CHAPTER LIV

About a month after Sir Duncan's marriage, when he and his bride were in London, with the lady's parents come to help, in the misery of outfit, a little boy ran through a field of wheat, early in the afternoon, and hid himself in a blackthorn hedge to see what was going on at Anerley. Nothing escaped him, for his eyes were sharp, being of true Danish breed. He saw Captain Anerley trudging up the hill, with a pipe in his mouth, to the bean field, where three or four men were enjoying the air, without any of the greedy gulps produced by too great exertion of the muscles; then he saw the mistress of the house throw wide a lattice, and shake out a cloth for the birds, who skipped down from the thatch by the dozen instantly; and then he saw Mary, with a basket and a wooden measure, going round the corner of the house, and clucking for the fowls to rally from their scratching-places. These came zealously, with speed of leg and wing, from straw-rick, threshing-floor, double hedge, or mixen; and following their tails, the boy slipped through the rick-yard, and tossed a note to Mary with a truly Flamburian delivery.

Although it was only a small-sized boy, no other than the heir of the “Cod-fish,” a brighter rose flew into Mary's cheeks than the master-cock of all the yard could show upon comb or wattle. Contemptuous of twopence, which Mary felt for, the boy disappeared like a rabbit; and the fowls came and helped themselves to the tail-wheat, while their mistress was thinking of her letter. It was short and sweet—at least in promise—being no more than these few words: “Darling, the dike where first we met, an hour after sunset.”

Mary never doubted that her duty was to go; and at the time appointed she was there, with firm knowledge of her own mind, being now a loving and reasonable woman. It was just a year since she had saved the life of Robin; and patience, and loneliness, and opposition, had enlarged and ennobled her true and simple heart. No lord in the land need have looked for a purer or sweeter example of maidenhood than this daughter of a Yorkshire farmer was, in her simple dress, and with the dignity of love. The glen was beginning to bestrew itself with want of light, instead of shadows; and bushy places thickened with the imperceptible growth of night. Mary went on, with excitement deepening, while sunset deepened into dusk; and the color of her clear face flushed and fleeted under the anxious touch of love, as the tint of a delicate finger-nail, with any pressure, varies. But not very long was she left in doubt.

“How long you have been! And oh, where have you been? And how much longer will you be?” Among many other words and doings she insisted chiefly on these points.

“I am a true-blue, as you may see, and a warrant-officer already,” he said, with his old way of smiling at himself. “When the war begins again (as it must—please God!—before many weeks are over), I shall very soon get my commission, and go up. I am quite fit already to command a frigate.”

Mary was astonished at his modesty; she thought that he ought to be an admiral at least, and so she told him; however, he knew better.

“You must bear in mind,” he replied, with a kindly desire to spare her feelings, “that until a change for the better comes, I am under disadvantages. Not only as an outlaw—which has been upon the whole a comfort—but as a suspected criminal, with warrant against him, and reward upon him. Of course I am innocent; and everybody knows it, or at least I hope so, except the one who should have known it best.”

“I am the person who should know it best of all,” his true love answered, with some jealousy. “Explain yourself, Robin, if you please.”

“No Robin, so please you, but Mr. James Blyth, captain of the foretop, then cockswain of the barge, and now master's mate of H. M. ship of the line Belleisle. But the one who should have trusted me, next to my own love, is my father, Sir Duncan Yordas.”

“How you are talking! You have such a reckless way. A warrant-officer, an arrant criminal! And your father, Sir Duncan Yordas, that very strange gentleman, who could never get warm! Oh, Robin, you always did talk nonsense, when—whenever I would let you. But you should not try to make my head go round.”

“Every word of it is true,” the young sailor answered, applying a prompt remedy for vertigo. “It had been clearly proved to his knowledge, long before the great fact was vouchsafed to me, that I am the only son of Sir Duncan Yordas, or, at any rate, his only son for the present. The discovery gratified him so little, that he took speedy measures to supplant me.”

“The very rich gentleman from India,” said Mary, “that married Miss Upround lately; and her dress was all made of spun diamonds, they say, as bright as the dew in the morning. Oh, then you will have to give me up; Robin, you must give up me!”

Clasping her hands, she looked up at him with courage, keeping down all sign of tears. She felt that her heart would not hold out long, and yet she was prouder than to turn away. “Speak,” she said; “it is better to speak plainly; you know that it must be so.”

“Do I? why?” Robin Lyth asked, calmly, being well contented to prolong her doubts, that he might get the benefit thereafter.

“Because you belong to great people, and I am just a farmer's daughter, and no more, and quite satisfied to remain so. Such things never answer.”

“A little while ago you were above me, weren't you? When I was nobody's son, and only a castaway, with a nickname.”

“That has nothing to do with it. We must take things exactly as we find them at the time.”

“And you took me as you found me at the time; only that you made me out so much better. Mary, I am not worthy of you. What has birth to do with it? And so far as that goes, yours is better, though mine may seem the brighter. In every other way you are above me. You are good, and I am wicked. You are pure, and I am careless. You are sweet, and I am violent. In truth alone can I ever vie with you; and I must be a pitiful scoundrel, Mary, if I did not even try to do that, after all that you have done for me.”

“But,” said Mary, with her lovely eyes gleaming with the glittering shade of tears, “I like you very much to do it—but not exactly as a duty, Robin.”

