Yes, the day had been a wonderful success, as Captain Pond remarked after waving good-bye to his visitor and watching his chaise out of sight upon the Plymouth road. The Colonel's manner had been so affable, his appreciation of Looe and its scenery and objects of interest so whole-hearted, he had played his part in the day's entertainment with so unmistakable a zest!
"We are lucky," said Captain Pond. "Suppose, now, he had turned out to be some cross-grained martinet… the type is not unknown in the regular forces."
"He was intelligent, too," chimed in the Doctor,—"unlike some soldiers I have met whose horizon has been bounded by the walls of their barrack-square. Did you observe the interest he took in my account of our Giant's Hedge? He fully agreed with me that it must be pre-Roman, and allowed there was much to be said for the theory which ascribes it to the Druids."
Alas for these premature congratulations! They were to be rudely shattered within forty-eight hours, and by a letter addressed to Captain Pond in Colonel Taubmann's handwriting:—
"DEAR SIR,—The warmth of my reception on Tuesday and the hospitality of the good people of Looe—a hospitality which, pray be assured, I shall number amongst my most pleasant recollections—constrain me to write these few friendly words covering the official letter you will receive by this or the next post. In the hurry of leave-taking I had no time to discuss with you certain shortcomings which I was compelled to note in the gunnery of the E. and W. Looe Volunteer Artillery, or to suggest a means of remedy. But, to be brief, I think a fortnight's or three weeks' continuous practiceaway from all local distractions, and in a battery better situated than your own for the requirements of effective coast-defence, will give your company that experience for which mere enthusiasm, however admirable in itself, can never be an entirely satisfactory substitute."On the 2nd of next month the company (No. 17) of the R.A. at present stationed at Pendennis Castle, Falmouth, will be sailing for Gibraltar on active service. Their successors, the 22nd Company, now at Chatham, will not be due to replace them until the New Year. And I have advised that your company be ordered down to the Castle to fill up the interval with a few weeks of active training."May I say that I was deeply impressed by the concern you show in the health of your men? I agreed with well-nigh everything you said to me on this subject, and am confident you will in turn agree with me that nothing conduces more to the physical well-being of a body of troops, large or small, than an occasional change of air."With kind regards and a request that you will remember me to the ladies who contributed so much to the amenities of my visit.— Believe me, dear sir, your obedient servant,"H. R. TAUBMANN (Lieut.-Colonel R.A.)."
"DEAR SIR,—The warmth of my reception on Tuesday and the hospitality of the good people of Looe—a hospitality which, pray be assured, I shall number amongst my most pleasant recollections—constrain me to write these few friendly words covering the official letter you will receive by this or the next post. In the hurry of leave-taking I had no time to discuss with you certain shortcomings which I was compelled to note in the gunnery of the E. and W. Looe Volunteer Artillery, or to suggest a means of remedy. But, to be brief, I think a fortnight's or three weeks' continuous practiceaway from all local distractions, and in a battery better situated than your own for the requirements of effective coast-defence, will give your company that experience for which mere enthusiasm, however admirable in itself, can never be an entirely satisfactory substitute."On the 2nd of next month the company (No. 17) of the R.A. at present stationed at Pendennis Castle, Falmouth, will be sailing for Gibraltar on active service. Their successors, the 22nd Company, now at Chatham, will not be due to replace them until the New Year. And I have advised that your company be ordered down to the Castle to fill up the interval with a few weeks of active training."May I say that I was deeply impressed by the concern you show in the health of your men? I agreed with well-nigh everything you said to me on this subject, and am confident you will in turn agree with me that nothing conduces more to the physical well-being of a body of troops, large or small, than an occasional change of air."With kind regards and a request that you will remember me to the ladies who contributed so much to the amenities of my visit.— Believe me, dear sir, your obedient servant,"H. R. TAUBMANN (Lieut.-Colonel R.A.)."
"DEAR SIR,—The warmth of my reception on Tuesday and the hospitality of the good people of Looe—a hospitality which, pray be assured, I shall number amongst my most pleasant recollections—constrain me to write these few friendly words covering the official letter you will receive by this or the next post. In the hurry of leave-taking I had no time to discuss with you certain shortcomings which I was compelled to note in the gunnery of the E. and W. Looe Volunteer Artillery, or to suggest a means of remedy. But, to be brief, I think a fortnight's or three weeks' continuous practiceaway from all local distractions, and in a battery better situated than your own for the requirements of effective coast-defence, will give your company that experience for which mere enthusiasm, however admirable in itself, can never be an entirely satisfactory substitute."On the 2nd of next month the company (No. 17) of the R.A. at present stationed at Pendennis Castle, Falmouth, will be sailing for Gibraltar on active service. Their successors, the 22nd Company, now at Chatham, will not be due to replace them until the New Year. And I have advised that your company be ordered down to the Castle to fill up the interval with a few weeks of active training."May I say that I was deeply impressed by the concern you show in the health of your men? I agreed with well-nigh everything you said to me on this subject, and am confident you will in turn agree with me that nothing conduces more to the physical well-being of a body of troops, large or small, than an occasional change of air."With kind regards and a request that you will remember me to the ladies who contributed so much to the amenities of my visit.— Believe me, dear sir, your obedient servant,"H. R. TAUBMANN (Lieut.-Colonel R.A.)."
I will dare to say that Colonel Taubmann never fired a shot in his life— round-shot, bomb or grenade, grape or canister—with a tithe of the effect wrought by this letter. For a whole day Looe was stunned, dismayed, desolated.
"And in Christmas week, of all holy seasons!" commented Gunner Spettigew. "And the very first Christmas the Die-hards have started a goose club!"
"And this," said Sergeant Pengelly, with bitter intonation, "is Peace on Earth and Good-will toward men, or what passes for such in the regulars. Wi' the carol-practisin' begun too, an' nobody left behind to take the bass!"
"Tis the Army all over!" announced William Henry Phippin, who had served as bo'sun's mate under Lord Howe. "I always was in two minds about belongin' to that branch o' the Service: for, put it how you will, 'tis a come-down for a fellow that has once known the satisfaction to march ahead of 'em. There was a sayin' we had aboard the oldQueen Charlotte— 'A messmate afore a shipmate,' we said, 'an' a shipmate afore a dog, an' a dog, though he be a yellow dog, afore a sojer.' But what vexes me is the triumphant arches we wasted on such a chap."
"My love," said the Doctor to his spouse, "I congratulate you on your fancy forprofessionalsoldiers. You are married to one, anyway."
"Dearest!"
"It comes to that, or very nearly." He groaned. "To be separated for three weeks from my Araminta! And at this time of all others!"—for the lady was again expecting to become a mother: as in due course (I am happy to say) she did, and presented him with a bouncing boy and was in turn presented with a silver cradle. But this, though the great event of the Doctor's mayoralty, will not excuse a longer digression.
Captain Pond kept his head, although upon his first perusal of the letter he had come near to fainting, and for a week after walked the streets with a tragic face. There was no appeal. Official instructions had followed the Colonel's informal warning. The die was cast. The Die-hards must march, must for three weeks be immured in Pendennis Castle, that infernal fortress.
To his lasting credit he pretermitted no effort to prepare his men and steel them against the ordeal, no single care for their creature-comforts. Short though the notice was, he interviewed the Mayoress and easily persuaded her to organise a working-party of ladies, who knitted socks, comforters, woollen gloves, etc., for the departing heroes, and on the eve of the march-out aired these articles singly and separately that they might harbour no moisture from the feminine tears which had too often bedewed the knitting. He raised a house-to-house levy of borrowed feather-beds. Geese for the men's Christmas dinner might be purchased at Falmouth, and joints of beef, and even turkeys (or so he was credibly informed). But on the fatal morning he rode out of Looe with six pounds of sausages and three large Christmas puddings swinging in bags at his saddle-bow.
