towards Sir Digby she was as soft and sweet as a three-month-old kitten.If Sir Digby Auld had meant to propose to sweetGerty Keane that night, he never had a chance, for neither she nor her father appeared. It was reported that he had had a fit. But this was not so. After he was dressed, however, and the carriage waiting, he received a letter. He no sooner read it than it dropped from his hands on the floor, and he leaned back in his chair with his face to his hands.Gerty was by his side in a moment.“O father, are you ill?” she cried. “Shall I summon assistance?”He recovered himself at once. “Nay, nay,” he said; “only grief for the death of an old friend.” He smoothed her hair as he replied. “Gerty, we will not go out to-night.”But the letter he picked off the floor and carefully put away in his pocket-book.A whole half-year passed away without any events transpiring that much concern our narrative. Jack Mackenzie was still on the war-path, playing havoc with the commerce of France and Spain. Indeed he had constituted himself a kind of terror of the seas. His adventures were not only most daring, but carried out with a coolness that proved they were guided by a master mind. Indeed Jack Mackenzie and all hisofficers knew now to a very nicety what might be done with the swiftTonneraire, and what could not. Her bold young captain did not mean to be either captured or sunk, and he was wise enough to run away whenever he found himself overmatched. But this was not very often.One surprise, during this time, Jack and his officers had received, and it was a very happy one. While lying at anchor with Lord St. Vincent’s ships, one day a boat pulled off from the flagship, and there leaped therefrom and came swiftly up the ladder—who but young Murray himself. He saluted the quarter-deck, and he saluted Jack as he reported himself, smiling all over like the happy boy he was.“I’ve come on board to join, sir. Isn’t it jolly, just? And I’m promoted to a lieutenancy.”MʻHearty, Simmons, and every soul in the mess were most pleased to see him, and that evening Murray was the hero of the hour; and a very long and strange story he had to tell of his imprisonment, his harsh treatment, and his making love to the prison-governor’s daughter, through whose cleverness he at last managed to escape, dressed as agrisette.He kept his messmates laughing till long after seven bells in the first watch; and it must be saidthat not this night only, but every other night, Murray infused into the mess a joy and jollity to which it had been all winter a stranger.Meanwhile a greater hero than Jack Mackenzie must hold the stage for a brief spell—namely, Nelson himself. Napoleon Bonaparte, after lying awake for a night or two, gave birth to a grand idea. Hyder Ali, in the south of India, hated the British as one hates a viper, and gladly would have crushed our power under his heel. But he needed help. It occurred to Bonaparte to aid him, and so oust us from our Indian Empire, which was then being quickly built up. It was a pretty idea, and well carried out at the commencement; for Bonny, as our sailors called him, managed to sail from France with thirty thousand veteran, well-tried troops; and having the good luck to elude our fleet, he called at Malta, which he quickly brought to terms, then made straight for Egypt. Here he landed from his fleet, which I believe had orders to return, but did not.With such men as those old troops of Napoleon’s the conquest of Egypt and the Mamelukes was but a picnic, and all very pleasant for Bonny and his merry men, though sad enough for the country onwhich these human locusts had alighted. Cairo fell, and the great warrior now set himself to rebuild the constitution of the country and create a native army.Lord St. Vincent sent the brave one-eyed, one-armed Nelson with a fleet to destroy the French expedition. That he quickly would have done. He speedily would have cooked his hare, but he had to catch it first. Where ever was the French fleet? No one could tell him, and his adventures in search of it would fill a goodly volume. It reads like one long entrancing romance.Jack Mackenzie, in hisTonneraire—the real name of the ship I am bound not to mention—joined this fleet, and thus was present at the great battle of the Nile.Poor Nelson was almost worn out with anxiety and watching; but when he arrived at Aboukir Bay and found the foe, all his courage and all his calmness returned, and although the sun was slowly sinking in the west, our Nelson resolved not to wait an hour even, but attack the enemy there and then.CHAPTER XXI.WILLIE DIED A HERO’S DEATH.“Then, traveller, one kind drop bestow,’Twere graceful pity, nobly brave;Nought ever taught the heart to glowLike the tear that bedews a soldier’s grave.”Dibdin.ICANNOT help thinking that if glory is to be measured by pluck and skill combined, the battle of the Nile was even a more glorious fight than that of Trafalgar. The former battle required more physical exertion from the men individually, and therefore was a greater strain upon their courage. How? you may ask. I will tell you; and although my view of the matter may savour of the reasoning of the medico, still I think you will admit I have common-sense on my side. Besides, I am a sailor-surgeon; I have seen our brave blue-jackets working, and fighting too, under various conditions, so it cannotbe said I speak altogether without experience. Well, the battle of Aboukir Bay or the Nile began in the evening, when the men were more or less jaded or tired. They had, moreover, just come off a weary voyage or cruise, and a night’s good quiet sleep would have made a wonderful difference to them both in physique andmorale. Trafalgar was fought by day, beginning in the forenoon. Aboukir was contested in the hottest season of the year; Trafalgar in the cool—namely, toward the end of October. Therefore, I say, all the more honour and glory to our brave fellows; and may we fight as well and as fortunately during the next great naval war, which cannot now be far away.I never can read or even think about that long hide-and-seek cruise of Nelson’s in the Mediterranean, in search of the French expedition, without a feeling of disappointment. Why, oh why was it ordained that he should not catch Napoleon with his fleet and his army at sea? Could he have but sent the firebrand to the bottom of the salt ocean, what conflagrations Europe would have been spared, what shedding of blood, what hopeless sorrow and bitter tears!But there! I am keeping the fleets waiting. For his part, Brueys, the French admiral, would havepreferred to wait. “He means to attack,” he said to one of his captains, referring to Nelson, “but he cannot be mad enough to attack to-night.”But Nelsonwasmad enough. He was burning to give it to the French, and give it to them hot, for all the trouble and anxiety they had cost him. He was as eager as a wild cat to spring at the throat of his foe. Another night of waiting might have killed him. No, no, he cannot, will not wait. “Make the signal for general action, and trust to Heaven and the justice of our cause!”Along the bay lay the great French fleet, with shoal water behind them, supported by gunboats and bomb-vessels, the ships moored one hundred and sixty yards from each other, and with stream cables so that they could spring their broadsides on their enemy.And their line extended for a mile and a half.Had Brueys thought that Nelson would attack that night, he would have got under way, and thus been free either to manœuvre or show his heels. He did not know our Nelson. Nor could he have believed that the great British admiral would have done so