Читать книгу The Gentleman - Alfred Ollivant - Страница 20

"They call you Kit?"

The boy started.

His name, his pet name that he had not heard for days, on the lips of this block-of-granite little man, who had only spoken so far to snub him.

"Mother does, sir—and Gwen."

There was silence; only the water talking beneath the ship's bows, as she took the open sea and began to swing to it.

"Your father was my friend," continued the voice, less harsh now. "I was a pit-boy; he was a gentleman: we was friends."

The voice was gruff again.

"Ran away to sea same night—he from the Hall; me from the pit-mouth.

Met under the old oak on the green.

"'Ready, Bill?' says he.

"'Right, sir,' says I.

"'Then forge ahead.'

"And forge ahead it was, and never parted, till the Lord saw good to come atween us for the time bein at St. Vincent."

The voice in the darkness ceased and began again.

"Quiberon Bay was our first. Fifty-nine that were. I was powder-monkey on the Royal George; he was Hawke's orderly midshipman. St. Vincent our last. And a God's plenty in between. One time Dutchmen; one time Dons; and most all the time the French. Yes, sir," with quiet gusto, "reck'n we saw all the best that was goin in our time, and not a bad time neether—for them as like it, that's to say: seamen and such."

He was silent for a time, chewing his memories.

And what memories they were!—Had he not sailed under Boscawen in the fifties, when that old sea-dog stood between England and Invasion? Had he not lived to see Napoleon's Eagles brooding over the cliffs of France, intent on the same enterprise?—And between the two, what men, what deeds?—Hawke smashing Conflans in a hurricane; Rodney, gloriously alone, fighting his ship against a fleet; Duncan hammering the Dutch; Sam Hood, Jack Jervis, Nelson, Cuddie Collingwood; and all that grim array of big-beaked, bloody-fisted fighting men who for fifty years had held the narrow seas against all comers.

"D'you remember your father?"

The old man brooded over the boy. In a dumb and misty way he was puzzling out one of life's mysteries—this long stripling with the eyes sprung somehow from that other long stripling with the eyes, whom he had followed from the pit-mouth fifty years since.

"I just remember him coming into the nursery with mother and a candle the night before he sailed the last time, sir, to join Lord Howe."

"Ah," mused the old man, "that'd be a week afoor the First o June; and nigh three years afoor he died."

He paused again, rummaging in his memory.

"He was Post-Captain at St. Vincent; I was his First—aboord the old Terrible, 74. … You'll ha heard all about that tale. [Footnote: Sir John Jervis crushed the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent in 1797. In this action the Spanish fleet was in two divisions. In order to prevent a junction between them Nelson drew out of the British line and single-handed attacked the Spanish weather-division, including the Spanish flag-ship and five other sail of the line. See Mahan's "Life of Nelson."]

"'Plucky chap, Nelson,' says the Captain, as he tumbles to the little man's game. 'Wear ship, and a'ter him.' So we hauls out? the line, us and the Culloden—Tom Troubridge—and pushes up, all sail set, to help him.

"By then we got alongside, the Captain—Nelson's ship she were—was a sheer hulk. As we pass her, your father leans over the rail.

"'Well done, Captain,' says he, liftin his hat.

"Nelson blinks his one eye up—I can see him now.

"'That you, Kit?' he pipes through his nose that way of is'n. 'You've got it all your own way now. I'm a wreck. Good luck, Terrible.'

"So on we goes bang atween two Spanish Fust-rates—hundud and twenty guns apiece. Had em all to ourselves, and asked no better.

"'Just your style, Bill,' says the Captain. He was pacing up and down the lee of the poop with me. 'Pretty work, ain't it?'

"'Too pretty to last, sir,' says I; as our fore-mast went by the board.

"Just then up runs the carpenter's mate all of a sweat.

"'Well, Michael,' says the Captain, 'what is it to-day?'

"'Goin down with a run, sir,' pants old Chips. 'Twenty foot? water in her well.'

"The Captain turns to me.

"'Where's the nearest land, Willum?' says he, with that twinkle of is'n. Always called me Willum, when he meant mischief, did the Captain.

"'Why, sir,' says I, 'the bottom, I reck'n.'

"'Wrong again,' says he. 'That's the nearest land to me,' and he points at the Santy Maria, Don Somebody Somethin's Flag-ship. 'Hard a-starboard, if you please, Mr. Hardin,' says he. 'I'm a-goin to land.'

"So I luffs up alongside, and fell aboard Er Oliness—like a mighty great mountain above us she was, all poop, and galleries, and Armada fittins.

"When our bow scraped her quarter,

"'Anybody for the shore!' pipes the Captain; and he jumps into her main-chain. …

"Ah, but you should ha heard the men cheer!"

The old man paused, breathing deep.

"Ten minutes a'terwards he was dying acrost my knees on the spar-deck of the Don.

"'Has she struck, Bill?' he whispers, coughing. …

"'The three decker's struck, sir,' says I, 'and the four-decker's strikin.'

"He shuts his eyes.

"'Then I can depart in peace,' he sighs. 'Tell Marjory I done my duty.'

"And he up and died."

There was a cough in the darkness.

"So I calls a cutter away, and rowed aboord the San Josef, the men blubberin like a pack o babbies, to break it to Nelson. Like twins, them two, Nelson and your father: that like, ye see!

"Well, there was the Commodore on the Don's quarter-deck, Berry beside him, the Spanish Captain afoor him, and behind him a British Jack-Tar tuckin the Spaniards' swords under his arm like so many umberellas.

"I breaks it to him short and straight.

"'Captain Caryll's compliments, sir,' says I. 'And he's dead.'

"Nelson claps his hands to his face as though I'd struck him. Then he falls on my neck afoor em all—Dons too.

"'O Ding-dong!' says he. 'I loved him.'—Just like that. 'I loved him. … '

"Yes, that was Nelson all through: one alf woman, t'other alf hero.

"Then he pulls himself together.

"'But there!' he says. 'He lived like an English gentleman; and he

died like a British seaman. May I go that way when my time comes.'

And he sweeps off his cocked hat as though it might ha been to the

King, and—

"'God bless Kit Caryll,' says he."

The old man blew his nose in the darkness.

"Yes, sir," he continued, "that was your father and my friend," and then suddenly gruff—

"D'you mean takin a'ter him?"

"I mean to try, sir," said the boy huskily.

In the darkness a hand gripped his.