Chapter Nineteen.On the first of June 1794, the British fleet was steering to the westward with a moderate breeze, south by west, and a tolerably smooth sea. All night Lord Howe had carried a press of sail to keep up with the French fleet, which he rightly conjectured would be doing the same; and as he eagerly looked forth at early dawn, great was his satisfaction to descry them, about six miles off, on the starboard or lee bow of his fleet, still steering in line of battle on the larboard tack. His great fear had been that the French Admiral would weather on him and escape; now he felt sure that he had him.At about 5 a.m. the ships of the British fleet bore up, steering first to the north-west, then to the north; and then again, having closed with the Frenchmen, they hauled their wind once more, and the Admiral, knowing that their crews had heavy work before them, ordered them to heave-to and to pipe to breakfast.The frigates, theRubyamong them, and the smaller vessels brought up the rear. Exactly at twelve minutes past 8 a.m., Lord Howe made the looked-for signal for the fleet to fill and bear down on the enemy; then came one for each ship to steer for and independently engage the ship opposed to her in the enemy’s line.The British line was to windward, and Lord Howe wished that each ship should cut through the enemy’s line astern of her proper opponent, and engage her to leeward.Soon after 9 a.m. the French ships opened their fire on the advancing British line, which was warmly returned. The gallant old English Admiral set an example of bravery by steering for the stern of the largest French ship, theMontague, and passed between her and theJacobin, almost running aboard the latter.So energetically did the men labour at their guns, and so tremendous was the fire that they poured into both their opponents, that in less than an hour theMontaguehad her stern-frame and starboard quarter shattered to pieces, and a hundred killed and two hundred wounded. In this condition she was still able to make sail, which she did, as did also theJacobin, theQueen Charlottebeing too much disabled in her masts and rigging to follow.Most of the other British ships were in the meantime hotly engaging those of the enemy. TheQueenespecially received a tremendous fire from several ships, and became so crippled that theMontague, after she had got clear of theQueen Charlotte, followed by several other ships, bore down to surround her.Lord Howe, however, having once more made sail on his ship, wore round, followed by several other ships, to her rescue. TheMontague, though she had suffered so much in her hull and had lost so many men, had her masts and rigging entire; and this enabled her to make sail ahead, followed by other ships which had in the same way escaped with their rigging uninjured. Twelve French ships, however, were by half-past eleven almost totally dismasted, while eleven of the British were in little better condition; but then the Frenchmen had suffered in addition far more severely in their hulls.The proceedings of the line-of-battle ships had been viewed at a distance by the eager crew of theRuby. As one ship after the other was dismasted, their enthusiasm knew no bounds.“Oh, Paul, I wish I was there!” cried True Blue vehemently. “There!—there!—another Frenchman is getting it! Down comes her foremast!—see!—her mainmast and mizen-mast follow! Oh, what a crash there must be! That’s the eighth Frenchman without a lower mast standing. Hurrah! we shall have them all!”“Not quite so sure of that, boy,” observed Peter Ogle, who had come upon the forecastle. “Two of our own ships, you see, are no better off; and several have lost their topmasts and topgallant-masts. Still they are right bravely doing their duty. I’ve never seen warmer work in my day. Have you, Paul?”“No. With Lord Rodney we have had hot work enough; but the Frenchmen didn’t fight as well as they do to-day, I must say that for them,” observed Paul. “See now that Admiral of theirs; he is bearing down once more to help some of his disabled ships. See, his division seems to have four or five of them under their lee; but there are a good many more left to our share.”“Hurrah!” cried True Blue, who had been watching an action briskly carried on in another direction. “There’s one more Frenchman will be ours before long. That’s a tremendous drubbing theBrunswickhas given her.”No ship’s company displayed more determined gallantry during that eventful day than did theBrunswick, commanded by the brave Captain Harvey. Being prevented from passing between theAchilleandVengeur, in consequence of the latter shooting ahead and filling up the intervening space, she ran foul of theVengeur, her own starboard anchors hooking on the Frenchman’s larboard foreshrouds and fore-channels.“Shall we cut away the anchor, sir?” inquired the master, Mr Stewart, of the Captain.“No, no. We have got her, and we will keep her,” replied Captain Harvey.The two ships on this swung close to each other, and, paying off before the wind with their heads to the northward, with their yards squared, and with a considerable way on them, they speedily ran out of the line, commencing a furious engagement. The British crew, unable to open the eight lower-deck starboard ports from the third abaft, blew them off. TheVengeur’smusketry, meantime, and her poop carronades, soon played havoc on theBrunswick’squarterdeck, killing several officers and men, and wounding others, among whom was Captain Harvey, three of his fingers being torn away by a musket-shot, though he refused to leave the deck.For an hour and a half the gallantBrunswickcarried on the desperate strife, the courage of her opponent’s crew being equal to that of her own, when, at about 11 a.m., a French ship was discovered through the smoke, with her foremast only standing, bearing down on her larboard quarter, with her gangways and rigging crowded with men, prepared, it was evident, to board her, for the purpose of releasing theVengeur. Instead of trembling at finding the number of their enemies doubled, the British seamen cheered, and the men stationed at the five aftermost lower-deck guns on the starboard side were turned over to those on the larboard side, on which the fresh enemy appeared. A double-headed shot was added to each of these guns, already loaded with a 32-pounder. The main and upper deck guns were already manned.“Now, my lads,” cried the officer, “fire high, and knock away her remaining mast!”The stranger, which was theAchille, had now got within musket-shot, and wonderfully surprised were her crew at the hot fire with which they were received. Round after round from the after-guns were discharged in rapid succession, till, in a few minutes, down came the Frenchman’s foremast, falling on the starboard side, where the wreck of the main and mizen-masts already lay, and preventing him making the slightest resistance. A few more rounds were given. They were not returned, and down came the Frenchman’s colours, which had been hoisted on one of her remaining stumps. TheBrunswick, however, was utterly unable to take possession, not having a boat that would swim, and being still hotly engaged with her opponent on the opposite side.When the Frenchmen discovered this, they once more rehoisted their colours, and, setting a spritsail on the bowsprit, endeavoured to make off. TheBrunswick, as they did so, gave them a parting dose; but it had not the effect of making them once more lower their colours. All this time, the crews stationed at theBrunswick’slower and main deck guns were heroically labouring away. Profiting by the rolling of theVengeur, they frequently drove home the quoins and depressed the muzzles of the guns, which were loaded with two round-shot, and then before the next discharge withdrew the quoins and pointed the muzzles upwards, thus alternately firing into her opponent’s bottom and ripping up her decks. While, however, they were hurling destruction into the side of the enemy below, the French musketry was sweeping the quarterdeck, forecastle, and poop, whence, in consequence, it was scarcely possible to work the guns. Several times, also, she had been on fire from the wadding which came blazing on board.The brave Captain Harvey, on passing along the deck, was knocked down by a splinter; but, though seriously injured, he was quickly on his legs again encouraging his men. Soon afterwards, however, the crown of a double-headed shot, which had split, struck his right arm and shattered it to fragments. He fell into the arms of some of those standing round.“Stay a moment before you take me below!” he exclaimed, believing that he was mortally wounded. “Persevere, my brave lads, in your duty. Continue the action with spirit, for the honour of our King and country; and remember my last word, ‘The colours of the Brunswick shall never be struck!’”Hearty shouts answered this heroic address, and the crew set to work with renewed energy to compel their opponents to succumb. Never, perhaps, however, were two braver men than the Captains of theBrunswickandVengeuropposed to each other, and their spirits undoubtedly animated their crews. If the British had resolved to conquer, the French had determined not to yield as long as their ship remained afloat.Still it appeared doubtful which would come off the victor. At this crisis, for an instant, as the smoke cleared off, another line-of-battle ship was seen approaching theBrunswick. If a Frenchman, all on board saw it would go hard with her. Still they determined not to disappoint their Captain’s hopes, and to go down with their colours flying rather than strike.The command had now devolved on Lieutenant Cracraft. For three hours the two ships had been locked in their fiery embrace, pounding away at each other with the most desperate fury, when, near 1 p.m., theVengeur, tearing away the three anchors from theBrunswick’sbow, rolled herself clear, and the two well-matched combatants separated.The newcomer was seen to be theRamillies, with her masts and spars still uninjured. Having, indeed, had but two seamen killed and seven wounded, she was quite a fresh ship. She, however, waited for the French ship to settle farther from theBrunswick, in order to have room to fire at her without injuring the latter. The brave crew of theBrunswickwere, however, not idle even yet, and continued their fire so well-directed that they split theVengeur’srudder and shattered her stern-post, besides making a large hole in her counter, through which they could see the water rushing furiously.At this spot theRamillies, now only forty yards distant, pointed her guns, and theBrunswick, still firing, in a few minutes reduced the braveVengeurto a sinking state. Just then, it being seen from theRamilliesthat theAchillewas endeavouring to make her escape, all sail was made on her, and away she stood from the two exhausted combatants in chase of the fugitive, which she ultimately secured without opposition. Soon after 1 p.m., the two gallant opponents ceased firing at each other, and at the same time a Union-Jack was displayed over the quarter of the Frenchman as a token of submission and a desire to be relieved.Not a boat, however, could be sent from theBrunswick, and in a few minutes her mizen-mast went by the board and made her still less able to render assistance. It made the hearts of the brave crew of theBrunswickbleed to think of the sad fate which awaited their late enemies, and which no exertion they had the power of making could avert.Mr Cracraft now considered what was best to be done. The French Admiral Villaret was leading a fresh line on the starboard tack, to recover as many as he could of his dismasted ships; and the difficulty of theBrunswickwas to rejoin her own fleet, without passing dangerously near that of the French, the loss of the mizen-mast and the wounded state of the other masts rendering it impossible to haul on a wind as was necessary. Accordingly, the head of theBrunswickwas put to the northward for the purpose of making the best of her way into port, while all possible sail was made on her.Sad was her state. Her mizen-mast was gone, and her two other masts and bowsprit were desperately wounded; her yards were shattered; all her running and most of her standing rigging was shot away, and her sails were in shreds and tatters. Twenty-three guns lay dismounted; her starboard quarter gallery had been carried away, and her best bower anchor with the starboard cathead was towing under her stem. Her brave Captain was mortally wounded, and she had three officers, eleven marines, and thirty seamen killed, and three officers, nineteen marines and ninety-one seamen wounded. The survivors immediately began to fish the masts, repair the damaged rigging, and to secure the lower-deck ports, through which the water was rushing at every roll. Her adventures were not over, though; for at 3 p.m., on her homeward course, she fell in with theJemappes, wholly dismasted, and moved only by means of her spritsails. TheBrunswick, which had received, early in the day, considerable annoyance from her, luffed up under her lee for the purpose of capturing her; but her crew displayed the Union-Jack over her quarter, and hailed that she had struck to the English Admiral, at the same time pointing at theQueen, then some distance to the south. The assertion being credited, theBrunswickstood on, and happily reached Plymouth Sound in safety, where, on the 30th, her brave Captain, John Harvey, died.Her gallant opponent, meantime, theVengeur, soon after they parted, lost her wounded fore and main masts, the latter in its fall carrying away the head of the mizen-mast. Thus reduced to a complete wreck, she rolled her ports deeply in the water, and the lids of those on the larboard side having been torn or knocked off in her late engagement, she filled faster than ever. Hopeless seemed the fate of all on board. Her officers scarcely expected that she could float many hours, or indeed minutes, longer.None of her own consorts could come to her assistance. Her boats were knocked to pieces; there was no time to construct a raft, and the sea was too rough to launch one. Her decks were covered with the dead and dying; her cockpit full of desperately wounded men, not less than two hundred in all. Discipline was at end. Many broke into the spirit-room. Many burst forth into wild Republican songs, and insisted on the tricoloured flag being again hoisted.Their brave Captain looked on with grief and pain at what was going forward, and did his utmost to restore order. He had a young son with him—a gallant little fellow, who had stood unharmed by his side during the hottest of the fight; and was he now thus to perish? Could he save the boy? There seemed no hope.Captain Garland had been aloft all day with his glass, as had also several of his officers, eagerly watching the proceedings of the two fleets. Never for a moment did he doubt on which side victory would drop her wreath of laurel; still his heart beat with an anxiety unusual for him. He had remarked the two ships remaining hotly engaged, yardarm to yardarm out of the line, and he had never lost sight of them altogether. What their condition would be after so desperate and lengthened an encounter he justly surmised, and he at length bore down to aid a friend in capturing an enemy, or to succour one or the other.TheRubyhad more than one ship to contend with on her way, and her boats were summoned by signal to take possession of a prize; so that the evening was drawing on when she, with another ship, and theRattlercutter, got down to the sinking Frenchman.Evidently, from the depth of the shattered seventy-four in the water, and the slow way in which she rolled, she had but a short time longer to float. The guns were secured, and every boat that could swim was instantly lowered from the sides of the British ships. The gallant seamen showed themselves as eager to save life as they had been to destroy it.“Jump, jump, Jean Crapaud!—jump, jump, friends!” they shouted as they got alongside. “We’ll catch you, never fear,” they added, holding out their arms.Numbers of Frenchmen, begrimed with powder and covered with blood, threw themselves headlong into the boats, and had it not been for the English seamen, would have been severely injured. Some refused to come, and looked through the ports, shouting, “Vive la Nation!”, “Vive la République!”“Poor fools!” cried Paul Pringle sadly; “they’ll soon be singing a different tune when the water is closing over their heads. That will bring them too late to their senses.”The boats, as fast as their eager crews could urge them, went backwards and forwards between the sinking Frenchman and the English ships. Some hundreds had been taken off; but still the wounded and many of the drunken remained.Sir Henry Elmore commanded one of the boats, and True Blue was in her. In one of her early trips an officer appeared at one of the ports, dragging forward a young midshipman.“Monsieur,” he said, hearing Sir Henry speak French, “I beg that you will take this brave boy in your boat. He wishes to be one of the last to leave the ship, and, as you see, we know not how soon she may go down, and he may be lost. He is our Captain’s son, and where his father is I cannot say.”“Gladly—willingly,” answered Sir Henry. “And you, my friend, come with the boy.”The lad showed signs of resistance; but True Blue sprang up into the port, aided by a boathook which he held, and, taking the lad round the waist, leaped with him into the boat. The officer refused to come, saying that he had duties to which he must attend; and the boat being now full, Sir Henry had to return to the frigate.On hastening back to the ship, the officer again appeared. “I will accompany you now,” he said, leaping in and taking his seat in the sternsheets. “But I have been searching in vain for our brave Captain Renaudin. What can have, become of him I do not know. If he is lost, it will break that poor boy’s heart, they were so wrapped up in each other.”The boat, as he spoke, was rapidly filling with French seamen.“Shove off! shove off!” cried Sir Henry energetically.It was time, indeed. There was a general rush from all the decks and ports of the haplessVengeur. Some threw themselves into the water, some headlong into the boats; others danced away, shouting as before; while one, more drunken or frantic than the rest, waved over her counter the tricoloured flag under which the ship had been so gallantly fought.The boats shoved off and pulled away as fast as they could move; there was danger in delay. The men pulled for their lives. The ship gave a heavy lurch, the madmen shouted louder than ever; and then every voice was silent, and down she went like some huge monster beneath the waves, which speedily closed over the spot where she had been, not a human being floating upwards alive from her vast hull, now the tomb of nearly a third of her crew.There were many other desperate encounters that day, but none so gallantly fought out to the death as that between theBrunswickand theVengeur. Six line-of-battle ships were secured as prizes. The total loss of the French in killed, wounded, and prisoners was not less than 7000 men, of whom fully 3000 were killed.The whole loss of the English on the 1st of June, and on the previous days, was 290 killed and 858 wounded. The French having suffered more in their hulls than in their masts and rigging, were able to manoeuvre better than the English; and Admiral Villaret, being content with having secured four of his ships, made no attempt to renew the battle, but under all the sail he could set, with the dismasted ships in tow, stood away to the northward, and by 6 p.m. was completely out of sight, a single frigate only remaining astern to reconnoitre.Thus ended this celebrated sea-fight, chronicled in the naval annals of England as the glorious First—1st of June. Its immediate results were in themselves not important; but it showed Englishmen what they were ready enough to believe, that they could thrash the Frenchmen as in days of yore; and it taught the French to dread the dogged resolution and stern courage of the English, and to be prepared to suffer defeat whenever they should meet on equal terms.The news of the victory reached London on the 10th. So important was it considered, that Lord Chatham carried the account of it to the opera, and just after the second act it was made known to the house. A burst of transport interrupted the opera, and never was any scene of emotion so rapturous as the audience exhibited when the band struck up “Rule Britannia!” The same enthusiasm welcomed the news at the other theatres. The event was celebrated throughout the night by the ringing of bells and firing of cannon, and the next day at noon by the firing of the Park and Tower guns. For three successive evenings also the whole metropolis was illuminated.A few days afterwards, the King himself, with the Queen and Royal Family, went to Portsmouth to visit the fleet. Lord Howe’s flag was shifted to a frigate, and the royal standard was hoisted on board theQueen Charlotte. The whole garrison was under arms, and the concourse of people was immense. The King, with his own hand, carried a valuable diamond-hilted sword from the Commissioner’s house down to the boat. As soon as His Majesty arrived on board theQueen Charlotte, with numbers of his ministers and nobles, and the officers of the fleet standing round on the quarterdeck, he presented the sword to Lord Howe, as a mark of his satisfaction and entire approbation of his conduct.As their Majesties’ barges passed, the crews cheered, the ships saluted, the bands played martial symphonies, and every sign of a general enthusiasm was exhibited.The next day, the King gave audience to the officers of Lord Howe’s fleet, and to the officers of the army and navy generally; and after their Majesties had dined at the Commissioner’s house, they proceeded up the harbour to view the six French prizes which lay there at their moorings.The primary object for which the fleet had put to sea was not accomplished; the great American convoy was not fallen in with, nor did Admiral Montague succeed in intercepting it, though he himself met Admiral Villaret’s defeated Squadron, and might, had the French shown more courage, have been overpowered by it. He avoided an engagement and returned into port; and a day or two afterwards, the expected convoy appeared off the French coast, and gained a harbour in safety.TheRubyhad arrived with the rest of the fleet at Spithead. The seamen treated their prisoners with the greatest kindness and humanity; and even Paul Pringle declared that the Jean Crapauds were not after all such bad fellows, if you got them by themselves to talk to quietly.Young Renaudin, the son of the brave Captain of theVengeur, during their ten days’ passage home, became a great pet among the officers and midshipmen. Still his spirits were very low, and he was very despondent, believing that his father was lost to him for ever. He had especially attached himself to Sir Henry Elmore and Johnny Nott, who, remembering their own preservation from foundering, had a fellow-feeling for him, and more especially looked after all his wants, while True Blue was appointed to attend on him.The day after their arrival, Sir Henry got leave to go on shore and take their young prisoner, as well as Nott and True Blue, with him. Scarcely had they touched the point, than the boy sprang from the boat, and, breathless with excitement, rushed into the arms of a gentleman who had just landed with some English officers.“Mon père! mon père!” exclaimed the boy.“Mon fils!mon fils!” cried the gentleman, enclosing him in his arms and bursting into tears.It was the gallant Captain of theVengeur.“Next to winning the battle, I would sooner have seen that meeting between the brave French Captain and his son than anything else I know of!” exclaimed True Blue as he recounted the adventure to Tim Fid, Harry Hartland, and other messmates on board theRuby.
