Chapter IV: Part I: Pipes in Arcady (4)

Shortly before noon a diminutive, mild-looking gentleman, noticeable for his childlike manner and a pair of large round spectacles, came alongside the _Egeria_ in a shore-boat. It appeared that he bore a visitor's ticket for the afternoon function and had arrived thus early by invitation of one of the Committee to take a good look over the ship before the proceedings began. Apparently, too, the Committee-man had sent Commander Headworthy no warning--to judge from that officer's wrathful face and the curt tone in which he invited his visitor to luncheon.

The mild-looking gentleman--who gave his name as Harris--declined courteously, averring that he had brought a sandwich with him. The Commander thereupon turned him over to the Second Officer under whose somewhat impatient escort Mr. Harris made a thorough tour of the ship, peering into everything and asking a number of questions. The boys--whom he amused by opening a large white umbrella, green-lined, to shield him from the noonday sun on the upper deck-- promptly christened him "Moonface."

This Mr. Harris, still in charge of the Second Officer, happened along the gun-deck as they finished singing "_Be present at our table, Lord_," and were sitting down to dinner. From their places they marched up one by one, each with his dinner-basin, to have it filled at the head of the table.

"Hallo, you, Andrew!" called out the Second Officer. "Fetch that basin along here. I want the gentleman to have a look at the ship's food."

Link came forward, stretched out a long arm, and thrust the basin under the visitor's nose.

"Perhaps," said he, "the toff would like a sniff at the same time? There's Sweet Williams for a summer's day!"

"There, that'll do, Link! Go to your place, my lad, and don't be insolent," said the Second Officer hastily, with a nervous glance at Mr. Harris.

But Mr. Harris merely blinked behind his glasses.

"Yes, yes, to be sure," he agreed. "Pork _is_ tricky diet in such weather as we're having!"

IV.

Half an hour later, having detached himself gently from his escort, Mr. Harris wandered back to the upper deck. It appeared to be deserted; and Mr. Harris, unfolding his umbrella against the sun's rays, wandered at will.

In the waist of the vessel, on the port side, he came upon a dais and a baize-covered table with an awning rigged over them; and upon the ship's Schoolmaster, who was busily engaged in arranging the prize-books.

"Good afternoon, sir!" The Schoolmaster, affecting to be busy and polite at the same time, picked out a book and held it up to view. "_Smiles on Self Help_," he announced.

"You don't say so!" answered Mr. Harris, halting. "But--I mean--they can't very well, can they?"

"_Eric, or Little by Little_, by the late Archdeacon Farrar. My choice, sir: some light, you see, and others solid, but all _pure_ literature. . . . They value it, too, in after life. Ah, sir, they've a lot of good in 'em! There's many worse characters than my boys walking the world."

Mild Mr. Harris removed his glasses. "Are you talking like that from force of habit?" he asked. "If so, I shall not be so much annoyed."

The Schoolmaster was fairly taken aback. He stared for a moment and shifted his helm, so to speak, with a grin of intelligence and a short laugh.

"Not quite so bad as that, sir," he remonstrated. "It's--it's--well, you may call it the _atmosphere_. On Speech-day the ship fairly reeks of it."

"And, like the pork, eh! it's just a little bit 'off'?" suggested the visitor, returning his smile. "By the way, I want to ask you a question or two about a boy. His name is Link--Something-or-other."

"Link Andrew?" The Schoolmaster gave him a quick look. "You don't tell me he's in trouble again? Not been annoying you, sir, I hope?"

"On the contrary, I've taken a fancy to the lad; and, by the way again, Link can't be his real name?"

"Short for Abraham Lincoln, as baptised," explained the Schoolmaster. "At least, that's one theory. According to another it's short for 'Missing Link.' Not that the boy's bad-looking; but did you happen to notice the length of his arms--like a gorilla's?"

"I could not avoid doing so."

Mr. Harris related the incident.

"It was exceedingly kind of you, sir, to pass over his conduct so lightly. The fact is, if Link Andrew had been reported again he'd have lost his hammock in the yacht. We all want him to go; some to get rid of him for a spell, and others because we can't help liking the boy. He hates us back, you bet, and has hated us from the moment he set foot on deck, five years ago . . . Whitechapel-reared, I believe. . . . Yet fond of the sea in his way. Once shipped on the yacht he'll behave like an angel. But here on board he's like a young beast in a trap."

V.

Mr. Harris mooned away to the poop-deck, from the rail of which he watched the guests arriving. As Sir Felix's gig was descried putting off from the shore, the boys swarmed up the ratlines and out on the yards, where they dressed ship very prettily. A brass band in the waist hailed his approach with the strains of "Rule, Britannia!" At the head of the accommodation-ladder a guard of honour welcomed him with a hastily rehearsed "Present Arms!" and the boys aloft accompanied it with three shrill British cheers. The dear old gentleman gazed up and around him, and positively beamed.

By this time a crowd of boats had put off, and soon the guests came pouring up the ladder in a steady stream. There were ladies in picture hats. A reporter stood by the gangway taking notes of their costumes. They fell to uttering the prettiest exclamations upon the shipshapeness of everything on board. Mr. Harris saw the First Officer inviting numbers of them to lean over the bulwarks and observe a scar the old ship had received--or so he alleged--at Trafalgar. "How interesting!" they cried.

Well, to be sure, it was interesting. Nelson himself--there was good authority for this at any rate--had once stood on the _Egeria's_ poop; had leaned, perhaps, against the very rail on which Mr. Harris's hand rested. . . . And the function went off very well. The boys clambered down upon deck again, the band played--

"'Tis a Fine Old English Gentleman,"

And all gathered about the awning. Sir Felix, nobly expansive in a buff waistcoat, cleared his throat and spoke of the Empire in a way calculated to bring tears to the eyes. The prize-giving followed.