“You look at me like that, and you talk of duty! Duty, duty; this is my duty. I should like to be discharging it forever and a day.”

“I did not come here for ideas of this kind,” said Mary, with her lips as red as pyracanthine berries; “free trade was bad enough, but the Royal Navy worse, it seems. Now, Robin dear, be sensible, and tell me what I am to do.”

“To listen to me, and then say whether I deserve what my father has done to me. He came back from India—as you must understand—with no other object in life, that I can hear of (for he had any quantity of money), than to find out me, his only child, and the child of the only wife he ever could put up with. For twenty years he had believed me to be drowned, when the ship he sent me home in to be educated was supposed to have foundered, with all hands. But something made him fancy that I might have escaped; and as he could not leave India then, he employed a gentleman of York, named Mordacks, to hunt out all about it. Mordacks, who seems to be a wonderful man, and most kind-hearted to everybody, as poor Widow Carroway says of him with tears, and as he testifies of himself—he set to work, and found out in no time all about me and my ear-rings, and my crawling from the cave that will bear my name, they say, and more things than I have time to tell. He appointed a meeting with Sir Duncan Yordas here at Flamborough, and would have brought me to him, and everything might have been quite happy. But in the mean while that horrible murder of poor Carroway came to pass, and I was obliged to go into hiding, as no one knows better than you, my dear. My father (as I suppose I must call him) being bound, as it seems that they all are, to fall out with their children, took a hasty turn against me at once. Mordacks, whom I saw last week, trusting myself to his honor, tells me that Sir Duncan would not have cared twopence about my free-trade work, and so on, or even about my having killed the officer in fair conflict, for he is used to that. But he never will forgive me for absconding, and leaving my fellows, as he puts it, to bear the brunt. He says that I am a dastard and a skulk, and unworthy to bear the name of Yordas.”

“What a wicked, unnatural man he must be!” cried Mary. “He deserves to have no children.”

“No; I am told that he is a very good man, but stiff-necked and disdainful. He regards me with scorn, because he knows no better. He may know our laws, but he knows nothing of our ways, to suppose that my men were in any danger. If I had been caught while the stir was on, a gibbet on the cliff would have been set up, even before my trial—such is the reward of eminence—but no Yorkshire jury would turn round in the box, with those poor fellows before them. 'Not guilty, my lord,' was on their tongues, before he had finished charging them.”

“Oh, I am so glad! They have been acquitted, and you were there to see it!”

“To be sure. I was in the court, as Harry Ombler's father. Mr. Mordacks got it up; and it told on the jury even more than could have been expected. Even the judge wiped his eyes as he looked at me, for they say he has a scapegrace son; and Harry was the only one of all the six in danger, according to the turn of the evidence. My poor eyes have scarcely come round yet from the quantity of sobbing that I had to do, and the horrible glare of my goggles. And then I had a crutch that I stumped with as I sighed, so that all the court could hear me; and whenever I did it, all the women sighed too, and even the hardest hearts were moved. Mr. Mordacks says that it was capital.”

“Oh, but, Robin, how shocking, though you make me laugh! If the verdict had been otherwise—oh, what then?”

“Well, then, Harry Ombler had a paper in his hand, done in printing letters by myself, because he is a very tidy scholar, and signed by me; the which he was to read before receiving sentence, saying that Robin Lyth himself was in York town, and would surrender to that court upon condition that mercy should be warranted to the prisoners.”

“And you would have given yourself up? And without consulting me about it!”

“Bad, I admit,” Robin answered, with a smile; “but not half so bad as to give up you—which you calmly proposed just now, dear heart. However, there is no need for any trouble now, except that I am forced to keep out of sight until other evidence is procured. Mordacks has taken to me, like a better father, mainly from his paramount love of justice, and of daring gallantry, as he calls it.”

“So it was, and ten times more; heroic self-devotion is a much more proper term.”

“Now don't,” said Robin. “If you make me blush, you may guess what I shall do to hide it—carry the war into the sweet land of the enemy. But truly, my darling, there was very little danger. And I am up for a much better joke this time. My august Roman father, who has cast me off, sails as a very great Indian gun, in a ship of the line, from Spithead, early in September. The Belleisle is being paid off now, and I have my certificate, as well as lots of money. Next to his lass, every sailor loves a spree; and mine, instead of emptying, shall fill the locker. With this disgusting peace on, and no chance of prize-money, and plenty in their pockets for a good spell ashore, blue-jackets will be scarce when Sir Duncan Yordas sails. If I can get a decent berth as a petty officer, off I go for Calcutta, and watch (like the sweet little cherub that sits up aloft) for the safety of my dear papa and mamma, as the Frenchmen are teaching us to call them. What do you think of such filial devotion?”

“It would be a great deal more than he deserves,” Mary answered, with sweet simplicity. “But what could you do, if he found out who you are?”

“Not the smallest fear of that, my dear. I have never had the honor of an introduction. My new step-mother, who might have been my sweetheart if I had not seen somebody a hundred times as good, a thousand times as gentle, and a million times as lovely—”

“Oh, Robin, do leave off such very dreadful stories! I saw her in the church, and she looked beautiful.”