doughty and daring a deed as to get round behind him, so to speak, betwixt the shore and his fleet,despite the sands and shoals. But Nelson did with a portion of his fleet, and each war-ship took up position with all the precision of couples in a contra-dance. Oh, it was beautiful! but when the battle fairly began, and tongues of fire and clouds of rolling smoke leaped and curled from the great guns, lighting up the dusk and gloom of gathering night, while echoes reverberated from shore to shore, oh, then this thunderstorm of war was very grand and terrible!To describe the battle in detail, and all the heroic actions that took place that night, would take a volume in itself. But it is all history, and probably the reader knows every bit of it as well as, if not better than, I myself do. We must honour the French, though, for this fight. They fought well and bravely, and you know the gallant Brueys died on his own quarter-deck, refusing to be carried below. He was a hero. So we might say was the captain of theSérieusefrigate, who had the cheek to fire into the greatOrion(Sir James Saumerez) as she was sweeping past. It was like a collie dog attacking a mastiff. Saumerez couldn’t stand it. He stayed long enough literally to blow the frigate out of the water or on to a shoal, where she was wrecked. TheOrionthen went quietly on and engaged a foeman worthy of hersteel. It was plucky of theBellerophon—the old Billy Ruffian, as sailors called her—of seventy-four guns, to attack the greatOrientof one hundred and twenty, and of theMajesticto range alongside the mightyTonnantand coolly say, “It’s you and I, isn’t it?” Then one can’t help feeling sorry for poor Trowbridge in theCulloden, because he ran ashore, and had to remain a mere spectator while burning to have a finger in the fearful pie.But the two events of this memorable battle which I daresay dwell longest in the minds of the young reader are the wounding of Nelson, who was carried below, his brow gashed so terribly that the skin in a flap hung over his eyes, despite which, you will remember, he bravely refused to have his wound dressed until his turn came; and the blowing up of the great shipOrientwith her bold Captain Casabianca and his poor boy, who refused to be taken off or give up his duty without his father’s orders.There are those who would rob us of this romantic story. I have no patience with such gray-souled sinners. There are people in this world who cannot endure romance and beauty; people who would paint the sky a dingy brown if they could, and smudge the glory of the summer sunsets. I do not love suchpeople, and I hope you don’t, reader. I verily believe their blood is green and sour, and that they do not see this lovely world of ours as you and I do, through rose-tinted glasses, but that to them it must appear an ugly olive green, as it would to us if we gazed upon it through a piece of bottle glass. No; we shall keep the brave boy of theOrient, and still read Mrs. Hemans’ delightful and spirited verses:—“The boy stood on the burning deck,Whence all but he had fled;The flame, that lit the battle’s wreck,Shone round him—o’er the dead.“The flames rolled on—he would not goWithout his father’s word;—That father, faint in death below,His voice no longer heard.“There came a burst of thunder sound,—The boy!—oh, where was he?Ask of the winds, that far aroundWith fragments strewed the sea,—“With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,That well had borne their part!But the noblest thing that perished thereWas that young faithful heart!”The battle is past and gone, a whole month has elapsed since then, and the swiftTonneraireis homeward bound with despatches. Many were killed andwounded, among others good old Simmons, the master, who fell at Jack’s side on the deck of a French man-o’-war. He would never grumble again; his deep bass, honest voice would be heard no more. There was hardly a dry eye in the ship when the kindly old man’s hammock was dropped overboard in Aboukir Bay.Yes, theTonnerairewas homeward bound at last, after an absence of two busy and eventful years. But the saddest, probably, of all her adventures had yet to come. MʻHearty, Tom Fairlie, and young Murray were in the captain’s cabin one evening towards sunset. Murray was particularly bright and pleasant to-night, and his laughing face and merry, saucy blue eyes did every one good to behold.Suddenly there is a cry on deck, “Sail ahead!” and next minute the drum is beating to quarters. TheTonnerairehas been working against a head wind, and now down upon her, like some monster sea-bird with wings outspread, sweeps a huge French ship of war. The battle will be very one-sided, but Jack will dare it. Already it is getting dusk; he must try to cripple the monster. He manages to rake her, and a broadside of iron hail is poured through her stern. He rakes her a second time, and this timedown thunders a mast. Well would it have been for Jack and theTonneraireif he had now put his ship before the wind. But no, he still fights on and on, and suffers terribly; and just as the shades of night deepen into blackness, he manages to hoist enough sail to stagger away, and the Frenchman is too sorely stricken to follow.Very early next morning, before the stars had quite faded in the west, or the sun had shot high his rays to gild the herald clouds, MʻHearty, looking careworn, unkempt, and weary—for he had never been to bed—entered Jack’s state-room and touched him lightly on the shoulder.Jack was awake in a moment.“Anything wrong, doctor?” he asked quickly.“Alas, sir!” replied MʻHearty, and there was a strange huskiness in his voice as he spoke—“alas, sir! poor young Murray is dying fast.”“Murray dying!”“Too true, sir. His wounds are far more grievous than I was aware of. He cannot last many minutes. He wants to see you.”The boy—for he was but little more—lay in a cot in the sick-bay. He was dressed in his scarlet coat, and his sword lay beside him, for he had refused to bedivested of his uniform. He was in a half-sitting position, propped up with pillows, and smiled faintly as Jack knelt by his side and took his thin white hand in his.It was a sad scene but a simple one. There was the gray light of early morning struggling in through the open port, and falling on the dying boy’s face; falling, too, on MʻHearty’s rough but kindly countenance, and on the figures of the sick-bay servants standing by the cot-foot tearful and frightened. That was all. But an open Bible lay upon the coverlet, and in his left hand the young soldier clasped a miniature—his little sweetheart’s.“Bury it with me,” he whispered feebly. “See her, sir—and tell her—Willie died a hero’s death.—Kiss me, Jack—I would sleep now.”The eyelids closed.Ah! they had closed for aye.Not a sound now save Jack’s gentle sobbing, then the slow and solemn tones of MʻHearty’s voice as he took up the little Bible and read from the Twenty-third Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Amen!CHAPTER XXII.STILL WATERS RUN DEEP.