As it proceeded, Mr. Harris stole down the poop-ladder and edged his way around the back of the crowd to the waist of the ship, where the boys were drawn up with a few officers interspersed to keep discipline. He arrived there just as Link Andrew returned from the dais with two books--the boxing and gymnasium prizes. The boy was foaming at the mouth.

"See, here--_Fights for the Flag!_ And, on top of it, _Deeds What Won the Silly Empire!_ And the old blighter 'oped that I'd be a good boy, and grow up, and win some more. For the likes of _him_, he meant--Yuss, I _don't_ think! . . . Oh, hold my little hand and check the tearful flow, for I'm to be a ship's boy at 'arf-a-crown a month, and go Empire buildin'!"

"There!" said Mr. Harris, indicating a coil of rope. "Sit down and have it out."

VI.

Some five or six years later, Mr. Harris--who resides in a small West Country town, the name of which does not concern us--was seated in his library reading, when his parlourmaid brought him a card-- "Mr. Wilkins, I.T.S. _Egeria_."

"I scarcely hoped that you would remember me, sir," began the Schoolmaster, on being introduced. "But, happening to pass through-- on a holiday trip, a walking tour--I ventured to call and ask news of Link Andrew. You may remember our having a conversation about him once on board the _Egeria_?"

"I remember it perfectly," said Mr. Harris; "and you'll be glad to hear that Andrew is doing remarkably well; is saving money, in fact, and contemplates getting married."

"Indeed, sir, that is good hearing. I was afraid that he might have left your employment."

"So, to be sure, he has; taking with him, moreover, an excellent character. He is now a second gardener at a steady wage."

"You can't think, sir, how you relieve my mind. To tell the truth, I met him, less than an hour ago; and by his manner . . . But I had better tell you how it happened: I knew, of course, that you had interested yourself in Link and found a job for him. But after he'd left the ship he never let us hear word of his doings. . . . Well, passing through your town just now, I ran up against him. He was coming along the street, and I recognised him on the instant; but all of a sudden he turned and began to stare in at a shop-window--an ironmonger's--giving me his back. I made sure, of course, that he hadn't spied me; so I stepped up and said I, 'Hallo, Link, my lad!' clapping a hand on his shoulder. He turned about, treated me to a long stare, and says he, 'Aren't you makin' some mistake, mister?' 'Why,' says I, 'surely I haven't changed so much as all that since the days I taught you vulgar fractions on board the old _Egeria_? I'm Mr. Wilkins,' says I. 'Oh, are you?' says he. 'Then, Mr. Wilkins, you can go back to hell and take 'em my compliments there.' That's all he said, and he walked away down the street."

"That's queer," said Mr. Harris, polishing his spectacles. "Yes, he came to me as gardener's boy--I thought it would be a pleasant change after the ship; and he served his apprenticeship well. I remember that in answer to my application the Secretary wrote: 'Of course we prefer to train our lads to the sea; but when one has no aptitude for it--'"

Mr. Harris paused, for the Schoolmaster was smiling broadly.

"Good Lord, sir!--if you'll excuse me. Link Andrew no aptitude for the sea! Why, that lad's seamanship saved my life once: and, what's more, it saved the whole yacht's company! Hasn't he ever told you about it?"

"Not a word. I think," said Mr. Harris, "our friend Link chooses to keep his past in watertight compartments. Sit down and tell me about it."

VII.

This was the Schoolmaster's story:

"It happened on that very cruise, sir. The _Swallow_ had been knocking around at various West Country regattas--Weymouth, Torquay, Dartmouth, finishing up with Plymouth. From Plymouth we were to sail for home.

"We had dropped hook in the Merchant Shipping Anchorage, as they call it; which is the eastern side of the Sound, by Jennycliff Bay. That last day of the regattas--a Saturday--the wind had been almost true north, and freshish, but nothing to mention: beautiful sailing weather for the small boats. The big cracks had finished their engagements and were making back for Southampton.

"Well, as I say, this north wind was a treat; especially coming, as it did, after a week of light airs and calms that had spoilt most of the yacht-racing. Some time in the afternoon I heard talk that our skipper--well, I won't mention names--and, as it turned out in the end, everyone was implicated. Anyhow, at six o'clock or thereabouts the gig was ordered out, and every blessed officer on board went ashore in her; which was clean contrary to regulations, of course, but there happened to be a cinematograph show they all wanted to see at the big music-hall--some prize-fight or other. I don't set much store by prize-fights for my part, and living pictures give me the headache: so, to salve everybody's conscience, I was left in sole charge of the ship.

"Everything went smooth as a buttered cake until about nine o'clock, when the wind, that had been dying down all the time, suddenly flew west and began to gather strength hand over fist. . . . I never, not being a seaman, could have believed--till I saw and felt it--the change that came over Plymouth Sound in the space of one half-hour. The gig had been ordered again for nine-thirty, to pull to the Barbican Steps and be ready at ten to bring the officers on board. But before nine-thirty I began to have my serious doubts about sending her. It was just as well I had.

"For by nine-forty-five it was blowing a real gale, and by ten o'clock something like a hurricane. Just then, to top my terror, Master Link Andrew came aft to me--the wind seemed to blow him along--and 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Wilkins,' said he, 'but in my opinion she's dragging.'

"Just think of it, sir! There was I, in sole charge of a hundred boys or so, and knowing no more what to do than the ship's cat. . . . She _was_ dragging, too; sagging foot by foot in towards the dark of Jennycliff Bay.