What had sustained him was indignation, mingled with professional pride. He had been outraged, hurt in the very seat of local patriotism: but he would show these regulars what a Volunteer company could do. Yes, and (Heaven helping him) he would bring his men home unscathed, in health, with not a unit missing or sick or sorry. Out of this valley of humiliation every man should return—ay, and with laurels!
Forbear, my Muse, to linger over the scene of that departure! Captain Pond (I say) rode with six pounds of sausages and three puddings dangling at his saddle-bow. The Doctor rode in an ambulance-waggon crammed to the tilt with materials ranging from a stomach-pump to a backgammon-board; appliances not a few to restore the sick to health, appliances in far larger numbers to preserve health in the already healthy. Mr. Clogg, the second lieutenant, walked with a terrier and carried a bag of rats by way of provision against the dull winter evenings. Gunner Oke had strapped an accordion on top of his knapsack. Gunner Polwarne staggered under a barrel of marinated pilchards. Gunner Spettigew travelled light with a pack of cards, for fortune-telling and Pope Joan. He carried a Dream-Book and Wesley's Hymns in either hip-pocket (and very useful they both proved). Uncle Issy had lived long enough to know that intellectual comforts are more lasting than material ones, and cheaper, and that in the end folks are glad enough to give material comforts in payment for them.
It was in the dusk of the December evening—the day, to be precise, was Saturday, and the hour 5 p.m.—that our Die-hards, footsore and dispirited, arrived in Falmouth, and tramped through the long streets to Pendennis. The weather (providentially) was mild; but much rain had fallen, and the roads were heavy. Uncle Issy had ridden the last ten miles in the ambulance, and the print of a single-Glo'ster cheese adhered thereafter to the seat of his regimentals until the day when he handed them in and the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery passed out of this transitory life to endure in memory.
They found the Castle in charge of a cross-grained, superannuated sergeant and his wife; of whom the one was partially deaf and the other totally. Also the regulars had marched out but three days before, and the apartments—the dormitories especially—were not in a condition to propitiate the squeamish. Also No. 17 Company of the Royal Artillery had included a notable proportion of absent-minded gunners who, in the words of a latter-day bard, had left a lot of little things behind them. Lieutenant Clogg, on being introduced to his quarters, openly and with excuse bewailed the trouble he had taken in carrying a bag of rats many weary miles. A second terrier would have been a wiser and less superfluous investment. As for the commissariat, nothing had been provided. The superannuated sergeant alleged that he had received no orders, and added cheerlessly that the shops in Falmouth had closed an hour ago. He wound up by saying incisively that he, for his part, had no experience of Volunteers nor of what they expected: and (to pass over this harrowing part of the business as lightly as may be) the Die-hards breakfasted next morning on hastily-cooked Christmas puddings.
The garrison clock had struck eleven before, dog-tired as they were, they had reduced the two dormitories to conditions of cleanliness in which it was possible for self-respecting men to lie down and take their sleep. And so they laid themselves down and slept, in their dreams remembering Looe and their families and rooms that, albeit small, were cosy, and beds that smelt of lavender. Captain Pond had apportioned to each man three fingers of rum, and in cases of suspected catarrh had infused a dose of quinine.
It was midnight before he lay down in his quarters, on bedding he had previously aired before a sullen fire. He closed his eyes—but only to sleep by fits and starts. How could his men endure three weeks of this? He must keep them occupied, amused.… He thought of amateur theatricals.… Good God! how unsatisfying a supper was biscuit, after a long day's ride! Wasthishow the regular army habitually lived?… What a pig's-sty of a barracks!… Well, it would rest upon Government, if he buried his men in this inhospitable hole. He raised himself on his pillow and stared at the fire. Strange, to think that only a few hours ago he had slept in Looe, and let the hours strike unheeded on his own parish clock! Strange! And his men must be feeling it no less, and he was responsible for them, for three weeks ofthis— and for their good behaviour!
Early next morning (Sunday) he was astir, and having shaved and dressed himself by lantern light, stepped down to the gate and roused up the superannuated sergeant with a demand to be conducted round the fortifications.
The sergeant—who answered to the incredible name of Topase—wanted to know what was the sense of worriting about the fortifications at this hour of the day: and, if his language verged on insubordination, his wife's was frankly mutinous. Captain Pond heard her from her bed exhorting her husband to close the window and not let in the draught upon her for the sake of any little Volunteer whipper-snapper in creation. "What next?" she should like to know, and "Tell the pestering man there's a bed of spring bulbs planted close under the wall, an' if he goes stampin' upon my li'l crocuges I'll have the law of him."
Captain Pond's authority, however, was not to be disobeyed, and a quarter of an hour later he found himself, with Sergeant Topase beside him, on the platform of the eighteen-pounder battery, watching the first rosy streaks of dawn as they spread and travelled across the misty sea at his feet. The hour was chilly, but it held the promise of a fine day; and in another twenty minutes, when the golden sunlight touched the walls of the old fortress and ran up the flagstaff above it in a needle of flame, he gazed around him on his temporary home, on the magnificent harbour, on the town of Falmouth climbing tier upon tier above the waterside, on the scintillating swell of the Channel without, and felt his chest expand with legitimate pride.
By this time the Doctor and Lieutenant Clogg had joined him, and their faces too wore a hopefuller, more contented look. Life at Pendennis might not prove so irksome after all, with plenty of professional occupation to relieve it. Captain Pond slipped an arm within the Doctor's, and together the three officers made a slow tour of the outer walls, plying Sergeant Topase with questions and disregarding his sulky hints that he, for his part, would be thankful to get a bite of breakfast.
"But what have we here?" asked Captain Pond suddenly, coming to a halt.
Their circuit had brought them round to the landward side of the fortress, to a point bearing south by east of the town, when through a breach—yes, a clean breach!—in the wall they gazed out across the fosse and along a high turfy ridge that roughly followed the curve of the cliffs and of the seabeach below. Within the wall, and backed by it,—save where the gap had been broken,—stood a group of roofless and half-dismantled outbuildings which our three officers studied in sheer amazement.
"What on earth is the meaning of this?"
"Married quarters," answered Sergeant Topase curtly. "You won't want 'em."
"Married quarters?"
"Leastways, that's what they was until three days ago. The workmen be pullin' 'em down to put up new ones."
"And in pulling them down they have actually pulled down twelve feet of the wall protecting the fortress?"
"Certainly: a bit of old wall and as rotten as touch. Never you fret: the Frenchies won't be comin' along whilstyou'rehere!"—thus Sergeant Topase in tones of fine sarcasm.
"By whose orders has this breach been made?" Captain Pond demanded sternly.
"Nobody's. I believe, if you ask me, 'twas just a little notion of the contractor's, for convenience of getting in his material and carting away the rubbish. He'll fix up the wall again as soon as the job's over, and the place will be stronger than ever."
"Monstrous!" exclaimed Captain Pond. "Monstrous! And you tell us he has done this without orders and no one has interfered!"
"I don't see what there is to fret about, savin' your presence," the old sergeant persisted. "And, any way, 'twon't take the man three days at the outside to cart off the old buildings. Allow another four for getting in the new material—"
"Seven days! seven days! And Great Britain engaged at this moment in the greatest war of its history! Oh, Doctor, Doctor—these professionals!"
Sergeant Topase shrugged his shoulders, and, concluding that his duties as a cicerone were at an end, edged away to the gatehouse for his breakfast.
"Oh, these professionals!" ingeminated Captain Pond again, eyeing the breach and the dismantled married quarters. "A whole seven days! And for that period we are to rest exposed not only to direct attack, but to the gaze of the curious public—nay, perchance even (who knows?) to the paid spies of the Corsican! Doctor, we must post a guard here at once! Incredible that even this precaution should have been neglected! Nay,"— with a sudden happy inspiration he clapped the Doctor on the shoulder,— "did he say 'twould take three days to level this sorry heap?"