“Fine feathers make fine birds. However, she is well enough in her way; and I love her father. But, for all that, she has no business to be my step-mother; and of course it was only the money that did it. She has a little temper of her own, I can assure you; and I wish Sir Duncan joy of her when they get among mosquitoes. But, as I was going to say, the only risk of my being caught is from her sharp eyes. Even of that there is not much danger, for we common sailors need not go within hail of those grandees, unless it comes to boat-work. And even if Miss Janetta—I beg her pardon, Lady Yordas—should chance to recognize me, I am sure she would never tell her husband. No, no; she would be too jealous; and for fifty other reasons. She is very cunning, let me tell you.”

“Well,” cried Mary, with a smile of wisdom, “I hope that I may never live to be a step-mother. The way those poor things get abused—”

“You would have more principle, I should hope, than to marry anybody after me. However, I have told you nearly all my news, and in a few minutes I must be off. Only two things more. In the first place, Mordacks has taken a very great fancy to me, and has turned against my father. He and Widow Carroway and I had a long talk after the trial, and we all agreed that the murder was committed by a villain called 'John Cadman,' a sneak and a skulk, whom I knew well, as one of Carroway's own men. Among other things, they chanced to say that Cadman's gun was missing, and that the poor widow can swear to it. I asked if any one had searched for it; and Mordacks said no, it would be hopeless. I told them that if I were only free to show myself and choose my time, I would lay my life upon finding it, if thrown away (as it most likely was) in some part of that unlucky cave. Mordacks caught at this idea, and asked me a number of questions, and took down my answers; for no one else knows the cave as I do. I would run all risks myself, and be there to do it, if time suited. But only certain tides will serve, even with the best of weather; and there may be no such tide for months—I mean tide, weather, and clear water combined, as they must be for the job. Therefore I am not to wait, but go about my other business, and leave this to Mordacks, who loves to be captain of everything. Mr. Mordacks talked of a diving-bell, and some great American inventions; but nothing of the kind can be used there, nor even grappling-irons. The thing must not be heard of even, until it has been accomplished. Whatever is done, must be done by a man who can swim and dive as I can, and who knows the place almost as well. I have told him where to find the man, when the opportunity comes for it; and I have shown my better father, Robin Cockscroft, the likely spot. So now I have nothing more to do with that.”

“How wonderfully you can throw off cares!” his sweetheart answered, softly. “But I shall be miserable till I know what happens. Will they let me be there? Because I understand so much about tides, and I can hold my tongue.”

“That you have shown right well, my Mary; but your own sense will tell you that you could not be there. Now one thing more: here is a ring, not worthy—although it is the real stuff—to go upon your precious hand, yet allow me to put it on; no, not there; upon your wedding finger. Now do you know what that is for?”

“For me, I suppose,” she answered, blushing with pleasure and admiration; “but it is too good, too beautiful, too costly.”

“Not half good enough. Though, to tell you the truth, it can not be matched easily; any more than you can. But I know where to get those things. Now promise me to wear it, when you think of me; and the one habit will confirm the other. But the more important part is this, and the last thing for me to say to you. Your father still hates my name, I fear. Tell him every word I have told you, and perhaps it will bring him half way round. Sooner or later he must come round; and the only way to do it is to work him slowly. When he sees in how many ways I have been wronged, and how beautifully I have borne it all, he will begin to say to himself, 'Now this young man may be improving.' But he never will say, 'He hath no need of it.'”

“I should rather think not, you conceited Robin, or whatever else I am to call you now. But I bargain for one thing—whatever may happen, I shall never call you anything else but Robin. It suits you, and you look well with it. Yordas, indeed, or whatever it may be—”

“No bargain is valid without a seal,” etc., etc. In the old but ever-vivid way they went on, until they were forced to part, at the very lips of the house itself, after longing lingerings. The air of the fields was sweet with summer fragrance and the breath of night; the world was ripe with soft repose, whose dreams were hope and happiness; and the heaven spread some gentle stars, to show mankind the way to it. Then a noble perfume strewed the ambient air with stronger presence, as the farmer, in his shirt sleeves, came, with a clay pipe, and grumbled, “Wherever is our Mary all this time?”

Five hundred years ago there was a great Italian swimmer, even greater than our Captain Webb; inasmuch as he had what the wags of the age unjustly ascribe to our hero, that is to say, web toes and fingers. This capable man could, if history be true, not only swim for a week without ceasing (reassuring solid nature now and then by a gulp of live fish), but also could expand his chest so considerably that it held enough air for a day's consumption. Fortified thus, he explored Charybdis and all the Liparic whirlpools, and could have found Cadman's gun anywhere, if it had only been there. But at last the sea had its revenge upon him, through the cruel insistence of his king.

No man so amphibious has since arisen through the unfathomed tide of time. But a swimmer and diver of great repute was now living not far from Teesmouth. That is to say, he lived there whenever the state of the weather or the time of year stranded him in dry misery. Those who have never come across a man of this description might suppose that he was happy and content at home with his wife and growing family, assuaging the brine in the delightful manner commended by Hero to Leander. But, alas! it was not so at all. The temper of the man was very slow to move, as generally happens with deep-chested men, and a little girl might lead him with her finger on the shore; and he liked to try to smell land flowers, which in his opinion were but weeds. But if a man can not control his heart, in the very middle of his system, how can he hope to command his skin, that unscientific frontier of his frame?