"'If you'll take a word from me, sir,' said Link, 'we'd best up sail and get out of this.'

"'What about the other anchor?' I suggested.

"' Try it if you like,' said he. 'In my belief it won't hold any more than a tin mustard-pot.'

"Nor did it, when we let go. He came back after a few minutes from the darkness forward. 'No go,' said he. 'Nothing to do but slip and clear.'

"There was no question, either, that he spoke sense. 'But where?' I shouted at him. 'Drake's Island? . . . And who's to do it, even so?'

"'The anchorage is crowded under Drake's Island,' he shouted back. 'It's the devil-among-the-tailors we'd play there, if we ever fetched. . . . Breakwater's no shelter either.'

"He seemed to whistle to himself for a moment; and the next I heard him yell out sharply to the boys forward to tumble on the mainsail, strip her covers off, double-reef and hoist her. He took command from that moment. While a score of them flew to tackle this job, he beat his way forward and called on another lot to get out the staysail. Back he ran again, cursing and calling on all and sundry to look smart. Next he was at my side ordering me to unlash the wheel and stand by. 'It's touch-and-go, sir.'

"'Hadn't we better send up a flare?' I suggested feebly.

"'Flare your bloomin' grandmother!' From this moment I regret to say that Link Andrew treated me with contempt. He next ordered a dozen small boys aloft, to reef and set her upper square-sail. When I urged that it was as good as asking them to commit suicide, he cursed me openly. 'Drown the poor pups, will I? I thought--damn you all!-- you laid yourselves out to breed seamen! You _say_ you do, at prize-givings!' He ran forward again to get the hawsers buoyed before slipping them.

"I never remember a sound more sickening to the stomach than those chains made as they ran out through the hawse-holes. The one mistake Link committed was in ordering the upper square-sail to be reefed. By the mercy of God not a child was blown off the yards in that operation; yet it was no sooner concluded than, having by this time found a megaphone, he shouted up to them to undo their work and shake out the reef.

"'That's madness!' I yelled from the wheel, where I clung dripping, blindly pressing down the spokes and easing them as he checked me. 'Look to leeward, you blighter!' he yelled back.

"The ship had payed off slowly, and while she gathered way, was drifting straight down upon an Italian barque that two hours ago had lain more than a cable's length from us. . . . I thought our lower yard--we heeled so--would have smacked against her bowsprit-end; and from the outcries on board the Italian I rather fancy her crew expected it. But we shaved her by a yard or so, as Link pushed me away from the wheel and took charge. A moment later she had dropped behind us into the night, and we were surging in full-tilt for Plymouth, heaving over at the Lord knows what angle.

"But we were off; we were clear; and, strange to say, the worst of it was over. The wind was worsening, if anything, and we continued to drive at a frightful angle. Now and again we slanted to a squall that fairly dipped us till the sea poured half-way across her decks. As I staggered forward--clutching at anything handy--to assure myself that none of the boys had been flung off the fore-yard and overboard, I heard a sea burst the starboard bulwarks, and in another moment, while I yet wondered if the sound came from something parting aloft, with a 'Wa-ay-oh!' Link had put over her helm, and the suddenly altered slant flung me into the scuppers, where I dropped after taking a knock against the standing rigging, the mark of which I shall carry on my forehead till I die.

"By this time, sir, I was pretty well dazed. I forget if it was in a couple of short tacks, or in three, that we fetched Picklecombe Point on the western side. Then we put about on a long tack that carried us well outside the breakwater and came in for Cawsand Bay and safety. On this last fetch Link kicked me up and gave me the wheel again, while he went forward to hunt up the spare anchor.

"We brought up, well in shelter, at something before two in the morning, not a hand lost. Before anyone was allowed to turn in, Link had every sail stowed and covered--'for the honour of the blasted ship,' as he put it.

"The skipper and his precious lot came aboard next day not long before noon, and after a wholesome scare. It seems they were late, and all pretty so-so by the time they reached the Barbican Steps; and, let be that there was no boat for them, the watermen one and all declined to take them off in any such weather. Nothing for it but to doss the night ashore, which they did. But I wouldn't give much for their feelings next morning when they put off and, lo! there was no _Swallow_ in the Merchant Shipping Anchorage. In Cawsand Bay, you understand, we were well hidden by the land, and it cost them at least a couple of hours to guess our whereabouts.

"Long as the time was, it wasn't enough to wear out the effects of the--well, the Cinematograph. A yellower set, or a bluer in the gills, you never set eyes on. They came aboard, and the skipper, having made some inquiries of me, called up Link, cleared his throat quite in the old approved style, and began to make a speech.

"Link cut it short.

"'All right, my precious swine! Now step below and wash off the traces. If you behave pretty, maybe I'll not report you.'"

VIII.

"That finished the lot," wound up the Schoolmaster. "There _was_ no answer to it, if you come to think."

"And Link never told?"

"Never a word, sir. Nor did I. But the story leaked out somehow, and it gave the Commander the whip-hand of his Committee, to ship a new set of officers. Ship and tender, sir, the _Egeria_ nowadays is something to be proud of. But for my part I don't go on any more of these summer cruises. The open sea never suited my stomach, and I prefer a walk for my holiday."

LIEUTENANT LAPENOTIERE.

The night-porter at the Admiralty had been sleeping in his chair. He was red-eyed and wore his livery coat buttoned at random. He grumbled to himself as he opened the great door.

He carried a glass-screened candle, and held it somewhat above the level of his forehead--which was protuberant and heavily pock-marked. Under the light he peered out at the visitor, who stood tall and stiff, with uniform overcoat buttoned to the chin, between the Ionic pillars of the portico.

"Who's there?"