"He did."
"It shall not take us an hour! By George, sir, before daylight to-morrow we'll run up a nine-pounder, and have this rubbish down in five minutes! Yes, yes—and I'd do it to-day, if it weren't the Sabbath."
"I don't see that the Sabbath ought to count against what we may fairly call the dictates of national urgency," said the Doctor. "Salus patriæ suprema lex."
"What's that?"
"Latin. It means that when the State is endangered all lesser considerations should properly go to the wall. To me your proposal seems a brilliant one; just the happy inspiration that would never occur to the hidebound professional mind in a month of Sundays. And in your place I wouldn't allow the Sabbath or anything else—"
A yell interrupted him—a yell, followed by the sound of a scuffle and, after a moment's interval, by a shout of triumph. These noises came from the roofless married quarters, and the voice of triumph was Lieutenant Clogg's, who had stepped inside the building while his seniors stood conversing, and now emerged dragging a little man by the collar, while with his disengaged hand he flourished a paper excitedly.
"A spy! A spy!" he panted.
"Hey?"
"I caught him in the act!" Mr. Clogg thrust the paper into his Captain's hands and, turning upon his captive, shook him first as one shakes a fractious child, and then planted him vigorously on his feet and demanded what he had to say for himself.
The captive could achieve no more than a stutter. He was an extremely little man, dressed in the Sunday garb of a civilian—fustian breeches, moleskin waistcoat, and a frock of blue broadcloth, very shiny at the seams. His hat had fallen off in the struggle, and his eyes, timorous as a hare's, seemed to plead for mercy while he stammered for speech.
"Good Lord!" cried Captain Pond, gazing at the paper. "Look, Doctor—a plan!"
"A sketch plan!"
"A plan of our defences!"
"Damme, a plan of the whole Castle, and drawn to scale! Search him, Clogg; search the villain!"
"Wha-wha-what," stuttered the little man, "WHAT'S the m-m-meaning of this? S-some-body shall p-pay, as sure as I—I—I—"
"Pay, sir?" thundered Captain Pond as Mr. Clogg dragged forth yet another bundle of plans from the poor creature's pocket. "You have seen the last penny you'll ever draw in your vile trade."
"Wha-whathave I—I—I DONE?"
"Heaven knows, sir—Heaven, which has interposed at this hour to thwart this treacherous design—alone can draw the full indictment against your past. Clogg, march him off to the guard-room: and you, Doctor, tell Pengelly to post a guard outside the door. In an hour's time I may feel myself sufficiently composed to examine him, and we will hold a full inquiry to-morrow. Good Lord!"—Captain Pond removed his hat and wiped his brow. "Good Lord! what an escape!"
"I'll—I'll have the l-l-law on you for t-th-this!" stammered the prisoner sulkily an hour later when Captain Pond entered his cell.
No other answer would he give to the Captain's closest interrogatory. Only he demanded that a constable should be fetched. He was told that in England a constable had no power of interference with military justice.
"Y-you are a s-s-silly fool!" answered the prisoner, and turned away to his bench.
Captain Fond, emerging from the cell, gave orders to supply him with a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. Down in Falmouth the bells were ringing for church. In the Castle a Sabbath stillness reigned. Sergeant Topase, napping and reading his Bible by turns before the gatehouse fire, remarked to his wife that on the whole these silly amachoors were giving less trouble than he had expected.
At 7.45 next morning Gunner Israel Spettigew, having relieved guard with Gunner Oke at the breach, and advised him to exhibit a dose of black-currant wine before turning in (as a specific against a chill in the extremities), was proceeding leisurably to cut himself a quid of tobacco when he became aware of two workmen—carpenters they appeared to be in the dim light—approaching the entry.
"Who goes there?" he challenged. "'Tis no use my asking you for the countersign, because I've forgotten it myself: but there's No Admittance except on Business."
"That's what we've come upon," said one of the workmen. "By the looks of 'ee you must be one of the new Artillerymen from Looe that can't die however hard they want to. But didn' Jackson tell you to look out for us?"
"Who's Jackson?"
"Why, our Clerk of the Works. He's somewhere inside surely? He usually turns up half an hour ahead of anyone else, his heart's so set on this job."
"I haven't seen 'en go by, to my knowledge," said Uncle Issy.
The two men looked at one another. "Not turned up? Then there must be something the matter with 'en this morning: taken poorly with over-work, I reckon. Oh, you can't miss Jackson when once you've set eyes on him—a little chap with a face like a rabbit and a 'pediment in his speech."
"Hey?" said Uncle Issy sharply. "What? A stammerin' little slip of a chap in a moleskin waistcoat?"
"That's the man. Leastways I never see'd him wear a moleskin waistcoat, 'xcept on Sundays."
"But itwasSunday!"
"Hey?"
"Oh, tell me—tell me, that's dear souls! Makes a whistly noise in his speech—do he?—like a slit bellows?"
"That's Jackson, to a hair. But—but—then youhevseen 'en?"
"Seen 'en?" cried Uncle Issy. "A nice miss I ha'n't helped to bury 'en, by this time! Oh yes… if you want Jackson he's inside: an' what's more, he's a long way inside. But you can't want him half so much as he'll be wantin' you."
My grand-uncle pushed the decanter of brown sherry: a stout old-fashioned decanter, with shoulders almost as square as his own, and a silver chain about them bearing a silver label—not unlike the badge and collar which he himself wore on full ceremonial occasions.
"Three times round the world," he said, "and as yet only twice around the table. You must do it justice, gentlemen."
"A great wine, Admiral!" said the Rector, filling and sipping, with half-closed eyes. "They have a brown sherry at Christ Church which may challenge it, perhaps… The steward remembers my weakness when I go up to preach my afternoon sermon at St. Mary's. There was talk in Congregation, the other day, of abolishing afternoon sermons, on the ground that nobody attended them; but this, as one speaker feelingly observed, would deprive the country clergy of a dear privilege.…" The Rector took another sip. "An heroic contest, between two such wines!"
"Talking of heroic contests, mine came to me by means of a prize-fight," said my grand-uncle, with a glance down the table at us two youngsters who were sipping and looking wise, as became connoisseurs fresh from the small beer of a public school. At the word 'prize-fight,' Dick and I pricked up our ears. To us the Admiral was at once a prodigiously fine fellow and a prodigiously old one—though he dated after Nelson's day, to us he reached well back to it, and in fact he had been a midshipman in the last two years of the Great War. Certainly he belonged to the old school rather than to the new. He had fought under Codrington at Navarino. He had talked with mighty men of the ring—Tom Cribb, Jem Mace, Belcher, Sayers.
"What is more," said he, "though paid late, the wine you're drinking is the first prize-money I ever took; in my first ship, lads, and within forty-eight hours of joining her.… Youth, youth!"—as the decanter came around to him he refilled his glass.—"And to think that I was a good two years younger than either of you!"
"A prize-fight? You'll tell us about it, sir?" ventured Dick eagerly.
"The Rector has heard the yarn before, I doubt?" said the old man, with a glance which told that he only needed pressing.
"That objection," the Rector answered tactfully, "has been lodged against certain of my sermons. I never let it deter me."
"There's a moral in it, too," said my grand-uncle, visibly reassured.
Well, as for the moral, I cannot say that I have ever found it, to swear by. But here is my grand-uncle's story.