“Nicholas the fish,” as his neighbors (whenever, by coming ashore, he had such treasures) contemptuously called him, was endowed from his birth with a peculiar skin, and by exercise had improved it. Its virtue was excessive thickness—such as a writer should pray for—protected also by powerful hairiness—largely admired by those with whom it is restricted to the head.

Unhappily for Nicholas, the peremptory poises of nature struck a line with him, and this was his line of flotation. From perpetual usage this was drawn, obliquely indeed, but as definitely as it is upon a ship of uniform displacement—a yacht, for instance, or a man-of-war. Below that line scarcely anything could hurt him; but above it he was most sensitive, unless he were continually wetted; and the flies, and the gnats, and many other plagues of England, with one accord pitched upon him, and pitched into him, during his short dry intervals, with a bracing sense of saline draught. Also the sun, and the wind, and even the moon, took advantage of him when unwetted.

This made his dry periods a purgatory to him; and no sooner did he hear from Mr. Mordacks of a promising job under water than he drew breath enough for a ten-fathom dive, and bursting from long despair, made a great slap at the flies beneath his collar-bone. The sound was like a drum which two men strike; and his wife, who was devoted to him, hastened home from the adjoining parish with a sad presentiment of parting. And this was speedily verified; for the champion swimmer and diver set forth that very day for Bempton Warren, where he was to have a private meeting with the general factor.

Now it was a great mistake to think—as many people at this time did, both in Yorkshire and Derbyshire—that the gulf of connubial cares had swallowed the great Roman hero Mordacks. Unarmed, and even without his gallant roadster to support him, he had leaped into that Curtian lake, and had fought a good fight at the bottom of it. The details are highly interesting, and the chronicle might be useful; but, alas! there is no space left for it. It is enough, and a great thing too, to say that he emerged triumphant, reduced his wife into very good condition, and obtained the due mastery of her estates, and lordship of the household.

Refreshed and recruited by the home campaign, and having now a double base for future operations—York city with the fosse of Ouse in the east, and Pretorian Hill, Derbyshire, westward—Mordacks returned, with a smack of lip more dry than amontilladissimo, to the strict embrace of business. So far as the needs of the body were concerned, he might have done handsomely without any business; but having no flesh fit to weigh against his mind, he gave preference to the latter. Now the essence of his nature was to take strong views; not hastily—if he could help it—nor through narrow aspect of prejudice, but with power of insight (right or wrong), and stern fixity thereafter. He had kept his opinion about Sir Duncan Yordas much longer than usual pending, being struck with the fame of the man, and his manner, and generous impulsive nature. All these he still admired, but felt that the mind was far too hasty, and, to put it in his own strong way, Sir Duncan (whatever he might be in India) had been but a fool in England. Why had he cast away his claim on Scargate, and foiled the factor's own pet scheme for a great triumph over the lawyers? And why condemn his only son, when found with such skill and at heavy expense, without even hearing both sides of the tale? Last, but not least, what induced him to marry, when amply old enough to know better, a girl who might be well enough in her way, but had no family estate to bring, was shrewdly suspected of a cutting tongue, and had more than once been anything but polite to Geoffrey Mordacks?

Although this gentleman was not a lawyer, and indeed bore a tyrannous hate against that gentle and most precious class, he shared the solicitor's just abhorrence of the word “farewell,” when addressed to him by any one of good substance. He resolved that his attentions should not cease, though undervalued for the moment, but should be continued to the son and heir—whose remainder in tail subsisted still, though it might be hard to substantiate—and when his cousin Lancelot should come into possession, he might find a certain factor to grapple him. Mr. Mordacks hated Lancelot, and had carried out his banishment with intense enjoyment, holding him as in a wrench-hammer all the way, silencing his squeaks with another turn of the screw, and as eager to crack him as if he were a nut, the first that turns auburn in September.

This being the condition of so powerful a mind, facts very speedily shaped themselves thereto, as they do when the power of an eminent orator lays hold of them and crushes them, and they can not even squeak. Or even as a still more eminent 'bus driver, when the street is blocked, and there seems to be no room for his own thumb, yet (with a gentle whistle and a wink) solves the jostling stir and balk, makes obstructive traffic slide, like an eddy obsequious, beside him and behind, and comes forth as the first of an orderly procession toward the public-house of his true love.

Now if anything beyond his own conviction were wanted to set this great agent upon action, soon it was found in York Summer Assizes, and the sudden inrush of evidence, which—no matter how a case has been prepared—gets pent up always for the Bar and Bench. Then Robin Lyth came, with a gallant dash, and offered himself as a sacrifice, if needful, which proved both his courage and his common-sense in waiting till due occasion demanded him. Mordacks was charmed with this young man, not only for proving his own judgment right, but also for possessing a quickness of decision akin to his own, and backing up his own ideas.

With vigor thus renewed by many interests and motives, the general and generous factor kept his appointment in Bempton Warren. Since the distressing, but upon the whole desirable, decease of that poor Rickon Goold, the lonely hut in which he breathed his last had not been by any means a popular resort. There were said to be things heard, seen, and felt, even in the brightest summer day, which commended the spot to the creatures that fear mankind, but not their spectres. The very last of all to approach it now would have been the two rollicking tars who had trodden their wooden-legged watch around it. Nicholas the fish was superstitious also, as it behooved him well to be; but having heard nothing of the story of the place, and perceiving no gnats in the neighborhood, he thankfully took it for his short dry spells.