"Lieutenant Lapenotiere, of the _Pickle_ schooner--with dispatches."

"Dispatches?" echoed the night-porter. Out beyond the screen of masonry that shut off the Board of Admiralty's forecourt from Whitehall, one of the tired post-horses started blowing through its nostrils on this foggy night.

"From Admiral Collingwood--Mediterranean Fleet off Cadiz--sixteen days," answered the visitor curtly. "Is everyone abed?"

"Admiral Collingwood? Why Admiral Collingwood?" The night-porter fell back a pace, opening the door a trifle wider. "Good God, sir! You don't say as how--"

"You can fetch down a Secretary or someone, I hope?" said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, quickly stepping past him into the long dim hall. "My dispatches are of the first importance. I have posted up from Falmouth without halt but for relays."

As the man closed the door, he heard his post-boy of the last relay slap one of the horses encouragingly before heading home to stable. The chaise wheels began to move on the cobbles.

"His Lordship himself will see you, sir. Of that I make no doubt," twittered the night-porter, fumbling with the bolt. "There was a terrible disturbance, back in July, when Captain Bettesworth arrived--not so late as this, to be sure, but towards midnight--and they waited till morning, to carry up the dispatches with his Lordship's chocolate. Thankful was I next day not to have been on duty at the time. . . . If you will follow me, sir--"

Lieutenant Lapenotiere had turned instinctively towards a door on the right. It admitted to the Waiting Room, and there were few officers in the service who did not know--and only too well--that Chamber of Hope Deferred.

"No, sir, . . . this way, if you please," the night-porter corrected him, and opened a door on the left. "The Captains' Room," he announced, passing in and steering for the chimney-shelf, on which stood a pair of silver sconces each carrying three wax candles. These he took down, lit and replaced. "Ah, sir! Many's the time I've showed Lord Nelson himself into this room, in the days before Sir Horatio, and even after. And you were sayin'--"

"I said nothing."

The man moved to the door; but halted there and came back, as though in his own despite.

"I can't help it, sir. . . . Half a guinea he used to give me, regular. But the last time--and hard to believe 'twas little more than a month ago--he halts on his way out, and says he, searchin' awkward-like in his breeches' pocket with his left hand, 'Ned,' says he, 'my old friend'--aye, sir, his old friend he called me--'Ned,' says he, pullin' out a fistful o' gold, 'my old friend,' says he, 'I'll compound with you for two guineas, this bein' the last time you may hold the door open for me, in or out. But you must pick 'em out,' says he, spreadin' his blessed fingers with the gold in 'em: 'for a man can't count money who's lost his right flapper.' Those were his words, sir. 'Old friend,' he called me, in that way of his."

Lieutenant Lapenotiere pointed to his left arm. Around the sleeve a black scarf was knotted.

"_Dead_, sir," the night-porter hushed his voice.

"Dead," echoed Lieutenant Lapenotiere, staring at the Turkey carpet, of which the six candles, gaining strength, barely illumined the pattern. "Dead, at the top of victory; a great victory. Go: fetch somebody down."

The night-porter shuffled off. Lieutenant Lapenotiere, erect and sombre, cast a look around the apartment, into which he had never before been admitted. The candles lit up a large painting--a queer bird's-eye view of Venice. Other pictures, dark and bituminous, decorated the panelled walls--portraits of dead admirals, a sea-piece or two, some charts. . . . This was all he discerned out in the dim light; and in fact he scanned the walls, the furniture of the room, inattentively. His stomach was fasting, his head light with rapid travel; above all, he had a sense of wonder that all this should be happening to _him_. For, albeit a distinguished officer, he was a modest man, and by habit considered himself of no great importance; albeit a brave man, too, he shrank at the thought of the message he carried--a message to explode and shake millions of men in a confusion of wild joy or grief.

For about the tenth time in those sixteen days it seemed to burst and escape in an actual detonation, splitting his head--there, as he waited in the strange room where never a curtain stirred. . . . It was a trick his brain played him, repeating, echoing the awful explosion of the French seventy-four _Achille_, which had blown up towards the close of the battle. When the ship was ablaze and sinking, his own crew had put off in boats to rescue the Frenchmen, at close risk of their own lives, for her loaded guns, as they grew red-hot, went off at random among rescuers and rescued. . . .

As had happened before when he felt this queer shock, his mind travelled back and he seemed to hear the series of discharges running up at short intervals to the great catastrophe. . . . To divert his thoughts, he turned to study the view of Venice above the chimney-piece . . . and on a sudden faced about again.

He had a sensation that someone was in the room--someone standing close behind him.

But no. . . . For the briefest instant his eyes rested on an indistinct shadow--his own perhaps, cast by the candle-light? Yet why should it lie lengthwise there, shaped like a coffin, on the dark polished table that occupied the middle of the room?

The answer was that it did not. Before he could rub his eyes it had gone. Moreover, he had turned to recognise a living being . . . and no living person was in the room, unless by chance (absurd supposition) one were hidden behind the dark red window curtains.

"Recognise" may seem a strange word to use; but here had lain the strangeness of the sensation--that the someone standing there was a friend, waiting to be greeted. It was with eagerness and a curious warmth of the heart that Lieutenant Lapenotiere had faced about--upon nothing.

He continued to stare in a puzzled way at the window curtains, when a voice by the door said:

"Good evening!--or perhaps, to be correct, good morning! You are Mr.--"

"Lapenotiere," answered the Lieutenant, who had turned sharply. The voice--a gentleman's and pleasantly modulated--was not one he knew; nor did he recognise the speaker--a youngish, shrewd-looking man, dressed in civilian black, with knee-breeches. "Lapenotiere--of the _Pickle_ schooner."