If you want a seaman, they say, you must catch him young, and I will add that the first hour for him is the best. Eh? Young men have talked to me of the day when they first entered Oxford or Cambridge—of the moment, we'll say, when the London coach topped the Shotover rise in the early morning, and they saw all the towers and spires at their feet. I am willing to believe it good. And the first kiss,—when you and she are young fools and over head and ears in love,—you'll know what I mean, you boys, when you grow to it, and I am not denying that it brings heaven down to earth and knocks their heads together. But for bliss—sheer undiluted bliss—match me the day when a boy runs upstairs and sees his midshipman's outfit laid out on the bed—blue jacket, brass buttons, dirk, yes, and in my sea time a kind of top-hat that fined away towards the top, with a cockade. I tell you I spent an hour looking at myself in my poor mother's cheval-glass, and then walked out across the common to show myself to my aunts,—rest their souls!—who inhabited a cottage about a mile from ours, and had been used hitherto, when entertaining me, to ask one another in French if the offer of a glass of beer would, considering my age, be permissible. I drank sherry with them that afternoon, and left them (I make no doubt) with a kind of tacit assurance that, come what might, they were henceforward secure of protection.
The next day—though it blew a short squall of tears when I took leave of my mother and climbed aboard the coach—was scarcely less glorious. I wore my uniform, and nursed my toasting-fork proudly across my knees; and the passengers one and all made much of me, in a manner which I never allowed to derogate into coddling. At The Swan with Two Necks, Cheapside, when the coach set me down, I behaved as a man should; ordered supper and a bed; and over my supper discussed the prospects of peace with an affable, middle-aged bagman who shared my box. He thought well of the prospects of peace. For me, I knitted my brows and gave him to understand that circumstances might alter cases.
From The Swan with Two Necks I took coach next morning—proceeding from the bar to the door between two lines of smiling domestics—and travelled down to the Blue Posts, the famous Blue Posts, at Portsmouth. In the Blue Posts there was a smoking-room, and across the end of it ran a sofa on which (tradition said) you might count on finding a midshipman asleep. I was not then aware of the tradition; but sure enough a midshipman reclined there when I entered the room. He was not asleep, but engaged in perusing something which he promptly, even hastily, stowed away in the breast of his tunic—a locket, I make no doubt. He sat up and regarded me; and I stared back at him, how long I will not say, but long enough for me to perceive that his jacket buttons were as glossy as my own. I noted this; but it conveyed little to me, for my imagination clothed in equal splendour everyone in his Majesty's service.
He appeared to be young, even delicately youthful; but I felt it necessary to assert my manhood before him, and rang for the waiter.
"A glass of beer, if you please," said I.
The waiter lifted his eyebrows and looked from me to the sofa.
"Oneglass of beer, sir?" he asked.
"I hardly like to offer—" I began lamely, following his glance.
"It is more usual, sir.Inthe Service. Between two young gentlemen as, by the addresses on their chestes, is both for theMelpomeny: and newly joined."
"Hulloa!" said I, turning round to the sofa, "are you in the same fix as myself?"
Reading in his face that it was so, I corrected my order, and waved the waiter to the door with creditable self-possession. As soon as he had withdrawn, "My name's Rodd," said I. "What's yours?"
"Hartnoll," he said; "from Norfolk."
"I come from the West—Devonshire," said I, and with an air of being proud of it; but added, on an afterthought, "Norfolk must be a fine county, though I've never seen it. Nelson came from there, didn't he?"
"His place is only six miles from ours," said Hartnoll. "I've seen it scores of times."
And with that he stuck his hands suddenly in his pockets, turned away from me, and stared very resolutely out of the dirty bow-window.
When the waiter had brought the drinks and retired again, Hartnoll confessed to me that he had never tasted beer. "You'll come to it in time," said I encouragingly: but I fancy that the tap at the Blue Posts was of a quality to discourage a first experiment. He tasted his, made a face, and suggested that I might deal with both glasses. I had, to begin with, ordered the beer out of bravado, and one gulp warned me that bravado might be carried too far. I managed, indeed—being on my mettle—to drain my own glass, and even achieved a noise which, with Hartnoll, might pass for a smacking of the lips: but we decided to empty his out of window, for fear of the waiter's scorn. We heaved up the lower sash—the effort it cost went some way to explaining the fustiness of the room—and Hartnoll tossed out the beer.
There was an exclamation below.
While we craned out to see what had happened, the waiter's voice smote on our ears from the doorway behind us, saying that young gentlemen would be young gentlemen all the world over, but a new beaver hat couldn't be bought for ten shillings. Everything must have a beginning, of course, but the gentleman below was annoyed, and threatened to come upstairs. It wasn't perhaps exactly the thing to come to the Port Admiral's ears: but if we left it tohim(the waiter) he had a notion that ten shillings, with a little tact, might clear it, and no bones broken.
Hartnoll, somewhat white in the face, tendered the sum, and very pluckily declined to let me bear my share. "You'll excuse me, Rodd," said he politely, "but I must make it a point of honour." Pale though he was, I believe he would have offered to fight me had I insisted.
Our instructions, it turned out, were identical. We were to be called for at the Blue Posts, and a boat would fetch us off to theMelpomenefrigate. Her captain, it appeared, was a kind of second cousin of Hartnoll's: for me, I had been recommended to him by a cousin of my father's, a member of the Board of Admiralty. Captain the Hon. John Suckling treated us, nearly or remotely as we might be connected with him, with impartiality that night. No boat came off for us. We learned that theMelpomenewas lying at Spithead, waiting (so the waiter told us) to carry out a new Governor with his suite to Barbados; which possibly accounted for her captain's neglect of such small fry as two midshipmen. The waiter, however, advised us not to trouble ourselves. He would make it all right in the morning.
So Hartnoll and I supped together in the empty coffee-room; compared notes; drank a pint of port apiece; and under its influence became boastful. Insensibly the adventure of the beaver hat came to wear the aspect of a dashing practical joke. It encouraged us to exchange confidences of earlier deeds of derring-do, of bird-nesting, of rook-shooting, of angling for trout, of encounters with poachers. I remember crossing my knees, holding up my glass to the light, and remarking sagely that some poachers were not at all bad fellows. Hartnoll agreed that it depended how you took 'em. We lauded Norfolk and Devon as sporting counties, and somehow it was understood that they respectively owed much of their reputation to the families of Hartnoll and Rodd. Hartnoll even hinted at a love-affair: but here I discouraged him with a frown, which implied that as seamen we saw that weakness in its proper light. I have wondered, since then, to what extent we imposed upon one another: in fact, I daresay, very little; but in spirit we gave and took fire. We were two ardent boys, and we meant well.
"Here's to the Service!" said I, holding up my glass.
"To the Service!" echoed Hartnoll; drained his, set it down, and looked across at me with a flushed face.
"With quick promotion and a plenty of prize-money!" said a voice in the doorway. It was that diabolical waiter again, entering to remove the cloth: and for a moment I felt my ears redden. Recovering myself, I told him pretty strongly not to intrude again upon the conversation of gentlemen; but added that since he had presumed to take part in the toast, he might fetch himself a tankard of beer and drink to it. Whereupon he thanked me, begged my pardon for having taken the liberty, and immediately took another, telling me that anyone havinghisexperience of young gentlemen could see with half an eye that I was born to command.
"Tell you what," said I to Hartnoll when the waiter had left us, "that fellow has given me a notion, with his talk about prize-money. I don't half like owing you my share of that ten shillings, you know."
"I thought we were agreed not to mention it again," said Hartnoll, firing up.
Said I, "But there's my view of it to be considered. Suppose now we put it on to our first prize-money—whoever makes the first haul to pay the whole ten shillings, and if we make it together, then each to pay five?"
"That won't do," said Hartnoll. "My head don't seem able to follow you very clearly, but if we make our first haul together, the matter remains where it is."
"Very well," I yielded. "Then I must get ahead of you, to get quits."
