The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 4

"What's he wearin?" whispered the other, peering. "You can most always tell the lay he's on by that. Pea-jacket means boat-work, cuttins out, fire-s.h.i.+ps, landin parties, and the like. If it's old blue frock and yaller waistcoat, then it's lay em aboard and say your prayers.

And if it's c.o.c.ked hat and chewin a quid, then it's elp you G.o.d: for your time's come."

"You're a disgrace to the Service, Mr. Lanyon," came a curt voice.

"And you're a credit to it, sir," was the hearty retort.

"Go below."

"And just sposin I won't," answered the drunkard--"only sposin, mind!--just for the sake of argyment, d'ye see?--what then?"

"Irons."

The drunkard folded his arms.

"And might I make so bold, Commander Ardin," he began elaborately, "to ask who'll fight your guns, your Actin Fust in irons; and besides yourself ne'er another officer on the quar'er-deck--only this ere squab."

"I'll fight em myself if needs be. Go below, d'ye hear?"

The Gunner stumbled away, roaring laughter.

"Sail the blurry s.h.i.+p; fight the blurry s.h.i.+p; sink the blurry s.h.i.+p; and go to ell in the blurry s.h.i.+p. That's old Ding-dong."

CHAPTER IV

OLD DING-DONG

"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 s.h.i.+p'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 mids.h.i.+pman. St.

Vincent our last. And a G.o.d'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 smas.h.i.+ng Conflans in a hurricane; Rodney, gloriously alone, fighting his s.h.i.+p against a fleet; Duncan hammering the Dutch; Sam Hood, Jack Jervis, Nelson, Cuddie Collingwood; and all that grim array of big-beaked, b.l.o.o.d.y-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-s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p she were--was a sheer hulk. As we pa.s.s 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 p.o.o.p 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.'