‘Then why don’t you? There’s a splendid opportunity. Do you see that soldier walking along? He’s a marine; he looks into the gallery of the theatre every night: and he’s in connexion with the press-gang that came ashore just now from the frigate lying in Portland Roads. They are often here for men.’
‘Yes. Our boatmen dread ’em.’
‘Well, we have only to tell him that Loveday is a seaman to be clear of him this very night.’
‘Done!’ said Festus. ‘Take my arm and come this way.’ They walked across to the footway. ‘Fine night, sergeant.’
‘It is, sir.’
‘Looking for hands, I suppose?’
‘It is not to be known, sir. We don’t begin till half past ten.’
‘It is a pity you don’t begin now. I could show ’ee excellent game.’
‘What, that little nest of fellows at the “Old Rooms” in Cove Row? I have just heard of ’em.’
‘No—come here.’ Festus, with Miss Johnson on his arm, led the sergeant quickly along the parade, and by the time they reached the Narrows the lovers, who walked but slowly, were visible in front of them. ‘There’s your man,’ he said.
‘That buck in pantaloons and half-boots—a looking like a squire?’
‘Twelve months ago he was mate of the brig Pewit; but his father has made money, and keeps him at home.’
‘Faith, now you tell of it, there’s a hint of sea legs about him. What’s the young beau’s name?’
‘Don’t tell!’ whispered Matilda, impulsively clutching Festus’s arm.
But Festus had already said, ‘Robert Loveday, son of the miller at Overcombe. You may find several likely fellows in that neighbourhood.’
The marine said that he would bear it in mind, and they left him.
‘I wish you had not told,’ said Matilda tearfully. ‘She’s the worst!’
‘Dash my eyes now; listen to that! Why, you chicken-hearted old stager, you was as well agreed as I. Come now; hasn’t he used you badly?’
Matilda’s acrimony returned. ‘I was down on my luck, or he wouldn’t have had the chance!’ she said.
‘Well, then, let things be.’
Miss Garland and Loveday walked leisurely to the inn and called for horse-and-gig. While the hostler was bringing it round, the landlord, who knew Bob and his family well, spoke to him quietly in the passage.
‘Is this then because you want to throw dust in the eyes of the Black Diamond chaps?’ (with an admiring glance at Bob’s costume).
‘The Black Diamond?’ said Bob; and Anne turned pale.
‘She hove in sight just after dark, and at nine o’clock a boat having more than a dozen marines on board, with cloaks on, rowed into harbour.’
Bob reflected. ‘Then there’ll be a press to-night; depend upon it,’ he said.
‘They won’t know you, will they, Bob?’ said Anne anxiously.
‘They certainly won’t know him for a seaman now,’ remarked the landlord, laughing, and again surveying Bob up and down. ‘But if I was you two, I should drive home-along straight and quiet; and be very busy in the mill all to-morrow, Mr. Loveday.’
They drove away; and when they had got onward out of the town, Anne strained her eyes wistfully towards Portland. Its dark contour, lying like a whale on the sea, was just perceptible in the gloom as the background to half-a-dozen ships’ lights nearer at hand.
‘They can’t make you go, now you are a gentleman tradesman, can they?’ she asked.
‘If they want me they can have me, dearest. I have often said I ought to volunteer.’
‘And not care about me at all?’
‘It is just that that keeps me at home. I won’t leave you if I can help it.’
‘It cannot make such a vast difference to the country whether one man goes or stays! But if you want to go you had better, and not mind us at all!’
Bob put a period to her speech by a mark of affection to which history affords many parallels in every age. She said no more about the Black Diamond; but whenever they ascended a hill she turned her head to look at the lights in Portland Roads, and the grey expanse of intervening sea.
Though Captain Bob had stated that he did not wish to volunteer, and would not leave her if he could help it, the remark required some qualification. That Anne was charming and loving enough to chain him anywhere was true; but he had begun to find the mill-work terribly irksome at times. Often during the last month, when standing among the rumbling cogs in his new miller’s suit, which ill became him, he had yawned, thought wistfully of the old pea-jacket, and the waters of the deep blue sea. His dread of displeasing his father by showing anything of this change of sentiment was great; yet he might have braved it but for knowing that his marriage with Anne, which he hoped might take place the next year, was dependent entirely upon his adherence to the mill business. Even were his father indifferent, Mrs. Loveday would never intrust her only daughter to the hands of a husband who would be away from home five-sixths of his time.
But though, apart from Anne, he was not averse to seafaring in itself, to be smuggled thither by the machinery of a press-gang was intolerable; and the process of seizing, stunning, pinioning, and carrying off unwilling hands was one which Bob as a man had always determined to hold out against to the utmost of his power. Hence, as they went towards home, he frequently listened for sounds behind him, but hearing none he assured his sweetheart that they were safe for that night at least. The mill was still going when they arrived, though old Mr. Loveday was not to be seen; he had retired as soon as he heard the horse’s hoofs in the lane, leaving Bob to watch the grinding till three o’clock; when the elder would rise, and Bob withdraw to bed—a frequent arrangement between them since Bob had taken the place of grinder.
Having reached the privacy of her own room, Anne threw open the window, for she had not the slightest intention of going to bed just yet. The tale of the Black Diamond had disturbed her by a slow, insidious process that was worse than sudden fright. Her window looked into the court before the house, now wrapped in the shadow of the trees and the hill; and she leaned upon its sill listening intently. She could have heard any strange sound distinctly enough in one direction; but in the other all low noises were absorbed in the patter of the mill, and the rush of water down the race.
However, what she heard came from the hitherto silent side, and was intelligible in a moment as being the footsteps of men. She tried to think they were some late stragglers from Budmouth. Alas! no; the tramp was too regular for that of villagers. She hastily turned, extinguished the candle, and listened again. As they were on the main road there was, after all, every probability that the party would pass the bridge which gave access to the mill court without turning in upon it, or even noticing that such an entrance existed. In this again she was disappointed: they crossed into the front without a pause. The pulsations of her heart became a turmoil now, for why should these men, if they were the press-gang, and strangers to the locality, have supposed that a sailor was to be found here, the younger of the two millers Loveday being never seen now in any garb which could suggest that he was other than a miller pure, like his father? One of the men spoke.
‘I am not sure that we are in the right place,’ he said.
‘This is a mill, anyhow,’ said another.
‘There’s lots about here.’
‘Then come this way a moment with your light.’
Two of the group went towards the cart-house on the opposite side of the yard, and when they reached it a dark lantern was opened, the rays being directed upon the front of the miller’s waggon.
‘“Loveday and Son, Overcombe Mill,”’ continued the man, reading from the waggon. ‘“Son,” you see, is lately painted in. That’s our man.’
He moved to turn off the light, but before he had done so it flashed over the forms of the speakers, and revealed a sergeant, a naval officer, and a file of marines.