On the first of June 1794, the British fleet was steering to the westward with a moderate breeze, south by west, and a tolerably smooth sea. All night Lord Howe had carried a press of sail to keep up with the French fleet, which he rightly conjectured would be doing the same; and as he eagerly looked forth at early dawn, great was his satisfaction to descry them, about six miles off, on the starboard or lee bow of his fleet, still steering in line of battle on the larboard tack. His great fear had been that the French Admiral would weather on him and escape; now he felt sure that he had him.
At about 5 a.m. the ships of the British fleet bore up, steering first to the north-west, then to the north; and then again, having closed with the Frenchmen, they hauled their wind once more, and the Admiral, knowing that their crews had heavy work before them, ordered them to heave-to and to pipe to breakfast.
The frigates, theRubyamong them, and the smaller vessels brought up the rear. Exactly at twelve minutes past 8 a.m., Lord Howe made the looked-for signal for the fleet to fill and bear down on the enemy; then came one for each ship to steer for and independently engage the ship opposed to her in the enemy’s line.
The British line was to windward, and Lord Howe wished that each ship should cut through the enemy’s line astern of her proper opponent, and engage her to leeward.
Soon after 9 a.m. the French ships opened their fire on the advancing British line, which was warmly returned. The gallant old English Admiral set an example of bravery by steering for the stern of the largest French ship, theMontague, and passed between her and theJacobin, almost running aboard the latter.
So energetically did the men labour at their guns, and so tremendous was the fire that they poured into both their opponents, that in less than an hour theMontaguehad her stern-frame and starboard quarter shattered to pieces, and a hundred killed and two hundred wounded. In this condition she was still able to make sail, which she did, as did also theJacobin, theQueen Charlottebeing too much disabled in her masts and rigging to follow.
Most of the other British ships were in the meantime hotly engaging those of the enemy. TheQueenespecially received a tremendous fire from several ships, and became so crippled that theMontague, after she had got clear of theQueen Charlotte, followed by several other ships, bore down to surround her.
Lord Howe, however, having once more made sail on his ship, wore round, followed by several other ships, to her rescue. TheMontague, though she had suffered so much in her hull and had lost so many men, had her masts and rigging entire; and this enabled her to make sail ahead, followed by other ships which had in the same way escaped with their rigging uninjured. Twelve French ships, however, were by half-past eleven almost totally dismasted, while eleven of the British were in little better condition; but then the Frenchmen had suffered in addition far more severely in their hulls.
The proceedings of the line-of-battle ships had been viewed at a distance by the eager crew of theRuby. As one ship after the other was dismasted, their enthusiasm knew no bounds.
“Oh, Paul, I wish I was there!” cried True Blue vehemently. “There!—there!—another Frenchman is getting it! Down comes her foremast!—see!—her mainmast and mizen-mast follow! Oh, what a crash there must be! That’s the eighth Frenchman without a lower mast standing. Hurrah! we shall have them all!”
“Not quite so sure of that, boy,” observed Peter Ogle, who had come upon the forecastle. “Two of our own ships, you see, are no better off; and several have lost their topmasts and topgallant-masts. Still they are right bravely doing their duty. I’ve never seen warmer work in my day. Have you, Paul?”
“No. With Lord Rodney we have had hot work enough; but the Frenchmen didn’t fight as well as they do to-day, I must say that for them,” observed Paul. “See now that Admiral of theirs; he is bearing down once more to help some of his disabled ships. See, his division seems to have four or five of them under their lee; but there are a good many more left to our share.”
“Hurrah!” cried True Blue, who had been watching an action briskly carried on in another direction. “There’s one more Frenchman will be ours before long. That’s a tremendous drubbing theBrunswickhas given her.”
No ship’s company displayed more determined gallantry during that eventful day than did theBrunswick, commanded by the brave Captain Harvey. Being prevented from passing between theAchilleandVengeur, in consequence of the latter shooting ahead and filling up the intervening space, she ran foul of theVengeur, her own starboard anchors hooking on the Frenchman’s larboard foreshrouds and fore-channels.
“Shall we cut away the anchor, sir?” inquired the master, Mr Stewart, of the Captain.
“No, no. We have got her, and we will keep her,” replied Captain Harvey.
The two ships on this swung close to each other, and, paying off before the wind with their heads to the northward, with their yards squared, and with a considerable way on them, they speedily ran out of the line, commencing a furious engagement. The British crew, unable to open the eight lower-deck starboard ports from the third abaft, blew them off. TheVengeur’smusketry, meantime, and her poop carronades, soon played havoc on theBrunswick’squarterdeck, killing several officers and men, and wounding others, among whom was Captain Harvey, three of his fingers being torn away by a musket-shot, though he refused to leave the deck.
For an hour and a half the gallantBrunswickcarried on the desperate strife, the courage of her opponent’s crew being equal to that of her own, when, at about 11 a.m., a French ship was discovered through the smoke, with her foremast only standing, bearing down on her larboard quarter, with her gangways and rigging crowded with men, prepared, it was evident, to board her, for the purpose of releasing theVengeur. Instead of trembling at finding the number of their enemies doubled, the British seamen cheered, and the men stationed at the five aftermost lower-deck guns on the starboard side were turned over to those on the larboard side, on which the fresh enemy appeared. A double-headed shot was added to each of these guns, already loaded with a 32-pounder. The main and upper deck guns were already manned.
“Now, my lads,” cried the officer, “fire high, and knock away her remaining mast!”
The stranger, which was theAchille, had now got within musket-shot, and wonderfully surprised were her crew at the hot fire with which they were received. Round after round from the after-guns were discharged in rapid succession, till, in a few minutes, down came the Frenchman’s foremast, falling on the starboard side, where the wreck of the main and mizen-masts already lay, and preventing him making the slightest resistance. A few more rounds were given. They were not returned, and down came the Frenchman’s colours, which had been hoisted on one of her remaining stumps. TheBrunswick, however, was utterly unable to take possession, not having a boat that would swim, and being still hotly engaged with her opponent on the opposite side.
When the Frenchmen discovered this, they once more rehoisted their colours, and, setting a spritsail on the bowsprit, endeavoured to make off. TheBrunswick, as they did so, gave them a parting dose; but it had not the effect of making them once more lower their colours. All this time, the crews stationed at theBrunswick’slower and main deck guns were heroically labouring away. Profiting by the rolling of theVengeur, they frequently drove home the quoins and depressed the muzzles of the guns, which were loaded with two round-shot, and then before the next discharge withdrew the quoins and pointed the muzzles upwards, thus alternately firing into her opponent’s bottom and ripping up her decks. While, however, they were hurling destruction into the side of the enemy below, the French musketry was sweeping the quarterdeck, forecastle, and poop, whence, in consequence, it was scarcely possible to work the guns. Several times, also, she had been on fire from the wadding which came blazing on board.
The brave Captain Harvey, on passing along the deck, was knocked down by a splinter; but, though seriously injured, he was quickly on his legs again encouraging his men. Soon afterwards, however, the crown of a double-headed shot, which had split, struck his right arm and shattered it to fragments. He fell into the arms of some of those standing round.
“Stay a moment before you take me below!” he exclaimed, believing that he was mortally wounded. “Persevere, my brave lads, in your duty. Continue the action with spirit, for the honour of our King and country; and remember my last word, ‘The colours of the Brunswick shall never be struck!’”
Hearty shouts answered this heroic address, and the crew set to work with renewed energy to compel their opponents to succumb. Never, perhaps, however, were two braver men than the Captains of theBrunswickandVengeuropposed to each other, and their spirits undoubtedly animated their crews. If the British had resolved to conquer, the French had determined not to yield as long as their ship remained afloat.
Still it appeared doubtful which would come off the victor. At this crisis, for an instant, as the smoke cleared off, another line-of-battle ship was seen approaching theBrunswick. If a Frenchman, all on board saw it would go hard with her. Still they determined not to disappoint their Captain’s hopes, and to go down with their colours flying rather than strike.
The command had now devolved on Lieutenant Cracraft. For three hours the two ships had been locked in their fiery embrace, pounding away at each other with the most desperate fury, when, near 1 p.m., theVengeur, tearing away the three anchors from theBrunswick’sbow, rolled herself clear, and the two well-matched combatants separated.
The newcomer was seen to be theRamillies, with her masts and spars still uninjured. Having, indeed, had but two seamen killed and seven wounded, she was quite a fresh ship. She, however, waited for the French ship to settle farther from theBrunswick, in order to have room to fire at her without injuring the latter. The brave crew of theBrunswickwere, however, not idle even yet, and continued their fire so well-directed that they split theVengeur’srudder and shattered her stern-post, besides making a large hole in her counter, through which they could see the water rushing furiously.
At this spot theRamillies, now only forty yards distant, pointed her guns, and theBrunswick, still firing, in a few minutes reduced the braveVengeurto a sinking state. Just then, it being seen from theRamilliesthat theAchillewas endeavouring to make her escape, all sail was made on her, and away she stood from the two exhausted combatants in chase of the fugitive, which she ultimately secured without opposition. Soon after 1 p.m., the two gallant opponents ceased firing at each other, and at the same time a Union-Jack was displayed over the quarter of the Frenchman as a token of submission and a desire to be relieved.
Not a boat, however, could be sent from theBrunswick, and in a few minutes her mizen-mast went by the board and made her still less able to render assistance. It made the hearts of the brave crew of theBrunswickbleed to think of the sad fate which awaited their late enemies, and which no exertion they had the power of making could avert.
Mr Cracraft now considered what was best to be done. The French Admiral Villaret was leading a fresh line on the starboard tack, to recover as many as he could of his dismasted ships; and the difficulty of theBrunswickwas to rejoin her own fleet, without passing dangerously near that of the French, the loss of the mizen-mast and the wounded state of the other masts rendering it impossible to haul on a wind as was necessary. Accordingly, the head of theBrunswickwas put to the northward for the purpose of making the best of her way into port, while all possible sail was made on her.
Sad was her state. Her mizen-mast was gone, and her two other masts and bowsprit were desperately wounded; her yards were shattered; all her running and most of her standing rigging was shot away, and her sails were in shreds and tatters. Twenty-three guns lay dismounted; her starboard quarter gallery had been carried away, and her best bower anchor with the starboard cathead was towing under her stem. Her brave Captain was mortally wounded, and she had three officers, eleven marines, and thirty seamen killed, and three officers, nineteen marines and ninety-one seamen wounded. The survivors immediately began to fish the masts, repair the damaged rigging, and to secure the lower-deck ports, through which the water was rushing at every roll. Her adventures were not over, though; for at 3 p.m., on her homeward course, she fell in with theJemappes, wholly dismasted, and moved only by means of her spritsails. TheBrunswick, which had received, early in the day, considerable annoyance from her, luffed up under her lee for the purpose of capturing her; but her crew displayed the Union-Jack over her quarter, and hailed that she had struck to the English Admiral, at the same time pointing at theQueen, then some distance to the south. The assertion being credited, theBrunswickstood on, and happily reached Plymouth Sound in safety, where, on the 30th, her brave Captain, John Harvey, died.
Her gallant opponent, meantime, theVengeur, soon after they parted, lost her wounded fore and main masts, the latter in its fall carrying away the head of the mizen-mast. Thus reduced to a complete wreck, she rolled her ports deeply in the water, and the lids of those on the larboard side having been torn or knocked off in her late engagement, she filled faster than ever. Hopeless seemed the fate of all on board. Her officers scarcely expected that she could float many hours, or indeed minutes, longer.
None of her own consorts could come to her assistance. Her boats were knocked to pieces; there was no time to construct a raft, and the sea was too rough to launch one. Her decks were covered with the dead and dying; her cockpit full of desperately wounded men, not less than two hundred in all. Discipline was at end. Many broke into the spirit-room. Many burst forth into wild Republican songs, and insisted on the tricoloured flag being again hoisted.
Their brave Captain looked on with grief and pain at what was going forward, and did his utmost to restore order. He had a young son with him—a gallant little fellow, who had stood unharmed by his side during the hottest of the fight; and was he now thus to perish? Could he save the boy? There seemed no hope.
Captain Garland had been aloft all day with his glass, as had also several of his officers, eagerly watching the proceedings of the two fleets. Never for a moment did he doubt on which side victory would drop her wreath of laurel; still his heart beat with an anxiety unusual for him. He had remarked the two ships remaining hotly engaged, yardarm to yardarm out of the line, and he had never lost sight of them altogether. What their condition would be after so desperate and lengthened an encounter he justly surmised, and he at length bore down to aid a friend in capturing an enemy, or to succour one or the other.
TheRubyhad more than one ship to contend with on her way, and her boats were summoned by signal to take possession of a prize; so that the evening was drawing on when she, with another ship, and theRattlercutter, got down to the sinking Frenchman.
Evidently, from the depth of the shattered seventy-four in the water, and the slow way in which she rolled, she had but a short time longer to float. The guns were secured, and every boat that could swim was instantly lowered from the sides of the British ships. The gallant seamen showed themselves as eager to save life as they had been to destroy it.
