The old man looked up.
"Any more for us, Mr. Caryll?"
A boat swept under the stern.
"Here's another of them, sir!"
The boy staggered to the side. A grappling iron swung from beneath almost struck him in the face.
He seized the cook's poll-axe, and hacked away at the bulwark. Then he put his shoulder to a carronade and shoved.
"H'all together eave!" whispered the dying cook, and lent a feeble hand.
Over went the carronade with spinning wheels. It caught the boat fair amidships, and broke it up like matchwood.
The boy leaned over. Beneath him in the green and sucking waters amid a litter of wreckage one or two heads showed, swimming faintly.
Pale and panting, he turned.
"I think that's the last, sir," languidly.
The old Commander removed the plug from his mouth.
"There's two things go to make a British seaman," he growled—"guts and gumption. Maybe you've got both, as your father had afoor you. We're like to see e'er the day's out."
He wiped his jack-knife on his breeches, and began to carve his plug again.
"Now run below and see how things are going with Mr. Lanyon."
The boy went. His passion had long passed. He was sick and weary.Head and heart ached.
With shaking knees, he tottered below. Had a party of jabberingFrenchmen met him, he wouldn't have minded. He was too spent.
But no.
All below was calm now and silence; smoke-drift and dying men.
The Gunner was standing at an open port, directing operations.
His passion too had passed. The giant-hero of a few minutes' back seemed almost small now. And a strange figure he made.
The sweat had coursed through the rouge on his cheeks; and the dye on his whiskers had run, dripping on to neck and shoulders. He was naked still, save for his trousers, but wearing his cocked hat a-rake.
The man at his side heaved a French corpse through the port.
"That's the lot," said the Gunner, picking his teeth, and turned with black and grinning face to the boy.
"Well, sir, what d'ye think? me?—earty fighter, ain't I?"
All was very still on the deck of theTremendous; and those quiet men lolling in the sun added to the hush.
They sprawled about in all attitudes—on their faces, on their backs, in each other's arms, as though snoozing. And the snoring noise that came from one or two of them enhanced the illusion. Only the blank unwinking eyes of those upon their backs, the expression of the upturned faces, and the wet red stuff smeared everywhere, showed that they were not holiday picnickers.
Aft by the binnacle a man sat up against the side watching with appalling solemnity the blood pat-pat-patting down from a wound in his side. He dabbed a finger in the mess, and scrawled his name on the deck,
Tom Bleach. R.I.P._
"Tom Bleach—Remember Im Please," he repeated, nodding his head with portentous gravity.
A white and crimson huddle beside him groaned.
The man of letters frowned at it.
"How d'ye feel, cookie?" he asked.
"Mortal queer," whispered the dying man.
"It do feel queer, dyin," admitted the other solemnly.
A French officer close by opened glazed eyes.
"I too I die," he announced. "What then will I do?"
"Why, pray God forgive you bein French," growled old Ding-dong, propped against the wheel. "That's your worst crime."
The boy came up from below, deathly pale, the wind lifting his hair. He crossed to the old Commander, reeling faintly among the dead as he came.
"Lanyon alive?"
"Yes, sir. All well below," in thin and ghostly voice.
The old man nodded satisfaction.
"Starry fighter, ain't he?—Wonderful gift that way. Don't know asI ever saw his ekal at a pinch."
He looked up at the lad, swaying above him.
"Feel funny?"
The boy did not reply, leaning against the side, a far-away look in his eyes.
Then he burst into tears.
"There, there!" said the old man soothingly. "Sure to come a bit okkud-like first start-off. It's been a nasty beginning for you too—messy fightin, I call it. Look at my quarter-deck! More like a slaughter-house nor a King's ship."
He mopped at his leg.
"And all the shore-goin folk on their knees in Church all the time!—Funny to think on, ain't it?"
The Gunner came up the ladder.
A sack was cast about his naked shoulders; his cocked hat was on the back of his head; and a tooth-pick between his lips.
He strolled to the side.
Beneath him theCocotte, smoking like a damped furnace, the blood trickling from between her seams, was settling fast.
"Got her bellyful all snug," said the Gunner complacently, picking his teeth.
He strolled off to old Ding-dong, propped on his corpse beside the wheel.
"Well, sir, you play a pretty stick with a handspike still!—how's yerself?"