Anne waited to see no more. When Bob stayed up to grind, as he was doing to-night, he often sat in his room instead of remaining all the time in the mill; and this room was an isolated chamber over the bakehouse, which could not be reached without going downstairs and ascending the step-ladder that served for his staircase. Anne descended in the dark, clambered up the ladder, and saw that light strayed through the chink below the door. His window faced towards the garden, and hence the light could not as yet have been seen by the press-gang.
‘Bob, dear Bob!’ she said, through the keyhole. ‘Put out your light, and run out of the back-door!’
‘Why?’ said Bob, leisurely knocking the ashes from the pipe he had been smoking.
‘The press-gang!’
‘They have come? By God! who can have blown upon me? All right, dearest. I’m game.’
Anne, scarcely knowing what she did, descended the ladder and ran to the back-door, hastily unbolting it to save Bob’s time, and gently opening it in readiness for him. She had no sooner done this than she felt hands laid upon her shoulder from without, and a voice exclaiming, ‘That’s how we doos it—quite an obleeging young man!’
Though the hands held her rather roughly, Anne did not mind for herself, and turning she cried desperately, in tones intended to reach Bob’s ears: ‘They are at the back-door; try the front!’
But inexperienced Miss Garland little knew the shrewd habits of the gentlemen she had to deal with, who, well used to this sort of pastime, had already posted themselves at every outlet from the premises.
‘Bring the lantern,’ shouted the fellow who held her. ‘Why—’tis a girl! I half thought so—Here is a way in,’ he continued to his comrades, hastening to the foot of the ladder which led to Bob’s room.
‘What d’ye want?’ said Bob, quietly opening the door, and showing himself still radiant in the full dress that he had worn with such effect at the Theatre Royal, which he had been about to change for his mill suit when Anne gave the alarm.
‘This gentleman can’t be the right one,’ observed a marine, rather impressed by Bob’s appearance.
‘Yes, yes; that’s the man,’ said the sergeant. ‘Now take it quietly, my young cock-o’-wax. You look as if you meant to, and ’tis wise of ye.’
‘Where are you going to take me?’ said Bob.
‘Only aboard the Black Diamond. If you choose to take the bounty and come voluntarily, you’ll be allowed to go ashore whenever your ship’s in port. If you don’t, and we’ve got to pinion ye, you will not have your liberty at all. As you must come, willy-nilly, you’ll do the first if you’ve any brains whatever.’
Bob’s temper began to rise. ‘Don’t you talk so large, about your pinioning, my man. When I’ve settled—’
‘Now or never, young blow-hard,’ interrupted his informant.
‘Come, what jabber is this going on?’ said the lieutenant, stepping forward. ‘Bring your man.’
One of the marines set foot on the ladder, but at the same moment a shoe from Bob’s hand hit the lantern with well-aimed directness, knocking it clean out of the grasp of the man who held it. In spite of the darkness they began to scramble up the ladder. Bob thereupon shut the door, which being but of slight construction, was as he knew only a momentary defence. But it gained him time enough to open the window, gather up his legs upon the sill, and spring across into the apple-tree growing without. He alighted without much hurt beyond a few scratches from the boughs, a shower of falling apples testifying to the force of his leap.
‘Here he is!’ shouted several below who had seen Bob’s figure flying like a raven’s across the sky.
There was stillness for a moment in the tree. Then the fugitive made haste to climb out upon a low-hanging branch towards the garden, at which the men beneath all rushed in that direction to catch him as he dropped, saying, ‘You may as well come down, old boy. ’Twas a spry jump, and we give ye credit for ‘t.’
The latter movement of Loveday had been a mere feint. Partly hidden by the leaves he glided back to the other part of the tree, from whence it was easy to jump upon a thatch-covered out-house. This intention they did not appear to suspect, which gave him the opportunity of sliding down the slope and entering the back door of the mill.
‘He’s here, he’s here!’ the men exclaimed, running back from the tree.
By this time they had obtained another light, and pursued him closely along the back quarters of the mill. Bob had entered the lower room, seized hold of the chain by which the flour-sacks were hoisted from story to story by connexion with the mill-wheel, and pulled the rope that hung alongside for the purpose of throwing it into gear. The foremost pursuers arrived just in time to see Captain Bob’s legs and shoe-buckles vanishing through the trap-door in the joists overhead, his person having been whirled up by the machinery like any bag of flour, and the trap falling to behind him.
‘He’s gone up by the hoist!’ said the sergeant, running up the ladder in the corner to the next floor, and elevating the light just in time to see Bob’s suspended figure ascending in the same way through the same sort of trap into the second floor. The second trap also fell together behind him, and he was lost to view as before.
It was more difficult to follow now; there was only a flimsy little ladder, and the men ascended cautiously. When they stepped out upon the loft it was empty.
‘He must ha’ let go here,’ said one of the marines, who knew more about mills than the others. ‘If he had held fast a moment longer, he would have been dashed against that beam.’
They looked up. The hook by which Bob had held on had ascended to the roof, and was winding round the cylinder. Nothing was visible elsewhere but boarded divisions like the stalls of a stable, on each side of the stage they stood upon, these compartments being more or less heaped up with wheat and barley in the grain.
‘Perhaps he’s buried himself in the corn.’
The whole crew jumped into the corn-bins, and stirred about their yellow contents; but neither arm, leg, nor coat-tail was uncovered. They removed sacks, peeped among the rafters of the roof, but to no purpose. The lieutenant began to fume at the loss of time.
‘What cursed fools to let the man go! Why, look here, what’s this?’ He had opened the door by which sacks were taken in from waggons without, and dangling from the cat-head projecting above it was the rope used in lifting them. ‘There’s the way he went down,’ the officer continued. ‘The man’s gone.’
Amidst mumblings and curses the gang descended the pair of ladders and came into the open air; but Captain Bob was nowhere to be seen. When they reached the front door of the house the miller was standing on the threshold, half dressed.
‘Your son is a clever fellow, miller,’ said the lieutenant; ‘but it would have been much better for him if he had come quiet.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ said Loveday.
‘I have no doubt that he’s in the house.’
‘He may be; and he may not.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘I do not; and if I did I shouldn’t tell.’
‘Naturally.’
‘I heard steps beating up the road, sir,’ said the sergeant.
They turned from the door, and leaving four of the marines to keep watch round the house, the remainder of the party marched into the lane as far as where the other road branched off. While they were pausing to decide which course to take, one of the soldiers held up the light. A black object was discernible upon the ground before them, and they found it to be a hat—the hat of Bob Loveday.
‘We are on the track,’ cried the sergeant, deciding for this direction.
They tore on rapidly, and the footsteps previously heard became audible again, increasing in clearness, which told that they gained upon the fugitive, who in another five minutes stopped and turned. The rays of the candle fell upon Anne.
‘What do you want?’ she said, showing her frightened face.
They made no reply, but wheeled round and left her. She sank down on the bank to rest, having done all she could. It was she who had taken down Bob’s hat from a nail, and dropped it at the turning with the view of misleading them till he should have got clear off.