“Jump, jump, Jean Crapaud!—jump, jump, friends!” they shouted as they got alongside. “We’ll catch you, never fear,” they added, holding out their arms.
Numbers of Frenchmen, begrimed with powder and covered with blood, threw themselves headlong into the boats, and had it not been for the English seamen, would have been severely injured. Some refused to come, and looked through the ports, shouting, “Vive la Nation!”, “Vive la République!”
“Poor fools!” cried Paul Pringle sadly; “they’ll soon be singing a different tune when the water is closing over their heads. That will bring them too late to their senses.”
The boats, as fast as their eager crews could urge them, went backwards and forwards between the sinking Frenchman and the English ships. Some hundreds had been taken off; but still the wounded and many of the drunken remained.
Sir Henry Elmore commanded one of the boats, and True Blue was in her. In one of her early trips an officer appeared at one of the ports, dragging forward a young midshipman.
“Monsieur,” he said, hearing Sir Henry speak French, “I beg that you will take this brave boy in your boat. He wishes to be one of the last to leave the ship, and, as you see, we know not how soon she may go down, and he may be lost. He is our Captain’s son, and where his father is I cannot say.”
“Gladly—willingly,” answered Sir Henry. “And you, my friend, come with the boy.”
The lad showed signs of resistance; but True Blue sprang up into the port, aided by a boathook which he held, and, taking the lad round the waist, leaped with him into the boat. The officer refused to come, saying that he had duties to which he must attend; and the boat being now full, Sir Henry had to return to the frigate.
On hastening back to the ship, the officer again appeared. “I will accompany you now,” he said, leaping in and taking his seat in the sternsheets. “But I have been searching in vain for our brave Captain Renaudin. What can have, become of him I do not know. If he is lost, it will break that poor boy’s heart, they were so wrapped up in each other.”
The boat, as he spoke, was rapidly filling with French seamen.
“Shove off! shove off!” cried Sir Henry energetically.
It was time, indeed. There was a general rush from all the decks and ports of the haplessVengeur. Some threw themselves into the water, some headlong into the boats; others danced away, shouting as before; while one, more drunken or frantic than the rest, waved over her counter the tricoloured flag under which the ship had been so gallantly fought.
The boats shoved off and pulled away as fast as they could move; there was danger in delay. The men pulled for their lives. The ship gave a heavy lurch, the madmen shouted louder than ever; and then every voice was silent, and down she went like some huge monster beneath the waves, which speedily closed over the spot where she had been, not a human being floating upwards alive from her vast hull, now the tomb of nearly a third of her crew.
There were many other desperate encounters that day, but none so gallantly fought out to the death as that between theBrunswickand theVengeur. Six line-of-battle ships were secured as prizes. The total loss of the French in killed, wounded, and prisoners was not less than 7000 men, of whom fully 3000 were killed.
The whole loss of the English on the 1st of June, and on the previous days, was 290 killed and 858 wounded. The French having suffered more in their hulls than in their masts and rigging, were able to manoeuvre better than the English; and Admiral Villaret, being content with having secured four of his ships, made no attempt to renew the battle, but under all the sail he could set, with the dismasted ships in tow, stood away to the northward, and by 6 p.m. was completely out of sight, a single frigate only remaining astern to reconnoitre.
Thus ended this celebrated sea-fight, chronicled in the naval annals of England as the glorious First—1st of June. Its immediate results were in themselves not important; but it showed Englishmen what they were ready enough to believe, that they could thrash the Frenchmen as in days of yore; and it taught the French to dread the dogged resolution and stern courage of the English, and to be prepared to suffer defeat whenever they should meet on equal terms.
The news of the victory reached London on the 10th. So important was it considered, that Lord Chatham carried the account of it to the opera, and just after the second act it was made known to the house. A burst of transport interrupted the opera, and never was any scene of emotion so rapturous as the audience exhibited when the band struck up “Rule Britannia!” The same enthusiasm welcomed the news at the other theatres. The event was celebrated throughout the night by the ringing of bells and firing of cannon, and the next day at noon by the firing of the Park and Tower guns. For three successive evenings also the whole metropolis was illuminated.
A few days afterwards, the King himself, with the Queen and Royal Family, went to Portsmouth to visit the fleet. Lord Howe’s flag was shifted to a frigate, and the royal standard was hoisted on board theQueen Charlotte. The whole garrison was under arms, and the concourse of people was immense. The King, with his own hand, carried a valuable diamond-hilted sword from the Commissioner’s house down to the boat. As soon as His Majesty arrived on board theQueen Charlotte, with numbers of his ministers and nobles, and the officers of the fleet standing round on the quarterdeck, he presented the sword to Lord Howe, as a mark of his satisfaction and entire approbation of his conduct.
As their Majesties’ barges passed, the crews cheered, the ships saluted, the bands played martial symphonies, and every sign of a general enthusiasm was exhibited.
The next day, the King gave audience to the officers of Lord Howe’s fleet, and to the officers of the army and navy generally; and after their Majesties had dined at the Commissioner’s house, they proceeded up the harbour to view the six French prizes which lay there at their moorings.
The primary object for which the fleet had put to sea was not accomplished; the great American convoy was not fallen in with, nor did Admiral Montague succeed in intercepting it, though he himself met Admiral Villaret’s defeated Squadron, and might, had the French shown more courage, have been overpowered by it. He avoided an engagement and returned into port; and a day or two afterwards, the expected convoy appeared off the French coast, and gained a harbour in safety.
TheRubyhad arrived with the rest of the fleet at Spithead. The seamen treated their prisoners with the greatest kindness and humanity; and even Paul Pringle declared that the Jean Crapauds were not after all such bad fellows, if you got them by themselves to talk to quietly.
Young Renaudin, the son of the brave Captain of theVengeur, during their ten days’ passage home, became a great pet among the officers and midshipmen. Still his spirits were very low, and he was very despondent, believing that his father was lost to him for ever. He had especially attached himself to Sir Henry Elmore and Johnny Nott, who, remembering their own preservation from foundering, had a fellow-feeling for him, and more especially looked after all his wants, while True Blue was appointed to attend on him.
The day after their arrival, Sir Henry got leave to go on shore and take their young prisoner, as well as Nott and True Blue, with him. Scarcely had they touched the point, than the boy sprang from the boat, and, breathless with excitement, rushed into the arms of a gentleman who had just landed with some English officers.
“Mon père! mon père!” exclaimed the boy.
“Mon fils!mon fils!” cried the gentleman, enclosing him in his arms and bursting into tears.
It was the gallant Captain of theVengeur.
“Next to winning the battle, I would sooner have seen that meeting between the brave French Captain and his son than anything else I know of!” exclaimed True Blue as he recounted the adventure to Tim Fid, Harry Hartland, and other messmates on board theRuby.
Chapter Twenty.A considerable time had passed after that celebrated 1st of June, and the French had learned to suspect who were to be the masters at sea, whatever they might have thought of their own powers on shore, when a fine new corvette of eighteen guns, theGannet, was standing across the British Channel on a cruise. Her master and commander was Captain Brine, long first lieutenant of theRuby. Her first lieutenant was a very gallant officer, Mr Digby; and her second was Sir Henry Elmore, who was glad to go to sea again with his old friend Captain Brine. She had a boatswain, who had not long received his warrant for that rank, Paul Pringle by name; her gunner was Peter Ogle, and her carpenter Abel Bush; while one of her youngest though most active A.B.s was Billy True Blue Freeborn. She had a black cook too. He was not a very good one; but he played the fiddle, and that was considered to make amends for his want of skill.“For why,” he used to remark, “if my duff hard, I fiddle much; you dance de more, and den de duff go down—what more you want?”True Blue’s three godfathers had resolved to become warrant-officers if they could, and all had studied hard to pass their examinations, which they did in a very satisfactory way.Their example was not lost upon True Blue. “I have never been sorry that I am not on the quarterdeck,” said he one day to Paul. “But, godfather, I shall be if I cannot become a boatswain. That’s what I am fitted for, and that’s what my father would have wished me to be, I’m sure.”“That he would, Billy,” answered Paul. “You see a boatswain’s an officer and wears a uniform; and he’s a seaman, too, so to speak, and that’s what your father wished you to be; and I’ll tell you what, godson, if some of these days, when you’re old enough, you becomes a boatswain, and when the war’s over you goes on shore and marries Mary Ogle, so that you’ll have a home of your own when I am under hatches, that’s all I wishes for you. It’s the happiest lot for any man—a good wife, a snug little cottage, a garden to dig in, with a summer-house to smoke your pipe in, and maybe a berth in the dockyard, just to keep you employed and your legs going, is all a man like you or me can want for, and that is what I hope you may get.”Some young men would have turned the matter off with a laugh, but True Blue replied, “Ay, godfather, there isn’t such a girl between the North Foreland and the Land’s End so good and so pretty to my mind as Mary Ogle; and that I’ll maintain, let others say what they will.”“True, boy, true!” cried Paul, slapping him affectionately on the shoulder. “You are right about Mary; and when a lad does like a girl, it’s pleasant to see that he really does like her right heartily and honestly, and isn’t ashamed of saying so.”TheGannethad altogether a picked crew, and Captain Brine was on the lookout to give them every opportunity of distinguishing themselves. There were, to be sure, some not quite equal to the rest. Tim Fid and Harry Hartland had joined with True Blue, and poor Gregory Gipples had managed still to hang on in the service, though, as his messmates observed, he was more suited to sweep the decks than to set the Thames on fire.As yet the saucy littleGannet, as her crew delighted to call her, had done nothing particularly to boast of, except capturing and burning a fewchasse-marées, looking into various holes and corners of the French coast, exchanging shots with small batteries here and there, and keeping the French coastguard in a very lively and active condition, never knowing when they might receive a nine-pound round-shot in the middle of one of their lookout towers, or be otherwise disturbed in their nocturnal slumbers.Captain Brine was up the coast and down the coast in every direction; and if he could manage to appear at a point where the wind was least likely to allow him to be, by dint of slashing at it in the offing against a head wind, or by creeping in shore with short tacks, he was always more pleased and satisfied, and so were his crew.The wind was north-east, the ship’s head was south; it was in the month of March, and the weather not over balmy.“A sail on the weather bow!” cried the lookout from the masthead.“What is she like?” asked the second lieutenant, who had charge of the deck.“She looms large, sir,” was the answer.The information was notified to the Captain, who was on deck in an instant.Whether the stranger was friend or foe was the next question to be ascertained. Doubts were expressed as to that point both fore and aft. She was a frigate, that was very certain; still, without trying her with the private signal, Captain Brine did not like to haul his wind and make sail away from her. The nearer she drew, the more French she looked. Eighteen guns to thirty-eight or forty, which probably the stranger carried, was a greater disproportion than even the gallant Brine was inclined to encounter. All hands stood ready to make sail at an instant’s notice.At length the two ships drew almost near enough to exchange signals. “That ship is French, depend on it, sir!” exclaimed the first lieutenant to the Captain.“I am not quite so certain of that, Digby,” answered Captain Brine. “But if she is not an enemy, she is theDiamondfrigate, commanded by Sir Sydney Smith. He has a wonderful knack of disguising his ship. I have known him to deceive the French themselves, and quietly to sail under a battery, look into a port, and be out again before he was suspected. He delights in such sort of work, and is not over bashful in describing afterwards what he has done. We shall soon, however, ascertain the truth. Try the stranger now with our private signals.”The flags were run up, and in a short time Sir Henry exclaimed, “You are right, sir! She replies, and makes theDiamond’snumber. There is another signal now. Sir Sydney orders us to close with him.”“I felt almost certain that it was theDiamond,” said the Captain. “Well, gentlemen, I have no doubt that we shall soon have some work to do.”As soon as the corvette got within a short distance of the frigate, she hove to; and a boat being lowered, Captain Brine went on board to pay his respects to his superior officer. He, however, speedily returned.“Sir Sydney proposes a cruise round the French coast together, which accords with our instructions,” he said, addressing his two lieutenants, and the news soon spread through the ship.Away the frigate and corvette sailed together, and soon fell in with a large lugger, to which they gave chase; but she turned out to be theAristocrat, a hired vessel, fitted out by Government, and commanded by Lieutenant Gossett. Sir Sydney rubbed his hands.“We could not be better off!” he exclaimed. “TheLion,Wolf, andJackalall hunting in company.”Not many days had passed before a fleet of vessels was espied under the land, and evidently French. One was made out to be a corvette, and the others brigs, schooners, and luggers, which she was apparently convoying. Chase was instantly given, and the strangers made all sail to escape.Away they went, close in with the shore, just as a herd of oxen run along a hedge looking for an opening into which to escape. At length the water shoaled so much that the frigate had to haul off. The corvette stood on a little longer, and had to do the same; while the lugger, running on still farther, signalled that all the enemy had run into a harbour under some high land which appeared to be surmounted with batteries.Sir Sydney on this called the other two vessels near to him, and informed their commanders that he knew the place, and that he intended surveying the entrance, which he believed was deep enough for the frigate herself. The frigate and her consorts then stood off till the approach of evening, as if giving up the pursuit. As soon, however as it was dark, they once more approached the land.All the night Sir Sydney and his lieutenants, and Captain Brine and his, were busily sounding the channel; but before daybreak the little squadron was too far from the land to seen from it. A favourable breeze carried them back, and without hesitating, they stood boldly on towards the mouth of the port. The entrance to it was guarded by two batteries one beyond the other, on the left hand, and by several guns posted on a commanding point which it was necessary to round before the harbour could be entered. For the forts Sir Sydney was prepared, as he knew of their existence; and he had directed four of his own boats, with three from the corvette and one from the lugger, to attack and carry them in succession.Mr Digby, from a wound in his right arm, which prevented him from using it, was unable to go; and so Sir Henry Elmore had command of theGannet’sboats, and True Blue went in his boat as his coxswain, Mr Nott, now a mate, accompanying him. Paul Pringle, the boatswain, had command of another boat, and a mate and midshipman of theGannethad charge of the other two. The whole expedition was under the command of the first lieutenant of the frigate, who was accompanied by a lieutenant and the marines of the two ships. As soon as the frigate and corvette got within range of the guns on the point, the latter opened a hot fire on them; but so well did the ships ply theirs in return as they passed that the gunners were speedily driven from them.On rounding the point, however, the vessels became exposed to a severe fire from the two batteries. A considerable tide was running out, and Sir Sydney saw, as he expected, that the ships might suffer a severe loss before they could be passed, unless the batteries could be silenced. The order was therefore given for the boats to be lowered, and instantly to shove off. Away they dashed with loud cheers. The French troops, not expecting such a mode of attack, hurried down from their batteries to oppose them on the beach. This was just what Sir Sydney wished, as it enabled the ships to creep up without being fired at.The boats, as they advanced, were so warmly received by the troops on the beach that they could not effect a landing at the spot proposed. True Blue’s quick eye, however, observed what he thought looked like a landing-place, close under the nearest fort. He pointed it out to Sir Henry, who, calling the boats nearest to him to follow, dashed on towards it. The first lieutenant of theDiamondmeantime so entirely kept the troops on the beach employed, that no one saw what was occurring.In another minute Sir Henry and his followers were on shore. True Blue was next to him, carrying the flag. A rocky height, almost a precipice, had to be climbed to reach the fort. Up they all went at once, like goats, making violent springs, or climbing up with hands and knees. True Blue was one of the first, helping up Sir Henry, whose strength was often not equal to his spirit.When the English were half way up, the French caught sight of them, and now the whole body hurried along the road to regain the fort. It was a desperate race between the two parties. The English had a short but rugged height to scale, the French a longer but smoother path to traverse. The frigate’s boats however, by a well-directed fire, assisted to impede their progress, and to thin their numbers as they went. On sprang the daring seamen. True Blue was the first over the parapet and into the fort. Sir Henry followed close to him. The French were almost at the gate, which was left open.