Mr. Mordacks met him, and the two men were deeply impressed with one another. The diver admired the sharp, terse style and definite expression of the factor, while the factor enjoyed the large ponderous roll and suggestive reservations of the diver. For this was a man who had met great beings, and faced mighty wonders in deep places; and he thought of them more than he liked to say, because he had to get his living.

Nothing could be settled to a nicety between them, not even as to pounds, shillings, and pence. For the nature of the job depended wholly upon the behavior of the weather; and the weather must be not only at its best, but also setting meekly in the right direction at the right moment of big springtide. The diver was afraid that he might ask too little, and the factor disliked the risk of offering too much, and possibly spoiling thereby a noble nature. But each of them realized (to some extent) the honesty of the other, and neither of them meant to be unreasonable.

“Give and take, is what I say,” said the short man with the monstrous chest, looking up at the tall man with the Roman nose; “live and let live. Ah! that's it.”

Mr. Mordacks would have said, “Right you are,” if that elegant expression had been in vogue; but as that brilliance had not yet risen, he was content to say, “Just so.” Then he added, “Here you have everything you want. Madam Precious will send you twice a day, to the stone at the bottom of the lane, a gallon of beer, and victuals in proportion. Your duty is to watch the tides and weather, keep your boat going, and let me know; and here I am in half an hour.”

Calpurnia Mordacks was in her duty now, and took her autumn holiday at Flamborough. And though Widow Precious felt her heart go pitapat at first sight of another Mrs. Mordacks, she made up her mind, with a gulp, not to let this cash go to the Thornwick. As a woman she sighed; but as a landlady she smiled, and had visions of hoisting a flag on her roof.

When Mordacks, like a victorious general, conqueror of this Danish town, went forth for his evening stroll to see his subjects and be saluted, a handsome young sailor came up from the cliffs, and begged to have a few quiet words with him. “Say on, my lad; all my words are quiet,” replied the general factor. Then this young man up and told his tale, which was all in the well-trodden track of mankind. He had run away to sea, full of glorious dreams—valor, adventure, heroism, rivers of paradise, and lands of heaven. Instead of that, he had been hit upon the head, and in places of deeper tenderness, frequently roasted, and frozen yet more often, basted with brine when he had no skin left, scorched with thirst, and devoured by creatures whose appetites grew dainty when his own was ravening.

“Excellent youth,” Mr. Mordacks said, “your tale might move a heart of flint. All who know me have but one opinion. I am benevolence itself. But my balance is low at my banker's.”

“I want no money, sir,” the sailor answered, simply offering benevolence itself a pipeful of tobacco from an ancient bit of bladder; “I have not got a farthing, but I am with good people who never would take it if I had it, and that makes everything square between us. I might have a hatful of money if I chose, but I find myself better without it, and my constitution braces up. If I only chose to walk a league sou'west, there would be bonfires burning. But I vowed I would go home a captain, and I will.”

“Ha!” cried Mr. Mordacks, with his usual quickness, and now knowing all about everybody; “you are Mr. John Anerley, the son of the famous Captain Anerley.”

“Jack Anerley, sir, till better times; and better they never will be, till I make them. But not a word to any one about me, if you please. It would break my mother's heart (for she doth look down upon people, without asking) to hear that Robin Cockscroft was supporting of me. But, bless you, I shall pay him soon, a penny for a guinea.”

Truth, which struggles through the throng of men to get out and have a little breath sometimes, now and then succeeds, by accident, or the stupid misplacement of a word. A penny for a guinea was as much as Robin Cockscroft was likely ever to see for his outlay upon this very fine young fellow. Jack Anerley accepted the situation with the large philosophy of a sailor; and all he wanted from Mr. Mordacks was leave to be present at the diving job. This he obtained, as he promised to be useful, and a fourth oar was likely to be needed.

It was about an hour before noon of a beautifully soft September day, when little Sam Precious, the same boy that carried Robin Lyth's note to Mary, came up to Mr. Mordacks with a bit of plaited rushes, the scytale of Nicholas the fish, who was happy enough not to know his alphabet. The factor immediately put on his hat, girded himself with his riding sword and pistol belt, and told his good wife that business might take him away for some hours. Then he hastened to Robin Cockscroft's house, after sending the hostler, on his own horse, with a letter to Bridlington coast-guard station, as he had arranged with poor Carroway's successor.

The Flamborough fishermen were out at sea; and without any fuss, Robin's boat was launched, and manned by that veteran himself, together with old Joe and Bob, who had long been chewing the quid of expectation, and at the bow oar Jack Anerley. Their orders were to slip quietly round, and wait in the Dovecote till the diver came. Mordacks saw them on their way; and then he strode up the deserted path, and struck away toward a northern cove, where the diver's little boat was housed. There he found Nicholas the fish, spread out in all his glory, like a polypod awash, or a basking turtle, or a well-fed calf of Proteus. Laid on his back, where the wavelets broke, and beaded a silver fringe upon the golden ruff of sand, he gave his body to soft lullaby, and his mind to perfect holiday. His breadth, and the spring of fresh air inside it, kept him gently up and down; and his calm enjoyment was enriched by the baffled wrath of his enemies. For flies, of innumerable sorts and sizes, held a hopeless buzz above him, being put upon their mettle to get at him, and perishing sweetly in the vain attempt.