But Anne Garland was too anxious to remain long away from the centre of operations. When she got back she found that the press-gang were standing in the court discussing their next move.
‘Waste no more time here,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Two more villages to visit to-night, and the nearest three miles off. There’s nobody else in this place, and we can’t come back again.’
When they were moving away, one of the private marines, who had kept his eye on Anne, and noticed her distress, contrived to say in a whisper as he passed her, ‘We are coming back again as soon as it begins to get light; that’s only said to deceive ’ee. Keep your young man out of the way.’
They went as they had come; and the little household then met together, Mrs. Loveday having by this time dressed herself and come down. A long and anxious discussion followed.
‘Somebody must have told upon the chap,’ Loveday remarked. ‘How should they have found him out else, now he’s been home from sea this twelvemonth?’
Anne then mentioned what the friendly marine had told her; and fearing lest Bob was in the house, and would be discovered there when daylight came, they searched and called for him everywhere.
‘What clothes has he got on?’ said the miller.
‘His lovely new suit,’ said his wife. ‘I warrant it is quite spoiled!’
‘He’s got no hat,’ said Anne.
‘Well,’ said Loveday, ‘you two go and lie down now and I’ll bide up; and as soon as he comes in, which he’ll do most likely in the course of the night, I’ll let him know that they are coming again.’
Anne and Mrs. Loveday went to their bedrooms, and the miller entered the mill as if he were simply staying up to grind. But he continually left the flour-shoot to go outside and walk round; each time he could see no living being near the spot. Anne meanwhile had lain down dressed upon her bed, the window still open, her ears intent upon the sound of footsteps and dreading the reappearance of daylight and the gang’s return. Three or four times during the night she descended to the mill to inquire of her stepfather if Bob had shown himself; but the answer was always in the negative.
At length the curtains of her bed began to reveal their pattern, the brass handles of the drawers gleamed forth, and day dawned. While the light was yet no more than a suffusion of pallor, she arose, put on her hat, and determined to explore the surrounding premises before the men arrived. Emerging into the raw loneliness of the daybreak, she went upon the bridge and looked up and down the road. It was as she had left it, empty, and the solitude was rendered yet more insistent by the silence of the mill-wheel, which was now stopped, the miller having given up expecting Bob and retired to bed about three o’clock. The footprints of the marines still remained in the dust on the bridge, all the heel-marks towards the house, showing that the party had not as yet returned.
While she lingered she heard a slight noise in the other direction, and, turning, saw a woman approaching. The woman came up quickly, and, to her amazement, Anne recognized Matilda. Her walk was convulsive, face pale, almost haggard, and the cold light of the morning invested it with all the ghostliness of death. She had plainly walked all the way from Budmouth, for her shoes were covered with dust.
‘Has the press-gang been here?’ she gasped. ‘If not they are coming!’
‘They have been.’
‘And got him—I am too late!’
‘No; they are coming back again. Why did you—’
‘I came to try to save him. Can we save him? Where is he?’
Anne looked the woman in the face, and it was impossible to doubt that she was in earnest.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘I am trying to find him before they come.’
‘Will you not let me help you?’ cried the repentant Matilda.
Without either objecting or assenting Anne turned and led the way to the back part of the homestead.
Matilda, too, had suffered that night. From the moment of parting with Festus Derriman a sentiment of revulsion from the act to which she had been a party set in and increased, till at length it reached an intensity of remorse which she could not passively bear. She had risen before day and hastened thitherward to know the worst, and if possible hinder consequences that she had been the first to set in train.
After going hither and thither in the adjoining field, Anne entered the garden. The walks were bathed in grey dew, and as she passed observantly along them it appeared as if they had been brushed by some foot at a much earlier hour. At the end of the garden, bushes of broom, laurel, and yew formed a constantly encroaching shrubbery, that had come there almost by chance, and was never trimmed. Behind these bushes was a garden-seat, and upon it lay Bob sound asleep.
The ends of his hair were clotted with damp, and there was a foggy film upon the mirror-like buttons of his coat, and upon the buckles of his shoes. His bunch of new gold seals was dimmed by the same insidious dampness; his shirt-frill and muslin neckcloth were limp as seaweed. It was plain that he had been there a long time. Anne shook him, but he did not awake, his breathing being slow and stertorous.
‘Bob, wake; ’tis your own Anne!’ she said, with innocent earnestness; and then, fearfully turning her head, she saw that Matilda was close behind her.
‘You needn’t mind me,’ said Matilda bitterly. ‘I am on your side now. Shake him again.’
Anne shook him again, but he slept on. Then she noticed that his forehead bore the mark of a heavy wound.
‘I fancy I hear something!’ said her companion, starting forward and endeavouring to wake Bob herself. ‘He is stunned, or drugged!’ she said; ‘there is no rousing him.’
Anne raised her head and listened. From the direction of the eastern road came the sound of a steady tramp. ‘They are coming back!’ she said, clasping her hands. ‘They will take him, ill as he is! He won’t open his eyes—no, it is no use! O, what shall we do?’
Matilda did not reply, but running to the end of the seat on which Bob lay, tried its weight in her arms.
‘It is not too heavy,’ she said. ‘You take that end, and I’ll take this. We’ll carry him away to some place of hiding.’
Anne instantly seized the other end, and they proceeded with their burden at a slow pace to the lower garden-gate, which they reached as the tread of the press-gang resounded over the bridge that gave access to the mill court, now hidden from view by the hedge and the trees of the garden.
‘We will go down inside this field,’ said Anne faintly.
‘No!’ said the other; ‘they will see our foot-tracks in the dew. We must go into the road.’
‘It is the very road they will come down when they leave the mill.’
‘It cannot be helped; it is neck or nothing with us now.’
So they emerged upon the road, and staggered along without speaking, occasionally resting for a moment to ease their arms; then shaking him to arouse him, and finding it useless, seizing the seat again. When they had gone about two hundred yards Matilda betrayed signs of exhaustion, and she asked, ‘Is there no shelter near?’
‘When we get to that little field of corn,’ said Anne.
‘It is so very far. Surely there is some place near?’
She pointed to a few scrubby bushes overhanging a little stream, which passed under the road near this point.
‘They are not thick enough,’ said Anne.
‘Let us take him under the bridge,’ said Matilda. ‘I can go no further.’
Entering the opening by which cattle descended to drink, they waded into the weedy water, which here rose a few inches above their ankles. To ascend the stream, stoop under the arch, and reach the centre of the roadway, was the work of a few minutes.
‘If they look under the arch we are lost,’ murmured Anne.
‘There is no parapet to the bridge, and they may pass over without heeding.’
They waited, their heads almost in contact with the reeking arch, and their feet encircled by the stream, which was at its summer lowness now. For some minutes they could hear nothing but the babble of the water over their ankles, and round the legs of the seat on which Bob slumbered, the sounds being reflected in a musical tinkle from the hollow sides of the arch. Anne’s anxiety now was lest he should not continue sleeping till the search was over, but start up with his habitual imprudence, and scorning such means of safety, rush out into their arms.