“Here, Freeborn!” he exclaimed; “this gun, slew it round and give it to them. It is loaded and primed—see!”The gun which Sir Henry touched was a field-piece, evidently brought for the occasion into the fort. Several seamen assembling, the gun was instantly got round, and as the leading body of French appeared, True Blue pointing it, fired it directly in their faces; then with a loud shout drawing his cutlass, he and Sir Henry rushed furiously at them, followed by most of the men. So unexpected was the assault that the leading files gave way, and, pressing on the others, hurried down the narrow path. Sir Henry calling back his companions, they re-entered the fort.The gate was then shut, lest the enemy should return, and all the guns were immediately spiked. The commander of the expedition, and the lieutenant of marines and his men, had in the meantime come round and gained the height, in spite of a heavy flank fire from the French. Several of the guns were now, besides being spiked, tumbled down the precipice, and a considerable amount of destruction effected in the fort.The French, however, were now collecting in stronger force, and the work on which the party were sent being accomplished, a return to the ships became necessary. The officer in command, seeing that, if they attempted to return by the steep way they ascended, they might be shot down in detail, resolved to make a bold dash and cut his way back to the boats, which had been compelled to return under shelter of the ships. The plan suited the spirits of the men. The gate was thrown open. Out of the fort they dashed, and down the hill at a double quick march. They had not got far before they encountered a large body of French, who attempted to oppose them; but the enemy, though double their number, could no more withstand their headlong charge than does the wooden village the force of the avalanche. Down before them went the Frenchmen, scattered right and left; but some got up, and others came on, and the English found themselves nearly surrounded, while a considerable body, remaining at a distance, kept up a hot and galling fire, which brought down several of the bold invaders.Pistols were flashing, cutlasses were clashing, and the marines were charging here and there with their bayonets, keeping the French back while they retired towards the water, when another large body of French was seen coming over the hill. Their friends below saw them also, and now all uniting made a furious onslaught on the French.“Charge them, my lads, and drive them back, or they will not let us embark quietly!” shouted theDiamond’slieutenant.Sir Henry Elmore with a number of followers, carried on by his ardour, went farther than was necessary, when a shot from a distance brought him to the ground.At that moment the retreat was sounded, for the fresh body of French was coming on. True Blue had two stout Frenchmen to attend to, and had just disabled one and driven the other back when he saw what had occurred. Sir Henry’s followers were almost overpowered and retreating. True Blue saw that he would be made prisoner or killed, and that not a moment should be lost if he was to be rescued. “Back lads, and help our officer!” he shouted, springing desperately onward.Several of the corvette’s crew, headed by Tom Marline, followed him, Tom shouting, “Hurrah, lads, hurrah! We mustn’t let our True Blue be made prisoner.”The French, who had already had a sufficient taste of the English seamen’s quality, hurriedly retreated for a few yards, keeping up, however, a galling fire. They then waited till the reinforcement came up, and left Elmore unmolested. This gave time to True Blue to spring forward and lift him in his arms, and to run back with him through showers of bullets among his shipmates before the enemy could recover their prisoner.Sir Henry, though suffering great pain, was perfectly conscious. “Thanks, my brave friend—thanks Freeborn!” he exclaimed; “you’ve again saved me from worse than death. But now, my lads, back to our boats; we shall do nothing now, I fear.”The boats only just then reached the beach, and True Blue had but bare time to spring with his charge into the first, which proved to be their own, when the French troops came charging down upon them. The last man to leave the beach was the officer of marines, who, like a true soldier, retreated with his face to the foe amidst thick showers of bullets. He had just stepped into one of the boats, when he fell back into the arms of the Captain with a cry, shot through the body. He was lifted up and placed in the sternsheets.“Shove off! shove off!” cried the officer.The sailors shoved away with their oars, while the marines stood up with their muskets, returning the fire of the enemy, desirous to punish them for the loss of their officer. One marine and two seamen had fallen, and several men were wounded. In another minute they would with difficulty have got off, for, in the rear of the reinforcement, there came rattling along two small field-pieces.The boats were afloat, the men pulled away with all their might and were soon on board the ships. True Blue would allow no one but himself to carry the young lieutenant below to his cabin. Of course he had to return to his duty on deck, for there was hot work going on; but he stood anxiously waiting till he could hear the surgeon’s report.“Ah, mates!” he said to Fid and Hartland, and other friends stationed near him, “if you had seen, as I have, young Sir Henry at home, and how her ladyship, his mother, and sisters loved him and made much of him, you would understand what a killing blow it would be to them if they heard that he was dead or even hurt. I’d rather lose my own right arm any day, and my life too, than have them hear such a tale.”As soon as the boats returned, the fire from the frigate and corvette knocked over the two field-pieces and several of the men who served them, and the ships then proceeded up the harbour. The French troops, as they did so, followed them along the shore, keeping, however, as well as they could, concealed behind the inequalities of the ground, and only occasionally halting and firing rapid volleys at them.The corvette, and several brigs and schooners, and three armed luggers, were soon seen either at anchor close to the beach or on shore. The frigate could not venture to close with them, but the gallant littleGannet, with the lead going, stood on till she had scarcely a foot of water under her keel, and then, dropping an anchor with a spring to the cable, so as to keep her broadside to the corvette, opened her fire.The Frenchmen replied briskly enough at first; but as they occasionally got a dose from the frigate’s long guns, they gradually slackened in their efforts to defend their ships, and finally were seen taking to their boats and escaping on shore. Mr Nott instantly volunteered to board and set fire to the corvette. He beckoned to True Blue, who flew to the boats, which had been kept ready on the side of the ship away from the shore. Within a minute, two boats were pulling under a hot fire towards the French ship. True Blue and his companions speedily climbed through her ports both fore and aft. They had brought abundance of combustibles. These were instantly carried below, and, the most inflammable materials being thrown together in piles along her lower deck, were set on fire. The thick wreaths of smoke which ascended assisted to conceal the party in their rapid retreat, the more rapid as they could not tell at what moment a spark might enter the magazine and blow them all into the air.Back they pulled, and were on board theGannetonce more, within five minutes after they had left her side, not a man having been hurt, and the work so thoroughly accomplished that the corvette was in a furious blaze fore and aft, the flames already licking the heels of her topmasts in their upward ascent.All this time, the frigate astern and the lugger ahead of theGannetwere keeping up a warm fire on the shore, to hold the troops in check. They wisely concealed themselves when no boats appeared; but as the various merchantmen, one after the other, were attacked by the boats of the squadron, they sallied bravely out, and endeavoured to drive back their assailants. In vain, however, they made the attempt; the British seamen persevered, and before the evening every vessel in the harbour was destroyed.Not a moment had honest True Blue been idle, from the time that the boats had been first sent away till dark; nor had he had an opportunity of inquiring after the second lieutenant. At length the surgeon came on deck to take a breath of fresh air. True Blue stepped up to him, and, touching his hat, inquired after Sir Henry.“Hurt very badly, my lad,” answered the surgeon, “and, I am very much afraid, will slip through our fingers; but do not let that vex you. He has told me of the gallant way in which you brought him off from the enemy; and his great anxiety seems to be, that your interest should be cared for—that you should be rewarded.”“Rewarded, sir!” exclaimed True Blue in a tone of indignation and sorrow. “Oh, sir, I don’t want any reward. Sir Henry knows that I would go through fire and water to serve him, that I would sooner have lost my own right arm or my life than that he should be hurt. Do tell him, sir, that I am unhappy when I hear about a reward. I shall be joyful, indeed, if he gets round again, and be able to go to his duty.”“All right, my lad, I will tell him; and I hope he may recover, and settle the matter with you in your own way.”“I hope so, sir—I hope so,” said True Blue; but he felt very sad about what he had heard.This conversation took place during a short cessation of firing, when, for some reason not ascertained, the French troops retreated. They now came back with more field-pieces, and opened on the ships. Happily the ebb just then made, and a light breeze sprang up and blew down the harbour. A fire was kept up from the ships, however, all the time, while their anchors were weighed, and their topsails being sheeted home, they stood out of the harbour. Still the shot followed them. They had got some way when True Blue felt himself struck to the deck. He lay some little time before being observed in the dark, and then he was carried below. He knew no more, till he heard a voice in a tone of deep grief saying, “Oh, doctor, is he killed?”It was that of Paul Pringle.“I hope not, boatswain,” was the answer. “I have extracted the bullet, which was pretty deep in; and I trust he may do well.”
A considerable time had passed after that celebrated 1st of June, and the French had learned to suspect who were to be the masters at sea, whatever they might have thought of their own powers on shore, when a fine new corvette of eighteen guns, theGannet, was standing across the British Channel on a cruise. Her master and commander was Captain Brine, long first lieutenant of theRuby. Her first lieutenant was a very gallant officer, Mr Digby; and her second was Sir Henry Elmore, who was glad to go to sea again with his old friend Captain Brine. She had a boatswain, who had not long received his warrant for that rank, Paul Pringle by name; her gunner was Peter Ogle, and her carpenter Abel Bush; while one of her youngest though most active A.B.s was Billy True Blue Freeborn. She had a black cook too. He was not a very good one; but he played the fiddle, and that was considered to make amends for his want of skill.
“For why,” he used to remark, “if my duff hard, I fiddle much; you dance de more, and den de duff go down—what more you want?”
True Blue’s three godfathers had resolved to become warrant-officers if they could, and all had studied hard to pass their examinations, which they did in a very satisfactory way.
Their example was not lost upon True Blue. “I have never been sorry that I am not on the quarterdeck,” said he one day to Paul. “But, godfather, I shall be if I cannot become a boatswain. That’s what I am fitted for, and that’s what my father would have wished me to be, I’m sure.”
“That he would, Billy,” answered Paul. “You see a boatswain’s an officer and wears a uniform; and he’s a seaman, too, so to speak, and that’s what your father wished you to be; and I’ll tell you what, godson, if some of these days, when you’re old enough, you becomes a boatswain, and when the war’s over you goes on shore and marries Mary Ogle, so that you’ll have a home of your own when I am under hatches, that’s all I wishes for you. It’s the happiest lot for any man—a good wife, a snug little cottage, a garden to dig in, with a summer-house to smoke your pipe in, and maybe a berth in the dockyard, just to keep you employed and your legs going, is all a man like you or me can want for, and that is what I hope you may get.”
Some young men would have turned the matter off with a laugh, but True Blue replied, “Ay, godfather, there isn’t such a girl between the North Foreland and the Land’s End so good and so pretty to my mind as Mary Ogle; and that I’ll maintain, let others say what they will.”
“True, boy, true!” cried Paul, slapping him affectionately on the shoulder. “You are right about Mary; and when a lad does like a girl, it’s pleasant to see that he really does like her right heartily and honestly, and isn’t ashamed of saying so.”
TheGannethad altogether a picked crew, and Captain Brine was on the lookout to give them every opportunity of distinguishing themselves. There were, to be sure, some not quite equal to the rest. Tim Fid and Harry Hartland had joined with True Blue, and poor Gregory Gipples had managed still to hang on in the service, though, as his messmates observed, he was more suited to sweep the decks than to set the Thames on fire.
As yet the saucy littleGannet, as her crew delighted to call her, had done nothing particularly to boast of, except capturing and burning a fewchasse-marées, looking into various holes and corners of the French coast, exchanging shots with small batteries here and there, and keeping the French coastguard in a very lively and active condition, never knowing when they might receive a nine-pound round-shot in the middle of one of their lookout towers, or be otherwise disturbed in their nocturnal slumbers.
Captain Brine was up the coast and down the coast in every direction; and if he could manage to appear at a point where the wind was least likely to allow him to be, by dint of slashing at it in the offing against a head wind, or by creeping in shore with short tacks, he was always more pleased and satisfied, and so were his crew.
The wind was north-east, the ship’s head was south; it was in the month of March, and the weather not over balmy.
“A sail on the weather bow!” cried the lookout from the masthead.
“What is she like?” asked the second lieutenant, who had charge of the deck.
“She looms large, sir,” was the answer.
The information was notified to the Captain, who was on deck in an instant.
Whether the stranger was friend or foe was the next question to be ascertained. Doubts were expressed as to that point both fore and aft. She was a frigate, that was very certain; still, without trying her with the private signal, Captain Brine did not like to haul his wind and make sail away from her. The nearer she drew, the more French she looked. Eighteen guns to thirty-eight or forty, which probably the stranger carried, was a greater disproportion than even the gallant Brine was inclined to encounter. All hands stood ready to make sail at an instant’s notice.
At length the two ships drew almost near enough to exchange signals. “That ship is French, depend on it, sir!” exclaimed the first lieutenant to the Captain.
“I am not quite so certain of that, Digby,” answered Captain Brine. “But if she is not an enemy, she is theDiamondfrigate, commanded by Sir Sydney Smith. He has a wonderful knack of disguising his ship. I have known him to deceive the French themselves, and quietly to sail under a battery, look into a port, and be out again before he was suspected. He delights in such sort of work, and is not over bashful in describing afterwards what he has done. We shall soon, however, ascertain the truth. Try the stranger now with our private signals.”
The flags were run up, and in a short time Sir Henry exclaimed, “You are right, sir! She replies, and makes theDiamond’snumber. There is another signal now. Sir Sydney orders us to close with him.”
“I felt almost certain that it was theDiamond,” said the Captain. “Well, gentlemen, I have no doubt that we shall soon have some work to do.”
As soon as the corvette got within a short distance of the frigate, she hove to; and a boat being lowered, Captain Brine went on board to pay his respects to his superior officer. He, however, speedily returned.
“Sir Sydney proposes a cruise round the French coast together, which accords with our instructions,” he said, addressing his two lieutenants, and the news soon spread through the ship.
Away the frigate and corvette sailed together, and soon fell in with a large lugger, to which they gave chase; but she turned out to be theAristocrat, a hired vessel, fitted out by Government, and commanded by Lieutenant Gossett. Sir Sydney rubbed his hands.
“We could not be better off!” he exclaimed. “TheLion,Wolf, andJackalall hunting in company.”
Not many days had passed before a fleet of vessels was espied under the land, and evidently French. One was made out to be a corvette, and the others brigs, schooners, and luggers, which she was apparently convoying. Chase was instantly given, and the strangers made all sail to escape.
Away they went, close in with the shore, just as a herd of oxen run along a hedge looking for an opening into which to escape. At length the water shoaled so much that the frigate had to haul off. The corvette stood on a little longer, and had to do the same; while the lugger, running on still farther, signalled that all the enemy had run into a harbour under some high land which appeared to be surmounted with batteries.
Sir Sydney on this called the other two vessels near to him, and informed their commanders that he knew the place, and that he intended surveying the entrance, which he believed was deep enough for the frigate herself. The frigate and her consorts then stood off till the approach of evening, as if giving up the pursuit. As soon, however as it was dark, they once more approached the land.
All the night Sir Sydney and his lieutenants, and Captain Brine and his, were busily sounding the channel; but before daybreak the little squadron was too far from the land to seen from it. A favourable breeze carried them back, and without hesitating, they stood boldly on towards the mouth of the port. The entrance to it was guarded by two batteries one beyond the other, on the left hand, and by several guns posted on a commanding point which it was necessary to round before the harbour could be entered. For the forts Sir Sydney was prepared, as he knew of their existence; and he had directed four of his own boats, with three from the corvette and one from the lugger, to attack and carry them in succession.
Mr Digby, from a wound in his right arm, which prevented him from using it, was unable to go; and so Sir Henry Elmore had command of theGannet’sboats, and True Blue went in his boat as his coxswain, Mr Nott, now a mate, accompanying him. Paul Pringle, the boatswain, had command of another boat, and a mate and midshipman of theGannethad charge of the other two. The whole expedition was under the command of the first lieutenant of the frigate, who was accompanied by a lieutenant and the marines of the two ships. As soon as the frigate and corvette got within range of the guns on the point, the latter opened a hot fire on them; but so well did the ships ply theirs in return as they passed that the gunners were speedily driven from them.
On rounding the point, however, the vessels became exposed to a severe fire from the two batteries. A considerable tide was running out, and Sir Sydney saw, as he expected, that the ships might suffer a severe loss before they could be passed, unless the batteries could be silenced. The order was therefore given for the boats to be lowered, and instantly to shove off. Away they dashed with loud cheers. The French troops, not expecting such a mode of attack, hurried down from their batteries to oppose them on the beach. This was just what Sir Sydney wished, as it enabled the ships to creep up without being fired at.
The boats, as they advanced, were so warmly received by the troops on the beach that they could not effect a landing at the spot proposed. True Blue’s quick eye, however, observed what he thought looked like a landing-place, close under the nearest fort. He pointed it out to Sir Henry, who, calling the boats nearest to him to follow, dashed on towards it. The first lieutenant of theDiamondmeantime so entirely kept the troops on the beach employed, that no one saw what was occurring.