“This little maxim, for my sake,I pray you be believing:The truest pleasures that we takeAre those that we are giving.”Dibdin.FOR more than twenty years, dating back from the time our story commenced, Richards had been a partner in the firm of Griffiths, Keane, and Co.; yet although he was almost every day in the company of Mr. Keane, he could neither love nor respect him. Perhaps had he been less with him he might have respected him more. But he knew him too well; knew him to be Keane by name and keen by nature—avaricious, grasping, and miserly in the extreme, and for the sake of adding to his stores of gold, very far indeed from scrupulous. His niggardly habits had undoubtedly hurried his wife to her grave,when Gerty was little more than a baby, and she was left to the tender mercies of a nurse and governess. In the transaction of his business Richards was constantly at his partner’s home, and usually stayed to dine; but for the sake of the child Gerty, he made many and many a visit to the house after her mother’s death, when he had no real business to transact. “Poor little mite!” he thought; “she is so lonely, and she sees no one; has no one to love save her father, to whom she is merely ‘the child.’”It used to vex poor great-hearted Richards to the core to hear Keane snap out, “Take away that child; it’s troublesome.”“Nay, nay,” Richards would say, lifting the mite from the hearth-rug to his knee, “let me have the darling a minute.”“Richards, you’re a fool!” Keane would growl.And with one arm round her protector’s neck, her cheeks wet with tears, the mite would gaze round-eyed and in saddened silence at her unnatural father. It is no wonder that she grew up to love Richards. What stories he used to tell her! what fun he used to make for her! how he entered heart and soul into all her games and romps, as if he himself were but a boy in reality, as he was in his heart of hearts!But the psychical mystery is how she could have come to love her father so. Yes, as the reader already knows, she did love him, and love him to that extent that she was willing to sacrifice her own happiness to his ambition, and marry a man whom she loathed if she did actually not detest.A bachelor, with no expenses worth naming, Richards had saved quite a small fortune in his time; and when he came to find out that Keane was going positively to sell his daughter to the worn-outrouéSir Digby, that for his own advancement he might see her ere long a lord’s wife, Richards thumped his fist down on his desk—he was alone at the time—till even the big ink-bottle leaped an inch up from the table.“I’ll save that darling child,” he had said, “if I spend every penny I have earned, and lose my life into the bargain.”He smiled to himself a moment after.“Everything is fair in love and war,” he said: “I’ll play a game. The cause is good. Yes, Jack Mackenzie, my open-hearted, frank, brave boy, you shall marry Gerty. I have said it—you—shall.”He laughed aloud next minute at his own enthusiasm.“What a capital actor I should have made!” he thought. “How beautifully I could have done heavy fathers!”Still waters run deep, and Richards was astute, though perhaps he did not look it. So he began at once to shuffle his cards for the game he was about to play—a game which he rightly judged was to be one of life or death. For he shuddered to think of the living death to which the selfishness of her miserly, ambitious father intended condemning Gerty.“My baby, bless her sweet face,” he added, “shall never marry that bleach-eyed old Digby.”Then he shut his ledger with a bang, and went for a walk in the park, where he could think. But the Mackenzies would lose the fine old house and property called Grantley Hall. Keane would assuredly foreclose. Then the place would be Keane’s or Gerty’s, it was much the same. Keane really meant it to be Sir Digby’s and Gerty’s, while he, Keane, should live and be honoured and respected there—his son-in-law a lord. Richards thought he must try by hook or by crook to prevent his partner from foreclosing, if only for the following reason: if Grantley Hall once passed into Keane’s hands, much though Gerty and Jack loved each other, the latter, being a Mackenzie and aScot, would be far too proud to propose marriage, seeing that in doing so his desires might be misconstrued, and people would naturally say he was simply marrying back his own property.The general had told his children that Keane was his only creditor. Yes, because in order to make sure of the estate, the old lawyer had bought up all the others. He could thus come down upon the brave but reckless Scottish soldier, like an avalanche from a mountain’s brow.The day had almost arrived for Keane’s foreclosing. The family had already left Grantley Hall, taking little with them save the family jewellery, pictures, and nick-nacks. Flora had gone to Torquay, Jack was in town, and his father preparing to resume his sword, and once more fight for his country. The eventful morning itself came round. Keane was early at his office. He was in an unusually happy frame of mind. Yet perhaps he had a few slight “stoun’s” of conscience, for over and over again he talked to Richards, bringing up the subject next his heart, and excusing himself.“I had to do it—I had to do it,” he said. “Pity for the poor Mackenzies. But the general was so improvident, and what could I do?”“Most improvident,” replied Richards, smiling quietly over his ledger nevertheless.As the day wore away, Keane fidgeted more and more, and often looked at the clock. “Another hour,” he said, half aloud, “only another hour.”Richards looked at the clock too, and he often glanced uneasily towards the door.What was going to happen?“Only half-an-hour.” This from Keane.“You seem pleased,” said Richards dryly.Rat, tat—bang, bang, at the office door.Both men looked up; Richards with a sigh of relief, Keane with gray face and flashing eyes.Enter a tall, good-looking clerk, hat in one hand, a bundle of papers in the other. He was a stranger to Keane.“Rethe mortgage on estate of General Grant Mackenzie, I’ve come to pay it off.”Old Keane grew grayer and grayer in face, and foam appeared on his lips. He could not speak.Richards slipped out and away.He went out, and went down the street, positively laughing aloud, so that people turned smilingly round to look after him.And to pay this mortgage off, the honest fellowhad put down the bulk of his fortune, and borrowed thousands besides. The property of Grantley Hall was now virtually his; buthewould not foreclose, and the Mackenzies should know nothing about it, for a time at all events.Richards had played his first card, and it was a strong one.He went straight off now to see “his baby,” and to continue the fairy story which he had commenced at Grantley Hall.He saw some one else—he saw Mary. Mary was his first lieutenant. It was she who summoned him that evening at the Hall when he entered the room just as Sir Digby was about to propose.A good girl, Mary, and devoted to her “missus.” She could keep a secret, too, and she could keep Richards posted, lest Sir Digby should steal a march upon them.But time had rolled on, as we know. There were wars and rumours of wars, disaffection at home and threatened revolution, and last, but not least, as far as our story goes, Sir Digby had been ill, and at the point of death. Keane also had been abroad for his health, and with him his daughter, so that the evil day was postponed.Evil days have a disagreeable habit of coming, nevertheless, in spite of all we can do.Slowly and sadly, with rent rigging and battered hull, theTonnerairestaggered home. She is in Plymouth Sound at last. Letters and papers come off to the ship. Jack Mackenzie, sitting alone by his open port, turns eagerly to a recent copy of theTimes. Almost the first notice that attracts his attention runs thus: “Marriage of Sir Digby Auld and Miss Gertrude”—he sees no more. His head swims. The wind seizes the paper, as if in pity, and carries it far astern of the ship.He feels utterly crushed and broken, and head and hands droop helplessly on the table before him.CHAPTER XXIII.“IT’S ALL UP, MR. RICHARDS, IT’S ALL UP!”“The busy crew the sails unbending,The ship in harbour safe arrived;Jack Oakum, all his perils ending,Has made the port where Kitty lived.”Dibdin.