With a grunt of reluctance he awoke to business, swam for his boat, and embarking Mr. Mordacks, pulled him across the placid bay to the cave where his forces were assembled.

“Let there be no mistake about it,” the factor shouted from the mermaids' shelf, having promised his Calpurnia to keep upon dry land whenever the water permitted him; “our friend the great diver will first ascertain whether the thing which we seek is here. If so, he will leave it where it is until the arrival of the Preventive boat. You all understand that we wish to put the matter so that even a lawyer can not pick any hole in the evidence. Light no links until I tell you. Now, Nicholas the fish, go down at once.”

Without a word the diver plunged, having taken something between his teeth which he would not let the others see. The watery floor of the cavern was as smooth as a mill-pond in July, and he plunged so neatly that he made no splash; nothing but a flicker of reflection on the roof, and a lapping murmur round the sides, gave token that a big man was gone into the deep. For several minutes no one spoke, but every eye was strained upon the glassy dimness, and every ear intent for the first break of sound.

“T' goop ha' got un,” cried old Robin, indignant at this outrage by a stranger to his caves, “God niver mahd mon to pree intil 's ain warks.”

Old Joe and Bob grunted approbation, and Mordacks himself was beginning to believe that some dark whirlpool or coil of tangles had drowned the poor diver, when a very gentle noise, like a dabchick playing beneath a bridge, came from the darkest corner. Nicholas was there, inhaling air, not in greedy gulps and gasps, like a man who has had no practice, but leisurely encouraging his lungs with little doses, as a doctor gives soup to a starved boat crew. Being hailed by loud voices, he answered not, for his nature was by no means talkative; but presently, with very little breach of water, he swam to the middle, and asked for his pipe.

“Have you found the gun?” cried Mordacks, whose loftiest feelings had subsided in a quarter of a minute to the business level. Nicholas made no reply until the fire of his pipe was established, while he stood in the water quite as if he were on land, supporting himself by nothing more than a gentle movement of his feet, while the glow of the touch-paper lit his round face and yellow leather skull-cap. “In coorse I has,” he said at last, blowing a roll of smoke along the gleaming surface; “over to yon little cornder.”

“And you can put your hand upon it in a moment?” The reply was a nod and another roll of smoke. “Admirable! Now, then, Joe, and Bob the son of Joe, do what I told you, while Master Cockscroft and our nimble young friend get the links all ready.”

The torches were fixed on the rocky shelf, as they had been upon the fatal night; but they were not lit until Joe and his son, sent forth in the smaller boat to watch, came back with news that the Preventive gig was round the point, and approaching swiftly, with a lady in the stern, whose dress was black.

“Right!” cried Mr. Mordacks, with a brisk voice ringing under the ponderous brows of rock. “Men, I have brought you to receive a lesson. You shall see what comes of murder. Light the torches. Nicholas, go under, with the exception of your nose, or whatever it is you breathe with. When I lift my hand, go down; and do as I have ordered you.”

The cavern was lit with the flare of fire, and the dark still water heaved with it, when the coast-guard boat came gliding in. The crew, in white jerseys, looked like ghosts flitting into some magic scene. Only the officer, darkly clad, and standing up with the tiller-lines in hand, and the figure of a woman sitting in the stern, relieved their spectral whiteness.

“Commander Hardlock, and men of the coastguard,” shouted Mr. Mordacks, when the wash of ripples and the drip of oars and the creak of wood gave silence, “the black crime committed upon this spot shall no longer go unpunished. The ocean itself has yielded its dark secret to the perseverance of mankind, and the humble but not unskillful efforts which it has been my privilege to conduct. A good man was slain here, in cold blood slain—a man of remarkable capacity and zeal, gallantry, discipline, and every noble quality, and the father of a very large family. The villain who slew him would have slain six other harmless men by perjury if an enlightened English jury had been fools enough to believe him. Now I will show you what to believe. I am not eloquent, I am not a man of words; my motto is strict business. And business with me is a power, not a name. I lift my hand; you wait for half a minute; and then, from the depths of this abyss, arises the gun used in the murder.”

The men understood about half of this, being honest fellows in the main, and desiring time to put heads together about the meaning; but one there was who knew too well that his treacherous sin had found him out. He strove to look like the rest, but felt that his eyes obeyed heart more than brain; and then the widow, who had watched him closely through her black veil, lifted it, and fixed her eyes on his. Deadly terror seized him, and he wished that he had shot himself.

“Stand up, men,” the commander shouted, “until we see the end of this. The crime has been laid upon our force. We scorn the charge of such treachery. Stand up, men, and face, like innocent men, whatever can be shown against you.”

The men stood up, and the light of the torches fell upon their faces. All were pale with fear and wonder, but one was white as death itself. Calling up his dogged courage, and that bitterness of malice which had made him do the deed, and never yet repent of it, he stood as firmly as the rest, but differed from them in three things. His face wore a smile; he watched one place only; and his breath made a noise, while theirs was held.