"Yes, yes--the porter bungled your name badly, but I guessed. Lord Barham will see you personally. He is, in fact, dressing with all haste at this moment. . . . I am his private secretary," explained the shrewd-looking gentleman in his quiet, business-like voice. "Will you come with me upstairs?"

Lieutenant Lapenotiere followed him. At the foot of the great staircase the Secretary turned.

"I may take it, sir, that we are not lightly disturbing his Lordship--who is an old man."

"The news is of great moment, sir. Greater could scarcely be."

The Secretary bent his head. As they went up the staircase Lieutenant Lapenotiere looked back and caught sight of the night-porter in the middle of the hall, planted there and gazing up, following their ascent.

On the first-floor landing they were met by a truly ridiculous spectacle. There emerged from a doorway on the left of the wide corridor an old gentleman clad in night-cap, night-shirt and bedroom slippers, buttoning his breeches and cursing vigorously; while close upon him followed a valet with dressing-gown on one arm, waistcoat and wig on the other, vainly striving to keep pace with his master's impatience.

"The braces, my lord--your Lordship has them forepart behind, if I may suggest--"

"Damn the braces!" swore the old gentleman. "Where is he? Hi, Tylney!" as he caught sight of the Secretary. "Where are we to go? My room, I suppose?"

"The fire is out there, my lord. . . . 'Tis past three in the morning. But after sending word to awake you, I hunted round and by good luck found a plenty of promising embers in the Board Room grate. On top of these I've piled what remained of my own fire, and Dobson has set a lamp there--"

"You've been devilish quick, Tylney. Dressed like a buck you are, too!"

"Your Lordship's wig," suggested the valet.

"Damn the wig!" Lord Barham snatched it and attempted to stick it on top of his night-cap, damned the night-cap, and, plucking it off, flung it to the man.

"I happened to be sitting up late, my lord, over the _Aeolus_ papers," said Mr. Secretary Tylney.

"Ha?" Then, to the valet, "The dressing-gown there! Don't fumble! . . . So this is Captain--"

"Lieutenant, sir: Lapenotiere, commanding the _Pickle_ schooner."

The Lieutenant saluted.

"From the Fleet, my lord--off Cadiz; or rather, off Cape Trafalgaro."

He drew the sealed dispatch from an inner breast-pocket and handed it to the First Lord.

"Here, step into the Board Room. . . . Where the devil are my spectacles?" he demanded of the valet, who had sprung forward to hold open the door.

Evidently the Board Room had been but a few hours ago the scene of a large dinner-party. Glasses, dessert-plates, dishes of fruit, decanters empty and half empty, cumbered the great mahogany table as dead and wounded, guns and tumbrils, might a battlefield. Chairs stood askew; crumpled napkins lay as they had been dropped or tossed, some on the floor, others across the table between the dishes.

"Looks cosy, eh?" commented the First Lord. "Maggs, set a screen around the fire, and look about for a decanter and some clean glasses."

He drew a chair close to the reviving fire, and glanced at the cover of the dispatch before breaking its seal.

"Nelson's handwriting?" he asked. It was plain that his old eyes, unaided by spectacles, saw the superscription only as a blur.

"No, my lord: Admiral Collingwood's," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, inclining his head.

Old Lord Barham looked up sharply. His wig set awry, he made a ridiculous figure in his hastily donned garments. Yet he did not lack dignity.

"Why Collingwood?" he asked, his fingers breaking the seal. "God! you don't tell me--"

"Lord Nelson is dead, sir."

"Dead--dead? . . . Here, Tylney--you read what it says. Dead? . . . No, damme, let the captain tell his tale. Briefly, sir."

"Briefly, sir--Lord Nelson had word of Admiral Villeneuve coming out of the Straits, and engaged the combined fleets off Cape Trafalgaro. They were in single line, roughly; and he bore down in two columns, and cut off their van under Dumanoir. This was at dawn or thereabouts, and by five o'clock the enemy was destroyed."

"How many prizes?"

"I cannot say precisely, my lord. The word went, when I was signalled aboard the Vice-Admiral's flagship, that either fifteen or sixteen had struck. My own men were engaged, at the time, in rescuing the crew of a French seventy-four that had blown up; and I was too busy to count, had counting been possible. One or two of my officers maintain to me that our gains were higher. But the dispatch will tell, doubtless."

"Aye, to be sure. . . . Read, Tylney. Don't sit there clearing your throat, but read, man alive!" And yet it appeared that while the Secretary was willing enough to read, the First Lord had no capacity, as yet, to listen. Into the very first sentence he broke with--

"No, wait a minute. 'Dead,' d'ye say? . . . My God! . . . Lieutenant, pour yourself a glass of wine and tell us first how it happened."

Lieutenant Lapenotiere could not tell very clearly. He had twice been summoned to board the _Royal Sovereign_--he first time to receive the command to hold himself ready. It was then that, coming alongside the great ship, he had read in all the officers' faces an anxiety hard to reconcile with the evident tokens of victory around them. At once it had occurred to him that the Admiral had fallen, and he put the question to one of the lieutenants--to be told that Lord Nelson had indeed been mortally wounded and could not live long; but that he must be alive yet, and conscious, since the _Victory_ was still signalling orders to the Fleet.