"You won't, though," said Hartnoll, pushing back his chair, and so dismissing the subject.
Now the evening being young, I proposed that we should sally forth together and view the town—in other words (though I avoided them) that we should flaunt our uniforms in the streets of Portsmouth. Hartnoll demurred: the boat (said he) might arrive in our absence. I rang for the waiter again, and took counsel with him. The waiter began by answering that the Blue Posts, though open day and night, would take it as a favour if gentlemen patronising the house would make it convenient to knock-in before midnight, and, if possible, retire to their rooms before that hour. He understood our desire to see the town; "it was, in fact, the usual thing, under the circumstances." If I would not take it as what he might call (and did) call a libbaty, there was a good many bad characters knocking about Portsmouth, pickpockets included, and especially at fair-time.
"Fair-time?" I asked.
"At the back of the town—Kingston way—you will find it," said he, with a jerk of the thumb.
"But," said I, "the frigate might send off a boat for us."
"Not a chance of it to-night, sir," said the waiter. "The southerly breeze has been bringing up a fog these two hours past, and the inside of the harbour is thick as soup. More by token, I've already sent word to the chambermaid to fill a couple of warming-pans. You're booked with us, gentlemen, till to-morrow morning."
Sure enough, descending to the street, we found it full of fog; and either the fog was of remarkable density, or Portsmouth furnished with the worst street-lamps in the world, for we had not walked five hundred yards before it dawned on me that to find our hostelry again might not be an entirely simple matter. Maybe the port wine had induced a haze of its own upon my sense of locality. I fancied, too, that the fresh air was affecting Hartnoll, unless his gait feigned a sea-roll to match his uniform. I felt a delicacy in asking him about it.
Another thing that surprised me was the emptiness of the streets. I had always imagined Portsmouth to be a populous town… but possibly its inhabitants were congregated around the fair, towards which we set ourselves to steer, guided by the tunding of distant drums. It mattered little If we lost our bearings, since everybody in Portsmouth must know the Blue Posts.
"Tell you what it is, Rodd," said Hartnoll, pulling up in a by-street and picking his words deliberately,—"tell you what accounts for it,"—he waved a hand at the emptiness surrounding us. "It's the press. Very night for it; and the men all hiding within doors."
"Nonsense," said I. "It's a deal likelier to be the Fat Woman or the Two-headed Calf."
"It's the press," insisted Hartnoll: and for the moment, when we emerged out of a side lane upon a square filled with flaring lights, the crashing of drums and cymbals, and the voices of showmen yelling in front of their booths, I had a suspicion that he was right. One or two women, catching sight of our uniforms, edged away swiftly, and, as they went, peered back into the darkness of the lane behind us. A few minutes later, as we dodged around the circumference of the crowd in search of an opening, we ran up against one of the women with her man in tow. She was arguing with him in a low, eager sort of voice, and he followed sulkily. At sight of us again she fetched up with a gasp of breath, almost with a squeal. The man drew himself up defiantly and began to curse us, but she quickly interrupted him, thrusting her open hand over his mouth, and drew him away down a dark courtyard.
After this we found ourselves in the glare immediately under the platform of a booth; and two minutes later were mounting the rickety steps, less of our own choice than by pressure of the crowd behind. The treat promised us within was the Siege of Copenhagen with real fireworks, which as an entertainment would do as well as another. On the way up Hartnoll whispered to me to keep my hands in my breeches pockets, if I carried my money there; and almost on the same instant cried out that someone had stolen his dirk. He stood lamenting, pointing to the empty sheath, while a stout woman at a table took our entrance-money with an impassive face. The Siege of Copenhagen was what you youngsters nowadays would call a 'fizzle,' I believe: or maybe Hartnoll's face of woe and groanings over his lost dirk damped the fireworks for me. But these were followed by a performing pony, which, after some tricks, being invited by his master to indicate among the audience a gentleman addicted to kissing the ladies and running away, thrust its muzzle affectionately into my waistcoat; whereat Hartnoll recovered his spirits at a bound, and treacherously laughed louder than any of the audience. I thought it infernally bad taste, and told him so. But, as it happened, I had a very short while to wait for revenge: for in the very next booth, being invited to pinch the biceps of the Fat Woman, my gentleman-of-the-world blushed to the eyes, cast a wild look around for escape, and turned, to fall into the arms of a couple of saucy girls who pushed him forward to hold him to his bargain. His eyes were red—he was positively crying with shame and anger—when we found ourselves outside under the torchlights that made flaming haloes in the fog.
"Hang it, Rodd! I've had enough of this fair. Let's get back to the Posts."
"What's the time?" said I, and felt for my watch.
My watch had disappeared.
It had been my mother's parting gift, and somehow the loss of it made me feel, with a shock, utterly alone in the world. Why on earth had I not clung to the respectable shelter of the Blue Posts? What a hollow mockery were these brazen cymbals, these hoarse inviting voices, these coarse show-cloths, these lights!
Curiously enough, and as if in instant sympathy with my dejection, the cymbals ceased to clash. The showmen began to extinguish their torches. I had lost my watch; Hartnoll did not own one. But we agreed that, at latest, the hour could not be much more than ten. Yet the shows were closing, the populace was melting away into the fog.
"I've had enough of this. Let's get back to the Posts," Hartnoll repeated. His eyes told me that up to two days ago, when he left home, nine o'clock or thereabouts had been his regular bedtime. It had been mine also.
One of the two saucy girls, happening to pass an instant before the booth above us extinguished its lights, spied us in dejected colloquy, and came forward. Hartnoll turned from her, but I made bold to ask her the nearest way to the Blue Posts.
I will give you her exact answer. She said—"Turn up on your right hand at the next turning, but, at the next turning of all, on your left; marry, at the very next turning, turn of no hand, but turn down indirectly to the Blue Postesses."
I have it by heart, because years after I found it in Shakespeare'sMerchant of Venice, where you may find it for yourselves, if you look, with the answer I might have made to her. She did not wait for one, however, but stood looking around in the fog as if for a guide. "Poor lads!" she went on, "you'll certainly never reach it without help, though everyone in Portsmouth knows the Blue Posts: and I'd go with you myself if I weren't due at the theatre in ten minutes' time. I have to call on the manager as soon as the house empties to-night; and if I miss it will mean losing an engagement." She puckered her brow thoughtfully, and her face in spite of the paint on it struck me as a lovely one, saucy no longer but almost angelically kind. I have never seen her again from that day to this, and I was a boy of fourteen, but I'll wager that girl had a good heart. "Your best plan," she decided, "is to step along with me, and at the stage door, or inside the theatre at any rate, we'll soon find somebody to put you in the way."
But here a small figure stepped out against us from the shadow of the platform, and a small shrillish voice piped up—
"For a copper, miss—or a copper apiece if they'll trust me. Find the Blue Postesses? W'y, I'd walk there on my head with my eyes bound!"
We stared down at her—for it was a small girl, a girl so diminutive that Hartnoll and I, who were not Anaks by any means, topped her by head and shoulders. She wore no shoes, no stockings, no covering for her head. Her hair, wet with the fog, draggled down, half-hiding her face, which was old for its age (as they say), and chiefly by reason of her sharp, gipsy-coloured eyes.
"For a copper apiece, miss, and honour bright!" said the waif.
The young actress turned to us with a laugh. "Why not?" she asked. "That is, if you're not above being beholden to the child? But I warn you not to pay her till you get to the Blue Posts."
I answered that any port was good in a storm, and the child should have sixpence if she proved as good as her word.
"So long, then, my pair of seventy-fours. I'm late for the theatre already. Good-night! and when you tuck yourselves in to bye-low don't forget to dream of your mammies." Bending quickly, she kissed Hartnoll on the cheek, and was in the act to offer me a like salute when I dodged aside, angered by her last words. She broke into a laugh like a chime of bells, made a pretty pout at me with her lips and disappeared into the darkness. Then it struck me that I need not have lost my temper; but I was none the more inclined to let Hartnoll down easily.