A quarter of an hour dragged by, and then indications reached their ears that the re-examination of the mill had begun and ended. The well-known tramp drew nearer, and reverberated through the ground over their heads, where its volume signified to the listeners that the party had been largely augmented by pressed men since the night preceding. The gang passed the arch, and the noise regularly diminished, as if no man among them had thought of looking aside for a moment.
Matilda broke the silence. ‘I wonder if they have left a watch behind?’ she said doubtfully.
‘I will go and see,’ said Anne. ‘Wait till I return.’
‘No; I can do no more. When you come back I shall be gone. I ask one thing of you. If all goes well with you and him, and he marries you—don’t be alarmed; my plans lie elsewhere—when you are his wife tell him who helped to carry him away. But don’t mention my name to the rest of your family, either now or at any time.’
Anne regarded the speaker for a moment, and promised; after which she waded out from the archway.
Matilda stood looking at Bob for a moment, as if preparing to go, till moved by some impulse she bent and lightly kissed him once.
‘How can you!’ cried Anne reproachfully. When leaving the mouth of the arch she had bent back and seen the act.
Matilda flushed. ‘You jealous baby!’ she said scornfully.
Anne hesitated for a moment, then went out from the water, and hastened towards the mill.
She entered by the garden, and, seeing no one, advanced and peeped in at the window. Her mother and Mr. Loveday were sitting within as usual.
‘Are they all gone?’ said Anne softly.
‘Yes. They did not trouble us much, beyond going into every room, and searching about the garden, where they saw steps. They have been lucky to-night; they have caught fifteen or twenty men at places further on; so the loss of Bob was no hurt to their feelings. I wonder where in the world the poor fellow is!’
‘I will show you,’ said Anne. And explaining in a few words what had happened, she was promptly followed by David and Loveday along the road. She lifted her dress and entered the arch with some anxiety on account of Matilda; but the actress was gone, and Bob lay on the seat as she had left him.
Bob was brought out, and water thrown upon his face; but though he moved he did not rouse himself until some time after he had been borne into the house. Here he opened his eyes, and saw them standing round, and gathered a little consciousness.
‘You are all right, my boy!’ said his father. ‘What hev happened to ye? Where did ye get that terrible blow?’
‘Ah—I can mind now,’ murmured Bob, with a stupefied gaze around. ‘I fell in slipping down the topsail halyard—the rope, that is, was too short—and I fell upon my head. And then I went away. When I came back I thought I wouldn’t disturb ye: so I lay down out there, to sleep out the watch; but the pain in my head was so great that I couldn’t get to sleep; so I picked some of the poppy-heads in the border, which I once heard was a good thing for sending folks to sleep when they are in pain. So I munched up all I could find, and dropped off quite nicely.’
‘I wondered who had picked ’em!’ said Molly. ‘I noticed they were gone.’
‘Why, you might never have woke again!’ said Mrs. Loveday, holding up her hands. ‘How is your head now?’
‘I hardly know,’ replied the young man, putting his hand to his forehead and beginning to doze again. ‘Where be those fellows that boarded us? With this—smooth water and—fine breeze we ought to get away from ’em. Haul in—the larboard braces, and—bring her to the wind.’
‘You are at home, dear Bob,’ said Anne, bending over him, ‘and the men are gone.’
‘Come along upstairs: th’ beest hardly awake now,’ said his father and Bob was assisted to bed.
In four-and-twenty hours Bob had recovered. But though physically himself again, he was not at all sure of his position as a patriot. He had that practical knowledge of seamanship of which the country stood much in need, and it was humiliating to find that impressment seemed to be necessary to teach him to use it for her advantage. Many neighbouring young men, less fortunate than himself, had been pressed and taken; and their absence seemed a reproach to him. He went away by himself into the mill-roof, and, surrounded by the corn-heaps, gave vent to self-condemnation.
‘Certainly, I am no man to lie here so long for the pleasure of sighting that young girl forty times a day, and letting her sight me—bless her eyes!—till I must needs want a press-gang to teach me what I’ve forgot. And is it then all over with me as a British sailor? We’ll see.’
When he was thrown under the influence of Anne’s eyes again, which were more tantalizingly beautiful than ever just now (so it seemed to him), his intention of offering his services to the Government would wax weaker, and he would put off his final decision till the next day. Anne saw these fluctuations of his mind between love and patriotism, and being terrified by what she had heard of sea-fights, used the utmost art of which she was capable to seduce him from his forming purpose. She came to him in the mill, wearing the very prettiest of her morning jackets—the one that only just passed the waist, and was laced so tastefully round the collar and bosom. Then she would appear in her new hat, with a bouquet of primroses on one side; and on the following Sunday she walked before him in lemon-coloured boots, so that her feet looked like a pair of yellow-hammers flitting under her dress.
But dress was the least of the means she adopted for chaining him down. She talked more tenderly than ever; asked him to begin small undertakings in the garden on her account; she sang about the house, that the place might seem cheerful when he came in. This singing for a purpose required great effort on her part, leaving her afterwards very sad. When Bob asked her what was the matter, she would say, ‘Nothing; only I am thinking how you will grieve your father, and cross his purposes, if you carry out your unkind notion of going to sea, and forsaking your place in the mill.’
‘Yes,’ Bob would say uneasily. ‘It will trouble him, I know.’
Being also quite aware how it would trouble her, he would again postpone, and thus another week passed away.
All this time John had not come once to the mill. It appeared as if Miss Johnson absorbed all his time and thoughts. Bob was often seen chuckling over the circumstance. ‘A sly rascal!’ he said. ‘Pretending on the day she came to be married that she was not good enough for me, when it was only that he wanted her for himself. How he could have persuaded her to go away is beyond me to say!’
Anne could not contest this belief of her lover’s, and remained silent; but there had more than once occurred to her mind a doubt of its probability. Yet she had only abandoned her opinion that John had schemed for Matilda, to embrace the opposite error; that, finding he had wronged the young lady, he had pitied and grown to love her.
‘And yet Jack, when he was a boy, was the simplest fellow alive,’ resumed Bob. ‘By George, though, I should have been hot against him for such a trick, if in losing her I hadn’t found a better! But she’ll never come down to him in the world: she has high notions now. I am afraid he’s doomed to sigh in vain!’
Though Bob regretted this possibility, the feeling was not reciprocated by Anne. It was true that she knew nothing of Matilda’s temporary treachery, and that she disbelieved the story of her lack of virtue; but she did not like the woman. ‘Perhaps it will not matter if he is doomed to sigh in vain,’ she said. ‘But I owe him no ill-will. I have profited by his doings, incomprehensible as they are.’ And she bent her fair eyes on Bob and smiled.
Bob looked dubious. ‘He thinks he has affronted me, now I have seen through him, and that I shall be against meeting him. But, of course, I am not so touchy. I can stand a practical joke, as can any man who has been afloat. I’ll call and see him, and tell him so.’