"I think, my lord," said he, "that Admiral Collingwood must have been doubtful, just then, what responsibility had fallen upon him, or how soon it might fall. He had sent for me to 'stand by' so to speak. He was good enough to tell me the news as it had reached him--"

Here Lieutenant Lapenotiere, obeying the order to fill his glass, let spill some of the wine on the table. The sight of the dark trickle on the mahogany touched some nerve of the brain: he saw it widen into a pool of blood, from which, as they picked up a shattered seaman and bore him below, a lazy stream crept across the deck of the flag-ship towards the scuppers. He moved his feet, as he had moved them then, to be out of the way of it: but recovered himself in another moment and went on--

"He told me, my lord, that the _Victory_ after passing under the _Bucentaure's_ stern, and so raking her that she was put out of action, or almost, fell alongside the _Redoutable_. There was a long swell running, with next to no wind, and the two ships could hardly have cleared had they tried. At any rate, they hooked, and it was then a question which could hammer the harder. The Frenchman had filled his tops with sharp-shooters, and from one of these-- the mizen-top, I believe--a musket-ball struck down the Admiral. He was walking at the time to and fro on a sort of gangway he had caused to be planked over his cabin sky-light, between the wheel and the ladder-way. . . . Admiral Collingwood believed it had happened about half-past one . . ."

"Sit down, man, and drink your wine," commanded the First Lord as the dispatch-bearer swayed with a sudden faintness.

"It is nothing, my lord--"

But it must have been a real swoon, or something very like it: for he recovered to find himself lying in an arm-chair. He heard the Secretary's voice reading steadily on and on. . . . Also they must have given him wine, for he awoke to feel the warmth of it in his veins and coursing about his heart. But he was weak yet, and for the moment well content to lie still and listen.

Resting there and listening, he was aware of two sensations that alternated within him, chasing each other in and out of his consciousness. He felt all the while that he, John Richards Lapenotiere, a junior officer in His Majesty's service, was assisting in one of the most momentous events in his country's history; and alone in the room with these two men, he felt it as he had never begun to feel it amid the smoke and roar of the actual battle. He had seen the dead hero but half a dozen times in his life: he had never been honoured by a word from him: but like every other naval officer, he had come to look up to Nelson as to the splendid particular star among commanders. _There_ was greatness: _there_ was that which lifted men to such deeds as write man's name across the firmament! And, strange to say, Lieutenant Lapenotiere recognised something of it in this queer old man, in dressing-gown and ill-fitting wig, who took snuff and interrupted now with a curse and anon with a "bravo!" as the Secretary read. He was absurd: but he was no common man, this Lord Barham. He had something of the ineffable aura of greatness.

But in the Lieutenant's brain, across this serious, even awful sense of the moment and of its meaning, there played a curious secondary sense that the moment was not--that what was happening before his eyes had either happened before or was happening in some vacuum in which past, present, future and the ordinary divisions of time had lost their bearings. The great twenty-four-hour clock at the end of the Board Room, ticking on and on while the Secretary read, wore an unfamiliar face. . . . Yes, time had gone wrong, somehow: and the events of the passage home to Falmouth, of the journey up to the doors of the Admiralty, though they ran on a chain, had no intervals to be measured by a clock, but followed one another like pictures on a wall. He saw the long, indigo-coloured swell thrusting the broken ships shoreward. He felt the wind freshening as it southered and he left the Fleet behind: he watched their many lanterns as they sank out of sight, then the glow of flares by the light of which dead-tired men were repairing damages, cutting away wreckage. His ship was wallowing heavily now, with the gale after her,--and now dawn was breaking clean and glorious on the swell off Lizard Point. A Mount's Bay lugger had spied them, and lying in wait, had sheered up close alongside, her crew bawling for news. He had not forbidden his men to call it back, and he could see the fellows' faces now, as it reached them from the speaking-trumpet: "Great victory--twenty taken or sunk--Admiral Nelson killed!" They had guessed something, noting the _Pickle's_ ensign at half-mast: yet as they took in the purport of the last three words, these honest fishermen had turned and stared at one another; and without one answering word, the lugger had been headed straight back to the mainland.

So it had been at Falmouth. A ship entering port has a thousand eyes upon her, and the _Pickle's_ errand could not be hidden. The news seemed in some mysterious way to have spread even before he stepped ashore there on the Market Strand. A small crowd had collected, and, as he passed through it, many doffed their hats. There was no cheering at all--no, not for this the most glorious victory of the war--outshining even the Nile or Howe's First of June.

He had set his face as he walked to the inn. But the news had flown before him, and fresh crowds gathered to watch him off. The post-boys knew . . . and _they_ told the post-boys at the next stage, and the next--Bodmin and Plymouth--not to mention the boatmen at Torpoint Ferry. But the countryside did not know: nor the labourers gathering in cider apples heaped under Devon apple-trees, nor, next day, the sportsmen banging off guns at the partridges around Salisbury. The slow, jolly life of England on either side of the high road turned leisurely as a wagon-wheel on its axle, while between hedgerows, past farm hamlets, church-towers and through the cobbled streets of market towns, he had sped and rattled with Collingwood's dispatch in his sealed case. The news had reached London with him. His last post-boys had carried it to their stables, and from stable to tavern. To-morrow--to-day, rather--in an hour or two--all the bells of London would be ringing--or tolling! . . .

"He's as tired as a dog," said the voice of the Secretary. "Seems almost a shame to waken him."

The Lieutenant opened his eyes and jumped to his feet with an apology. Lord Barham had gone, and the Secretary hard by was speaking to the night-porter, who bent over the fire, raking it with a poker. The hands of the Queen Anne clock indicated a quarter to six.

"The First Lord would like to talk with you . . . later in the day," said Mr. Tylney gravely, smiling a little these last words. He himself was white and haggard. "He suggested the early afternoon, say half-past two. That will give you time for a round sleep. . . . You might leave me the name of your hotel, in case he should wish to send for you before that hour."

"'The Swan with Two Necks,' Lad Lane, Cheapside," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere.

