Читать книгу The Admiral - Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen - Страница 7

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AND now it is time for me to tell you how first I met Will.

I was the jest of the ship. The mids in the gun-room hit off the keynote of my personal appearance when they christened me Tubby the very first day I went on shipboard; and Tubby I remained till I was given a command on the captured sloop St. Malo, in the year 18—. It was recognised at once that I could stand a good deal more than my share of gun-room wit without quarrelling, though I showed no deficiency in pluck when it came to going aloft in heavy weather, or steering a boat under heavy fire; and I was popular, I believe, though no one thought me worth considering. I was not born to be considered: I was born to attach myself to a strong nature, to subordinate myself to its will and enjoy its glory as if it were my own. My friendship with Will has filled my life. For all the years during which we were shipmates, my thoughts were hardly ever off Will Hardres; and now that we are both of us laid on the shelf on this windy coast of Kent, because Europe is so exhausted that there will never be any wars again, my little crib is within an old pony’s amble of his mansion-house of Eastry, and my wife, his sister, leads me the same dance as Will led me—God bless her!

I am not like to forget the first day we met. The wind was roaring; the sky was a feather-bed of clouds; the ships were forging up and down at their anchors; their cables and timbers were cracking rather than creaking, even under the lee of the land; and the waves looked like sweeping away the narrow spit of shore which shuts out the sea and makes Brading Harbour.

We had a noble fleet. A few men-of-war on their way out to join my Lord St. Vincent, Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, and with them the Portugal, Gibraltar, and Mediterranean convoy, lay in the roads between St. Helen’s, in the Isle of Wight, and Spithead, on the morning of that 8th of April, 1798, waiting for the gale to drop or shift from the south-west, till when they were wind-bound,—for the Mediterranean.

Our ship, the Vanguard, a fine seventy-four, was one of the nearest in-shore, for we had the Admiral aboard.

Walking up and down the slippery deck with Berry, our Captain, was a most remarkable-looking little man. His shoulders were made to appear narrower than they really were by the loss of his right arm and the way he pulled his coat round it. A certain peculiarity in his gait was probably due to the same cause. The flowing hair which almost concealed his ears, the ruddy skin and bright blue eyes would alone have attracted attention. It was a small face, with certain very marked features. The forehead was lofty, though narrow; the nose was long, and almost straight; the chin, though very strong, was not broad; and his mouth, which was noticeably large, was the most extraordinarily sensitive mouth I have ever seen. In remarking its size, it was not the length that you noted, but the range and flexibility of the lips. This contributed largely to the wonderful expressiveness of the face.

His eyebrows, too, were very marked; they were bent rather than curved, and had a curious little upward curl at the end. But his eyes, with his mouth, were the features of his face. For being of the bright blue which is hardly ever dissociated from courage and resoluteness, they gave the face its strength; and they were the most remarkable I have ever seen in this way,—that while cruelty, or at the least callousness, and insensibility to any emotions but animal passions and anger, are frequently the other characteristics of eyes of this particular bright blue, his eyes had instead the tenderness, the sensibility, the imaginativeness of large eyes which sometimes look greyish-brown and sometimes brownish-grey.

And herein lay the index to his whole character. For once in the world, dark-eyed genius was found in the same body as blue-eyed recklessness. He had at once head and heart and backbone. And sometimes his poor little weakling body was wrung almost dry of blood by the mighty soul which struggled within it. But as Will’s eyes first fell on him that day he was a little thin man, crooked with the loss of his arm, and with wild hair tumbling over a small weather-ruddied face with petulant eyes and mouth.

That was his expression when worried with forced inaction, or being chained to mere routine with no prospect of an occasion which demanded ability to meet it. But when such an occasion arose this expression was replaced by the smiling serenity and confidence of the portrait painted in the year of the Nile.

The narrowness of chin and forehead, and the general smallness of the face, I have always considered as the physiognomical expression of the concentration and intenseness of his character.