Before he started, Bob bethought him of something which would still further prove to the misapprehending John that he was entirely forgiven. He went to his room, and took from his chest a packet containing a lock of Miss Johnson’s hair, which she had given him during their brief acquaintance, and which till now he had quite forgotten. When, at starting, he wished Anne goodbye, it was accompanied by such a beaming face, that she knew he was full of an idea, and asked what it might be that pleased him so.
‘Why, this,’ he said, smacking his breast-pocket. ‘A lock of hair that Matilda gave me.’
Anne sank back with parted lips.
‘I am going to give it to Jack—he’ll jump for joy to get it! And it will show him how willing I am to give her up to him, fine piece as she is.’
‘Will you see her to-day, Bob?’ Anne asked with an uncertain smile.
‘O no—unless it is by accident.’
On reaching the outskirts of the town he went straight to the barracks, and was lucky enough to find John in his room, at the left-hand corner of the quadrangle. John was glad to see him; but to Bob’s surprise he showed no immediate contrition, and thus afforded no room for the brotherly speech of forgiveness which Bob had been going to deliver. As the trumpet-major did not open the subject, Bob felt it desirable to begin himself.
‘I have brought ye something that you will value, Jack,’ he said, as they sat at the window, overlooking the large square barrack-yard. ‘I have got no further use for it, and you should have had it before if it had entered my head.’
‘Thank you, Bob; what is it?’ said John, looking absently at an awkward squad of young men who were drilling in the enclosure.
‘’Tis a young woman’s lock of hair.’
‘Ah!’ said John, quite recovering from his abstraction, and slightly flushing. Could Bob and Anne have quarrelled? Bob drew the paper from his pocket, and opened it.
‘Black!’ said John.
‘Yes—black enough.’
‘Whose?’
‘Why, Matilda’s.’
‘O, Matilda’s!’
‘Whose did you think then?’
Instead of replying, the trumpet-major’s face became as red as sunset, and he turned to the window to hide his confusion.
Bob was silent, and then he, too, looked into the court. At length he arose, walked to his brother, and laid his hand upon his shoulder. ‘Jack,’ he said, in an altered voice, ‘you are a good fellow. Now I see it all.’
‘O no—that’s nothing,’ said John hastily.
‘You’ve been pretending that you care for this woman that I mightn’t blame myself for heaving you out from the other—which is what I’ve done without knowing it.’
‘What does it matter?’
‘But it does matter! I’ve been making you unhappy all these weeks and weeks through my thoughtlessness. They seemed to think at home, you know, John, that you had grown not to care for her; or I wouldn’t have done it for all the world!’
‘You stick to her, Bob, and never mind me. She belongs to you. She loves you. I have no claim upon her, and she thinks nothing about me.’
‘She likes you, John, thoroughly well; so does everybody; and if I hadn’t come home, putting my foot in it— That coming home of mine has been a regular blight upon the family! I ought never to have stayed. The sea is my home, and why couldn’t I bide there?’
The trumpet-major drew Bob’s discourse off the subject as soon as he could, and Bob, after some unconsidered replies and remarks, seemed willing to avoid it for the present. He did not ask John to accompany him home, as he had intended; and on leaving the barracks turned southward and entered the town to wander about till he could decide what to do.
It was the 3rd of September, but the King’s watering-place still retained its summer aspect. The royal bathing-machine had been drawn out just as Bob reached Gloucester Buildings, and he waited a minute, in the lack of other distraction, to look on. Immediately that the King’s machine had entered the water a group of florid men with fiddles, violoncellos, a trombone, and a drum, came forward, packed themselves into another machine that was in waiting, and were drawn out into the waves in the King’s rear. All that was to be heard for a few minutes were the slow pulsations of the sea; and then a deafening noise burst from the interior of the second machine with power enough to split the boards asunder; it was the condensed mass of musicians inside, striking up the strains of ‘God save the King,’ as his Majesty’s head rose from the water. Bob took off his hat and waited till the end of the performance, which, intended as a pleasant surprise to George III. by the loyal burghers, was possibly in the watery circumstances tolerated rather than desired by that dripping monarch.[303]
Loveday then passed on to the harbour, where he remained awhile, looking at the busy scene of loading and unloading craft and swabbing the decks of yachts; at the boats and barges rubbing against the quay wall, and at the houses of the merchants, some ancient structures of solid stone, others green-shuttered with heavy wooden bow-windows which appeared as if about to drop into the harbour by their own weight. All these things he gazed upon, and thought of one thing—that he had caused great misery to his brother John.
The town clock struck, and Bob retraced his steps till he again approached the Esplanade and Gloucester Lodge, where the morning sun blazed in upon the house fronts, and not a spot of shade seemed to be attainable. A huzzaing attracted his attention, and he observed that a number of people had gathered before the King’s residence, where a brown curricle had stopped, out of which stepped a hale man in the prime of life, wearing a blue uniform, gilt epaulettes, cocked hat, and sword, who crossed the pavement and went in. Bob went up and joined the group. ‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘Captain Hardy,’ replied a bystander.
‘What of him?’
‘Just gone in—waiting to see the King.’
‘But the captain is in the West Indies?’
‘No. The fleet is come home; they can’t find the French anywhere.’
‘Will they go and look for them again?’ asked Bob.
‘O yes. Nelson is determined to find ’em. As soon as he’s refitted he’ll put to sea again. Ah, here’s the King coming in.’
Bob was so interested in what he had just heard that he scarcely noticed the arrival of the King, and a body of attendant gentlemen. He went on thinking of his new knowledge; Captain Hardy was come. He was doubtless staying with his family at their small manor-house at Pos’ham, a few miles from Overcombe, where he usually spent the intervals between his different cruises.
Loveday returned to the mill without further delay; and shortly explaining that John was very well, and would come soon, went on to talk of the arrival of Nelson’s captain.
‘And is he come at last?’ said the miller, throwing his thoughts years backward. ‘Well can I mind when he first left home to go on board the Helena as midshipman!’
‘That’s not much to remember. I can remember it too,’ said Mrs. Loveday.
‘’Tis more than twenty years ago anyhow. And more than that, I can mind when he was born; I was a lad, serving my ‘prenticeship at the time. He has been in this house often and often when ‘a was young. When he came home after his first voyage he stayed about here a long time, and used to look in at the mill whenever he went past. “What will you be next, sir?” said mother to him one day as he stood with his back to the doorpost. “A lieutenant, Dame Loveday,” says he. “And what next?” says she. “A commander.” “And next?” “Next, post-captain.” “And then?” “Then it will be almost time to die.” I’d warrant that he’d mind it to this very day if you were to ask him.’
Bob heard all this with a manner of preoccupation, and soon retired to the mill. Thence he went to his room by the back passage, and taking his old seafaring garments from a dark closet in the wall conveyed them to the loft at the top of the mill, where he occupied the remaining spare moments of the day in brushing the mildew from their folds, and hanging each article by the window to get aired. In the evening he returned to the loft, and dressing himself in the old salt suit, went out of the house unobserved by anybody, and ascended the road towards Captain Hardy’s native village and present temporary home.