"Tidy," grunted the veteran. "How fur's yon frigate yet? I can't see over the side, settin on my little sofia."
"Within random shot, sir. She's got a slant of wind, and is crowding all sail to get alongside."
"Then we'd best be sturrin. How are we ridin?"
The Gunner looked over the side.
"Why, middlin deep, sir."
"Then cut the boats away, and the anchors. Stave in the water-casks. Heave all spare shot and tackle overboard—we need nowt but the boards we stand on and the guns we fight; and make what sail you can on her…. I shall bear away for the shore. Don't mean bein took at my time o life."
A breeze light as a lady's kiss smote the water. The topsails of the sloop began to fill and flutter.
Deep in the water as a barge, she drew away from her floundering antagonist. As she did so, the privateer, as though loth to let her depart unsaluted, barked a sullen farewell.
A roar of triumph from theCoquette, clearing now on the port-bow and a fainter shout from the frigate to starboard, told their own tale.
The mizzen, struck twenty foot above the deck, came down with a crash. With it fell the red-cross flag, and the faces of the crew.
"Hand me that striped petticut!" roared the Gunner, pointing to the tricolour lying entangled in the ruins of the privateer's main-top on the deck of the sloop. "I want to blow me nose."
He leaped on to the bulwark, flag in hand; and staying himself by the shroud, blew his nose boisterously on the enemy's colours.
The crew, busy clearing the wreckage of the mizzen, roared delight.
The Gunner jumped down, and spread the flag over the old Commander's feet as he lay.
"There's the first on em, sir. There's two more to follow."
"Make it so," said the old man grimly.
He was chewing a quid, and a battered cocked hat tilted over his eyes.
The Gunner marched away, eyes to his right, eyes to his left. And as he marched, he swept off his cocked hat.
"Chaps," he called to the remnant of the crew gathered grimy about the after-hatch. "I thank my God for this booriful sight. Frenchman to port!" shooting his left arm. "Frenchman to starboard!" shooting his right. "Frenchman astarn!" with a backward toss. "And God A'mighty aloft. What more can a Christian ask?"
A shot from the frigate splashed under the bows of the sloop, sluicing her deck.
"There she spouts!" roared the Gunner, and clapping on his hat ran, kicking his heels behind him. "Come along, the baby-boys!—the last fight o the littleTremendous—and the best."
It was evening.
The littleTremendouslay under the cliff, pounding gently, gently, on a reef. Her back was broken, she had a heavy list to starboard, and her bulwark was awash.
The mainmast had gone by the board. The quarterdeck carronades, loosed from their moorings, sprawled in the wash of the water, a dead man floating amongst them. The deck was a tangle of wreckage and bloody sails. From a splintered stump, more like a shaving-brush than a mast, the red-cross flag still flapped.
Astern of her, in the deep water, lay her enemies in smoking ruins. The privateer, her foretop in flames, was dishevelled as a virago after a street fight; while great white clouds puffing out of the frigate's quarter-gallery told that she was afire.
The sea wallowed about the sloop, green and sleek and greedy. There was scarcely a ruffle on the water; only a huge slow heaving, as of some monster breathing deeply, and licking its lips before an orgie.
Firing had long ceased.
Kit, squatting, his back against the mizzen-stump, was coming to with splitting head.
All through that golden summer afternoon the sloop had drifted shoreward, privateer and frigate hammering her from either side. Towards evening, her last shot spent, the frigate boarded. The Gunner, hoarse as a crow, bloody as a beefsteak, had brought up the weary remnant of the crew to repel the attack, Kit aiding him manfully.
Men had been dancing idiotically about the boy; he had heard theGunner's raucous voice close in his ear,
"Gad, you're a game un!" and had run at a nightmare man with goggle eyes.
Then something had happened.
Now all was calm and sunset peace, and dew on the deck among the blood stains.
And how beautiful it was, this strange twilight quiet, after the howl and torment of battle!
Warily the boy opened eyes and ears. He was not dead then, not even wounded, only horribly parched, and how his head ached!
Before him the cliff fell sheer and blank—a white curtain dropped from heaven.
Over it sea-gulls floated on dream-wings. While from some remote Down village, church bells swung out the old song—
Come to Christ,Come to Christ,Come, dear children, come to Christ.
The boy, lying on the bloody deck, his feet cushioned on a dead man, listened with closed eyes to the old call.