In another minute Sir Henry and his followers were on shore. True Blue was next to him, carrying the flag. A rocky height, almost a precipice, had to be climbed to reach the fort. Up they all went at once, like goats, making violent springs, or climbing up with hands and knees. True Blue was one of the first, helping up Sir Henry, whose strength was often not equal to his spirit.
When the English were half way up, the French caught sight of them, and now the whole body hurried along the road to regain the fort. It was a desperate race between the two parties. The English had a short but rugged height to scale, the French a longer but smoother path to traverse. The frigate’s boats however, by a well-directed fire, assisted to impede their progress, and to thin their numbers as they went. On sprang the daring seamen. True Blue was the first over the parapet and into the fort. Sir Henry followed close to him. The French were almost at the gate, which was left open.
“Here, Freeborn!” he exclaimed; “this gun, slew it round and give it to them. It is loaded and primed—see!”
The gun which Sir Henry touched was a field-piece, evidently brought for the occasion into the fort. Several seamen assembling, the gun was instantly got round, and as the leading body of French appeared, True Blue pointing it, fired it directly in their faces; then with a loud shout drawing his cutlass, he and Sir Henry rushed furiously at them, followed by most of the men. So unexpected was the assault that the leading files gave way, and, pressing on the others, hurried down the narrow path. Sir Henry calling back his companions, they re-entered the fort.
The gate was then shut, lest the enemy should return, and all the guns were immediately spiked. The commander of the expedition, and the lieutenant of marines and his men, had in the meantime come round and gained the height, in spite of a heavy flank fire from the French. Several of the guns were now, besides being spiked, tumbled down the precipice, and a considerable amount of destruction effected in the fort.
The French, however, were now collecting in stronger force, and the work on which the party were sent being accomplished, a return to the ships became necessary. The officer in command, seeing that, if they attempted to return by the steep way they ascended, they might be shot down in detail, resolved to make a bold dash and cut his way back to the boats, which had been compelled to return under shelter of the ships. The plan suited the spirits of the men. The gate was thrown open. Out of the fort they dashed, and down the hill at a double quick march. They had not got far before they encountered a large body of French, who attempted to oppose them; but the enemy, though double their number, could no more withstand their headlong charge than does the wooden village the force of the avalanche. Down before them went the Frenchmen, scattered right and left; but some got up, and others came on, and the English found themselves nearly surrounded, while a considerable body, remaining at a distance, kept up a hot and galling fire, which brought down several of the bold invaders.
Pistols were flashing, cutlasses were clashing, and the marines were charging here and there with their bayonets, keeping the French back while they retired towards the water, when another large body of French was seen coming over the hill. Their friends below saw them also, and now all uniting made a furious onslaught on the French.
“Charge them, my lads, and drive them back, or they will not let us embark quietly!” shouted theDiamond’slieutenant.
Sir Henry Elmore with a number of followers, carried on by his ardour, went farther than was necessary, when a shot from a distance brought him to the ground.
At that moment the retreat was sounded, for the fresh body of French was coming on. True Blue had two stout Frenchmen to attend to, and had just disabled one and driven the other back when he saw what had occurred. Sir Henry’s followers were almost overpowered and retreating. True Blue saw that he would be made prisoner or killed, and that not a moment should be lost if he was to be rescued. “Back lads, and help our officer!” he shouted, springing desperately onward.
Several of the corvette’s crew, headed by Tom Marline, followed him, Tom shouting, “Hurrah, lads, hurrah! We mustn’t let our True Blue be made prisoner.”
The French, who had already had a sufficient taste of the English seamen’s quality, hurriedly retreated for a few yards, keeping up, however, a galling fire. They then waited till the reinforcement came up, and left Elmore unmolested. This gave time to True Blue to spring forward and lift him in his arms, and to run back with him through showers of bullets among his shipmates before the enemy could recover their prisoner.
Sir Henry, though suffering great pain, was perfectly conscious. “Thanks, my brave friend—thanks Freeborn!” he exclaimed; “you’ve again saved me from worse than death. But now, my lads, back to our boats; we shall do nothing now, I fear.”
The boats only just then reached the beach, and True Blue had but bare time to spring with his charge into the first, which proved to be their own, when the French troops came charging down upon them. The last man to leave the beach was the officer of marines, who, like a true soldier, retreated with his face to the foe amidst thick showers of bullets. He had just stepped into one of the boats, when he fell back into the arms of the Captain with a cry, shot through the body. He was lifted up and placed in the sternsheets.
“Shove off! shove off!” cried the officer.
The sailors shoved away with their oars, while the marines stood up with their muskets, returning the fire of the enemy, desirous to punish them for the loss of their officer. One marine and two seamen had fallen, and several men were wounded. In another minute they would with difficulty have got off, for, in the rear of the reinforcement, there came rattling along two small field-pieces.
The boats were afloat, the men pulled away with all their might and were soon on board the ships. True Blue would allow no one but himself to carry the young lieutenant below to his cabin. Of course he had to return to his duty on deck, for there was hot work going on; but he stood anxiously waiting till he could hear the surgeon’s report.
“Ah, mates!” he said to Fid and Hartland, and other friends stationed near him, “if you had seen, as I have, young Sir Henry at home, and how her ladyship, his mother, and sisters loved him and made much of him, you would understand what a killing blow it would be to them if they heard that he was dead or even hurt. I’d rather lose my own right arm any day, and my life too, than have them hear such a tale.”
As soon as the boats returned, the fire from the frigate and corvette knocked over the two field-pieces and several of the men who served them, and the ships then proceeded up the harbour. The French troops, as they did so, followed them along the shore, keeping, however, as well as they could, concealed behind the inequalities of the ground, and only occasionally halting and firing rapid volleys at them.
The corvette, and several brigs and schooners, and three armed luggers, were soon seen either at anchor close to the beach or on shore. The frigate could not venture to close with them, but the gallant littleGannet, with the lead going, stood on till she had scarcely a foot of water under her keel, and then, dropping an anchor with a spring to the cable, so as to keep her broadside to the corvette, opened her fire.
The Frenchmen replied briskly enough at first; but as they occasionally got a dose from the frigate’s long guns, they gradually slackened in their efforts to defend their ships, and finally were seen taking to their boats and escaping on shore. Mr Nott instantly volunteered to board and set fire to the corvette. He beckoned to True Blue, who flew to the boats, which had been kept ready on the side of the ship away from the shore. Within a minute, two boats were pulling under a hot fire towards the French ship. True Blue and his companions speedily climbed through her ports both fore and aft. They had brought abundance of combustibles. These were instantly carried below, and, the most inflammable materials being thrown together in piles along her lower deck, were set on fire. The thick wreaths of smoke which ascended assisted to conceal the party in their rapid retreat, the more rapid as they could not tell at what moment a spark might enter the magazine and blow them all into the air.
Back they pulled, and were on board theGannetonce more, within five minutes after they had left her side, not a man having been hurt, and the work so thoroughly accomplished that the corvette was in a furious blaze fore and aft, the flames already licking the heels of her topmasts in their upward ascent.
All this time, the frigate astern and the lugger ahead of theGannetwere keeping up a warm fire on the shore, to hold the troops in check. They wisely concealed themselves when no boats appeared; but as the various merchantmen, one after the other, were attacked by the boats of the squadron, they sallied bravely out, and endeavoured to drive back their assailants. In vain, however, they made the attempt; the British seamen persevered, and before the evening every vessel in the harbour was destroyed.
Not a moment had honest True Blue been idle, from the time that the boats had been first sent away till dark; nor had he had an opportunity of inquiring after the second lieutenant. At length the surgeon came on deck to take a breath of fresh air. True Blue stepped up to him, and, touching his hat, inquired after Sir Henry.
“Hurt very badly, my lad,” answered the surgeon, “and, I am very much afraid, will slip through our fingers; but do not let that vex you. He has told me of the gallant way in which you brought him off from the enemy; and his great anxiety seems to be, that your interest should be cared for—that you should be rewarded.”
“Rewarded, sir!” exclaimed True Blue in a tone of indignation and sorrow. “Oh, sir, I don’t want any reward. Sir Henry knows that I would go through fire and water to serve him, that I would sooner have lost my own right arm or my life than that he should be hurt. Do tell him, sir, that I am unhappy when I hear about a reward. I shall be joyful, indeed, if he gets round again, and be able to go to his duty.”
“All right, my lad, I will tell him; and I hope he may recover, and settle the matter with you in your own way.”
“I hope so, sir—I hope so,” said True Blue; but he felt very sad about what he had heard.
This conversation took place during a short cessation of firing, when, for some reason not ascertained, the French troops retreated. They now came back with more field-pieces, and opened on the ships. Happily the ebb just then made, and a light breeze sprang up and blew down the harbour. A fire was kept up from the ships, however, all the time, while their anchors were weighed, and their topsails being sheeted home, they stood out of the harbour. Still the shot followed them. They had got some way when True Blue felt himself struck to the deck. He lay some little time before being observed in the dark, and then he was carried below. He knew no more, till he heard a voice in a tone of deep grief saying, “Oh, doctor, is he killed?”
It was that of Paul Pringle.
“I hope not, boatswain,” was the answer. “I have extracted the bullet, which was pretty deep in; and I trust he may do well.”
Chapter Twenty One.As True Blue lay wounded in his hammock, he made daily, almost hourly, inquiries after Sir Henry; and nothing seemed to expedite his own recovery so much as hearing that the lieutenant was considered out of danger.TheGannetstill continued in company with theDiamond, and True Blue’s chief unhappiness arose at not being allowed to join the various cutting-out expeditions in which the crews of the two ships were engaged.At length, by the time that they once more stood up channel, both Sir Henry and True Blue were sufficiently recovered to go on deck, the lieutenant being almost fit to do some duty, though the latter was not allowed to exert himself.Sir Sydney had invited the young lieutenant to spend a day or two on board the frigate, as he said, for change of air; and Sir Henry got leave for True Blue to accompany him, for the purpose, in reality, of making him known to one who, brave himself, could so well appreciate bravery in others, and who, if he had the will, would probably have the means of forwarding the young seaman’s interests.Soon after this, in a thick fog, the frigate parted company with the corvette. TheDiamondhad taken a number of prizes, and sent them away under the command of various officers, so that she had very few left. Sir Sydney had intended to go the next day into Portsmouth to pick them up, when he fell in with a schooner making for the French coast, which turned out to be a prize to a French privateer lugger, theVengeur, known to have taken a number of prizes.From the prisoners, Sir Sydney learned that she had the character of being very fast, that she was armed with ten nine-pounders, that her commander was a very enterprising character himself, and that she had been in vain chased on several occasions by British cruisers.“Then we must put a stop to this gentleman’s proceedings!” exclaimed Sir Sydney. “We may not gain much glory, but we shall be doing good service to the commerce of our country; and that, after all, is our duty, and I take it we could not be engaged in more honourable work than in the performance of our duty.”“Certainly not, sir,” warmly responded the young lieutenant, his guest; “and, if you will give me leave, I will accompany you. I am quite able to endure fatigue, and will take my young shipmate, True Blue Freeborn, with me, of whom I spoke to you—a gallant fellow, who has twice saved my life.”Sir Sydney, who delighted in the sort of spirit exhibited by the young lieutenant, at once acceded to his wishes, and arranged that he should have charge of one of the boats. The frigate stood in, and soon discovered the lugger at anchor in the outer roads. The first lieutenant was on shore in England, the second was very ill, and the third lay in his berth severely wounded; so Sir Sydney gave notice that he himself would take command of the expedition.The information was received with infinite satisfaction on board, because, in the first place, it seemed certain that there was some dashing work to be done; and, in the second, it was believed that, in whatever the Captain engaged, he succeeded. The necessary preparations were rapidly carried out. An eighteen-pounder carronade was mounted in the frigate launch, and her crew were also armed with muskets; three other boats were armed with smaller guns on swivels, and muskets; and one with muskets only—a wherry, pulling two oars.Everything was ready by ten o’clock at night, when Sir Sydney Smith pushed off from the frigate, taking the lead of the other boats in his wherry. In perfect silence they pulled away, till through the darkness they perceived the lugger ahead of them. The crews now lay on their oars, while their Captain, in a clear, distinct voice, issued his definite orders.“Understand, my lads, we must not alarm the enemy sooner than we can help. Give her a wide berth, therefore, and get between her and the shore, so that those on board, if they see us, may fancy that we are fishing-boats dropping out of the harbour. Then pull directly for the lugger, and be on board her as soon as possible.”No further words were spoken. When they had got to the position indicated, no apparent notice was taken of them, and they hoped to get close alongside undiscovered.“Pass the word along to the men to reserve their fire till the Frenchmen open theirs,” said the Captain, who continued ahead. “Now, my lads, pull straight for her.”Away dashed the boats as fast as their crews could urge them. The Frenchmen were all asleep, or the watch on deck had not made them out. When, however, about a musket-shot off, lights were seen, and there was a considerable bustle on deck, and hallooing and shouting. On they dashed; they had got within half pistol-shot of the lugger, when a volley was let fly amongst them. As usual, the dose, instead of checking their progress, only stimulated them to greater exertions. The marines and small-arm men returned the fire in right good earnest, while the boats advanced more rapidly than before.The Frenchmen had been taken by surprise: they had barely time to load their guns. As they had not pointed them precisely, most of their shot flew over the heads of their opponents, and there had been no time to trice up the boarding nettings. The British were therefore soon alongside; a fierce hand-to-hand conflict commenced with pistols, boarding-pikes, and cutlasses, and the gallant assailants began to climb over her low bulwarks and furiously to attack the enemy with cutlass and pistol. The French crew, though far outnumbering the British, could not withstand the desperate onslaught.Sir Sydney Smith was one of the first on board. True Blue, cutlass in hand, leaped over the bulwarks at the same moment from another boat, with Sir Henry Elmore. There was a rapid mingling of shouts and cheers and cries, and rattling of musketry, and the crack of pistols and clashing of cutlasses and then the privateer’s men gave way, leaped down below, and cried for quarter. It was given, and the prisoners were at once secured.Scarcely was this done, when True Blue, who was forward, discovered that the cable was cut, and that the vessel was drifting with the tide, now making strong up the river, rapidly towards the shore. He reported this to Sir Sydney, who instantly ordered the boats to go ahead and tow her away. Meantime, search was made for an anchor to hold the vessel against the tide making up the Seine, every instant apparently increasing in strength.“Here’s a small kedge, sir!” cried True Blue, who, one of the most active, was searching away in the forehold. “It will be of little service, I fear, though.”“Get it bent on. We will try what our canvas will do first,” answered the Captain.Every stitch of sail the lugger could carry was set on her; but still the breeze refused to blow with sufficient strength to enable her to stem the tide, even with all the boats towing ahead. The kedge was therefore let go, but though it somewhat stopped her way, still she dragged it rapidly on. Higher and higher she drifted up the Seine, till at length she brought up off Harfleur, on the northern bank of the river, two miles above Havre.It seemed as if nothing more could now be done.“I ought to return to the frigate,” said the Captain, “Sir Henry, you will accompany me. Mr Wright, you will get under weigh the instant the tide slackens or a breeze springs up, and run out to us.”Sir Henry begged that he might remain on board the lugger and share the risk with the rest, though it was not without considerable reluctance that Sir Sydney consented to leave him. Sir Sydney then pulled off in his small boat for the frigate.Daylight was now coming on, and by its means several boats were seen coming down the Seine, evidently with the intention of trying to recapture theVengeur. At the same time, however, a small boat was observed approaching from the frigate, and soon afterwards Sir Sydney Smith himself stepped on board.“My lads,” he said, “I believe that we shall have to fight for our prize, and I have returned to lend a hand in defending her. However, we have more boats and people than are required. Sir Henry Elmore, I must beg you to undertake the charge of landing the prisoners at Honfleur, on the southern bank of the river, in the launch and pinnace, and then return to theDiamond. These are my orders. We must first, however, make the Frenchmen give us their parole not in any way to interfere in whatever takes place. I propose fighting the lugger under weigh, till the breeze and ebb tide enable us to carry her out. The tide will soon make, and I hope to be alongside the frigate in an hour or little more.”Very unwillingly Sir Henry quitted his gallant chief and friend, taking, of course, True Blue with him.It was now broad daylight, and all the glasses of the frigate were turned towards theVengeur. Another large lugger as big as herself was seen approaching her. She got under weigh, and a warm action began.“She is giving it her!—she is giving it her!” shouted True Blue. “Sir Sydney will beat him, I am certain.”So it seemed probable by the gallant way in which theVengeurmet her approach. The latter was soon seen to sheer off and drop up the river again, evidently having had fighting enough. Most anxiously a breeze was looked-for.Though victorious in this instance, the prize was even in a more perilous position than before, having drifted still more up the river, and numerous boats being seen in the distance approaching her. Down they came, their numbers rapidly increasing. Now she opened her fire right and left upon them. They returned it with heavy discharges of musketry, till she was completely surrounded by smoke, an evidence also that she had no breeze to assist her in manoeuvring.Farther and farther off she drifted, till, with hearts foreboding evil, the spectators on board theDiamondlost sight of her in the distance, surrounded by smoke. In vain they waited. The day wore on; there was not a sign of their gallant Captain and his brave followers, and at length it became too certain that they must have been taken prisoners by the French.A strong breeze now sprang up. After waiting off the port all the night, theDiamondran across the Channel, and anchored at Spithead, with the intelligence of Sir Sydney Smith’s capture. TheGannethad not yet appeared, and True Blue, as well as Sir Henry, began to be anxious, fearing that some mishap might have befallen her.Two days passed by. On the third, True Blue was looking out to the south-east, when he espied two ships standing in towards the anchorage. He looked and looked again. One was, he thought, and yet doubted, theGannet, so different did she look to the trim and gallant little ship she had but lately been; the other was a craft much of her size, with the English ensign flying over the tricolour of France. The first soon made her number, and left no doubt as to her being theGannet.An action, and a well-fought one, had evidently taken place, and the corvette had brought in her captured prize; but then came the question, who among shipmates and friends had suffered? True Blue could not help thinking of Paul Pringle, whom he loved with an affection which could not have been surpassed had Paul been his father, and Peter Ogle, and Abel Bush, and his own messmates. Had any of them been killed or hurt?He knew that Sir Henry, who had remained doing duty on board theDiamond, would feel somewhat as he did; so he went to him, and Sir Henry gratified him by saying that he would at once make arrangements for returning to the corvette the instant she anchored. A boat was got ready, and away they pulled for her. They were on board almost as soon as the anchor was dropped.True Blue glanced eagerly forward. Paul Pringle was on the forecastle, call in mouth, issuing the necessary orders for furling sails. Peter Ogle was not to be seen, nor was Abel Bush, but they might be about some duty below; nor were Tim Fid nor Gregory Gipples visible, though they ought to have been on deck.Having reported himself as come on board with Sir Henry to the first lieutenant, who was near the gangway, he dived below. Numerous hammocks slung up forward showed that there were many sick or wounded, while groups of Frenchmen, with sentries over them, proved that a prize had been taken.He first hurried to the gunner’s cabin. The door was closed—he knocked—there was no answer—his heart sank within him—his thoughts flew to Mary and her mother. Could Peter Ogle be among the killed in the late action? He dared not ask; he opened the door and looked in. The cabin was empty. He went next to that of Abel Bush.