It
was early on the morning of one of those bright and bracing days in the beginning of October, when summer seems to return as if to say good-bye before giving place to winter with its wild winds, its stormy seas, its driving mist and sleet. TheTonnerairehad sailed in towards Havre on the previous evening. To put it in plain English, she was on the prowl. Jack had received word from a fisherman that lying at anchor was a very large store-ship belonging to the French, and he meant to cut her out or destroy her. Buteither the fisherman had deceived him or the vessel had sailed. He found no vessel that he could make a prize of, nor any foeman worthy of his steel.
Having been up half the night, Jack Mackenzie was tired, and had lain down to sleep. The ship was under easy sail, and going to the north and west, right before the wind. Jack was dreaming about his old home of Grantley Hall. He was walking in the garden on a bright moonlight night with his sister and Gerty; but the sister had gone on, up the broad green walk, while the other two stopped beside the old dial-stone, the figures on which were quite overgrown with green moss and gray pink-tipped lichens.
“See, see, Gerty,” he was saying, as he hurriedly cleared the stone, “the old time appears again, the dear old days have come once more. The figures were always there though we could not see them. Our old love, Gerty, like the figures in the dial, has been obscured, but never, never lost.” A bonnie blush had stolen over her face, and her long eyelashes swept her cheeks, as she glanced downwards at a bouquet of blue flowers Jack had given her. She was about to reply, when sharp as a pistol-shot on the quiet morning air rang out the voice of the outlook aloft,—
“Sail ahead, sir; right away on the starboard bow!”
Gerty with her flowers of blue, Gerty with the bonnie blush on her cheek and the love-light in her eye, Grantley Hall, green grassy walks, dial-stone, and all vanished in a hand-clap, and next moment Jack was hurriedly dressing to go on deck.
She was a French sloop of war. Disappointed at his want of success on the previous night, Jack announced to Tom Fairlie his generous intention of blowing her sky-high.
So all sail was crowded in chase.
The sloop bore away before the wind. She knew, perhaps, her best course for safety and escape.
It was very tantalizing but very exciting withal. She might have been a phantom ship, so steadily did she crack on all day long, Jack never getting a knot nearer, nor she a knot farther off. Stun’-sails were set and carried away, all was done that could be done; but when at last the crimson sun sank in a pink and purple haze, all on board could see that the sloop had won the race.
But strange things happen, and but for this sloop Jack would never have had the honour of being at the battle of Camperdown. They had sailed veryfar north; and about five bells in the morning watch, while it was still dark, theTonnerairefound herself surrounded with mighty men-of-war. Now, if these were Frenchmen, the days and years of the swiftTonnerairewere assuredly numbered. But they were not. They were the ships of Britannia, who was even then ruling the sea—the fleet of bold Scotch Duncan, who had been refitting at Yarmouth, when he had heard that the great Dutch fleet of De Winter had at last crawled out of the Texel, and was on its way south to effect a junction with the French, then—Heaven help Britannia!
“Going to join the French fleet De Winter is, is he?” Scotch Duncan said when he heard the news. Duncan never said a bad word, but on this memorable occasion he hitched up his Scotch breeks and added, “I’ll be dashed if he does. Make the signal ‘Up anchor!’” Having issued this order, he coolly entered his state-room to lock his drawers and put away his papers and jewellery, for he knew the ship would be knocked about a bit. As he did so he whistled “Johnnie Cope.”
And now theTonnerairewas hailed by the flagship, and told to fall in with the fleet.
Tom Fairlie rubbed his hands with delight,MʻHearty chuckled, and old Simmons rumbled out some remark to the effect that he knew Duncan well, and that “you youngsters” (that was Tom and Jack) “will soon have your fill of honour and glory.”
So they did.
And braver battle than Camperdown was never fought. Not only did our fellows exhibit the greatest of courage, but gallant De Winter as well.
The Dutch had about twenty ships, and we nineteen in all. Since the suppression of the mutiny at the Nore, Duncan had regained all his fleet; and the men seemed determined to wipe out the stain that had blackened their characters. And right well they succeeded.
You must go to history for a complete account of the battle. Suffice it for me to say that on coming up with the enemy’s fleet on the 11th of October, Duncan broke right through it and got inshore. De Winter could not have got away had he wanted to ever so much. The great battle was fought dangerously near to the coast indeed, for here were shoals and sands that were quite unknown to our fleet. The beach was lined with spectators, who must have been appalled at this terrible conflict of giants.
TheTonnerairewas splendidly handled. Old Simmons himself took the wheel, and carried her grandly alongside a Dutchman nearly double her size, so close that the guns touched, and seemed to belch fire and destruction down each other’s iron throats. But Jack had no intention of stopping there to be blown out of the water by the Dutchman’s broadsides.
“Away, boarders!” It was Jack’s own brave voice sounding through the trumpet, high over the din of battle.
Then, ah then! a scene ensued that it may be just as well not to describe too graphically. Our marines and blue-jackets boarded pell-mell and together, and amid the roar of cannon from other ships, the incessant rattle of musketry from the tops, the hand-to-hand fight raged on, with shouts and groans and shrieks of execration. Hitherto no wounded man had been borne below to the cockpit, so that MʻHearty was idle as yet. He was on the rigging with the captain, from which they had a bird’s-eye view of the battle.
“Look, sir, look, the captain of marines has fallen. Oh, I can’t stand this!”
Next moment he had leaped below. Off went his coat and waistcoat and hat. He seized a cutlass, and in a minute more was on the Dutchman’s deck,flailing away like a perfect Wallace Redivivus. Many a head he broke, for he literally showered his blows like wintry rain.
He saved the marine captain’s life, although that sailor-soldier was severely wounded. It is almost unnecessary to say that, under the circumstances, Captain Jack Mackenzie forgave the gallant doctor for leaving his ship without permission.
But the toughest fight of all raged around Duncan’s flagship, theVenerable, when she tackled that of the Dutch admiral De Winter—namely, theVreyheid. Just as in days of long, long ago the chiefs of opposing armies used to delight to single each other out and fight hand-to-hand, so did bold Duncan keep his eye on the Dutchman, and as soon as the battle had commenced he went straight for her. As he bore down towards her, however, theStates-Generalpresented a target that he could not resist, for she was stern on to theVenerable. Murderous indeed was the broadside Duncan poured into her, raking her from aft to fore. This vessel soon after left the battle ranks, with a loss of over two hundred and fifty killed and wounded.
“Bold Jack Crawford nailed the colours to the mast.”Page169.