Last Sunday at that hour, the blackbirds hopping on the lawn without, the swifts screaming above, he and mother and Gwen had been singing hymns together in the schoolroom—rather chokily indeed, for it was his last Sunday at home.
All that was ages and ages ago. He had lived and died a hundred times since then.
Now….
There by the wheel, in a puddle of his own blood, lay old Ding-dong, grey and ghastly. His eyes were closed; his cocked hat with a rakish forward tilt sat on his nose. He lay with shoulders hunched, his legs spread helplessly along the deck before him, stubborn chin digging into the breast of his frock-coat.
One grim fist was frozen to the shattered wheel; the other, grimmer still, clutched the scent-bottle.
A bosun's whistle sounded.
On hands and knees the lad crept along the tilted deck past the oldCommander.
"That you, Mr. Caryll?" came a husky voice. "I canna see over plain."
The old man had not moved, but one eye had opened and was glaring up from under the eaves of his cocked hat.
"Yes, sir."
"Are they coomin?"
Kit threw a glance seaward.
"The frigate's piped her boats away, sir."
The old man's head, still forward on his breast, did not move; he did not seem to breathe. All of him was dead save that little eye, cocking up at the lad from under the tilted hat.
"Canst walk?"
"Yes, sir. I'm not wounded, only stunned."
"Then run below to Mr. Lanyon, and tell him to bide my whistle."
"Where is he, sir?"
"Where he ought to be," growled the old man—"powder-magazine o coorse."
The eye closed: the little ray of soul, still haunting the body, seemed quenched for ever; but it was not.
"And bring along a brace o round-shot when ye coom back, wilta?" came the painful voice out of the deeps.
Kit slid down the companion ladder.
The lower deck was half awash, and foul with smoke. There was a stink of dead men, bilge, and powder.
But what a change from when he was last here!
Then sights so ghastly that he dared not recall them: screams of torn men, rending of torn planks; howling terrors on every side, shattering his head, bursting his heart, dissipating his mind.
Now silence everywhere, beautiful silence, the silence of Death.
And those leaping devils with the hoarse throats, who had barked themselves red-hot then, were strangely hushed now. Loosed from their moorings, they huddled, together beneath him half under water, like so many great black beasts, cowed, it seemed, almost ashamed; here a huge breech showing, there a blunt snout, and again a thrusting trunnion.
As he crawled along in the gloom among blackened corpses he thanked God for the stillness. It was comforting to him as water in the desert to a man dying. He drank it in gulps.
A sound in the darkness and silence stopped him.
Out of the deeps a shuddering voice rose up to him, mumbling a Litany of the dead,
"Lord ha mercy on me a sinner—Lord ha mercy on me a sinner—Lord ha mercy on me a sinner."
The boy crept to the forehatch and peered down.
One tiny yellow star flickered in the pitch blackness beneath.
"Mr. Lanyon!" His voice was frightened of itself. "Is that you?"
The Litany ceased. Some one cleared his throat.
"That's me, sir," came a voice from the pit. "I'm back where I belong—in her bow'ls."
The Gunner was squatting in a powder barrel, a lighted purser's glim between his teeth, and a pistol in one hand. Kit caught the glimmer of naked shoulders, the wet gleam of eyes, and the shine of sweat on a face black as a sweep's.
"I was ummin all the bawdy bits I know to keep me company," called up a voice husky as a ghost's and cheery as a robin's: "It's lonesome-like kickin your heels in the dark against the powder bar'l you're goin to ell in next minute. Not that it's ell I mind. Ell's all right once you're there. It's the gettin there's the trouble—the messin about and waitin and that."
"You won't have to wait long now," replied Kit in a voice so still and solemn that he hardly recognised it himself. Nothing was very real to him. Even the words he uttered were not his own: they were machine-made somehow.
"They'll be alongside in a minute. Commander Harding says you're to wait for his whistle. Then—"
"Amen. So be it. God save the King."
The Gunner dropped his voice to a whisper, rolling up his eyes.'
"Say, Sonny, are you afraid?"
"No. I can't take anything in."
"Nor'm I; and ain't got no cause neether," came the voice from the darkness, defiant almost to truculence. "I only ad but the two talents—lovin and fightin; and they can't say I've id eether o them up in a napkin. They can't chuck that in me face."
He spat philosophically between his thighs.