"I call that pretty meek," said I, as we walked off together, the child pattering, barefoot, beside us.
"What's the matter?" asked Hartnoll.
"Why, to let that girl kiss you—like a baby!"
"Sure you're not thinking of sour grapes?"
"I take you to witness," said I, "that she tried it on and I wouldn't let her."
"The more fool you!" retorted Hartnoll, edging away from me in dudgeon— but I knew he was more than half ashamed. Just at that moment to my astonishment I felt the child at my side reach up and touch my hand.
"Ugh!" said I, drawing it away quickly. "Paws off, please! Eh?—what's this?" For she was trying to thrust something into it and to close my fingers upon it.
"Hush!" she whispered. "It's your watch."
I gave a whistle. "My watch? How the deuce didyoucome by my watch?"
"Prigged it," said the child in a business-like voice. "Don't know why I gave it back: seemed that I wanted to. That's why I offered to come with you: and now I'm glad. Don't care if Idoget a hiding."
For the moment, while she plodded alongside, I could only feel the watch over in my hand, making sure that it was really mine.
"But," said I, after a long pause of wonder, "you don't suppose thatIwant to give you a hiding, eh?—and you a girl, too!"
"No."
"Then who's going to beat you?"
"Mother." After a moment she added reassuringly, "But I've got another inside o' my bodice."
I whistled again, and called up Hartnoll, who had been lagging behind sulkily. But he lost his sulks when I showed him the watch: and he too whistled, and we stood stock-still gazing at the child, who had halted with one bare foot on the edge of the gutter.
"She has another about her," said I. "She confessed it."
"Good Lord!" As the child made a motion to spring away, Hartnoll stepped out across the gutter and intercepted her. "I—I say," he stammered, "you don't by any chance happen to have my dirk?"
She fell to whimpering. "Lemme go… I took pity on yer an' done yer a kindness… put myself out o' the way, I did, and this is what I get for it. Thought you was kind-hearted, I did, and—if you don't lemme go, I'll leave you to find your way, and before mornin' the crimps'll get you." She threatened us, trembling with passion, shaking her finger at the ugly darkness.
"Look here," said I, "if you said anything about another watch, understand that I didn't hear. You don't suppose I want to take it from you? I'm only too glad to have my own again, and thank you."
"I thought'emight," she said, only half-reassured, jerking a nod towards Hartnoll. "As for his dirk, I never took it, but I know the boy as did. He lives the way we're going, and close down by the water; and if you spring a couple o' tanners maybe I'll make him give it up."
"I'd give all I possess to get back that dirk," said Hartnoll, and I believe he meant it.
"Come along, then,"—and we plunged yet deeper into the dark bowels of Portsmouth. The child had quite recovered her confidence, and as we went she explained to us quite frankly why her mother would be angry. The night—if I may translate out of her own language, which I forget— was an ideal one for pocket-picking, what with the crowd at the fair, and the fog, and (best of all, it seemed) the constables almost to a man drawn off to watch the roads around Fareham.
"But what," I asked, "is the matter with Fareham?"
My ignorance staggered her. "What? Hadn't we heard of the great Prize-fight?" We had not. "Not the great fight coming off between Jem Clark and the Dustman?" We were unfamiliar even with the heroes' names.
She found this hard—very hard—to believe. Why, Portsmouth was full of it, word having come down from London the date was to-morrow, and that Fareham, or one of the villages near Fareham, the field of battle. The constabulary, too, had word of it—worse luck—and were on their mettle to break up the meeting, as the sportsmen of Portsmouth and its neighbourhood were all on their mettle to attend it. This, explained the child in her thin clear voice,—I can hear it now discoursing its sad, its infinitely weary wisdom to us two Johnny Newcomes,—this was the reason why the fair had closed early. The show-folk were all waiting, so to speak, for a nod. The tip given, they would all troop out northward, on each other's heels, greedy for the aftermath of the fight. Rumour filled the air, and every rumour chased after the movements of the two principals and their trainers, of whom nothing was known for certain save that they had left London, and (it was said) had successfully dodged a line of runners posted for some leagues along the Bath and Portsmouth roads. For an hour, soon after sunset, the town had been stunned by a report that Brighton, after all, would be the venue: a second report said Newbury, or at any rate a point south-west of Reading. Fire drives out fire: a third report swore positively that Clark and the Dustman were in Portsmouth, in hiding, and would run the cordon in the small hours of the morning.
So much—and also that her own name was Meliar-Ann and her mother kept a sailor's lodging-house—the small creature told us, still trotting by our side, until we found ourselves walking alongside a low wall over which we inhaled strong odours of the sea and of longshore sewage, and spied the riding-lights of the harbour looming through the fog. At the end of this we came to the high walls of a row of houses, all very quiet and black to the eye, except that here and there a chink of light showed through a window-shutter or the sill of a street-door. Throughout that long walk I had an uncanny sensation as of being led through a town bewitched, hushed, but wakeful and expectant of something.… I can get no nearer to explaining. We must have passed a score of taverns at least; of that I have assured myself by many a later exploration of Portsmouth: and in those days a Portsmouth tavern never closed day or night, save for the death of a landlord, nor always for that. But to-night a murmur at most distinguished it from the other houses in the street.
Meliar-Ann solved the puzzle for us, with a wise nod of the head—
"There's a press out; or elst they're expecting one," she said.
I heard a distant clock chiming for midnight as we followed her along this row of houses. Ahead of us a door opened, throwing a thin line of light upon the roadway, and was closed again softly, after the person within had stood listening (as it seemed to me) for five seconds or so.
Meliar-Ann started suddenly in front of us, spreading her arms out, then slowly backwards, and so motioning us to halt under the shadow of the wall. Obeying, we saw her tiptoe forwards, till, coming to the door which had just been closed, she crept close and tapped on it softly, yet in a way that struck me as being deliberate. Afterwards, thinking it over, I felt pretty sure that the child knocked by code.
At all events the door opened again, almost at once and as noiselessly as before. Hartnoll and I squeezed our bodies back in the foggy shadow, and I heard a voice ask, "Is that Smithers?" To this Meliar-Ann made some response which I could not catch, but its effect was to make the voice—a woman's—break out in a string of querulous cursings. "Drat the child!" it said (or rather, it said something much stronger which I won't repeat before the Rector. Eh, Rector—what's that you say?Maxima debetur pueris—oh, make yourself easy: I won't corrupt their morals). "Drat the child!" it said, then, or words to that effect. "Bothering here at this time of night, when Bill's been a-bed this hour and a half, and time you was the same." To this Meliar-Ann made, and audibly, the briefest possible answer. She said, "You lie." "Strike me dead!" replied the woman's voice in the doorway. "You lie," repeated the child; "and you'd best belay to that. Bill's been stealin' and got himself into trouble… a midshipman's dirk, it was, and he was seen taking it. I've run all this way to warn him.…" The two voices fell to muttering. "You can slip inside if you like and tell him quietly," said the woman after a while. "He's upstairs and asleep too, for all I know. If he brought any such thing home with himInever saw it, and to that I'll take my oath."
But here another and still angrier voice—a virago's—broke in from the passage behind, demanding to know if the door was being kept open to invite the whole town. The child stood her ground on the doorstep. An instant later a hand reached out, clutched her—it seemed by the hair— and dragged her inside. Then followed a strangling sob and the thud of heavy blows—
"Rodd, I can't stand this," whispered Hartnoll.
I answered, "Nor I;" and together we made a spring for it and hurled into the passage, bearing back the woman who tried to hold the door against us.