And now the great tulzie commenced in awful earnest, for Duncan ranged himself up against theVreyheidto the lee, while to windward of her was theArdent. But three mighty Dutchmen came down hand-over-hand to the defence of their brave admiral’s ship. So fearful was the fire of these latter that Duncan’s ship would speedily have been placedhors de combat, had not others come to his rescue and restored the balance. But nothing could withstand the fury of Duncan’s onslaught; and at last, with every officer dead or wounded, the brave Dutch admiral hauled down his flag. Twice during the terrible combat had Admiral Duncan’s flag been shot away. It was then that bold Jack Crawford, whose name indicates his Scottish origin, wrapped the colours round his waist, and providing himself with nails and a hammer, climbed nearly to the main-truck and nailed the ensign to the mast.
Duncan received De Winter’s sword, and soon after the battle was over and the victory ours. A glorious day and a glorious victory, but, ah! how dearly bought. It gives us some faint notion of the pluck and go of our navy in those fighting days of old, to learn that theArdenthad her captain and forty officers and men slain outright, and no less than one hundred and seven wounded.
The scene in the cockpit during a fight like this isone that genius alone could graphically depict. The centre-ground of the picture is the big table, around which the surgeons are at work, stripped to their shirts, their faces stained, their hands and garments dripping gore. The whole place is filled with stifling smoke, through which the glimmering lights are but faintly seen; but all around are ranged the wounded, the gashed, the bleeding, awaiting their turn on the terrible table. You can hear them if you cannot see them—hear them groaning, sometimes even shrieking, in their agony; and the mournful call for “Water! water!” is heard in every lull of the fight or momentary cessation of cannon’s roar. And bending low as they move among them are the stewards and idlers of the ship, serving out the coveted draught. But down the blood-slippery companion-ladder come the bearers incessantly, carrying as gently as a Jack can their sorely-stricken messmates. Verily a sad scene! On deck war is witnessed in all its pomp and its panoply, on deck is honour and glory; the dark side is seen in the cockpit—the sorrow, the despair, the hopelessness, the agony, the death.
NELSON AND THE NILE.
“With one of his precious limbs shot away,Bold Nelson knowed well how to trick ’em;So, as for the French, ’tis as much as to say,We can tie up one hand, and then lick ’em.”Dibdin.
T
HINGS in England began to look up. Those who preached revolution were forced to hide their heads with shame after the great battle of Camperdown. For this fight had completely restored confidence in our country’s powers, and for the time being the fears of invasion had fled far away.
In many a lordly hall over all the land the feast was laid, on many a lofty hill the bonfires blazed; it was indeed a season of great rejoicing.
In one of the window recesses of Mr. Keane’s somewhat lonesome and dreary suburban mansion, asthe shadows of evening fell on the almost leafless elms around the house, sat Gerty. She was looking out into the gathering night, looking out at the slowly-falling leaves; for though a book lay in her lap, it was almost too dark to read. By her side sat a beautiful deer-hound, with his muzzle leaning on her knee, and gazing up into her face with his brown earnest eyes, as if he knew there was sorrow at her heart.
He—Jack—had given her that dog as a puppy, and no power on earth could make her part with him. As she turned her eyes from the window, she noted his speaking look, and as she bent to caress him, a tear fell on his rough gray neck.
Presently there was a knock at the door, and in rushed Mary the maid.
Mary seemed about half daft. She was waving aloft a copy of theTimes, and scarce could speak for excitement. But she managed to point to a certain column.
“What is it, Mary? I cannot see.”
“Which it’s our boy Jack as is mentioned for conspeakyewous bravery. Aren’t you glad and proud?”
“Glad and proud? O Mary! silly child. And I am to be the bride of another. Nay, father insiststhat I shall give Sir Digby his answer to-night at the ball.”
“An’ I should do it, missus; that I should. I’d put it in fine polite English, but I’d put it straight, all the same. When he knelt before me,—‘Jump up, old Granger,’ I should say. ‘Right about face. Shoulder hip. Quick march. I loves another, and I cannot marry thee.’”
“O Mary,” said Gerty, smiling in spite of herself, “how you talk! Hush, child; not another word. I’m bound to make my father happy, and—I will.”
The ball to which Gerty and her father were going that evening was Sir Digby’s. This gentleman possessed both a town and a country house; but if the truth must be told, he was at present absolutely living on his future prospects.
“Well,” he told one of his chief cronies that evening before the arrival of the guests, “when my brother dies—and he is a terribly old buffer—I shall drop into a nice thing. But it is just like my confounded luck that he should linger so long. And to tell you the truth, D’Orsay, I’m a bit pinched, and some of the Jews are pressing.”
“Why don’t you marry?”
“Well, I’m going to. Ah! she’s a sweet young thing, Miss Keane; and though the father is a skinflint, he’s wealthy, and I’ll make him settle a bit before I give my ancient name away. Wager on that.”
“Hold hard, Digby; I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t tell you.”
“Didn’t tell me what?”
“Why, man, haven’t you heard? The firm of Griffin, Keane, and Co. is ruined. ’Pon honour. South Sea biz, or something. Had it from a friend, who had it from one of the firm. It’s a secret, mind. But it is true.”
“Good heavens, D’Orsay, you do not tell me so? Then I too am ruined!”
“What! you haven’t proposed—you’re not tied?”
“Nay, nay; all but. That is nothing, D’Orsay—nothing; but on the strength of this marriage I have borrowed thousands. Fleet prison is my fate if what you say is true.”
“Look here, Digby,” said D’Orsay, after a pause, “you are a man of the world, like myself. Now if I were you, I should transfer my affections. See?”
“In which quarter?”
“Why, there is Miss Gordon; a trifle old, to besure, but positively rolling in wealth, and rolling her eyes whenever she sees you.”
Sir Digby muttered something about a bag of broken bottles, but D’Orsay went on,—
“I’d marryher; ’pon honour I should.”
“Think of life with that old hag.”
“Think of life in the Fleet, my friend.”
Sir Digby winced, and for a time made no reply.
“D’Orsay,” he said at last, “I am a man, and, I trust, a gentleman. I’d prefer to marry Gerty even—even—”
“If she were a beggar. Bravo, Digby!” And D’Orsay laughed in the way men of the world do laugh.
“I didn’t say that. I—I—’pon my soul, D’Orsay, I do not know what to do.”
Miss Gordon was the belle of that ball, as far at least as dress and jewellery were concerned. She came of a noble family, too, and gave herself all the airs common in those days to ladies of title—hauteur, dignity, and condescension by turns. But towards Sir Digby she was as soft and sweet as a three-month-old kitten.