“Come in,” said the carpenter in a weak voice, very unlike his usual sturdy bass. “True Blue, is it you, my lad? Right glad to see you!” he exclaimed in a more cheerful tone. “Well, we have had a warm brush. Only sorry you were not with us; but we took her, as you see, though we had a hard struggle for it. Do you know, Billy, these Frenchmen do fight well sometimes. They’ve given me an ugly knock in the ribs; but the doctor says I shall be all to rights soon, so no matter. I don’t want to be laid up in ordinary yet. Time enough when I am as old as Lord Howe. He keeps afloat; so may I for twenty years to come yet, I hope.”Thus he ran on. He was evidently feverish from his wound.“But oh, Abel, where is Peter Ogle?” exclaimed True Blue, interrupting him at length.“Peter?—oh, aboard the prize!” answered Abel. “Where did you think he was?”“All right,” replied True Blue.In the evening, both ships went into the harbour to be refitted, an operation which, from the battered condition of the corvette and her prize, would evidently take some time.Scarcely was the ship moored, when Sir Henry sent for True Blue, and told him that, on account of his having been wounded, he had obtained leave for him to have a run on shore, and that if he liked he would take him up to London with him, and let him see more of the wonders of the great metropolis.The colour came to the young sailor’s cheeks. “Thank you, Sir Henry—thank you,” he answered; “but to be honest, I’d as lief go to my friends at Emsworth, you see, sir. They know me, and I know them; and though I should like to see her ladyship and the young ladies,—indeed I should,—there’s Mary Ogle, Peter Ogle’s daughter; and the truth is, we’ve come to understand each other, and talk of splicing one of these days, when I’m a bo’sun perhaps, or maybe before that. If you saw Mary, sir, I’m sure you wouldn’t be offended at my wishing to go down there rather than go up to big London with you, sir. But you’ll give, I hope, my dutiful respect to your mother, sir, and the young ladies, and tell them it’s not for want of love and duty to them that I don’t come.”“I am sure that they will think everything right of you, Freeborn,” answered the young baronet, struck by True Blue’s truthful frankness. “But instead of being a boatswain, why not aim at being placed, as I long ago wished, on the quarterdeck? Surely it would please your Mary more, and I daresay my friends would accomplish it for you.”“Thank you, Sir Henry—thank you. I’ve thought the matter over scores of times, and never thought differently,” answered True Blue with a thoughtful look. “And do you know, sir, I’m sure that Mary wouldn’t love me a bit the more because I was a Captain, than she does now, or than she will when I am a bo’sun. She isn’t a lady, and doesn’t set up for a lady; and why should she? I couldn’t love her a bit the more than I now do if she did. You see, Sir Henry, she’s a right true honest good girl, and what more can a man like me want in the world to make him happy?”“You are right, Freeborn—you are right!” exclaimed the young baronet, springing up and taking his friend’s hand; “and I wish you every happiness your Mary can give you. Remember, too, if I am in England, invite me to your wedding, and I’ll do my utmost to come to it. I have not often been at a wedding, and never thought of marrying; but I am very sure that somehow or other you will set me on the right course, by the pleasure I shall experience on that occasion.”The next day, while Sir Henry went up to London, True Blue started off by himself to Emsworth, his godfather having too much to do in refitting the ship to be spared away from her. He had not given notice that he was coming, and the cry of pleasure with which he was received when his smiling countenance appeared at Peter Ogle’s cottage door showed him that he might depend on a hearty welcome.A fair girl, with the sweetest of faces, rose from her seat, and, running towards him, put out both her hands, and did not seem overwhelmed with astonishment when he threw an arm round her waist and kissed her heartily.“Hillo, Master True Blue, are those the manners you have learned at sea?” exclaimed Mrs Ogle, not very angrily, though.“Yes, mother,” answered Billy, laughing, and still holding Mary by the hand and looking into her face. “It’s the way I behaved scores of times whenever I’ve thought of the only girl I ever loved; and now, though I didn’t intend to do it, I couldn’t help it—indeed I couldn’t. I hope you’ll forgive me, Mrs Ogle, if Mary does.”“Well, Billy, as my goodman has known you since you were a baby, and I’ve known you nearly as long, I suppose I must overlook it this time,” answered Mrs Ogle. “And now tell me, how is my husband, and Pringle, and the rest?”“Ogle and Pringle are very well; but Abel Bush has had an ugly knock on his side. It will grieve poor Mrs Bush, I know, when I tell her. He’ll be here as soon as he is out of hospital; but he wants to be aboard again when the ship is ready for sea.”Good Mrs Ogle, on hearing this, said that she would go in and prepare her neighbour for the news of Abel being wounded; and after she had done so, True Blue went and told her all the particulars, and comforted her to the best of his power; and then he hurried off to see old Mrs Pringle, who forgave him for not coming first to her, which he ought to have done.The hours of True Blue’s short stay flew quickly by—quicker by far than he wished. Never had the country to his eyes looked so beautiful, the meadows so green, the woods so fresh, and the flowers so bright; never had the birds seemed to sing so sweetly; and never had he watched with so much pleasure the sheep feeding on the distant downs, or the cattle come trooping in to their homesteads in the evening.“After all, Mary,” he said, “I really do think there are more things on shore worth looking at than I once fancied. Once I used to think that the sea was the only place fit for a man to live on, and now, though I don’t like it less than I did, I do love the look of this place at all events.”Mary smiled. They were sitting on a mossy bank on the hillside, with green fields before them and a wood on the right, in which the leaves were bursting forth fresh and bright, and a wide piece of water some hundred yards below, in which several wild fowl were dipping their wings; while beyond rose a range of smooth downs, the intermediate space being sprinkled over with neat farmhouses and labourers’ cottages; and rising above the trees appeared the grey, ivy-covered tower of the parish church, with the taper spire pointing upwards to the clear blue sky—not more clear or bright, though, than his Mary’s eyes; so True Blue thought, whether he said it or not.“Yes,” said Mary; “I am sure, True Blue, when you come to know more of dear Old England, you’ll love it as I do.”“I love it now, Mary—that I do, and everything in it for your sake, Mary, and its own sake!” exclaimed True Blue enthusiastically. “I used to think only of fighting for the King, God bless him; but now, though I won’t fight the less for him than I did, I’ll fight for Old England, and for you too, Mary; and not the worse either, because I shall be thinking of you, and of how I shall hope some day to come and live on shore with you, and perhaps go no more to sea.”Mary returned the pressure of his honest hand, and in the wide realms of England no two people were happier than they were; for they were faithful, guileless, and true, honest and virtuous, and no shadow cast by a thought of future misfortune crossed their path.Thus the days sped on. Then a letter came from Sir Henry, saying that he had obtained another fortnight’s leave for True Blue; and the different families looked forward to a visit from the three warrant-officers of theGannet, and felt how proud they should be at seeing them in their uniforms. Abel Bush was so far recovered that he was expected in a day or two.Such was the state of affairs, when one evening True Blue heard that an old shipmate of his in theRubywas ill at a little public-house about three miles off, nearer the sea; so he at once set off to visit him, intending to bring him up to Mrs Pringle’s, if he was able to be removed, for he was a favourite and friend of Paul’s.When he got there, he found a good many men in the house, mostly seamen, drinking and smoking in the bar. However, he passed on, and went up into the room where his old shipmate was in bed. He sat talking to him for some time, and then he gave him Mrs Pringle’s message, and told him that, as she had a spare room, he must come up there and stay till he was well. He had arranged to return with a cart the next morning, and had bid his friend good-bye, when, as he was on his way down the dark narrow stairs, he heard the door burst open, and a tremendous scuffle, and shouts, and oaths, and cries, and tables and chairs and benches upset, and blows rapidly dealt.He had little doubt that a pressgang had broken into the house, and, though they lawfully couldn’t touch him, he instinctively hurried back into his friend’s room, knowing how unscrupulous many people, when thus engaged, were, and that if they got hold of him he would have no little difficulty in escaping from their clutches.His friend, Ned Archer, thought the same. “Here, Billy,” he exclaimed, “jump out of the window! I will shut it after you, and you will be free of these fellows.”There was not a moment to be lost. True Blue threw open the casement, and dropped to the ground. It was a good height; but to an active lad like him the fall was nothing, and he would have made no noise had not a tin pan been set up against the wall. He kicked it over, and, as he was running off, he found himself collared by three stout fellows, drawn to the spot by the clatter it made.“You’ll have to serve His Majesty, my lad—that’s all; so be quiet,” said one of the men, for True Blue very naturally could not help trying to escape.“I have served His Majesty long and faithfully, and hope before long to be serving him again afloat,” answered True Blue. “But just hands off, mates. You’ve got hold of a wrong bird. I belong to a sloop of war, theGannet, and am away from her on leave.”“A likely story, my lad,” said the officer commanding the pressgang, who just then came up. “You are fair-spoken enough; but men with protections don’t jump out of windows and try to make off at the sight of a pressgang. Whether you’ve served His Majesty or not, you’ll come along with us and serve him now—that’s all I’ve to say on the subject.”The officer would not listen to a word True Blue had to plead, but with eight or nine other men, captured at the same time, he was forthwith marched down in the direction of the Hamble river.It was a long tramp, and True Blue often looked round for an opportunity of escaping; but his captors were vigilant, and there seemed but little chance of his getting away. Never had he felt so anxious, and, as he expressed his feelings, downhearted, not for himself,—he believed that all would come right at last, as far as he was concerned,—but for those he left behind him. He thought how anxious and grieved Mary would be when he did not return; and though he was aware that ultimately she would ascertain that he had been carried off by a pressgang, he knew that that would not mend matters much.A boat was waiting for them in the Hamble creek; and the party pulled on, till at daybreak they found themselves at the mouth of the Southampton Water, on board an eighteen-gun brig. The pressed men looked very sulky and angry, and eyed the shore as if even then they longed to jump overboard and swim for it; but the sentry, with his musket, at the gangway was a strong hint that they would have other dangers besides drowning to contend with should they attempt it.True Blue, who disdained to shirk duty on any pretence, performed as rapidly and well as he could what he was ordered to do; but at the same time his heart was heavier, probably, than that of any one on board. The officer who had captured him might or might not believe his assertion that he belonged to another ship. He had not his papers with him, and he had been caught trying to escape from the pressgang. The Captain of the brig was on shore, and was to be taken on board at Plymouth, where she was to call in for him.“Where are we bound for?” asked True Blue of one of his new shipmates.“Don’t you know, lad?” answered the man with a laugh which sounded harsh and cruel in his ears. “Why, out to the East Indies, to be sure—that’s the land, I’ve heard, of gold and silver and jewels. We shall all come back with our pockets well lined with the rhino. Lots of prize-money, lad—that’s the stuff we want. No wonder our skipper is in a hurry to be off. We shan’t drop anchor even in Plymouth Sound, but he’ll post down from London; and as soon as he sees us he’ll be aboard, for I know well that he will be eager to be off. He’s in as great a hurry to finger the ingots as any of us.”This was very unpleasant information for True Blue. He had no reason, either, to doubt it. As soon as the tide made, the brig got under weigh, and, standing out of the river, ran down the Solent towards the Needle Passage.Had True Blue been on board his own ship, he would have been contented enough, even though he had been bound for the East Indies; but to be carried off among strangers, without an opportunity of communicating with those he loved, was hard indeed to bear. The brig had got down as far as Berryhead, when it fell very nearly calm, and a thick fog came on. All night long the fog continued, and though it was not dark, all objects beyond ten or twenty fathoms at most of the brig were rendered invisible. Her head, therefore, was put off shore, to avoid the risk of running on it, and sail was reduced, so as merely to allow her to have steerage way.The breeze, however, got up a little with the sun, which was seen endeavouring to pierce the mist; but for a long time the sun appeared to strive in vain to accomplish that object.At last the silvery mist was, as it were, torn asunder; and then, running under all sail, and about to pass between the brig and the land, appeared a large lugger. The brig under reduced sail, seen through the fog, looked probably more like a merchantman than a man-of-war. The lugger ran up the tricolour and fired a round-shot at the brig.The first lieutenant, springing on deck with his trousers in one hand and his coat in the other, ordered the brig to be put about, and then all hands to make sail, and the guns to be cast loose and run out. The Frenchmen, before they discovered their mistake, had also tacked,—the wind was from the southward,—and were standing back towards the brig; but what was their astonishment, when, instead, of the thumping big merchantman they had expected to make their easy prize, they saw a trim man-of-war with nine guns looking down on them!They at the same time had the full taste of the nine guns, and of a volley of musketry also, to which they, however, in another minute, responded in gallant style. The brig was to windward. The object of her commanding officer was to jam the lugger up between her and the land, so that she could not possibly escape.The lugger’s Captain, unwilling to be thus caught, hauled his tacks aboard, and made a gallant attempt to cross the bows of the brig. Her helm, however, at that moment was put down, and a broadside fired right into the lugger, one shot bringing down her mainyard, and another knocking the mizen-mast over her side. The escape of the Frenchmen was now hopeless—they must either conquer or be captured. They made a bold attempt to win, by immediately running aboard the brig, before the lugger had lost her way, and securing her with grappling-irons.“Boarders, repel boarders!” shouted the first lieutenant of the brig.Among the first to answer the call was True Blue. Seizing a cutlass from a heap brought on deck,—for there had been no time to buckle them on,—he sprang to the spot where he Frenchmen were swarming on board.“Drive them back, for the sake of Old England, our King, and the homes we love!” he shouted, a dozen arming themselves as he had done, and following him.The officers in the same way seized what weapons they could lay hands on, and met their desperate assailants. In boarding, those who board, if they can take their opponents by surprise, have greatly the advantage. The Frenchmen reckoned on this, and were not disappointed. A strong party had made good their footing on the brig’s deck, when the first lieutenant, who was a powerful man, seizing a cutlass, with some of the best of the crew, threw himself upon them. So desperate was the onslaught he made that none could withstand it. The Frenchmen fired their pistols, by which several of the English, who had not one loaded, fell; and the gallant lieutenant was among others hit. Still his wound did not stop his progress.The Frenchmen retreated inch by inch, throwing themselves over the brig’s bulwarks into their own vessel. True Blue and his party had been equally successful forward, and now not a Frenchman remained on the brig’s deck. In another moment, he with his companions had leaped down on that of the lugger, and, though the French far outnumbered the British, drove them all abaft the foremast, where they found themselves attacked by another portion of the brig’s crew, headed by two of her officers.The first lieutenant had carried her aft, and the French, seeing that all was lost, threw down their arms and cried out for quarter. It was instantly given, and in ten minutes from the time the first shot was fired, the capture of the lugger was complete.As True Blue looked along her decks, he thought he recognised her appearance. “Hurrah!” he shouted. “Why, she’s the very craft, theVengeur, we took in the Seine.”So she proved. From one of the prisoners, who spoke English, True Blue learned that, soon after the boats had left her for the frigate, theVengeurhad been attacked by a large armed lugger, which, however, she beat off; that then a number of boats with soldiers in them surrounded her, and that, after a furious action had been carried on for some time, chiefly with musketry, and numbers of the British had been killed or wounded, Sir Sydney had yielded.Between twenty or thirty officers and men only had been landed at Rouen, the rest having fallen. The greater number were imprisoned at Rouen; but the French Government had considered Sir Sydney as a prisoner of state, and, with his secretary and servant, he had been placed in the tower of the Temple at Paris.In the afternoon, the brig and her prize ran up Plymouth Sound; and as she had killed and wounded and prisoners to land, and repairs to make good, instead of sailing at once, as had been intended, she had to wait several days.True Blue’s gallant conduct had been observed both by the first lieutenant and the master, and when the Captain came on board it was reported to him.“I think I must know the man,” he observed. “A fine young fellow—an old shipmate of mine in theRuby.”True Blue was sent for. The recognition was mutual. He told his story, and described also how he had been at the former capture of theVengeur.“I do not doubt a word you say,” said the Captain. “Still, here you are. I am unwilling to lose you, and am not compelled to release you. I will give you any rating you like to select in the ship.”“Thank you, sir, heartily,” answered True Blue; “but I belong to theGannet, and have no right to desert her, and have all my best friends aboard her. I would rather be put ashore to join her as soon as I can.”“But I cannot take any man’s word for such a statement,” answered the Captain. “If it were known, I should have all the pressed men coming to me with long yarns, which it might be difficult to disprove.”“Then, sir, perhaps you will take Sir Henry Elmore’s word for it. You know his handwriting, I daresay. I got this letter from him a few days ago;” and True Blue handed in the note, somewhat crumpled, which the young baronet had sent, saying that he had obtained longer leave for him.“That is sufficient warrant to me in allowing you to leave me, if we fall in with theGannet,” observed the Captain, who was a man never inclined, whether right or wrong, to yield a point.True Blue felt that he was cruelly wronged; still he hated the notion of running from the ship. Others put it into his head, but he would not accept it. “No, I have been unfairly taken, and I will be properly released,” he said to himself. “I’ll do what is right, whatever comes of it.”The brig’s repairs did not take long; but the arrangements respecting the prize occupied the Captain some time, so that nearly ten days passed before the brig was standing once more down the Sound.Poor True Blue’s application for a release had been ignored, and he now felt certain that he should have to go out to India. As they reached the entrance of the Sound, a corvette was seen standing in. She exchanged colours with the brig, and proved to be theGannet. Captain Brine, who was superior officer, directed the brig to heave-to. A boat shoved off from her, and, coming alongside, who should jump on the deck of the brig but Paul Pringle, who, touching his hat, said in a stern voice that he had been sent to bring back to his own ship Billy True Blue Freeborn.