At the rush of our footsteps the virago dropped Meliar-Ann and fled down the passage towards a doorway, through which she burst, screaming. The child, borne forward by our combined weight, tottered and fell almost across the threshold of this room, where a flight of stairs, lit by a dingy lamp, led up into obscure darkness. On the third stair under the lamp I caught a momentary vision of a dirty, half-naked boy standing with a drawn dirk in his hand, and with that, my foot catching against Meliar-Ann's body, I pitched past, head foremost, into the lighted room.
As I fell I heard, or seemed to hear, a scuffle of feet, followed by a shout from Hartnoll behind us—"My dirk! You dirty young villain!"—and another stampede, this time upon the stairway. Then, all of a sudden, the room was quiet, and I picked myself up and fell back against the door-post, face to face with half a dozen women.
They were assuredly the strangest set of females I had ever set eyes on, and the tallest-grown: nor did it relieve my astonishment to note that they wore bonnets and shawls, as if for a journey, and that two or three were smoking long clay pipes. The room, in fact, was thick with tobacco-smoke, through the reek of which my eyes travelled to a disorderly table crowded with glasses and bottles of strong waters, in the midst of which two tallow dips illuminated the fog; and beyond the table to the figure of a man stooping over a couple of half-packed valises; an enormously stout man swathed in greatcoats—a red-faced, clean-shaven man, with small piggish eyes which twinkled at me wickedly as I picked myself up, and he, too, stood erect to regard me.
"Press-gang be d—d!" he growled, answering the virago's call of warning. "More likely a spree ashore. And where mightyoucome from, young gentleman? And what might beyourbusiness to-night, breakin' into a private house?"
I cast a wild look over the bevy of forbidding females and temporised, backing a little until my shoulder felt the door-post behind me.
"I was trying to find my way to the Blue Posts," said I.
"Then," said the stout man with obvious truth, "you ain't found it yet."
"No, sir," said I.
"And that bein' the case, you'll march out and close the door behind you. Not,"—he went on more kindly—"that I'd be inhospitable to his Majesty's uniform, 'specially when borne by a man of your inches; and to prove it I'll offer you a drink before parting."
He reached out a hand towards one of the black bottles. I was about to thank him and decline, withdrawing my eyes from a black-bonneted female with (unless the shadow of her bonnet played me false) a stiff two-days' beard on her massive chin, when a noise of feet moving over the boards above, and of a scuffle, followed by loud whimpering, reminded me of Hartnoll.
"I don't go without my mate," I answered defiantly enough.
"And what the '—' have I to do with your mate?" demanded the stout man. "I tell you," said he, losing his temper and striding to the stairway, as the sounds of a struggle recommenced overhead, "if your mate don't hold the noise he's kicking up this instant, bringing trouble on respectable folks, I'll cut his liver out and fling it arter you into the street."
He would have threatened more, though he could hardly have threatened worse, but at this moment a door opened in the back of the room and a bullet-head thrust itself forward, followed by a pair of shoulders naked and magnificently shaped.
"Time to start, is it?" demanded the apparition. "Or elst what in thunder's the meanin' o' this racket, when I was just a-gettin' of my beauty sleep?"
The stout man let out a murderous oath, and, rushing back, thrust the door close upon the vision; but not before I had caught a glimpse of a woman's skirt enwrapping it from the waist down. The next moment one of the females had caught me up: I was propelled down the passage at a speed and with a force that made the blood sing in my ears, and shot forth into the darkness; where, as I picked myself up, half-stunned, I heard the house-door slammed behind me.
I take no credit for what I did next. No doubt I remembered that Hartnoll was still inside; but for aught I know it was mere shame and rage, and the thought of my insulted uniform, that made me rush back at the door and batter it with fists and feet. I battered until windows went up in the houses to right and left. Voices from them called to me; still I battered: and still I was battering blindly when a rush of footsteps came down the street and a hand, gripping me by the collar, swung me round into the blinding ray of a dark lantern.
"Hands off!" I gasped, half-choked, but fighting to break away.
"All right, my game-cock!" A man's knuckles pressed themselves firmly into the nape of my neck. "Hullo! By gosh, sir, if it ain't a midshipman!"
"A midshipman?" said a voice of command. "Slew him round here.… So it is, by George!… and a nice time of night! Hold him up, bo'sun—you needn't be choking the lad. Now then, boy, what's your name and ship?"
"Rodd, sir—of theMelpomene—and there's another inside—" I began.
"TheMelpomene!"
"Yes, sir: and there's my friend inside, and for all I know they're murdering him.… A lot of men dressed up as women.… His name's Hartnoll—" I struggled to make away for another rush at the door, and had my heel against it, when it gave way and Hartnoll came flying out into the night. The officer, springing past me, very cleverly thrust in a foot before it could be closed again.
"Men dressed as women, you say?"
"It's an old trick, sir," panted the bo'sun, pushing forward. "I've knowed it played ever since I served on a press. If you'll let the boys draw covert, sir… they've had a blank night, an' their tempers'll be the better for it."
He planted his shoulder against the door, begging for the signal, and the crew closed up around the step with a growl.
"My dirk!" pleaded Hartnoll. "I was getting it away, but one of 'em half-broke my arm and I dropped it again in the passage."
"Hey? Stolen your dirk—have they? That's excuse enough.… Right you are, men, and in you go!"
He waved his cocked hat to them as a huntsman lays on his hounds. In went the door with a crash, and in two twos I was swept up and across the threshold and surging with them down the passage. By reason of my inches I could see nothing of what was happening ahead. I heard a struggle, and in the midst of it a hand went up and smashed the lamp over the stairway, plunging us all in total darkness. But the lieutenant had his lantern ready, and by the rays of it the sailors burst open the locked door at the end and flung themselves upon the Amazons before the candles could be extinguished. At the same moment the lieutenant called back an order over my head to his whippers-in, to find their way around and take the house in the rear.
The women, though overmatched, fought like cats—or like bull-dogs rather. They were borne down to the floor, but even here for a while the struggle heaved and swayed this way and that, and I had barely time to snatch up one of the candles before table, bottles, glasses, went over in a general ruin. Above the clatter of it and the cursing, as I turned to stick the candle upright in a bottle on the dresser, I heard a cheer raised from somewhere in the back premises, and two men came rushing from the inner room—two men in feminine skirts, the one naked to the waist, the other clad about his chest and neck with a loose flannel shirt and a knotted Belcher handkerchief.
They paused for just about the time it would take you to count five; paused while they drew themselves up for the charge; and the lieutenant, reading the battle in their faces—and no ordinary battle either—shouted to close the door. He shouted none too soon. In a flash the pair were upon us, and at the first blow two sailors went down like skittles. There must have been at least twenty sailors in the room, and all of them willing, yet in that superb charge the pair drove them like sheep, and the naked man had even time to drag the dresser from the clamps fastening it to the wall and hurl it down between himself and three seamen running to take him in flank. The candle went down with it: but the lieutenant, skipping back to the closed door, very pluckily held up his lantern and called on his men, in the same breath forbidding them to use their cutlasses yet. In the circumstances this was generous, and I verily believe he would have been killed for it—the pair being close upon him and their fists going like hammers—had not one of the seamen whipped out a piece of rope and, ducking low, dived under the naked man's guard and lassoed him by the ankles. Two others, who had been stretched on the floor, simultaneously grabbed his companion by the skirts and wound their arms about his knees: and so in a trice both heroes were brought to ground. Even so they fought on until quieted by two judicious taps with the hilt of the boatswain's cutlass. I honestly thought he had killed them, but was assured they were merely stunned for the time. The boatswain, it appeared, was an expert, and had already administered the same soothing medicine to two or three of the more violent among the ladies; though loath to do so (he explained), because it sometimes gave the crowd a wrong impression when the bodies in this temporary state of inanition were carried out.