If Sir Digby Auld had meant to propose to sweetGerty Keane that night, he never had a chance, for neither she nor her father appeared. It was reported that he had had a fit. But this was not so. After he was dressed, however, and the carriage waiting, he received a letter. He no sooner read it than it dropped from his hands on the floor, and he leaned back in his chair with his face to his hands.
Gerty was by his side in a moment.
“O father, are you ill?” she cried. “Shall I summon assistance?”
He recovered himself at once. “Nay, nay,” he said; “only grief for the death of an old friend.” He smoothed her hair as he replied. “Gerty, we will not go out to-night.”
But the letter he picked off the floor and carefully put away in his pocket-book.
A whole half-year passed away without any events transpiring that much concern our narrative. Jack Mackenzie was still on the war-path, playing havoc with the commerce of France and Spain. Indeed he had constituted himself a kind of terror of the seas. His adventures were not only most daring, but carried out with a coolness that proved they were guided by a master mind. Indeed Jack Mackenzie and all hisofficers knew now to a very nicety what might be done with the swiftTonneraire, and what could not. Her bold young captain did not mean to be either captured or sunk, and he was wise enough to run away whenever he found himself overmatched. But this was not very often.
One surprise, during this time, Jack and his officers had received, and it was a very happy one. While lying at anchor with Lord St. Vincent’s ships, one day a boat pulled off from the flagship, and there leaped therefrom and came swiftly up the ladder—who but young Murray himself. He saluted the quarter-deck, and he saluted Jack as he reported himself, smiling all over like the happy boy he was.
“I’ve come on board to join, sir. Isn’t it jolly, just? And I’m promoted to a lieutenancy.”
MʻHearty, Simmons, and every soul in the mess were most pleased to see him, and that evening Murray was the hero of the hour; and a very long and strange story he had to tell of his imprisonment, his harsh treatment, and his making love to the prison-governor’s daughter, through whose cleverness he at last managed to escape, dressed as agrisette.
He kept his messmates laughing till long after seven bells in the first watch; and it must be saidthat not this night only, but every other night, Murray infused into the mess a joy and jollity to which it had been all winter a stranger.
Meanwhile a greater hero than Jack Mackenzie must hold the stage for a brief spell—namely, Nelson himself. Napoleon Bonaparte, after lying awake for a night or two, gave birth to a grand idea. Hyder Ali, in the south of India, hated the British as one hates a viper, and gladly would have crushed our power under his heel. But he needed help. It occurred to Bonaparte to aid him, and so oust us from our Indian Empire, which was then being quickly built up. It was a pretty idea, and well carried out at the commencement; for Bonny, as our sailors called him, managed to sail from France with thirty thousand veteran, well-tried troops; and having the good luck to elude our fleet, he called at Malta, which he quickly brought to terms, then made straight for Egypt. Here he landed from his fleet, which I believe had orders to return, but did not.
With such men as those old troops of Napoleon’s the conquest of Egypt and the Mamelukes was but a picnic, and all very pleasant for Bonny and his merry men, though sad enough for the country onwhich these human locusts had alighted. Cairo fell, and the great warrior now set himself to rebuild the constitution of the country and create a native army.
Lord St. Vincent sent the brave one-eyed, one-armed Nelson with a fleet to destroy the French expedition. That he quickly would have done. He speedily would have cooked his hare, but he had to catch it first. Where ever was the French fleet? No one could tell him, and his adventures in search of it would fill a goodly volume. It reads like one long entrancing romance.
Jack Mackenzie, in hisTonneraire—the real name of the ship I am bound not to mention—joined this fleet, and thus was present at the great battle of the Nile.
Poor Nelson was almost worn out with anxiety and watching; but when he arrived at Aboukir Bay and found the foe, all his courage and all his calmness returned, and although the sun was slowly sinking in the west, our Nelson resolved not to wait an hour even, but attack the enemy there and then.
WILLIE DIED A HERO’S DEATH.
“Then, traveller, one kind drop bestow,’Twere graceful pity, nobly brave;Nought ever taught the heart to glowLike the tear that bedews a soldier’s grave.”Dibdin.
I
CANNOT help thinking that if glory is to be measured by pluck and skill combined, the battle of the Nile was even a more glorious fight than that of Trafalgar. The former battle required more physical exertion from the men individually, and therefore was a greater strain upon their courage. How? you may ask. I will tell you; and although my view of the matter may savour of the reasoning of the medico, still I think you will admit I have common-sense on my side. Besides, I am a sailor-surgeon; I have seen our brave blue-jackets working, and fighting too, under various conditions, so it cannotbe said I speak altogether without experience. Well, the battle of Aboukir Bay or the Nile began in the evening, when the men were more or less jaded or tired. They had, moreover, just come off a weary voyage or cruise, and a night’s good quiet sleep would have made a wonderful difference to them both in physique andmorale. Trafalgar was fought by day, beginning in the forenoon. Aboukir was contested in the hottest season of the year; Trafalgar in the cool—namely, toward the end of October. Therefore, I say, all the more honour and glory to our brave fellows; and may we fight as well and as fortunately during the next great naval war, which cannot now be far away.
I never can read or even think about that long hide-and-seek cruise of Nelson’s in the Mediterranean, in search of the French expedition, without a feeling of disappointment. Why, oh why was it ordained that he should not catch Napoleon with his fleet and his army at sea? Could he have but sent the firebrand to the bottom of the salt ocean, what conflagrations Europe would have been spared, what shedding of blood, what hopeless sorrow and bitter tears!
But there! I am keeping the fleets waiting. For his part, Brueys, the French admiral, would havepreferred to wait. “He means to attack,” he said to one of his captains, referring to Nelson, “but he cannot be mad enough to attack to-night.”
But Nelsonwasmad enough. He was burning to give it to the French, and give it to them hot, for all the trouble and anxiety they had cost him. He was as eager as a wild cat to spring at the throat of his foe. Another night of waiting might have killed him. No, no, he cannot, will not wait. “Make the signal for general action, and trust to Heaven and the justice of our cause!”
Along the bay lay the great French fleet, with shoal water behind them, supported by gunboats and bomb-vessels, the ships moored one hundred and sixty yards from each other, and with stream cables so that they could spring their broadsides on their enemy.
And their line extended for a mile and a half.
Had Brueys thought that Nelson would attack that night, he would have got under way, and thus been free either to manœuvre or show his heels. He did not know our Nelson. Nor could he have believed that the great British admiral would have done so doughty and daring a deed as to get round behind him, so to speak, betwixt the shore and his fleet,despite the sands and shoals. But Nelson did with a portion of his fleet, and each war-ship took up position with all the precision of couples in a contra-dance. Oh, it was beautiful! but when the battle fairly began, and tongues of fire and clouds of rolling smoke leaped and curled from the great guns, lighting up the dusk and gloom of gathering night, while echoes reverberated from shore to shore, oh, then this thunderstorm of war was very grand and terrible!