He knew little of London, and gave the name of the hostelry at which, many years ago, he had alighted from a West Country coach with his box and midshipman's kit . . . . A moment later he found himself wondering if it still existed as a house of entertainment. Well, he must go and seek it.

The Secretary shook hands with him, smiling wanly.

"Few men, sir, have been privileged to carry such news as you have brought us to-night."

"And I went to sleep after delivering it," said Lieutenant Lapenotiere, smiling back.

The night-porter escorted him to the hall, and opened the great door for him. In the portico he bade the honest man good night, and stood for a moment, mapping out in his mind his way to "The Swan with Two Necks." He shivered slightly, after his nap, in the chill of the approaching dawn.

As the door closed behind him he was aware of a light shining, out beyond the screen of the fore-court, and again a horse blew through its nostrils on the raw air.

"Lord!" thought the Lieutenant. "That fool of a post-boy cannot have mistaken me and waited all this time!"

He hurried out into Whitehall. Sure enough a chaise was drawn up there, and a post-boy stood by the near lamp, conning a scrap of paper by the light of it. No, it was a different chaise, and a different post-boy. He wore the buff and black, whereas the other had worn the blue and white. Yet he stepped forward confidently, and with something of a smile.

"Lieutenant Lapenotiere?" he asked, reaching back and holding up his paper to the lamp to make sure of the syllables.

"That is my name," said the amazed Lieutenant.

"I was ordered here--five-forty-five--to drive you down to Merton."

"To Merton?" echoed Lieutenant Lapenotiere, his hand going to his pocket. The post-boy's smile, or so much as could be seen of it by the edge of the lamp, grew more knowing.

"I ask no questions, sir."

"But--but who ordered you?"

The post-boy did not observe, or disregarded, his bewilderment.

"A Briton's a Briton, sir, I hope? I ask no questions, knowing my place. . . . But if so be as you were to tell me there's been a great victory--" He paused on this.

"Well, my man, you're right so far, and no harm in telling you."

"Aye," chirruped the post-boy. "When the maid called me up with the order, and said as how _he_ and no other had called with it--"

"He?"

The fellow nodded.

"She knew him at once, from his portraits. Who wouldn't? With his right sleeve pinned across so. . . . And, said I, 'Then there's been a real victory. Never would you see him back, unless. And I was right, sir!' he concluded triumphantly.

"Let me see that piece of paper."

"You'll let me have it back, sir?--for a memento," the post-boy pleaded. Lieutenant Lapenotiere took it from him--a plain half-sheet of note-paper roughly folded. On it was scribbled in pencil, back-hand wise, "Lt. Lapenotiere. Admiralty, Whitehall. At 6.30 a.m., not later. For Merton, Surrey."

He folded the paper very slowly, and handed it back to the post-boy.

"Very well, then. For Merton."

The house lay but a very little distance beyond Wimbledon. Its blinds were drawn as Lieutenant Lapenotiere alighted from the chaise and went up to the modest porch.

His hand was on the bell-pull. But some pressure checked him as he was on the point of ringing. He determined to wait for a while and turned away towards the garden.

The dawn had just broken; two or three birds were singing. It did not surprise--at any rate, it did not frighten--Lieutenant Lapenotiere at all, when, turning into a short pleached alley, he looked along it and saw _him_ advancing.

--Yes,_ him_, with the pinned sleeve, the noble, seamed, eager face. They met as friends. . . . In later years the lieutenant could never remember a word that passed, if any passed at all. He was inclined to think that they met and walked together in complete silence, for many minutes. Yet he ever maintained that they walked as two friends whose thoughts hold converse without need of words. He was not terrified at all. He ever insisted, on the contrary, that there, in the cold of the breaking day, his heart was light and warm as though flooded with first love--not troubled by it, as youth in first love is wont to be--but bathed in it; he, the ardent young officer, bathed in a glow of affection, ennobling, exalting him, making him free of a brotherhood he had never guessed.

He used also, in telling the story, to scandalise the clergyman of his parish by quoting the evangelists, and especially St. John's narrative of Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre.

For the door of the house opened at length; and a beautiful woman, scarred by knowledge of the world, came down the alley, slowly, unaware of him. Then (said he), as she approached, his hand went up to his pocket for the private letter he carried, and the shade at his side left him to face her in the daylight.

THE CASK ASHORE.(1807).

I.

RUM FOR BOND.

At the head of a diminutive creek of the Tamar River, a little above Saltash on the Cornish shore, stands the village of Botusfleming; and in early summer, when its cherry-orchards come into bloom, you will search far before finding a prettier.

The years have dealt gently with Botusfleming. As it is to-day, so-- or nearly so--it was on a certain sunny afternoon in the year 1807, when the Reverend Edward Spettigew, Curate-in-Charge, sat in the garden before his cottage and smoked his pipe while he meditated a sermon. That is to say, he intended to meditate a sermon. But the afternoon was warm: the bees hummed drowsily among the wallflowers and tulips. From the bench his eyes followed the vale's descent between overlapping billows of cherry blossom to a gap wherein shone the silver Tamar--not, be it understood, the part called Hamoaze, where lay the warships and the hulks containing the French prisoners, but an upper reach seldom troubled by shipping.

Parson Spettigew laid the book face-downwards on his knee while his lips murmured a part of the text he had chosen: "_A place of broad rivers and streams . . . wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby_. . . ." His pipe went out. The book slipped from his knee to the ground. He slumbered.

The garden gate rattled, and he awoke with a start. In the pathway below him stood a sailor; a middle-sized, middle-aged man, rigged out in best shore-going clothes--shiny tarpaulin hat, blue coat and waistcoat, shirt open at the throat, and white duck trousers with broad-buckled waistbelt.