This little man was the great Admiral who was one day to be Lord Nelson, and leave such a name behind him as no sailor who ever sailed the sea left before him, or is ever like to leave. I was standing to take orders, when suddenly the Admiral cried out, “The devil take this wind, Berry! If the Boadicea’s news be true, the French in Brest will be ready for sea before it blows out, and I shall have to fight them with my hands tied by the convoy. I hate this convoying,—I don’t mind what the odds are in a fair fight. But they shall sink every King’s ship among us before they get away with any of my convoy. Sink, I say!—there shall be no question of capturing any fighting ship in my fleet. I hope that trial of Williamson’s will have its effect on officers going into action. I was sorry for him: I do not grudge him getting off with his life; I daresay that there were some favourable circumstances, and it is ever a virtue to lean to the side of mercy. But as to myself, upon the general question that if a man does not do his utmost in time of action, I think but one punishment ought to be inflicted. Not that I take a man’s merit from his list of killed and wounded, for but little may be in his power; and if he does his utmost in the station he is placed, he has equal merit to the man who may have his ship beat to pieces, but not his good fortune. I would have every man believe I shall only take my chance of being shot by the enemy, but if I do not take that chance I am certain of being shot by my friends.”

“I am sure, sir, that there is no captain in this fleet but thinks the same.”

“I am glad of that, Berry. I’m glad of that. But I say, the devil take this wind!—I shall never be quit of the sea-sickness till we are out of this. Why, this very morning ... but no matter. We want some luck, Berry.”

“I fear we cannot command that, sir; though Nelson’s luck is a proverb in the service. I know of no charm for luck except to whistle for the wind. I do not know how to unwhistle it.”

“Is it a proverb, Berry, my luck?”

“You may take my word for that, sir.”

The great little Admiral stroked his firm chin, and a glad light broke into his eyes.

“Strange!” he said, “that they talk of men being born under a lucky star. That is not the way I look at it, but I have always believed that I was born to do the work of Providence, which is perhaps what they mean. And I think that Providence gives its little signs to those whom it chooses for its instruments. But I have had no signs here—everything is as thick as St. Helen’s Church. It is not a church now, you know, Berry, only a tower—only the shell of a tower, I think, kept standing and washed with white as a beacon to mariners. And, even lying in-shore like this, we cannot see the beacon, it is so thick. However long is it since we were able to communicate with shore, Berry?”

“More than a week, sir.”

“And we have to take that draft on board to fill the places of those sick and missing men?”

“Yes, sir, thirty of them.”

“Thirty-one: at fewest there were twenty-five in hospital and either five or six missing, when I wrote to their Lordships; but since then I find that William O’Brien is missing, and that he boasted to his watch that he always meant to desert when he got the opportunity.”

“He was not a Norfolk man, sir.”

“No, Berry; I would not lose him so lightly if he were a Norfolk man. There is the greatest difference between a forced man and a man who voluntarily offers his life to preserve his country. These Norfolk lads are all volunteers, come for the honour of the country, because their Admiral is a Burnham man.”

“A hundred and more of them.”

They were silent for a bit, but presently the Admiral began again.

“I am sorry that young Hardres could not get to us—him that Lord Eastry wrote to me to have Thomas Irwine’s place, ‘the finest and bravest boy Lord Eastry knew.’ He was the sort we want. I met Harry Fleet when he was captain of the Ramillies, and a finer captain never sailed, of the old bull-dog sort, who did not know as much as I like my captains to know, but who always laid their ships alongside of the enemy. They were wonderful men to fight, those three Fleets! And this young Hardres was the finest and bravest boy Harry Fleet ever knew. What’s that coming along from the west’ard, youngster? You take my glass: I can’t use it yet without feeling dizzy. I can’t quite shake off that miserable sea-sickness, while we are lying-to doing nothing.”

“Looks like a Portsmouth smack, sir,” I said, after peeping for a bit; “but she’s only carrying such a rag of sail that I cannot quite make her out.”

“It takes a bold man,” said the Admiral, “to carry that on a day like this. He must have despatches on board from the Admiralty, or he’d never have put out.”

“There are two passengers, I make out now, sir.”

“Very important despatches, Berry. The French must have got out of Brest.”

“They’ll be alongside in a minute, sir, with this wind.”

As she came alongside and caught the rope I flung to her, the man at the tiller sang out to lower the gangway. “Lady on board, sir.”

The Captain looked at the Admiral. The weather was too rough for lowering a gangway.

“Lower away,” said the Admiral, with that little smile he wore after he had prayed, when going into battle: “please God nothing shall ever frighten me—not even a lady.”