To describe the battle in detail, and all the heroic actions that took place that night, would take a volume in itself. But it is all history, and probably the reader knows every bit of it as well as, if not better than, I myself do. We must honour the French, though, for this fight. They fought well and bravely, and you know the gallant Brueys died on his own quarter-deck, refusing to be carried below. He was a hero. So we might say was the captain of theSérieusefrigate, who had the cheek to fire into the greatOrion(Sir James Saumerez) as she was sweeping past. It was like a collie dog attacking a mastiff. Saumerez couldn’t stand it. He stayed long enough literally to blow the frigate out of the water or on to a shoal, where she was wrecked. TheOrionthen went quietly on and engaged a foeman worthy of hersteel. It was plucky of theBellerophon—the old Billy Ruffian, as sailors called her—of seventy-four guns, to attack the greatOrientof one hundred and twenty, and of theMajesticto range alongside the mightyTonnantand coolly say, “It’s you and I, isn’t it?” Then one can’t help feeling sorry for poor Trowbridge in theCulloden, because he ran ashore, and had to remain a mere spectator while burning to have a finger in the fearful pie.
But the two events of this memorable battle which I daresay dwell longest in the minds of the young reader are the wounding of Nelson, who was carried below, his brow gashed so terribly that the skin in a flap hung over his eyes, despite which, you will remember, he bravely refused to have his wound dressed until his turn came; and the blowing up of the great shipOrientwith her bold Captain Casabianca and his poor boy, who refused to be taken off or give up his duty without his father’s orders.
There are those who would rob us of this romantic story. I have no patience with such gray-souled sinners. There are people in this world who cannot endure romance and beauty; people who would paint the sky a dingy brown if they could, and smudge the glory of the summer sunsets. I do not love suchpeople, and I hope you don’t, reader. I verily believe their blood is green and sour, and that they do not see this lovely world of ours as you and I do, through rose-tinted glasses, but that to them it must appear an ugly olive green, as it would to us if we gazed upon it through a piece of bottle glass. No; we shall keep the brave boy of theOrient, and still read Mrs. Hemans’ delightful and spirited verses:—
“The boy stood on the burning deck,Whence all but he had fled;The flame, that lit the battle’s wreck,Shone round him—o’er the dead.
“The flames rolled on—he would not goWithout his father’s word;—That father, faint in death below,His voice no longer heard.
“There came a burst of thunder sound,—The boy!—oh, where was he?Ask of the winds, that far aroundWith fragments strewed the sea,—
“With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,That well had borne their part!But the noblest thing that perished thereWas that young faithful heart!”
The battle is past and gone, a whole month has elapsed since then, and the swiftTonneraireis homeward bound with despatches. Many were killed andwounded, among others good old Simmons, the master, who fell at Jack’s side on the deck of a French man-o’-war. He would never grumble again; his deep bass, honest voice would be heard no more. There was hardly a dry eye in the ship when the kindly old man’s hammock was dropped overboard in Aboukir Bay.
Yes, theTonnerairewas homeward bound at last, after an absence of two busy and eventful years. But the saddest, probably, of all her adventures had yet to come. MʻHearty, Tom Fairlie, and young Murray were in the captain’s cabin one evening towards sunset. Murray was particularly bright and pleasant to-night, and his laughing face and merry, saucy blue eyes did every one good to behold.
Suddenly there is a cry on deck, “Sail ahead!” and next minute the drum is beating to quarters. TheTonnerairehas been working against a head wind, and now down upon her, like some monster sea-bird with wings outspread, sweeps a huge French ship of war. The battle will be very one-sided, but Jack will dare it. Already it is getting dusk; he must try to cripple the monster. He manages to rake her, and a broadside of iron hail is poured through her stern. He rakes her a second time, and this timedown thunders a mast. Well would it have been for Jack and theTonneraireif he had now put his ship before the wind. But no, he still fights on and on, and suffers terribly; and just as the shades of night deepen into blackness, he manages to hoist enough sail to stagger away, and the Frenchman is too sorely stricken to follow.
Very early next morning, before the stars had quite faded in the west, or the sun had shot high his rays to gild the herald clouds, MʻHearty, looking careworn, unkempt, and weary—for he had never been to bed—entered Jack’s state-room and touched him lightly on the shoulder.
Jack was awake in a moment.
“Anything wrong, doctor?” he asked quickly.
“Alas, sir!” replied MʻHearty, and there was a strange huskiness in his voice as he spoke—“alas, sir! poor young Murray is dying fast.”
“Murray dying!”
“Too true, sir. His wounds are far more grievous than I was aware of. He cannot last many minutes. He wants to see you.”
The boy—for he was but little more—lay in a cot in the sick-bay. He was dressed in his scarlet coat, and his sword lay beside him, for he had refused to bedivested of his uniform. He was in a half-sitting position, propped up with pillows, and smiled faintly as Jack knelt by his side and took his thin white hand in his.
It was a sad scene but a simple one. There was the gray light of early morning struggling in through the open port, and falling on the dying boy’s face; falling, too, on MʻHearty’s rough but kindly countenance, and on the figures of the sick-bay servants standing by the cot-foot tearful and frightened. That was all. But an open Bible lay upon the coverlet, and in his left hand the young soldier clasped a miniature—his little sweetheart’s.
“Bury it with me,” he whispered feebly. “See her, sir—and tell her—Willie died a hero’s death.—Kiss me, Jack—I would sleep now.”
The eyelids closed.
Ah! they had closed for aye.
Not a sound now save Jack’s gentle sobbing, then the slow and solemn tones of MʻHearty’s voice as he took up the little Bible and read from the Twenty-third Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Amen!
STILL WATERS RUN DEEP.
“This little maxim, for my sake,I pray you be believing:The truest pleasures that we takeAre those that we are giving.”Dibdin.
F
OR more than twenty years, dating back from the time our story commenced, Richards had been a partner in the firm of Griffiths, Keane, and Co.; yet although he was almost every day in the company of Mr. Keane, he could neither love nor respect him. Perhaps had he been less with him he might have respected him more. But he knew him too well; knew him to be Keane by name and keen by nature—avaricious, grasping, and miserly in the extreme, and for the sake of adding to his stores of gold, very far indeed from scrupulous. His niggardly habits had undoubtedly hurried his wife to her grave,when Gerty was little more than a baby, and she was left to the tender mercies of a nurse and governess. In the transaction of his business Richards was constantly at his partner’s home, and usually stayed to dine; but for the sake of the child Gerty, he made many and many a visit to the house after her mother’s death, when he had no real business to transact. “Poor little mite!” he thought; “she is so lonely, and she sees no one; has no one to love save her father, to whom she is merely ‘the child.’”