"Beggin' your Reverence's pardon," began the visitor, touching the brim of his hat, and then upon second thoughts uncovering, "but my name's Jope--Ben Jope."

"Eh? . . . What can I do for you?" asked Parson Spettigew, a trifle flustered at being caught napping.

"--Of the _Vesoovius_ bomb, bo's'n," pursued Mr. Jope, with a smile that disarmed annoyance, so ingenuous it was, so friendly, and withal so respectful: "but paid off at eight this morning. Maybe your Reverence can tell me whereabouts to find an embalmer in these parts?"

"A--a _what?_"

"Embalmer." Mr. Jope chewed thoughtfully for a moment or two upon a quid of tobacco. "Sort of party you'd go to supposin' as you had a corpse by you and wanted to keep it for a permanency. You take a lot of gums and spices, and first of all you lays out the deceased, and next--"

"Yes, yes," the Parson interrupted hurriedly; "I know the process, of course."

"What? to _practise_ it?" Hope illumined Mr. Jope's countenance.

"No, most certainly not. . . . But, my good man,--an embalmer! and at Botusfleming, of all places!"

The sailor's face fell. He sighed patiently.

"That's what they said at Saltash, more or less. I got a sister living there--Sarah Treleaven her name is--a widow-woman, and sells fish. When I called on her this morning, 'Embalmer?' she said; 'Go and embalm your grandmother!' Those were her words, and the rest of Saltash wasn't scarcely more helpful. But, as luck would have it, while I was searchin', Bill Adams went for a shave, and inside of the barber's shop what should he see but a fair-sized otter in a glass case? Bill began to admire it, and it turned out the barber had stuffed the thing. Maybe your Reverence knows the man?--'A. Grigg and Son,' he calls hisself."

"Grigg? Yes, to be sure: he stuffed a trout for me last summer."

"What weight, makin' so bold?"

"Seven pounds."

Mr. Jope's face fell again.

"Well-a-well! I dare say the size don't matter, once you've got the knack. We've brought him along, anyway; and, what's more, we've made him bring all his tools. By his talk, he reckons it to be a shavin' job, and we agreed to wait before we undeceived him."

"But--you'll excuse me--I don't quite follow--"

Mr. Jope pressed a forefinger mysteriously to his lip, then jerked a thumb in the direction of the river.

"If your Reverence wouldn' mind steppin' down to the creek with me?" he suggested respectfully.

Parson Spettigew fetched his hat, and together the pair descended the vale beneath the dropping petals of the cherry. At the foot of it they came to a creek, which the tide at this hour had flooded and almost overbrimmed. Hard by the water's edge, backed by tall elms, stood a dilapidated fish-store, and below it lay a boat with nose aground on a beach of flat stones. Two men were in the boat. The barber--a slip of a fellow in rusty top-hat and suit of rusty black--sat in the stern-sheets face to face with a large cask; a cask so ample that, to find room for his knees, he was forced to crook them at a high, uncomfortable angle. In the bows, boathook in hand, stood a tall sailor, arrayed in shore-going clothes similar to Mr. Jope's. His face was long, sallow, and expressive of taciturnity, and he wore a beard--not, however, where beards are usually worn, but as a fringe beneath his clean-shaven chin.

"Well, here we are!" announced Mr. Jope cheerfully. "Your Reverence knows A. Grigg and Son, and the others you can trust in all weathers; bein' William Adams, otherwise Bill, and Eli Tonkin--friends o' mine an' shipmates both."

The tall seaman touched his hat by way of acknowledging the introduction.

"But--but I only see _one!_" protested Parson Spettigew.

"This here's Bill Adams," said Mr. Jope, and again the tall seaman touched his hat. "Is it Eli you're missin'? He's in the cask."

"Oh!"

"We'll hoick him up to the store, Bill, if you're ready? It looks a nice cool place. And while you're prizin' him open, I'd best explain to his Reverence and the barber. Here, unship the shore-plank; and you, A. Grigg and Son, lend a hand to heave. . . . Aye, you're right: it weighs more'n a trifle--bein' a quarter-puncheon, an' the best proof-spirits. Tilt her _this_ way, . . . Ready? . . . then w'y-ho! and away she goes!"

With a heave and a lurch that canted the boat until the water poured over her gunwale, the huge tub was rolled overside into shallow water. The recoil, as the boat righted herself, cast the small barber off his balance, and he fell back over a thwart with heels in air. But before he picked himself up, the two seamen, encouraging one another with strange cries, had leapt out and were trundling the cask up the beach, using the flats of their hands. With another _w'y-ho!_ and a tremendous lift, they ran it up to the turfy plat, whence Bill Adams steered it with ease through the ruinated doorway of the store. Mr. Jope returned, smiling and mopping his brow.

"It's this-a-way," he said, addressing the Parson. "Eli Tonkin his name is, or was; and, as he said, of this parish."

"Tonkin?" queried the Parson. "There are no Tonkins surviving in Botusfleming parish. The last of them was a poor old widow I laid to rest the week after Christmas."

"Belay there! . . . Dead, is she?" Mr. Jope's face exhibited the liveliest disappointment. "And after the surprise we'd planned for her!" he murmured ruefully. "Hi! Bill!" he called to his shipmate, who having stored the cask, was returning to the boat.

"Wot is it?" asked Bill Adams inattentively. "Look here, where did we stow the hammer an' chisel?"

"Take your head out o' the boat an' listen. The old woman's dead!"

The tall man absorbed the news slowly.

"That's a facer," he said at length. "But maybe we can fix _her_ up, too? I'll stand my share."

"She was buried the week after Christmas."

"Oh?" Bill scratched his head. "Then we can't--not very well."