Then, from the water, without a word, or sign of any hand that moved it, a long gun rose before John Cadman, and the butt was offered to his hand. He stood with his arms at his sides, and could not lift them to do anything. Neither could he speak, nor make defense, but stood like an image that is fastened by the feet.

“Hand me that,” cried the officer, sharply; but instead of obeying, the man stared malignantly, and then plunged over the gun into the depth.

Not so, however, did he cheat the hangman; Nicholas caught him (as a water-dog catches a worn-out glove), and gave him to any one that would have him. “Strap him tight,” the captain cried; and the men found relief in doing it. At the next jail-delivery he was tried, and the jury did their duty. His execution restored good-will, and revived that faith in justice which subsists upon so little food.

One of the greatest days in all the history of England, having no sense of its future fame, and being upon a hostile coast, was shining rather dismally. And one of England's greatest men, the greatest of all her sons in battle—though few of them have been small at that—was out of his usual mood, and full of calm presentiment and gloomy joy. He knew that he would see the sun no more; yet his fear was not of that, but only of losing the light of duty. As long as the sun endures, he shall never see duty done more brilliantly.

The wind was dropping, to give the storm of human fury leisure; and while a sullen swell was rolling, canvas flapped and timbers creaked. Like a team of mallards in double column, plunging and lifting buoyant breasts to right and left alternately, the British fleet bore down upon the swan-like crescent of the foe. These were doing their best to fly, but failing of that luck, put helm alee, and shivered in the wind, and made fine speeches, proving that they must win the day.

“For this I have lived, and for this it would be worth my while to die, having no one left, I dare say now, in all the world to care for me.”

Thus spake the junior lieutenant of that British ship, the Victory—a young man after the heart of Nelson, and gazing now on Nelson's face. No smarter sailor could be found in all that noble fleet than this Lieutenant Blyth, who once had been the captain of all smugglers. He had fought his way up by skill, and spirit, and patience, and good temper, and the precious gift of self-reliance, failing of which all merit fails. He had always thought well of himself, but never destroyed the good of it by saying so; and whoever praised him had to do it again, to outspeak his modesty. But without good fortune all these merits would never have been successes. One of Robin's truest merits was that he generally earned good luck.

However, his spirits were not in their usual flow of jocundity just now, and his lively face was dashed with care. Not through fear of lead, or steel, or wooden splinter, or a knock upon the head, or any other human mode of encouraging humanity. He hoped to keep out of the way of these, as even the greatest heroes do; for how could the world get on if all its bravest men went foremost? His mind meant clearly, and with trust in proper Providence, to remain in its present bodily surroundings, with which it had no fault to find. Grief, however—so far as a man having faith in his luck admits that point—certainly was making some little hole into a heart of corky fibre. For Robin Lyth had heard last night, when a schooner joined the fleet with letters, that Mary Anerley at last was going to marry Harry Tanfield. He told himself over and over again that if it were so, the fault was his own, because he had not taken proper care about the safe dispatch of letters. Changing from ship to ship and from sea to sea for the last two years or more, he had found but few opportunities of writing, and even of those he had not made the utmost. To Mary herself he had never once written, knowing well that her father forbade it, while his letters to Flamborough had been few, and some of those few had miscarried. For the French had a very clever knack just now of catching the English dispatch-boats, in most of which they found accounts of their own thrashings, as a listener catches bad news of himself. But none of these led them to improve their conduct.

Flamborough (having felt certain that Robin could never exist without free trade, and missing many little courtesies that flowed from his liberal administration), was only too ready to lament his death, without insisting on particulars. Even as a man who has foretold a very destructive gale of wind tempers with the pride of truth the sorrow which he ought to feel for his domestic chimney-pots (as soon as he finds them upon his lawn), so Little Denmark, while bewailing, accepted the loss as a compliment to its own renowned sagacity.

But Robin knew not until last night that he was made dead at Flamborough, through the wreck of a ship which he had quitted a month before she was cast away. And now at last he only heard that news by means of his shipmate, Jack Anerley. Jack was a thorough-going sailor now, easy, and childish, and full of the present, leaving the past to cure and the future to care for itself as might be. He had promised Mr. Mordacks and Robin Cockscroft to find out Robin Lyth, and tell him all about the conviction of John Cadman; and knowing his name in the navy and that of his ship, he had done so after in-and-out chase. But there for the time he had rested from his labors, and left “Davy Jones” to send back word about it; which that Pelagian Davy fails to do, unless the message is enshrined in a bottle, for which he seems to cherish true naval regard.

In this state of things the two brothers-in-law—as they fully intended to be by-and-by—were going into this tremendous battle: Jack as a petty officer, and Robin as a junior lieutenant of Lord Nelson's ship. Already had Jack Anerley begun to feel for Robin—or Lieutenant Blyth, as he now was called—that liking of admiration which his clear free manner, and quickness of resource, and agreeable smile in the teeth of peril, had won for him before he had the legal right to fight much. And Robin—as he shall still be called while the memory of Flamborough endures—regarded Jack Anerley with fatherly affection, and hoped to put strength into his character.

However, one necessary step toward that is to keep the character surviving; and in the world's pell-mell now beginning, the uproar alone was enough to kill some, and the smoke sufficient to choke the rest. Many a British sailor who, by the mercy of Providence, survived that day, never could hear a word concerning any other battle (even though a son of his own delivered it down a trumpet), so furious was the concussion of the air, the din of roaring metal, and the clash of cannon-balls which met in the air, and split up into founts of iron.