It used to vex poor great-hearted Richards to the core to hear Keane snap out, “Take away that child; it’s troublesome.”
“Nay, nay,” Richards would say, lifting the mite from the hearth-rug to his knee, “let me have the darling a minute.”
“Richards, you’re a fool!” Keane would growl.
And with one arm round her protector’s neck, her cheeks wet with tears, the mite would gaze round-eyed and in saddened silence at her unnatural father. It is no wonder that she grew up to love Richards. What stories he used to tell her! what fun he used to make for her! how he entered heart and soul into all her games and romps, as if he himself were but a boy in reality, as he was in his heart of hearts!
But the psychical mystery is how she could have come to love her father so. Yes, as the reader already knows, she did love him, and love him to that extent that she was willing to sacrifice her own happiness to his ambition, and marry a man whom she loathed if she did actually not detest.
A bachelor, with no expenses worth naming, Richards had saved quite a small fortune in his time; and when he came to find out that Keane was going positively to sell his daughter to the worn-outrouéSir Digby, that for his own advancement he might see her ere long a lord’s wife, Richards thumped his fist down on his desk—he was alone at the time—till even the big ink-bottle leaped an inch up from the table.
“I’ll save that darling child,” he had said, “if I spend every penny I have earned, and lose my life into the bargain.”
He smiled to himself a moment after.
“Everything is fair in love and war,” he said: “I’ll play a game. The cause is good. Yes, Jack Mackenzie, my open-hearted, frank, brave boy, you shall marry Gerty. I have said it—you—shall.”
He laughed aloud next minute at his own enthusiasm.
“What a capital actor I should have made!” he thought. “How beautifully I could have done heavy fathers!”
Still waters run deep, and Richards was astute, though perhaps he did not look it. So he began at once to shuffle his cards for the game he was about to play—a game which he rightly judged was to be one of life or death. For he shuddered to think of the living death to which the selfishness of her miserly, ambitious father intended condemning Gerty.
“My baby, bless her sweet face,” he added, “shall never marry that bleach-eyed old Digby.”
Then he shut his ledger with a bang, and went for a walk in the park, where he could think. But the Mackenzies would lose the fine old house and property called Grantley Hall. Keane would assuredly foreclose. Then the place would be Keane’s or Gerty’s, it was much the same. Keane really meant it to be Sir Digby’s and Gerty’s, while he, Keane, should live and be honoured and respected there—his son-in-law a lord. Richards thought he must try by hook or by crook to prevent his partner from foreclosing, if only for the following reason: if Grantley Hall once passed into Keane’s hands, much though Gerty and Jack loved each other, the latter, being a Mackenzie and aScot, would be far too proud to propose marriage, seeing that in doing so his desires might be misconstrued, and people would naturally say he was simply marrying back his own property.
The general had told his children that Keane was his only creditor. Yes, because in order to make sure of the estate, the old lawyer had bought up all the others. He could thus come down upon the brave but reckless Scottish soldier, like an avalanche from a mountain’s brow.
The day had almost arrived for Keane’s foreclosing. The family had already left Grantley Hall, taking little with them save the family jewellery, pictures, and nick-nacks. Flora had gone to Torquay, Jack was in town, and his father preparing to resume his sword, and once more fight for his country. The eventful morning itself came round. Keane was early at his office. He was in an unusually happy frame of mind. Yet perhaps he had a few slight “stoun’s” of conscience, for over and over again he talked to Richards, bringing up the subject next his heart, and excusing himself.
“I had to do it—I had to do it,” he said. “Pity for the poor Mackenzies. But the general was so improvident, and what could I do?”
“Most improvident,” replied Richards, smiling quietly over his ledger nevertheless.
As the day wore away, Keane fidgeted more and more, and often looked at the clock. “Another hour,” he said, half aloud, “only another hour.”
Richards looked at the clock too, and he often glanced uneasily towards the door.
What was going to happen?
“Only half-an-hour.” This from Keane.
“You seem pleased,” said Richards dryly.
Rat, tat—bang, bang, at the office door.
Both men looked up; Richards with a sigh of relief, Keane with gray face and flashing eyes.
Enter a tall, good-looking clerk, hat in one hand, a bundle of papers in the other. He was a stranger to Keane.
“Rethe mortgage on estate of General Grant Mackenzie, I’ve come to pay it off.”
Old Keane grew grayer and grayer in face, and foam appeared on his lips. He could not speak.
Richards slipped out and away.
He went out, and went down the street, positively laughing aloud, so that people turned smilingly round to look after him.
And to pay this mortgage off, the honest fellowhad put down the bulk of his fortune, and borrowed thousands besides. The property of Grantley Hall was now virtually his; buthewould not foreclose, and the Mackenzies should know nothing about it, for a time at all events.
Richards had played his first card, and it was a strong one.
He went straight off now to see “his baby,” and to continue the fairy story which he had commenced at Grantley Hall.
He saw some one else—he saw Mary. Mary was his first lieutenant. It was she who summoned him that evening at the Hall when he entered the room just as Sir Digby was about to propose.
A good girl, Mary, and devoted to her “missus.” She could keep a secret, too, and she could keep Richards posted, lest Sir Digby should steal a march upon them.
But time had rolled on, as we know. There were wars and rumours of wars, disaffection at home and threatened revolution, and last, but not least, as far as our story goes, Sir Digby had been ill, and at the point of death. Keane also had been abroad for his health, and with him his daughter, so that the evil day was postponed.
Evil days have a disagreeable habit of coming, nevertheless, in spite of all we can do.
Slowly and sadly, with rent rigging and battered hull, theTonnerairestaggered home. She is in Plymouth Sound at last. Letters and papers come off to the ship. Jack Mackenzie, sitting alone by his open port, turns eagerly to a recent copy of theTimes. Almost the first notice that attracts his attention runs thus: “Marriage of Sir Digby Auld and Miss Gertrude”—he sees no more. His head swims. The wind seizes the paper, as if in pity, and carries it far astern of the ship.
He feels utterly crushed and broken, and head and hands droop helplessly on the table before him.
“IT’S ALL UP, MR. RICHARDS, IT’S ALL UP!”
“The busy crew the sails unbending,The ship in harbour safe arrived;Jack Oakum, all his perils ending,Has made the port where Kitty lived.”Dibdin.