As True Blue lay wounded in his hammock, he made daily, almost hourly, inquiries after Sir Henry; and nothing seemed to expedite his own recovery so much as hearing that the lieutenant was considered out of danger.
TheGannetstill continued in company with theDiamond, and True Blue’s chief unhappiness arose at not being allowed to join the various cutting-out expeditions in which the crews of the two ships were engaged.
At length, by the time that they once more stood up channel, both Sir Henry and True Blue were sufficiently recovered to go on deck, the lieutenant being almost fit to do some duty, though the latter was not allowed to exert himself.
Sir Sydney had invited the young lieutenant to spend a day or two on board the frigate, as he said, for change of air; and Sir Henry got leave for True Blue to accompany him, for the purpose, in reality, of making him known to one who, brave himself, could so well appreciate bravery in others, and who, if he had the will, would probably have the means of forwarding the young seaman’s interests.
Soon after this, in a thick fog, the frigate parted company with the corvette. TheDiamondhad taken a number of prizes, and sent them away under the command of various officers, so that she had very few left. Sir Sydney had intended to go the next day into Portsmouth to pick them up, when he fell in with a schooner making for the French coast, which turned out to be a prize to a French privateer lugger, theVengeur, known to have taken a number of prizes.
From the prisoners, Sir Sydney learned that she had the character of being very fast, that she was armed with ten nine-pounders, that her commander was a very enterprising character himself, and that she had been in vain chased on several occasions by British cruisers.
“Then we must put a stop to this gentleman’s proceedings!” exclaimed Sir Sydney. “We may not gain much glory, but we shall be doing good service to the commerce of our country; and that, after all, is our duty, and I take it we could not be engaged in more honourable work than in the performance of our duty.”
“Certainly not, sir,” warmly responded the young lieutenant, his guest; “and, if you will give me leave, I will accompany you. I am quite able to endure fatigue, and will take my young shipmate, True Blue Freeborn, with me, of whom I spoke to you—a gallant fellow, who has twice saved my life.”
Sir Sydney, who delighted in the sort of spirit exhibited by the young lieutenant, at once acceded to his wishes, and arranged that he should have charge of one of the boats. The frigate stood in, and soon discovered the lugger at anchor in the outer roads. The first lieutenant was on shore in England, the second was very ill, and the third lay in his berth severely wounded; so Sir Sydney gave notice that he himself would take command of the expedition.
The information was received with infinite satisfaction on board, because, in the first place, it seemed certain that there was some dashing work to be done; and, in the second, it was believed that, in whatever the Captain engaged, he succeeded. The necessary preparations were rapidly carried out. An eighteen-pounder carronade was mounted in the frigate launch, and her crew were also armed with muskets; three other boats were armed with smaller guns on swivels, and muskets; and one with muskets only—a wherry, pulling two oars.
Everything was ready by ten o’clock at night, when Sir Sydney Smith pushed off from the frigate, taking the lead of the other boats in his wherry. In perfect silence they pulled away, till through the darkness they perceived the lugger ahead of them. The crews now lay on their oars, while their Captain, in a clear, distinct voice, issued his definite orders.
“Understand, my lads, we must not alarm the enemy sooner than we can help. Give her a wide berth, therefore, and get between her and the shore, so that those on board, if they see us, may fancy that we are fishing-boats dropping out of the harbour. Then pull directly for the lugger, and be on board her as soon as possible.”
No further words were spoken. When they had got to the position indicated, no apparent notice was taken of them, and they hoped to get close alongside undiscovered.
“Pass the word along to the men to reserve their fire till the Frenchmen open theirs,” said the Captain, who continued ahead. “Now, my lads, pull straight for her.”
Away dashed the boats as fast as their crews could urge them. The Frenchmen were all asleep, or the watch on deck had not made them out. When, however, about a musket-shot off, lights were seen, and there was a considerable bustle on deck, and hallooing and shouting. On they dashed; they had got within half pistol-shot of the lugger, when a volley was let fly amongst them. As usual, the dose, instead of checking their progress, only stimulated them to greater exertions. The marines and small-arm men returned the fire in right good earnest, while the boats advanced more rapidly than before.
The Frenchmen had been taken by surprise: they had barely time to load their guns. As they had not pointed them precisely, most of their shot flew over the heads of their opponents, and there had been no time to trice up the boarding nettings. The British were therefore soon alongside; a fierce hand-to-hand conflict commenced with pistols, boarding-pikes, and cutlasses, and the gallant assailants began to climb over her low bulwarks and furiously to attack the enemy with cutlass and pistol. The French crew, though far outnumbering the British, could not withstand the desperate onslaught.
Sir Sydney Smith was one of the first on board. True Blue, cutlass in hand, leaped over the bulwarks at the same moment from another boat, with Sir Henry Elmore. There was a rapid mingling of shouts and cheers and cries, and rattling of musketry, and the crack of pistols and clashing of cutlasses and then the privateer’s men gave way, leaped down below, and cried for quarter. It was given, and the prisoners were at once secured.
Scarcely was this done, when True Blue, who was forward, discovered that the cable was cut, and that the vessel was drifting with the tide, now making strong up the river, rapidly towards the shore. He reported this to Sir Sydney, who instantly ordered the boats to go ahead and tow her away. Meantime, search was made for an anchor to hold the vessel against the tide making up the Seine, every instant apparently increasing in strength.
“Here’s a small kedge, sir!” cried True Blue, who, one of the most active, was searching away in the forehold. “It will be of little service, I fear, though.”
“Get it bent on. We will try what our canvas will do first,” answered the Captain.
Every stitch of sail the lugger could carry was set on her; but still the breeze refused to blow with sufficient strength to enable her to stem the tide, even with all the boats towing ahead. The kedge was therefore let go, but though it somewhat stopped her way, still she dragged it rapidly on. Higher and higher she drifted up the Seine, till at length she brought up off Harfleur, on the northern bank of the river, two miles above Havre.
It seemed as if nothing more could now be done.
“I ought to return to the frigate,” said the Captain, “Sir Henry, you will accompany me. Mr Wright, you will get under weigh the instant the tide slackens or a breeze springs up, and run out to us.”
Sir Henry begged that he might remain on board the lugger and share the risk with the rest, though it was not without considerable reluctance that Sir Sydney consented to leave him. Sir Sydney then pulled off in his small boat for the frigate.
Daylight was now coming on, and by its means several boats were seen coming down the Seine, evidently with the intention of trying to recapture theVengeur. At the same time, however, a small boat was observed approaching from the frigate, and soon afterwards Sir Sydney Smith himself stepped on board.
“My lads,” he said, “I believe that we shall have to fight for our prize, and I have returned to lend a hand in defending her. However, we have more boats and people than are required. Sir Henry Elmore, I must beg you to undertake the charge of landing the prisoners at Honfleur, on the southern bank of the river, in the launch and pinnace, and then return to theDiamond. These are my orders. We must first, however, make the Frenchmen give us their parole not in any way to interfere in whatever takes place. I propose fighting the lugger under weigh, till the breeze and ebb tide enable us to carry her out. The tide will soon make, and I hope to be alongside the frigate in an hour or little more.”
Very unwillingly Sir Henry quitted his gallant chief and friend, taking, of course, True Blue with him.
It was now broad daylight, and all the glasses of the frigate were turned towards theVengeur. Another large lugger as big as herself was seen approaching her. She got under weigh, and a warm action began.
“She is giving it her!—she is giving it her!” shouted True Blue. “Sir Sydney will beat him, I am certain.”
So it seemed probable by the gallant way in which theVengeurmet her approach. The latter was soon seen to sheer off and drop up the river again, evidently having had fighting enough. Most anxiously a breeze was looked-for.
Though victorious in this instance, the prize was even in a more perilous position than before, having drifted still more up the river, and numerous boats being seen in the distance approaching her. Down they came, their numbers rapidly increasing. Now she opened her fire right and left upon them. They returned it with heavy discharges of musketry, till she was completely surrounded by smoke, an evidence also that she had no breeze to assist her in manoeuvring.
Farther and farther off she drifted, till, with hearts foreboding evil, the spectators on board theDiamondlost sight of her in the distance, surrounded by smoke. In vain they waited. The day wore on; there was not a sign of their gallant Captain and his brave followers, and at length it became too certain that they must have been taken prisoners by the French.
A strong breeze now sprang up. After waiting off the port all the night, theDiamondran across the Channel, and anchored at Spithead, with the intelligence of Sir Sydney Smith’s capture. TheGannethad not yet appeared, and True Blue, as well as Sir Henry, began to be anxious, fearing that some mishap might have befallen her.
Two days passed by. On the third, True Blue was looking out to the south-east, when he espied two ships standing in towards the anchorage. He looked and looked again. One was, he thought, and yet doubted, theGannet, so different did she look to the trim and gallant little ship she had but lately been; the other was a craft much of her size, with the English ensign flying over the tricolour of France. The first soon made her number, and left no doubt as to her being theGannet.
An action, and a well-fought one, had evidently taken place, and the corvette had brought in her captured prize; but then came the question, who among shipmates and friends had suffered? True Blue could not help thinking of Paul Pringle, whom he loved with an affection which could not have been surpassed had Paul been his father, and Peter Ogle, and Abel Bush, and his own messmates. Had any of them been killed or hurt?
He knew that Sir Henry, who had remained doing duty on board theDiamond, would feel somewhat as he did; so he went to him, and Sir Henry gratified him by saying that he would at once make arrangements for returning to the corvette the instant she anchored. A boat was got ready, and away they pulled for her. They were on board almost as soon as the anchor was dropped.
True Blue glanced eagerly forward. Paul Pringle was on the forecastle, call in mouth, issuing the necessary orders for furling sails. Peter Ogle was not to be seen, nor was Abel Bush, but they might be about some duty below; nor were Tim Fid nor Gregory Gipples visible, though they ought to have been on deck.
Having reported himself as come on board with Sir Henry to the first lieutenant, who was near the gangway, he dived below. Numerous hammocks slung up forward showed that there were many sick or wounded, while groups of Frenchmen, with sentries over them, proved that a prize had been taken.
He first hurried to the gunner’s cabin. The door was closed—he knocked—there was no answer—his heart sank within him—his thoughts flew to Mary and her mother. Could Peter Ogle be among the killed in the late action? He dared not ask; he opened the door and looked in. The cabin was empty. He went next to that of Abel Bush.
“Come in,” said the carpenter in a weak voice, very unlike his usual sturdy bass. “True Blue, is it you, my lad? Right glad to see you!” he exclaimed in a more cheerful tone. “Well, we have had a warm brush. Only sorry you were not with us; but we took her, as you see, though we had a hard struggle for it. Do you know, Billy, these Frenchmen do fight well sometimes. They’ve given me an ugly knock in the ribs; but the doctor says I shall be all to rights soon, so no matter. I don’t want to be laid up in ordinary yet. Time enough when I am as old as Lord Howe. He keeps afloat; so may I for twenty years to come yet, I hope.”
Thus he ran on. He was evidently feverish from his wound.
“But oh, Abel, where is Peter Ogle?” exclaimed True Blue, interrupting him at length.
“Peter?—oh, aboard the prize!” answered Abel. “Where did you think he was?”
“All right,” replied True Blue.
In the evening, both ships went into the harbour to be refitted, an operation which, from the battered condition of the corvette and her prize, would evidently take some time.
Scarcely was the ship moored, when Sir Henry sent for True Blue, and told him that, on account of his having been wounded, he had obtained leave for him to have a run on shore, and that if he liked he would take him up to London with him, and let him see more of the wonders of the great metropolis.