No less than seven French and Spanish ships agreed with one accord to fall upon and destroy Lord Nelson's ship. And if they had only adopted a rational mode of doing it, and shot straight, they could hardly have helped succeeding. Even as it was, they succeeded far too well; for they managed to make England rue the tidings of her greatest victory.

In the storm and whirl and flame of battle, when shot flew as close as the teeth of a hay-rake, and fire blazed into furious eyes, and then with a blow was quenched forever, and raging men flew into pieces—some of which killed their dearest friends—who was he that could do more than attend to his own business? Nelson had known that it would be so, and had twice enjoined it in his orders; and when he was carried down to die, his dying mind was still on this. Robin Lyth was close to him when he fell, and helped to bear him to his plank of death, and came back with orders not to speak, but work.

Then ensued that crowning effort of misplaced audacity—the attempt to board and carry by storm the ship that still was Nelson's. The captain of the Redoubtable saw through an alley of light, between walls of smoke, that the quarter-deck of the Victory had plenty of corpses, but scarcely a life upon it. Also he felt (from the comfort to his feet, and the increasing firmness of his spinal column) that the heavy British guns upon the lower decks had ceased to throb and thunder into his own poor ship. With a bound of high spirits he leaped to a pleasing conclusion, and shouted, “Forward, my brave sons; we will take the vessel of war of that Nielson!”

This, however, proved to be beyond his power, partly through the inborn absurdity of the thing, and partly, no doubt, through the quick perception and former vocation of Robin Lyth. What would England have said if her greatest hero had breathed his last in French arms, and a captive to the Frenchman? Could Nelson himself have departed thus to a world in which he never could have put the matter straight? The wrong would have been redressed very smartly here, but perhaps outside his knowledge. Even to dream of it awakes a shudder; yet outrages almost as great have triumphed, and nothing is quite beyond the irony of fate.

But if free trade can not be shown as yet to have won for our country any other blessing, it has earned the last atom of our patience and fortitude by its indirect benevolence at this great time. Without free trade—in its sweeter and more innocent maidenhood of smuggling—there never could have been on board that English ship the Victory, a man, unless he were a runagate, with a mind of such laxity as to understand French. But Robin Lyth caught the French captain's words, and with two bounds, and a holloa, called up Britons from below. By this time a swarm of brave Frenchmen was gathered in the mizzen-chains and gangways of their ship, waiting for a lift of the sea to launch them into the English outworks. And scarcely a dozen Englishmen were alive within hail to encounter them. Not even an officer, till Robin Lyth returned, was there to take command of them. The foremost and readiest there was Jack Anerley, with a boarder's pike, and a brace of ship pistols, and his fine ruddy face screwed up as firm as his father's, before a big sale of wheat. “Come on, you froggies; we are ready for you,” he shouted, as if he had a hundred men in ambush.

They, for their part, failed to enter into the niceties of his language—which difficulty somehow used never to be felt among classic warriors—yet from his manner and position they made out that he offered let and hinderance. To remove him from their course, they began to load guns, or to look about for loaded ones, postponing their advance until he should cease to interfere, so clear at that time was the Gallic perception of an English sailor's fortitude. Seeing this to be so, Jack (whose mind was not well balanced) threw a powder-case amongst them, and exhibited a dance. But this was cut short by a hand-grenade, and, before he had time to recover from that, the deck within a yard of his head flew open, and a stunning crash went by.

Poor Jack Anerley lay quite senseless, while ten or twelve men (who were rushing up, to repel the enemy) fell and died in a hurricane of splinters. A heavy round shot, fired up from the enemy's main-deck, had shattered all before it; and Jack might thank the grenade that he lay on his back while the havoc swept over. Still, his peril was hot, for a volley of musketry whistled and rang around him; and at least a hundred and fifty men were watching their time to leap down on him.

Everything now looked as bad as could be, with the drifting of the smoke, and the flare of fire, and the pelting of bullets, and of grapnel from coehorns, and the screams of Frenchmen exulting vastly, with scarcely any Englishmen to stop them. It seemed as if they were to do as they pleased, level the bulwarks of English rights, and cover themselves with more glory than ever. But while they yet waited to give one more scream, a very different sound arose. Powder, and metal, and crash of timber, and even French and Spanish throats at their very highest pressure, were of no avail against the onward vigor and power of an English cheer. This cheer had a very fine effect. Out of their own mouths the foreigners at once were convicted of inferior stuff, and their two twelve-pounders crammed with grapnel, which ought to have scattered mortality, banged upward, as harmless as a pod discharging seed.

In no account of this great conflict is any precision observed concerning the pell-mell and fisticuff parts of it. The worst of it is that on such occasions almost everybody who was there enlarges his own share of it; and although reflection ought to curb this inclination, it seems to do quite the contrary. This may be the reason why nobody as yet (except Mary Anerley and Flamborough folk) seems even to have tried to assign fair importance to Robin Lyth's share in this glorious encounter. It is now too late to strive against the tide of fortuitous clamor, whose deposit is called history. Enough that this Englishman came up, with fifty more behind him, and carried all before him, as he was bound to do.


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