"On'y one thing I wish," he continued confidentially. "I wish all the totties was settin atop o that clift to see Magnificent Arry go aloft. Ah, you mightn't think it to see me now, Mr. Caryll, squattin mother-naked in this bar'l, but I been a terror in me time. Sich a way with em and all!"
"You might think about something more decent just now," said the boy coldly. "Good-bye. I'm afraid you haven't lived a very good life."
As the boy groped his way back, the parched voice pursued him from the nether hell.
"My respects to the old man. We seen a tidy bit together, him and me; but reck'n this last little bust-up bangs the lot. I'd ha gone through a world without women for its sweet sake, blest if I wouldn't…. And now," came the voice in a sort of chant, "avin lived like a blanky King I'm goin to die like a blanky cro. Arry the Magnificent always and for h'ever!"
Old Ding-Dong lay as the boy had left him.
"Got them round-shot?" hoarsely.
"Yes, sir."
"Stuff em in my tails then."
The boy obeyed.
"Ah, that's better," sighed the old man comfortably. "No fear I shall break adrift o my moorings." He slipped the scent-bottle into his breast-pocket and patted it. "She'll lay snug along o me, she will."
He closed his eyes.
Kit, kneeling at his side, held a pannikin to his lips.
"Water, sir. Will you have a drop?"
"Nay, thank ee, ma lad. I'll bide till t'other side. Shan't be long now."
Kit drank greedily. He could hear the oars of the approaching boat; he had at the most some two minutes of life, but O! the delight of that draught.
A hand grasped his.
"Mr. Caryll," said the old Commander in strange and formal voice, "I've sent for you upon the quarter-deck to thank you for your gallantry in your first action, which is also, I fear, your last…. Can you swim?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, then, slip overboard, if you've a mind, and make shift for yourself."
"No, sir, thank you. I'll stand by the ship."
The old man grunted satisfaction.
"Then say your prayers."
He put the whistle between his teeth.
The flag he had kept flying, nailed to the splintered mizzen, curled languidly above his head.
The old mail, dying in its shadow, eyed it with silent content.
"Are they coomin, Mr. Caryll?"
"Yes, sir—near now."
"Lay low," whispered the old man, "and we'll bag the lot, God helpin us."
The sound of oars ceased. Out of the silence a voice hailed.
"Any one alife on board?"
Old Ding-dong hearkened, his cocked hat far over his eyes.
That look of the Eternal Child, arch and mischievous, played among the wrinkles about his eyes.
"Cuckoo!" he muttered. "Cuckoo!"
Kit giggled.
He knew the ship was about to be blown up; but he didn't take much interest in it himself. It didn't seem to affect him. Somehow he was so far away. All that was happening was happening in a dream-world of which he was a spectator only. True he felt a vague discomfort at the heart; but he knew that in a minute he should wake up—to find mother's eyes smiling into his, and her laughing voice saying,
"My dear boy, whathaveyou been dreaming about?"
The boats were drawing nearer again, wary as hunters drawing on a dying lion.
Old Ding-dong heard them, and smiled.
The littleTremendouswas a sheer hulk; her back was broken; her crew were dead—and still they feared her!
The old seaman's heart warmed within him. That one sweet moment paid him generously for fifty years of toil, of battle, of chagrin.
And as though thrilling to the emotion of the man who had loved her for so long, the little ship trembled as she settled deeper.
The old man patted the deck.
"There! it wonna urt you, my dear," he said soothingly. "Too suddint."
A tricorne rose over the bulwark.
An officer cast his eyes up and down the deck, swift and alert as a bird.
"Anybody alife on board?" he repeated, and in the vast silence his voice came small and very shrill.
He clambered over the bulwark, and came up the steep deck monkey-wise.
At the foot of the mizzen he paused.
Kit, crouching in a heap close by, noticed his boots, old, split across the toe, dingy white socks showing through. He found himself wondering whether the man had corns.
Clinging to the stump the Frenchman drew his sword, and looked up at the red-cross flag flapping sullen defiance overhead.
"Dans le nom de l'Empereur!" he cried pompously.
A whistle, swift as the arrow of death, pierced him to the heart.
A roar drowned the boy's senses, sweeping his mind away on a mountainous billow of sound.
Earth and sea were a bubble beneath his feet, swelling and sailing; and he was walking on the bubble, and toppling backwards as he walked.