The shadeless downs were now brown with the droughts of the passing summer, and few living things met his view, the natural rotundity of the elevation being only occasionally disturbed by the presence of a barrow, a thorn-bush, or a piece of dry wall which remained from some attempted enclosure. By the time that he reached the village it was dark, and the larger stars had begun to shine when he walked up to the door of the old-fashioned house which was the family residence of this branch of the South-Wessex Hardys.
‘Will the captain allow me to wait on him to-night?’ inquired Loveday, explaining who and what he was.
The servant went away for a few minutes, and then told Bob that he might see the captain in the morning.
‘If that’s the case, I’ll come again,’ replied Bob, quite cheerful that failure was not absolute.
He had left the door but a few steps when he was called back and asked if he had walked all the way from Overcombe Mill on purpose.
Loveday replied modestly that he had done so.
‘Then will you come in?’ He followed the speaker into a small study or office, and in a minute or two Captain Hardy entered.
The captain at this time was a bachelor of thirty-five, rather stout in build, with light eyes, bushy eyebrows, a square broad face, plenty of chin, and a mouth whose corners played between humour and grimness. He surveyed Loveday from top to toe.
‘Robert Loveday, sir, son of the miller at Overcombe,’ said Bob, making a low bow.
‘Ah! I remember your father, Loveday,’ the gallant seaman replied. ‘Well, what do you want to say to me?’ Seeing that Bob found it rather difficult to begin, he leant leisurely against the mantelpiece, and went on, ‘Is your father well and hearty? I have not seen him for many, many years.’
‘Quite well, thank ’ee.’
‘You used to have a brother in the army, I think? What was his name—John? A very fine fellow, if I recollect.’
‘Yes, cap’n; he’s there still.’
‘And you are in the merchant-service?’
‘Late first mate of the brig Pewit.’
‘How is it you’re not on board a man-of-war?’
‘Ay, sir, that’s the thing I’ve come about,’ said Bob, recovering confidence. ‘I should have been, but ’tis womankind has hampered me. I’ve waited and waited on at home because of a young woman—lady, I might have said, for she’s sprung from a higher class of society than I. Her father was a landscape painter—maybe you’ve heard of him, sir? The name is Garland.’
‘He painted that view of our village here,’ said Captain Hardy, looking towards a dark little picture in the corner of the room.
Bob looked, and went on, as if to the picture, ‘Well, sir, I have found that— However, the press-gang came a week or two ago, and didn’t get hold of me. I didn’t care to go aboard as a pressed man.’
‘There has been a severe impressment. It is of course a disagreeable necessity, but it can’t be helped.’
‘Since then, sir, something has happened that makes me wish they had found me, and I have come to-night to ask if I could enter on board your ship the Victory.’
The captain shook his head severely, and presently observed: ‘I am glad to find that you think of entering the service, Loveday; smart men are badly wanted. But it will not be in your power to choose your ship.’
‘Well, well, sir; then I must take my chance elsewhere,’ said Bob, his face indicating the disappointment he would not fully express. ‘’Twas only that I felt I would much rather serve under you than anybody else, my father and all of us being known to ye, Captain Hardy, and our families belonging to the same parts.’
Captain Hardy took Bob’s altitude more carefully. ‘Are you a good practical seaman?’ he asked musingly.
‘Ay, sir; I believe I am.’
‘Active? Fond of skylarking?’
‘Well, I don’t know about the last. I think I can say I am active enough. I could walk the yard-arm, if required, cross from mast to mast by the stays, and do what most fellows do who call themselves spry.’
The captain then put some questions about the details of navigation, which Loveday, having luckily been used to square rigs, answered satisfactorily. ‘As to reefing topsails,’ he added, ‘if I don’t do it like a flash of lightning, I can do it so that they will stand blowing weather. The Pewit was not a dull vessel, and when we were convoyed home from Lisbon, she could keep well in sight of the frigate scudding at a distance, by putting on full sail. We had enough hands aboard to reef topsails man-o’-war fashion, which is a rare thing in these days, sir, now that able seamen are so scarce on trading craft. And I hear that men from square-rigged vessels are liked much the best in the navy, as being more ready for use? So that I shouldn’t be altogether so raw,’ said Bob earnestly, ‘if I could enter on your ship, sir. Still, if I can’t, I can’t.’
‘I might ask for you, Loveday,’ said the captain thoughtfully, ‘and so get you there that way. In short, I think I may say I will ask for you. So consider it settled.’
‘My thanks to you, sir,’ said Loveday.
‘You are aware that the Victory is a smart ship, and that cleanliness and order are, of necessity, more strictly insisted upon there than in some others?’
‘Sir, I quite see it.’
‘Well, I hope you will do your duty as well on a line-of-battle ship as you did when mate of the brig, for it is a duty that may be serious.’
Bob replied that it should be his one endeavour; and receiving a few instructions for getting on board the guard-ship, and being conveyed to Portsmouth, he turned to go away.
‘You’ll have a stiff walk before you fetch Overcombe Mill this dark night, Loveday,’ concluded the captain, peering out of the window. ‘I’ll send you in a glass of grog to help ’ee on your way.’
The captain then left Bob to himself, and when he had drunk the grog that was brought in he started homeward, with a heart not exactly light, but large with a patriotic cheerfulness, which had not diminished when, after walking so fast in his excitement as to be beaded with perspiration, he entered his father’s door.
They were all sitting up for him, and at his approach anxiously raised their sleepy eyes, for it was nearly eleven o’clock.
‘There; I knew he’d not be much longer!’ cried Anne, jumping up and laughing, in her relief. ‘They have been thinking you were very strange and silent to-day, Bob; you were not, were you?’
‘What’s the matter, Bob?’ said the miller; for Bob’s countenance was sublimed by his recent interview, like that of a priest just come from the penetralia of the temple.
‘He’s in his mate’s clothes, just as when he came home!’ observed Mrs. Loveday.
They all saw now that he had something to tell. ‘I am going away,’ he said when he had sat down. ‘I am going to enter on board a man-of-war, and perhaps it will be the Victory.’
‘Going?’ said Anne faintly.
‘Now, don’t you mind it, there’s a dear,’ he went on solemnly, taking her hand in his own. ‘And you, father, don’t you begin to take it to heart’ (the miller was looking grave). ‘The press-gang has been here, and though I showed them that I was a free man, I am going to show everybody that I can do my duty.’
Neither of the other three answered, Anne and the miller having their eyes bent upon the ground, and the former trying to repress her tears.
‘Now don’t you grieve, either of you,’ he continued; ‘nor vex yourselves that this has happened. Please not to be angry with me, father, for deserting you and the mill, where you want me, for Imust go. For these three years we and the rest of the country have been in fear of the enemy; trade has been hindered; poor folk made hungry; and many rich folk made poor. There must be a deliverance, and it must be done by sea. I have seen Captain Hardy, and I shall serve under him if so be I can.’