The colour came to the young sailor’s cheeks. “Thank you, Sir Henry—thank you,” he answered; “but to be honest, I’d as lief go to my friends at Emsworth, you see, sir. They know me, and I know them; and though I should like to see her ladyship and the young ladies,—indeed I should,—there’s Mary Ogle, Peter Ogle’s daughter; and the truth is, we’ve come to understand each other, and talk of splicing one of these days, when I’m a bo’sun perhaps, or maybe before that. If you saw Mary, sir, I’m sure you wouldn’t be offended at my wishing to go down there rather than go up to big London with you, sir. But you’ll give, I hope, my dutiful respect to your mother, sir, and the young ladies, and tell them it’s not for want of love and duty to them that I don’t come.”
“I am sure that they will think everything right of you, Freeborn,” answered the young baronet, struck by True Blue’s truthful frankness. “But instead of being a boatswain, why not aim at being placed, as I long ago wished, on the quarterdeck? Surely it would please your Mary more, and I daresay my friends would accomplish it for you.”
“Thank you, Sir Henry—thank you. I’ve thought the matter over scores of times, and never thought differently,” answered True Blue with a thoughtful look. “And do you know, sir, I’m sure that Mary wouldn’t love me a bit the more because I was a Captain, than she does now, or than she will when I am a bo’sun. She isn’t a lady, and doesn’t set up for a lady; and why should she? I couldn’t love her a bit the more than I now do if she did. You see, Sir Henry, she’s a right true honest good girl, and what more can a man like me want in the world to make him happy?”
“You are right, Freeborn—you are right!” exclaimed the young baronet, springing up and taking his friend’s hand; “and I wish you every happiness your Mary can give you. Remember, too, if I am in England, invite me to your wedding, and I’ll do my utmost to come to it. I have not often been at a wedding, and never thought of marrying; but I am very sure that somehow or other you will set me on the right course, by the pleasure I shall experience on that occasion.”
The next day, while Sir Henry went up to London, True Blue started off by himself to Emsworth, his godfather having too much to do in refitting the ship to be spared away from her. He had not given notice that he was coming, and the cry of pleasure with which he was received when his smiling countenance appeared at Peter Ogle’s cottage door showed him that he might depend on a hearty welcome.
A fair girl, with the sweetest of faces, rose from her seat, and, running towards him, put out both her hands, and did not seem overwhelmed with astonishment when he threw an arm round her waist and kissed her heartily.
“Hillo, Master True Blue, are those the manners you have learned at sea?” exclaimed Mrs Ogle, not very angrily, though.
“Yes, mother,” answered Billy, laughing, and still holding Mary by the hand and looking into her face. “It’s the way I behaved scores of times whenever I’ve thought of the only girl I ever loved; and now, though I didn’t intend to do it, I couldn’t help it—indeed I couldn’t. I hope you’ll forgive me, Mrs Ogle, if Mary does.”
“Well, Billy, as my goodman has known you since you were a baby, and I’ve known you nearly as long, I suppose I must overlook it this time,” answered Mrs Ogle. “And now tell me, how is my husband, and Pringle, and the rest?”
“Ogle and Pringle are very well; but Abel Bush has had an ugly knock on his side. It will grieve poor Mrs Bush, I know, when I tell her. He’ll be here as soon as he is out of hospital; but he wants to be aboard again when the ship is ready for sea.”
Good Mrs Ogle, on hearing this, said that she would go in and prepare her neighbour for the news of Abel being wounded; and after she had done so, True Blue went and told her all the particulars, and comforted her to the best of his power; and then he hurried off to see old Mrs Pringle, who forgave him for not coming first to her, which he ought to have done.
The hours of True Blue’s short stay flew quickly by—quicker by far than he wished. Never had the country to his eyes looked so beautiful, the meadows so green, the woods so fresh, and the flowers so bright; never had the birds seemed to sing so sweetly; and never had he watched with so much pleasure the sheep feeding on the distant downs, or the cattle come trooping in to their homesteads in the evening.
“After all, Mary,” he said, “I really do think there are more things on shore worth looking at than I once fancied. Once I used to think that the sea was the only place fit for a man to live on, and now, though I don’t like it less than I did, I do love the look of this place at all events.”
Mary smiled. They were sitting on a mossy bank on the hillside, with green fields before them and a wood on the right, in which the leaves were bursting forth fresh and bright, and a wide piece of water some hundred yards below, in which several wild fowl were dipping their wings; while beyond rose a range of smooth downs, the intermediate space being sprinkled over with neat farmhouses and labourers’ cottages; and rising above the trees appeared the grey, ivy-covered tower of the parish church, with the taper spire pointing upwards to the clear blue sky—not more clear or bright, though, than his Mary’s eyes; so True Blue thought, whether he said it or not.
“Yes,” said Mary; “I am sure, True Blue, when you come to know more of dear Old England, you’ll love it as I do.”
“I love it now, Mary—that I do, and everything in it for your sake, Mary, and its own sake!” exclaimed True Blue enthusiastically. “I used to think only of fighting for the King, God bless him; but now, though I won’t fight the less for him than I did, I’ll fight for Old England, and for you too, Mary; and not the worse either, because I shall be thinking of you, and of how I shall hope some day to come and live on shore with you, and perhaps go no more to sea.”
Mary returned the pressure of his honest hand, and in the wide realms of England no two people were happier than they were; for they were faithful, guileless, and true, honest and virtuous, and no shadow cast by a thought of future misfortune crossed their path.
Thus the days sped on. Then a letter came from Sir Henry, saying that he had obtained another fortnight’s leave for True Blue; and the different families looked forward to a visit from the three warrant-officers of theGannet, and felt how proud they should be at seeing them in their uniforms. Abel Bush was so far recovered that he was expected in a day or two.
Such was the state of affairs, when one evening True Blue heard that an old shipmate of his in theRubywas ill at a little public-house about three miles off, nearer the sea; so he at once set off to visit him, intending to bring him up to Mrs Pringle’s, if he was able to be removed, for he was a favourite and friend of Paul’s.
When he got there, he found a good many men in the house, mostly seamen, drinking and smoking in the bar. However, he passed on, and went up into the room where his old shipmate was in bed. He sat talking to him for some time, and then he gave him Mrs Pringle’s message, and told him that, as she had a spare room, he must come up there and stay till he was well. He had arranged to return with a cart the next morning, and had bid his friend good-bye, when, as he was on his way down the dark narrow stairs, he heard the door burst open, and a tremendous scuffle, and shouts, and oaths, and cries, and tables and chairs and benches upset, and blows rapidly dealt.
He had little doubt that a pressgang had broken into the house, and, though they lawfully couldn’t touch him, he instinctively hurried back into his friend’s room, knowing how unscrupulous many people, when thus engaged, were, and that if they got hold of him he would have no little difficulty in escaping from their clutches.
His friend, Ned Archer, thought the same. “Here, Billy,” he exclaimed, “jump out of the window! I will shut it after you, and you will be free of these fellows.”
There was not a moment to be lost. True Blue threw open the casement, and dropped to the ground. It was a good height; but to an active lad like him the fall was nothing, and he would have made no noise had not a tin pan been set up against the wall. He kicked it over, and, as he was running off, he found himself collared by three stout fellows, drawn to the spot by the clatter it made.
“You’ll have to serve His Majesty, my lad—that’s all; so be quiet,” said one of the men, for True Blue very naturally could not help trying to escape.
“I have served His Majesty long and faithfully, and hope before long to be serving him again afloat,” answered True Blue. “But just hands off, mates. You’ve got hold of a wrong bird. I belong to a sloop of war, theGannet, and am away from her on leave.”
“A likely story, my lad,” said the officer commanding the pressgang, who just then came up. “You are fair-spoken enough; but men with protections don’t jump out of windows and try to make off at the sight of a pressgang. Whether you’ve served His Majesty or not, you’ll come along with us and serve him now—that’s all I’ve to say on the subject.”
The officer would not listen to a word True Blue had to plead, but with eight or nine other men, captured at the same time, he was forthwith marched down in the direction of the Hamble river.
It was a long tramp, and True Blue often looked round for an opportunity of escaping; but his captors were vigilant, and there seemed but little chance of his getting away. Never had he felt so anxious, and, as he expressed his feelings, downhearted, not for himself,—he believed that all would come right at last, as far as he was concerned,—but for those he left behind him. He thought how anxious and grieved Mary would be when he did not return; and though he was aware that ultimately she would ascertain that he had been carried off by a pressgang, he knew that that would not mend matters much.
A boat was waiting for them in the Hamble creek; and the party pulled on, till at daybreak they found themselves at the mouth of the Southampton Water, on board an eighteen-gun brig. The pressed men looked very sulky and angry, and eyed the shore as if even then they longed to jump overboard and swim for it; but the sentry, with his musket, at the gangway was a strong hint that they would have other dangers besides drowning to contend with should they attempt it.
True Blue, who disdained to shirk duty on any pretence, performed as rapidly and well as he could what he was ordered to do; but at the same time his heart was heavier, probably, than that of any one on board. The officer who had captured him might or might not believe his assertion that he belonged to another ship. He had not his papers with him, and he had been caught trying to escape from the pressgang. The Captain of the brig was on shore, and was to be taken on board at Plymouth, where she was to call in for him.
“Where are we bound for?” asked True Blue of one of his new shipmates.
“Don’t you know, lad?” answered the man with a laugh which sounded harsh and cruel in his ears. “Why, out to the East Indies, to be sure—that’s the land, I’ve heard, of gold and silver and jewels. We shall all come back with our pockets well lined with the rhino. Lots of prize-money, lad—that’s the stuff we want. No wonder our skipper is in a hurry to be off. We shan’t drop anchor even in Plymouth Sound, but he’ll post down from London; and as soon as he sees us he’ll be aboard, for I know well that he will be eager to be off. He’s in as great a hurry to finger the ingots as any of us.”
This was very unpleasant information for True Blue. He had no reason, either, to doubt it. As soon as the tide made, the brig got under weigh, and, standing out of the river, ran down the Solent towards the Needle Passage.
Had True Blue been on board his own ship, he would have been contented enough, even though he had been bound for the East Indies; but to be carried off among strangers, without an opportunity of communicating with those he loved, was hard indeed to bear. The brig had got down as far as Berryhead, when it fell very nearly calm, and a thick fog came on. All night long the fog continued, and though it was not dark, all objects beyond ten or twenty fathoms at most of the brig were rendered invisible. Her head, therefore, was put off shore, to avoid the risk of running on it, and sail was reduced, so as merely to allow her to have steerage way.
The breeze, however, got up a little with the sun, which was seen endeavouring to pierce the mist; but for a long time the sun appeared to strive in vain to accomplish that object.
At last the silvery mist was, as it were, torn asunder; and then, running under all sail, and about to pass between the brig and the land, appeared a large lugger. The brig under reduced sail, seen through the fog, looked probably more like a merchantman than a man-of-war. The lugger ran up the tricolour and fired a round-shot at the brig.
The first lieutenant, springing on deck with his trousers in one hand and his coat in the other, ordered the brig to be put about, and then all hands to make sail, and the guns to be cast loose and run out. The Frenchmen, before they discovered their mistake, had also tacked,—the wind was from the southward,—and were standing back towards the brig; but what was their astonishment, when, instead, of the thumping big merchantman they had expected to make their easy prize, they saw a trim man-of-war with nine guns looking down on them!
They at the same time had the full taste of the nine guns, and of a volley of musketry also, to which they, however, in another minute, responded in gallant style. The brig was to windward. The object of her commanding officer was to jam the lugger up between her and the land, so that she could not possibly escape.
The lugger’s Captain, unwilling to be thus caught, hauled his tacks aboard, and made a gallant attempt to cross the bows of the brig. Her helm, however, at that moment was put down, and a broadside fired right into the lugger, one shot bringing down her mainyard, and another knocking the mizen-mast over her side. The escape of the Frenchmen was now hopeless—they must either conquer or be captured. They made a bold attempt to win, by immediately running aboard the brig, before the lugger had lost her way, and securing her with grappling-irons.
“Boarders, repel boarders!” shouted the first lieutenant of the brig.
Among the first to answer the call was True Blue. Seizing a cutlass from a heap brought on deck,—for there had been no time to buckle them on,—he sprang to the spot where he Frenchmen were swarming on board.
“Drive them back, for the sake of Old England, our King, and the homes we love!” he shouted, a dozen arming themselves as he had done, and following him.
The officers in the same way seized what weapons they could lay hands on, and met their desperate assailants. In boarding, those who board, if they can take their opponents by surprise, have greatly the advantage. The Frenchmen reckoned on this, and were not disappointed. A strong party had made good their footing on the brig’s deck, when the first lieutenant, who was a powerful man, seizing a cutlass, with some of the best of the crew, threw himself upon them. So desperate was the onslaught he made that none could withstand it. The Frenchmen fired their pistols, by which several of the English, who had not one loaded, fell; and the gallant lieutenant was among others hit. Still his wound did not stop his progress.
The Frenchmen retreated inch by inch, throwing themselves over the brig’s bulwarks into their own vessel. True Blue and his party had been equally successful forward, and now not a Frenchman remained on the brig’s deck. In another moment, he with his companions had leaped down on that of the lugger, and, though the French far outnumbered the British, drove them all abaft the foremast, where they found themselves attacked by another portion of the brig’s crew, headed by two of her officers.
The first lieutenant had carried her aft, and the French, seeing that all was lost, threw down their arms and cried out for quarter. It was instantly given, and in ten minutes from the time the first shot was fired, the capture of the lugger was complete.
As True Blue looked along her decks, he thought he recognised her appearance. “Hurrah!” he shouted. “Why, she’s the very craft, theVengeur, we took in the Seine.”
So she proved. From one of the prisoners, who spoke English, True Blue learned that, soon after the boats had left her for the frigate, theVengeurhad been attacked by a large armed lugger, which, however, she beat off; that then a number of boats with soldiers in them surrounded her, and that, after a furious action had been carried on for some time, chiefly with musketry, and numbers of the British had been killed or wounded, Sir Sydney had yielded.
Between twenty or thirty officers and men only had been landed at Rouen, the rest having fallen. The greater number were imprisoned at Rouen; but the French Government had considered Sir Sydney as a prisoner of state, and, with his secretary and servant, he had been placed in the tower of the Temple at Paris.
In the afternoon, the brig and her prize ran up Plymouth Sound; and as she had killed and wounded and prisoners to land, and repairs to make good, instead of sailing at once, as had been intended, she had to wait several days.
True Blue’s gallant conduct had been observed both by the first lieutenant and the master, and when the Captain came on board it was reported to him.
“I think I must know the man,” he observed. “A fine young fellow—an old shipmate of mine in theRuby.”
True Blue was sent for. The recognition was mutual. He told his story, and described also how he had been at the former capture of theVengeur.
“I do not doubt a word you say,” said the Captain. “Still, here you are. I am unwilling to lose you, and am not compelled to release you. I will give you any rating you like to select in the ship.”
“Thank you, sir, heartily,” answered True Blue; “but I belong to theGannet, and have no right to desert her, and have all my best friends aboard her. I would rather be put ashore to join her as soon as I can.”
“But I cannot take any man’s word for such a statement,” answered the Captain. “If it were known, I should have all the pressed men coming to me with long yarns, which it might be difficult to disprove.”
“Then, sir, perhaps you will take Sir Henry Elmore’s word for it. You know his handwriting, I daresay. I got this letter from him a few days ago;” and True Blue handed in the note, somewhat crumpled, which the young baronet had sent, saying that he had obtained longer leave for him.
“That is sufficient warrant to me in allowing you to leave me, if we fall in with theGannet,” observed the Captain, who was a man never inclined, whether right or wrong, to yield a point.
True Blue felt that he was cruelly wronged; still he hated the notion of running from the ship. Others put it into his head, but he would not accept it. “No, I have been unfairly taken, and I will be properly released,” he said to himself. “I’ll do what is right, whatever comes of it.”
The brig’s repairs did not take long; but the arrangements respecting the prize occupied the Captain some time, so that nearly ten days passed before the brig was standing once more down the Sound.
Poor True Blue’s application for a release had been ignored, and he now felt certain that he should have to go out to India. As they reached the entrance of the Sound, a corvette was seen standing in. She exchanged colours with the brig, and proved to be theGannet. Captain Brine, who was superior officer, directed the brig to heave-to. A boat shoved off from her, and, coming alongside, who should jump on the deck of the brig but Paul Pringle, who, touching his hat, said in a stern voice that he had been sent to bring back to his own ship Billy True Blue Freeborn.