He felt himself smiling in a foolish way. There was no pain then about dying, he thought with a pleased and remote surprise—only this silly smiling content.
Things hit him outside. He was aware of them; but they did not hurt. His body was wood, dull to sensation. He himself was within somewhere, snug and safe. He had heard the parson at home talk about eternal life. Now he knew what the man meant. To be alive yet above pain, to be dead yet dimly comfortable—that was the heavenly life. It was very curious, and not half bad.
And—he had been there before. When and where, he could not recollect.But all was friendly, all familiar.
Suddenly there came a change, and for the worse. A great wet cloud swamped him. The light went out. All about him was cold, and dark, and clinging. Was this the grave and gate of Death?
He shuddered, and yet was not greatly afraid.
Everything was so far away, on the circumference of being, as it were; and he at the centre, safe and warm, was mildly interested—little more.
Somehow he knew he was in the sea, walking dream-waters; whether conscious, or unconscious, in the spirit or out of it, he knew not, and didn't greatly care.
Grotesque yet beautiful impressions of things familiar flitted across his mind. He saw his mother in a cocked hat; Cuddie Collingwood, his pet canary, strutting the maindeck and picking his teeth; and Gwen with a tarred pigtail, her brawny bosom tattooed with dancing-girls.
She was making faces at him, the faces that none but Gwen could make; and he was about to shoot his tongue back brotherly, when there came another change, terrible this time.
There was a singing in his ears; a sense of suffocation and appalling impotence. He was rushing back to the world of sense and pain—in time, no doubt, to die, when he thought he was through that trouble. Just his luck!
He was throttled, battling, distraught. About him was the rush and smother of waters. A secret power clutched him about the waist and tugged him back. For the first time in his life he felt the aweful and inexorable grip of Necessity; and his heart screamed.
Then with a bob and a gasp, he was up; the water in his nostrils; and his hands clinging to a spar.
About him was a fog of smoke, and the throes of water in torment, sucking, spewing, pouncing.
Then a great swell, roaring into foam, lifted him. He was swung out of the stinging smother, away from the shock and battle of waters, out and out under the calm sky.
Beneath him a sheer white wall rose. There was no top to it, and no bottom. He could have screamed. It was so huge, so blank, so incomprehensible. It fell from heaven. Was it the skirt of God?
Then he saw the dark crest miles overhead, and knew it for a cliff.He was right beneath it, and swinging towards it.
Suddenly he became aware of a badger-grey head bobbing beside him on the spar.
"Hullo, sir!" he gasped.
A voice spluttered,
"Pockets sprung a leak!—tailor! ruffian!"
A great following swell lifted them.
"Hold fast, sir!" called Kit. "This'll throw us up."
The swell drove forward, toppling to a fall; curled, and crashed down.
Kit found himself on hands and knees, banged, dripping, dizzy, in a hiss and turmoil of waters. The backward sweep of the waves almost carried him with it. But his hands were in the shingle up to the wrist, anchoring him. The body of water passed him. A thousand tresses of foam reminding him of his Granny's hair swept across his fingers.
He looked up. He was kneeling on a tiny strip of beach at the foot of the cliff. On his left sprawled the old Commander. His knees, cocked by the receding wave, swayed and toppled now; the legs wooden and dreadful as a dummy's.
Kit crawled towards him.
"Are you hurt, sir?"
The old man answered nothing. His eyes were shut, his arms wide. He lay upon his back on the wet and running shingle, his white knee-breeches sodden and rusty with blood, the square chin heavenward.
Another of those sleek green monsters stole towards them out of the smoke.
In an agony the lad tried to drag the old man back under the cliff.He might as well have attempted to lift a cask of lead.
"O, what shall I do?" wailed the boy to heaven.
"Why, cut and run," answered the voice from earth.
Then the wave was on them, swooping, worrying, white-toothed.
Kit did his best. Kneeling behind the old man, he heaved him into a sitting position, and propped him there, as the tumult of waters sluiced about them. Over the limp legs, up the great chest, the wave swept greedily; but the badger-grey head stayed above the flood.
Then the water withdrew, blind and baffled.
Kit lowered the grey head.
"Thank ee," grunted the old man, and seemed to sleep.
Kit made no answer. He was watching the sea with dreadful anxiety. Was it coming up? Was it going down? Were there to be more of those smothering floods? If so, they were lost. He knew he could not lift again that leaden old man.