‘Captain Hardy?’
‘Yes. I have been to his house at Pos’ham, where he’s staying with his sisters; walked there and back, and I wouldn’t have missed it for fifty guineas. I hardly thought he would see me; but he did see me. And he hasn’t forgot you.’
Bob then opened his tale in order, relating graphically the conversation to which he had been a party, and they listened with breathless attention.
‘Well, if you must go, you must,’ said the miller with emotion; ‘but I think it somewhat hard that, of my two sons, neither one of ’em can be got to stay and help me in my business as I get old.’
‘Don’t trouble and vex about it,’ said Mrs. Loveday soothingly. ‘They are both instruments in the hands of Providence, chosen to chastise that Corsican ogre, and do what they can for the country in these trying years.’
‘That’s just the shape of it, Mrs. Loveday,’ said Bob.
‘And he’ll come back soon,’ she continued, turning to Anne. ‘And then he’ll tell us all he has seen, and the glory that he’s won, and how he has helped to sweep that scourge Buonaparty off the earth.’
‘When be you going, Bob?’ his father inquired.
‘To-morrow, if I can. I shall call at the barracks and tell John as I go by. When I get to Portsmouth—’
A burst of sobs in quick succession interrupted his words; they came from Anne, who till that moment had been sitting as before with her hand in that of Bob, and apparently quite calm. Mrs. Loveday jumped up, but before she could say anything to soothe the agitated girl she had calmed herself with the same singular suddenness that had marked her giving way. ‘I don’t mind Bob’s going,’ she said. ‘I think he ought to go. Don’t suppose, Bob, that I want you to stay!’
After this she left the apartment, and went into the little side room where she and her mother usually worked. In a few moments Bob followed her. When he came back he was in a very sad and emotional mood. Anybody could see that there had been a parting of profound anguish to both.
‘She is not coming back to-night,’ he said.
‘You will see her to-morrow before you go?’ said her mother.
‘I may or I may not,’ he replied. ‘Father and Mrs. Loveday, do you go to bed now. I have got to look over my things and get ready; and it will take me some little time. If you should hear noises you will know it is only myself moving about.’
When Bob was left alone he suddenly became brisk, and set himself to overhaul his clothes and other possessions in a business-like manner. By the time that his chest was packed, such things as he meant to leave at home folded into cupboards, and what was useless destroyed, it was past two o’clock. Then he went to bed, so softly that only the creak of one weak stair revealed his passage upward. At the moment that he passed Anne’s chamber-door her mother was bending over her as she lay in bed, and saying to her, ‘Won’t you see him in the morning?’
‘No, no,’ said Anne. ‘I would rather not see him! I have said that I may. But I shall not. I cannot see him again!’
When the family got up next day Bob had vanished. It was his way to disappear like this, to avoid affecting scenes at parting. By the time that they had sat down to a gloomy breakfast, Bob was in the boat of a Budmouth waterman, who pulled him alongside the guardship in the roads, where he laid hold of the man-rope, mounted, and disappeared from external view. In the course of the day the ship moved off, set her royals, and made sail for Portsmouth, with five hundred new hands for the service on board, consisting partly of pressed men and partly of volunteers, among the latter being Robert Loveday.
In parting from John, who accompanied him to the quay, Bob had said: ‘Now, Jack, these be my last words to you: I give her up. I go away on purpose, and I shall be away a long time. If in that time she should list over towards ye ever so little, mind you take her. You have more right to her than I. You chose her when my mind was elsewhere, and you best deserve her; for I have never known you forget one woman, while I’ve forgot a dozen. Take her then, if she will come, and God bless both of ye.’
Another person besides John saw Bob go. That was Derriman, who was standing by a bollard a little further up the quay. He did not repress his satisfaction at the sight. John looked towards him with an open gaze of contempt; for the cuffs administered to the yeoman at the inn had not, so far as the trumpet-major was aware, produced any desire to avenge that insult, John being, of course, quite ignorant that Festus had erroneously retaliated upon Bob, in his peculiar though scarcely soldierly way. Finding that he did not even now approach him, John went on his way, and thought over his intention of preserving intact the love between Anne and his brother.
He was surprised when he next went to the mill to find how glad they all were to see him. From the moment of Bob’s return to the bosom of the deep Anne had had no existence on land; people might have looked at her human body and said she had flitted thence. The sea and all that belonged to the sea was her daily thought and her nightly dream. She had the whole two-and-thirty winds under her eye, each passing gale that ushered in returning autumn being mentally registered; and she acquired a precise knowledge of the direction in which Portsmouth, Brest, Ferrol, Cadiz, and other such likely places lay. Instead of saying her own familiar prayers at night she substituted, with some confusion of thought, the Forms of Prayer to be used at sea. John at once noticed her lorn, abstracted looks, pitied her,—how much he pitied her!—and asked when they were alone if there was anything he could do.
‘There are two things,’ she said, with almost childish eagerness in her tired eyes.
‘They shall be done.’
‘The first is to find out if Captain Hardy has gone back to his ship; and the other is—O if you will do it, John!—to get me newspapers whenever possible.’
After this duologue John was absent for a space of three hours, and they thought he had gone back to barracks. He entered, however, at the end of that time, took off his forage-cap, and wiped his forehead.
‘You look tired, John,’ said his father.
‘O no.’ He went through the house till he had found Anne Garland.
‘I have only done one of those things,’ he said to her.
‘What, already! I didn’t hope for or mean to-day.’
‘Captain Hardy is gone from Pos’ham. He left some days ago. We shall soon hear that the fleet has sailed.’
‘You have been all the way to Pos’ham on purpose? How good of you!’
‘Well, I was anxious to know myself when Bob is likely to leave. I expect now that we shall soon hear from him.’
Two days later he came again. He brought a newspaper, and what was better, a letter for Anne, franked by the first lieutenant of the Victory.
‘Then he’s aboard her,’ said Anne, as she eagerly took the letter.
It was short, but as much as she could expect in the circumstances, and informed them that the captain had been as good as his word, and had gratified Bob’s earnest wish to serve under him. The ship, with Admiral Lord Nelson on board, and accompanied by the frigate Euryalus, was to sail in two days for Plymouth, where they would be joined by others, and thence proceed to the coast of Spain.
Anne lay awake that night thinking of the Victory, and of those who floated in her. To the best of Anne’s calculation that ship of war would, during the next twenty-four hours, pass within a few miles of where she herself then lay. Next to seeing Bob, the thing that would give her more pleasure than any other in the world was to see the vessel that contained him—his floating city, his sole dependence in battle and storm—upon whose safety from winds and enemies hung all her hope.