The gangway was lowered, and strong arms, using all their dexterity, flung the larger bundle of oilskins into the arms of the sailor standing on the bottom step; they were going to follow with the thinner, taller bundle, but it shook them off with indignation. The larger bundle was passed up; the other scrambled up and stood on the deck bareheaded in front of the Admiral and the Captain. The Admiral conducted them along the slippery and unsteady deck to his state-room under the quarter-deck, and with his own hands peeled the oilskins from the lady, while the Captain gave orders for cordials, and the other bundle slipped back to the door of the state-room and began to lay off its oilskins there.

It was a little, slim, fair woman who stood before the hero, quite thinly clad when she removed the cloak under the oilskins, and evidently a widow, but of some years’ standing. She was the gentlest-looking creature imaginable, except for a certain firmness about the pathetic little mouth. The Admiral had signed to me to follow; he gave me the oilskins to hold. It was just like him: not until he had made the most solicitous inquiries and had offered her everything in the ship, did he ask whom he had the honour of addressing.

She took a sip of the cordial, and put her hand up to her silky fair hair, and finding how wet it was, gave it a little shake, as if she expected to dry herself like a dog. And after the shake she looked at the Admiral, who was re-beginning his inquiry with a considerable amount of trepidation, when she cut him short with:

“I am Mrs. Hardres: is it too late? We have been waiting in Portsmouth since the beginning of the storm, and this is the first day we have been able to get a boat to bring us off.”

“My missing midshipman,” he cried gaily. “Madam, it is never too late to get a good officer; but where is he?”

“Will!” called his mother. But there was no Will to be found. The Admiral, with the smile for which any man in his fleet was ready to die, flew to the door of the state-room in front of Mrs. Hardres. She knew where to look for her son. He was standing just outside the door in his new midshipman’s rig. His oilskins were lying folded in a neat pile on the deck beside him, though it had come on to rain in torrents.

“Come in, Will,” said the Admiral, in his best-pleased manner; and his satisfaction as he scanned him, face and figure, was evident, though he expressed it indirectly.

“He’s a big fellow for a midshipman, Mrs. Hardres. I was a post captain at twenty-one.”

“The only son of a widow, Sir Horatio. But the time has come when the widow must give her mite.”

Tears came into the Admiral’s eyes. I never knew a man of such delicate sensibilities: though he did not know what fear meant, he could weep like a child.

“How old are you, Will?”

“Eighteen, sir,” said Will.

“You must make haste and be a lieutenant.”

Our Admiral would not hear of Mrs. Hardres going off until the storm abated. In those days regulations were not so hard-and-fast about the presence of ladies on board a man-of-war, and the men who had brought her were willing enough to stay. They had run down to the ship before the wind, and they knew what it meant beating back against that wind and that sea. Towards evening the sea fell a good bit, and the thick weather cleared off, though it continued to blow; and shortly before dark we made out an Admiralty tender, which proved to have our thirty men aboard. The Admiral was delighted, and making his excuses to Mrs. Hardres, went off to write despatches.

When he had written them and paraded the new draft, he stepped up to Mrs. Hardres and said:—

“You shall go back, madam, in the state that befits a gallant officer’s mother. Lieutenant Morris, of the tender, shall take charge of you,” and at the same time he gave the men who had brought her their golden guinea apiece, for bringing him luck.

“We shall have a change in the wind now, Berry,” he said, “within a day or two. I know that this lady’s coming is the sign I was waiting for.”

And dinner was then served, put forward for Mrs. Hardres. And then, after many protestations of the Admiral’s kindness, and a grim, silent leave-taking, with hardly-kept-back tears, from her boy, the gangway was let down again. As she was leaving the ship, she said, “You will take care of him, Sir Horatio?”

The Admiral looked at her in his way.

“I do not mean in the face of the enemy,” she said warmly, the pitiful mouth, for the moment, taking the proud curves of her son’s; “but I have only a slender purse,—his father was killed when he was a lieutenant.”

“As regards that last, my dear madam, you may be perfectly easy, for your son will be a very lucky fellow if he gets on shore twice in a year. And for the rest, I shall look after him as if he were my own son, and you know where I should wish my son to be in the moment of honour.”