No. The worst was over. A lesser wave swept towards them. It tossed those wooden legs, dreadfully sporting with them, and fled, snarling.
The boy bent with thankful heart.
"That's all, sir. It won't come again. It's the swell made by the explosion—not the tide."
"Ah," said the other sleepily; and opened his eyes.
Seaward hung a huge toad-stool of smoke. Out of the heart of it came the clash and cry of torn waters. All else was still, save for the scream of disturbed sea-birds.
Through the frayed and drifting edge of the smoke could be seen the frigate and the spars of the privateer; and sticking out of the water, a jagged mizzen—all that was left of the littleTremendous.
As his eye fell on the splintered stump the old Commander lifted a hand to his forehead.
"Plucky little packet," he muttered. "Plucky little packet."
Old Ding-dong lay at the foot of the cliff among the chalk boulders, his limp white legs glimmering in the twilight.
To Kit, kneeling at his side, it seemed that only the old man's slow blinking eyelids were alive. The horror of it thrilled the boy, and woke the woman in him. He was not repelled; he was drawn closer.
Taking off his coat, he rolled it, sopping as it was, and stuffed it beneath the other's head.
Propped so, the old man lay in the falling gloom, head quaintly cocked, and chin crushed down on his chest.
"Are you comfortable, sir?"
"Comforubble as a man can be that canna feel," the other grunted."My back's bruk. I'm dyin uppuds."
Stealthily the boy took the old man's hand in his. A faint tightening of the clay-cold fingers surprised him.
The dusk was falling fast. At their feet the sea still crashed uneasily.Above them the cliff showed white. Under the moon one red star sparkled.From out of the smoke they could hear the sound of oars and voices.Boats were searching amid the wreckage.
"Ay, you may sarch," muttered the grim old man. "It's little you'll find but your own carpses."
He rolled his head round. Kit marked the shine of his eyes, the blink of pale lids, and the glimmer of his face.
"Look in ma breast-pocket. It's there."
The boy's scared fingers travelled over the other's sodden coat. It was like searching a drowned man.
"Yes, sir. Here it is."
"Hod it oop."
The boy held the scent-bottle before the other's eyes. The old man gazed at it, licking his lips.
Then he rolled his eyes up to the boy's.
"Kit Caryll," came the squeezed voice suddenly, "are you your father's son?"
"I hope so, sir."
There was a thrilling silence.
"Then take charge."
Slowly the boy received the trust into his soul.
"Very good, sir."
He slipped the scent-bottle into his pocket.
"It's all in there," continued the ghastly voice. "It's a plot, see?—to kidnap Nelson. There's a gal in it—o coorse. Thinks she can twiddle the A'mighty round her thumb because her face ain't spotty. Lay that in Nelson's hands—and we'll see."
The dusk was falling fast; the sea stilled; a breathing calm was everywhere.
"This here's Beachy Head. Birling Gap's yonder—where there's a last glimmer yet. Don't go that road. Soon as the tide's down, round the Head, and climb t'other side. It falls away there. Make for Lewes along the top o the Downs. There's a camp o soldiers there. Soldiers ain't much account, but they'll serve to see you through to Merton. And once there, and that in Nelson's hands—I ain't died in vain."
The hoarse voice grew hoarser.
"And mind! trust no one; don't go anigh farm, cottage, or village. It's an enemy's land all this side o Lewes. Gap Gang country, the folk call it. They're all in it—up to the neck."
"I'll do my best, sir," said the boy, licking up his tears.
"And not a bad best eether, as I know," came the squeezed voice. "And when you've won through to Nelson, as win through it's my firm faith you will—and laid that there in his hand"—his voice came in pants, and pauses, and with little runs—"tell him I sarved him all I was able and give him—my kind dooty—old Ding-dong's dooty."
There was a gasping silence.
"That's my revenge. He'll understand."
The light was ebbing fast, and old Ding-dong with it.
All was silence and a few pale stars.
The old seaman began to wander.
Scenes near, scenes far, drifted across his fading mind. Now he was a tiny lad babbling in broadest dialect to his mother at the washing-tub; now he was a pit boy yelling at Susannah, the one-eyed pit pony; anon he was on the spar-deck of the Don, holding by the hand the father of the boy who now held his.