The morrow was market-day at the seaport, and in this she saw her opportunity. A carrier went from Overcombe at six o’clock thither, and having to do a little shopping for herself she gave it as a reason for her intended day’s absence, and took a place in the van. When she reached the town it was still early morning, but the borough was already in the zenith of its daily bustle and show. The King was always out-of-doors by six o’clock, and such cock-crow hours at Gloucester Lodge produced an equally forward stir among the population. She alighted, and passed down the esplanade, as fully thronged by persons of fashion at this time of mist and level sunlight as a watering-place in the present day is at four in the afternoon. Dashing bucks and beaux in cocked hats, black feathers, ruffles, and frills, stared at her as she hurried along; the beach was swarming with bathing women, wearing waistbands that bore the national refrain, ‘God save the King,’ in gilt letters; the shops were all open, and Sergeant Stanner, with his sword-stuck bank-notes and heroic gaze, was beating up at two guineas and a crown, the crown to drink his Majesty’s health.
She soon finished her shopping, and then, crossing over into the old town, pursued her way along the coast-road to Portland. At the end of an hour she had been rowed across the Fleet (which then lacked the convenience of a bridge), and reached the base of Portland Hill. The steep incline before her was dotted with houses, showing the pleasant peculiarity of one man’s doorstep being behind his neighbour’s chimney, and slabs of stone as the common material for walls, roof, floor, pig-sty, stable-manger, door-scraper, and garden-stile. Anne gained the summit, and followed along the central track over the huge lump of freestone which forms the peninsula, the wide sea prospect extending as she went on. Weary with her journey, she approached the extreme southerly peak of rock, and gazed from the cliff at Portland Bill, or Beal, as it was in those days more correctly called.
The wild, herbless, weather-worn promontory was quite a solitude, and, saving the one old lighthouse about fifty yards up the slope, scarce a mark was visible to show that humanity had ever been near the spot. Anne found herself a seat on a stone, and swept with her eyes the tremulous expanse of water around her that seemed to utter a ceaseless unintelligible incantation. Out of the three hundred and sixty degrees of her complete horizon two hundred and fifty were covered by waves, the coup d’oeil including the area of troubled waters known as the Race, where two seas met to effect the destruction of such vessels as could not be mastered by one. She counted the craft within her view: there were five; no, there were only four; no, there were seven, some of the specks having resolved themselves into two. They were all small coasters, and kept well within sight of land.
Anne sank into a reverie. Then she heard a slight noise on her left hand, and turning beheld an old sailor, who had approached with a glass. He was levelling it over the sea in a direction to the south-east, and somewhat removed from that in which her own eyes had been wandering. Anne moved a few steps thitherward, so as to unclose to her view a deeper sweep on that side, and by this discovered a ship of far larger size than any which had yet dotted the main before her. Its sails were for the most part new and clean, and in comparison with its rapid progress before the wind the small brigs and ketches seemed standing still. Upon this striking object the old man’s glass was bent.
‘What do you see, sailor?’ she asked.
‘Almost nothing,’ he answered. ‘My sight is so gone off lately that things, one and all, be but a November mist to me. And yet I fain would see to-day. I am looking for the Victory.’
‘Why,’ she said quickly.
‘I have a son aboard her. He’s one of three from these parts. There’s the captain, there’s my son Ned, and there’s young Loveday of Overcombe—he that lately joined.’
‘Shall I look for you?’ said Anne, after a pause.
‘Certainly, mis’ess, if so be you please.’
Anne took the glass, and he supported it by his arm. ‘It is a large ship,’ she said, ‘with three masts, three rows of guns along the side, and all her sails set.’
‘I guessed as much.’
‘There is a little flag in front—over her bowsprit.’
‘The jack.’
‘And there’s a large one flying at her stern.’
‘The ensign.’
‘And a white one on her fore-topmast.’
‘That’s the admiral’s flag, the flag of my Lord Nelson. What is her figure-head, my dear?’
‘A coat-of-arms, supported on this side by a sailor.’
Her companion nodded with satisfaction. ‘On the other side of that figure-head is a marine.’
‘She is twisting round in a curious way, and her sails sink in like old cheeks, and she shivers like a leaf upon a tree.’
‘She is in stays, for the larboard tack. I can see what she’s been doing. She’s been re’ching close in to avoid the flood tide, as the wind is to the sou’-west, and she’s bound down; but as soon as the ebb made, d’ye see, they made sail to the west’ard. Captain Hardy may be depended upon for that; he knows every current about here, being a native.’
‘And now I can see the other side; it is a soldier where a sailor was before. You aresureit is the Victory?’
‘I am sure.’
After this a frigate came into view—the Euryalus—sailing in the same direction. Anne sat down, and her eyes never left the ships. ‘Tell me more about the Victory,’ she said.
‘She is the best sailer in the service, and she carries a hundred guns. The heaviest be on the lower deck, the next size on the middle deck, the next on the main and upper decks. My son Ned’s place is on the lower deck, because he’s short, and they put the short men below.’
Bob, though not tall, was not likely to be specially selected for shortness. She pictured him on the upper deck, in his snow-white trousers and jacket of navy blue, looking perhaps towards the very point of land where she then was.
The great silent ship, with her population of blue-jackets, marines, officers, captain, and the admiral who was not to return alive, passed like a phantom the meridian of the Bill. Sometimes her aspect was that of a large white bat, sometimes that of a grey one. In the course of time the watching girl saw that the ship had passed her nearest point; the breadth of her sails diminished by foreshortening, till she assumed the form of an egg on end. After this something seemed to twinkle, and Anne, who had previously withdrawn from the old sailor, went back to him, and looked again through the glass. The twinkling was the light falling upon the cabin windows of the ship’s stern. She explained it to the old man.
‘Then we see now what the enemy have seen but once. That was in seventy-nine, when she sighted the French and Spanish fleet off Scilly, and she retreated because she feared a landing. Well, ’tis a brave ship and she carries brave men!’
Anne’s tender bosom heaved, but she said nothing, and again became absorbed in contemplation.
The Victory was fast dropping away. She was on the horizon, and soon appeared hull down. That seemed to be like the beginning of a greater end than her present vanishing. Anne Garland could not stay by the sailor any longer, and went about a stone’s-throw off, where she was hidden by the inequality of the cliff from his view. The vessel was now exactly end on, and stood out in the direction of the Start, her width having contracted to the proportion of a feather. She sat down again, and mechanically took out some biscuits that she had brought, foreseeing that her waiting might be long. But she could not eat one of them; eating seemed to jar with the mental tenseness of the moment; and her undeviating gaze continued to follow the lessened ship with the fidelity of a balanced needle to a magnetic stone, all else in her being motionless.
The courses of the Victory were absorbed into the main, then her topsails went, and then her top-gallants. She was now no more than a dead fly’s wing on a sheet of spider’s web; and even this fragment diminished. Anne could hardly bear to see the end, and yet she resolved not to flinch. The admiral’s flag sank behind the watery line, and in a minute the very truck of the last topmast stole away. The Victory was gone.
Anne’s lip quivered as she murmured, without removing her wet eyes from the vacant and solemn horizon, ‘“They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters—”’
‘“These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep,”’ was returned by a man’s voice from behind her.
Looking round quickly, she saw a soldier standing there; and the grave eyes of John Loveday bent on her.