The small crowd in the street, however, seemed in no mind to hinder us. Possibly experience had taught them composure. At any rate they were apathetic, though curious enough to follow us down to the quay and stand watching whilst we embarked our unconscious burdens. A lamp burned foggily at the head of the steps by which we descended to the waterside, and looking up I saw the child who had called herself Meliar-Ann standing in the circle of it, and gazing down upon the embarkation with dark unemotional eyes. Hartnoll spied her too, and waved his recovered dirk triumphantly. She paid him no heed at all.
"But look here," said the lieutenant, turning on me, "we can't take you on board to-night—and without your chests. Oh yes—I have your names; Rodd and Hartnoll… and a deuced lucky thing for you we tumbled upon you as we did. But Captain Suckling's orders were—and I heard him give 'em, with my own ears—to fetch you off to-morrow morning. From the Blue Posts, eh? Well, just you run back, or Blue Billy,"—by this irreverent name, as I learned later, the executive officers of his Majesty's Navy had agreed to know Mr. Benjamin Sheppard, proprietor of the Blue Posts: a solid man, who died worth sixty thousand pounds—"or Blue Billy will be sending round the crier."
"But, sir, we don't know where to find the Blue Posts!"
He stared at me, turning with his foot on the boat's gunwale. "Why, God bless the boy! you've only to turn to your left and follow your innocent nose for a hundred and fifty yards, and you'll run your heads against the doorway."
We watched the boat as it pushed off. A few of the crowd still lingered on the quay's edge, and it has since occurred to me to wonder that, as Hartnoll and I turned and ascended the steps, no violence was offered to us. We had come out to flaunt our small selves in his Majesty's uniform. Here, if ever, was proof of the respect it commanded; and we failed to notice it. Meliar-Ann had disappeared. The loungers on the quay-head let us pass unmolested, and, following the lieutenant's directions, sure enough within five minutes we found ourselves under the lamp of the Blue Posts!
The night-porter eyed us suspiciously before admitting us. "A man might say that you've made a pretty fair beginning," he ventured; but I had warned Hartnoll to keep his chin up, and we passed in with a fine show of haughty indifference.
At eight o'clock next morning Hartnoll and I were eating our breakfast when the waiter brought a visitor to our box—a tallish midshipman about three years our senior, with a face of the colour of brickdust and a frame that had outgrown his uniform.
"Good-morning, gentlemen," said he; "and I daresay you guess my business. I'm to take you on board as soon as you can have your boxes ready."
We asked him if he would do us the honour to share our breakfast: whereupon he nodded.
"To tell you the truth, I was about to suggest it myself. Eh? What have we? Grilled kidneys? Good."
I called to the waiter to fetch another dish of kidneys.
"Anda spatchcock," added our guest. "They're famous, here, for spatchcock.And, yes, I think we'll say an anchovy toast. Tea? Well, perhaps, at this time of the morning—with a poker in it."
This allusion to a poker we did not understand; but fortunately the waiter did, and brought a glassful of rum, which Mr. Strangways—for so he had made himself known to us—tipped into his tea, assuring us that the great Nelson had ever been wont to refer to this—his favourite mixture—as "the pride of the morning."
"By the way," he went on, with his mouth full of kidney, "the second lieutenant tells me you were in luck's way last night."
To this we modestly agreed, and hoped that the prisoners had arrived safely on board.
He grinned. "You may lay to that. We had to club half a dozen of them as soon as they were lifted aboard. When I say 'we' I ought to add that I was in my hammock and never heard a word of it, being a heavy sleeper.That," said Mr. Strangways pensively, "is my one fault."
We attempted to convey by our silence that Mr. Strangways' single fault was a trifling, a venial one.
"It'll hinder my prospects, all the same." He nodded. "You mark my words." He nodded again, and helped himself to a round of buttered toast. "But I'm told," he went on, "there was an unholy racket. They couldn't do much, having the jollies on both pair of paws; but a party in mother-o'-pearl buttons made a speech about the liberty of the subject, in a voice that carried pretty nearly to Gosport: and the first lieutenant, being an old woman, and afraid of the ship's losing reputation while he was in charge, told them all to be good boys and he would speak to the Captain when he came aboard; and served them out three fingers of rum apiece, which the bo'sun took upon himself to hocus. By latest accounts, they're sleeping it off and—I say, waiter, you might tell the cook to devil those kidneys."
"But hasn't Captain Suckling returned yet?" I ventured to ask.
"He hasn't," said Mr. Strangways. "The deuce knows where he is, and the first lieutenant, not being in the deuce's confidence, is working himself into the deuce of a sweat. What's worse, His Excellency hasn't turned up yet, nor His Excellency's suite: though a boat waited for 'em five solid hours yesterday. All that arrived was His Excellency's valet and about a score of valises, and word that the great man would follow in a shore-boat. Which he hasn't."
From this light gossip Mr. Strangways turned and addressed himself to the devilled kidneys, remarking that in his Britannic Majesty's service a man was hungry as a matter of course; which I afterwards and experimentally found to be true.
Well—not to protract the tale—an hour later we took boat with our belongings, under Mr. Strangways' escort, and were pulled on a swift tide down to the ship. It so happened that the first and second lieutenants were standing together in converse on the break of the poop when we climbed on board and were led aft to report ourselves. The second lieutenant, Mr. Fraser (in whom we recognised our friend of the night before) stepped to the gangway and shook hands with a jolly smile. His superior offered us no such cheerful welcome, but stuck his hands behind him and scowled.
"H'm," said he, "are these your two infants? They look as if they had been making a night of it."
I could have answered (but did not) that we must be looking pasty-faced indeed if his gills had the advantage of us: for the man was plainly fretting himself to fiddle-strings with anxiety. He turned his back upon us and called forward for one of the master's mates, to whom he gave orders to show us our hammocks. We saluted and took leave of him, and on our way below fell in with Strangways again, who haled us off to introduce us to the gun-room.
Of the gun-room and its horrors you'll have formed—if lads still read their Marryat nowadays—your own conception; and I will only say that it probably bears the same relation to theMelpomene'sgun-room as chalk to cheese. TheMelpomene'sgun-room was low—so low that Strangways seldom entered it but he contused himself—and it was also dark as the inside of a hat, and undeniably stuffy.
Yet to me, in my first flush of enthusiasm, it appeared eminently cosy: and the six midshipmen of theMelpomene—Walters, de Havilland, Strangways, Pole, Bateman, Countisford—six as good fellows as a man could wish to sail with. Youth, youth! They had their faults: but they were all my friends till the yellow fever carried off two at Port Royal; and two are alive yet and my friends to-day. I tell their six names over to-day like a string of beads, and (if the Lord will forgive a good Protestant) with a prayer for each.
Our next business was to become acquainted with the two marines who had carried our chests below, and who (as we proudly understood) were to be our body-servants. We were on deck again, and luckily out of hearing of our fellow-midshipmen, when these two menials came up to report themselves: and Hartnoll and I had just arrived at an amicable choice between them.
"Here, Bill," said the foremost, advancing and pointing at me with a forefinger, "which'll it be? If youdon'tmind, I'll take the red-headed one, to put me in mind o' my gal."
So on the whole we settled ourselves down very comfortably aboard theMelpomene: but the ship was not easy that day as a society, nor could be, with her commanding officer pacing to and fro like a bear in a cage. You will have seen the black bear at the Zoo, and noticed the swing of his head as he turns before ever reaching the end of his cage? Well just so— or very like it—theMelpomene'sfirst lieutenant kept swinging and chafing on the quarter-deck all that afternoon—or, to be precise, until six o'clock, when Captain Suckling came aboard in a shore-boat, and in his shore-going clothes.