Then there came a silence, and out of it the words, clean and quiet:
"I'm the old man Nelson never forgave for doin of his dooty."
His brain seemed to clear. He began to tell a story half to himself, half to the stars—the story of the incident of his life.
"A'ter the Nile [Footnote: It was after the battle of the Nile, on his return to Naples, that Nelson succumbed to the fascination of Lady Hamilton.] it were—when we got back to Naples. Things got bad, very bad. At last Tom Troubridge wrote to him—I saw the letter. Tom and he'd been very thick—till then. Things got worse. It was in the papers and all. Somebody had to tackle him. Nobody durst—only old Ding-dong."
The wind gathered round to listen. A few curious stars pricked the darkness above. The old man's voice was gaining strength as he went on.
"So I goes aboord theVanguard, and there in his own state-roomI says the thing that had to be said and I says it straight."
Kit was listening intently. The strange blurred voice coming to his out of the darkness moved him to his deeps.
"Ooop joomps Nelson, raving mad. 'My God, Hardin!' he screams—'Ger off o my ship!—Ger off o my ship!GER OFF O MY SHIP!'
"'Pardon, my lord,' says I. 'I've done my dooty as a man, though I may have exceeded it as a sailor!'
"He called me a blanky pit boy.
"'A pit boy I was, my lord,' says I, 'and not ashamed on it; and powder-monkey to Hawke afoor your lordship was born. For nigh on fifty years I've touched the King's pay, and ate the King's salt. I'm the Father o this fleet, and all for the Service, as the sayin is. And I can't stand by and see the first officer in the British Navy lowerin himself in the eyes of Europe without a word.'"
The darkness hushed; the moon stared; the stars crept closer.
"He struck me. Nelson struck me in the mug. I wiped the blood away with my cuff. 'That's not the Nelson I know, my lord,' says I, and stumps out. And I never seen him from that day to this."
The boy could hear the old man's breath fluttering in the darkness.
"He was mad, ye see. She'd gone to his head; and she's stayed there ever since. Mad—as a man. As a sailor he's still Nelson—the first seaman afloat, ever was, or will be."
There was a thrill in the fading voice; a thrill of devotion to the man who had destroyed him.
"So he broke me, Nelson did, and I don't blame him: discipline is discipline, all said. Told the Admiralty they could choose between him and me—between Lord Nelson of the Nile, that is, and old Ding-dong, who'd climbed to the quarter-deck through the hawse-holes…. So they chose."
The sea rustled; the night was sprinkled with stars.
"But I've paid him now," ended the old man comfortably. "Reck'n I've paid him now."
Kit had heard the tale with puzzled but passionate interest.
"What was it all about, sir?" he asked at last in awed voice.
"Why; what it's always about," grunted the other. "One o them gals."
He coughed faintly.
"Thank the Lord there's been nobbut one woman in ma life, and that's the one a man can't help.
"What did I want with a pack?—trashy wives?… Nay. Fear God; fight to a finish; and steer clear o them gals—that's been old Ding-dong's rule o life: and it's the whole duty of a British seaman."
The old man's hand stirred in the boy's.
"In ma breech-pocket you'll find a Noo Testament and the Articles o War—all my readin these forty year; and all a sailor needs. Take em and study em. It'll pay you. Happen they run a bit athwart here and there; but that makes no odds, if you keep your head. There's always light enough to steer by if your heart's right. 'Christ's my compass,' your father'd say. 'He don't deviate.'"
The old man lay back, his eyes shut, the light on his uplifted face.
About him was stillness, hushed waters, and the moon a silver bubble.
In the quiet cove, beneath the quiet stars, after sixty years of storm, his soul was slipping away into the Great Quiet.
"I like layin here," came the ghostly voice. "So calm-like a'ter the trouble."
The cold fingers grew stiff; the eyes closed.
Kit laid a hand on the old man's forehead, and stroked his hair.
"I'm a-coomin," came a tiny chuckle as of a sleepy child—"Billy's coomin."
Seaward something flapped.
The boy turned.
At first he thought the Angel of Death was hovering over the white waters on sable wings.
Then he recognised what he saw for the flag on the splintered mizzen of theTremendoussaluting solemnly the dying seaman.
Old Ding-dong saw it too.
He raised his head. The moonlight was on his face, and the hand inKit's quivered.
"Them's my colours," he whispered. "I never struck em."