In the King's Name Part 1

In the King's Name.

by George Manville Fenn.

CHAPTER ONE.

ON BOARD THE "KESTREL."

Morning on board the _Kestrel_, his Britannic majesty's cutter, lying on and off the south coast on the lookout for larks, or what were to her the dainty little birds that the little falcon, her namesake, would pick up. For the _Kestrel's_ wings were widespread to the soft south-easterly breeze that barely rippled the water; and mainsail, gaff topsail, staysail, and jib were so new and white that they seemed to s.h.i.+ne like silver in the sun.

The larks the hover-winged _Kestrel_ was on the watch to pick up were smuggling boats of any sort or size, or Jacobite messages, or exiles, or fugitives--anything, in fact, that was not in accordance with the laws of his most gracious majesty King George the Second, whose troops had not long before dealt that fatal blow to the young Pretender's hopes at the battle of Culloden.

The sea was as bright and blue as the sea can look in the Channel when the bright sun is s.h.i.+ning, and the arch above reflects itself in its bosom. The gulls floated half asleep on the water, with one eye open and the other closed; and the pale-grey kittiwakes seemed to glide about on the wing, to dip down here and there and cleverly s.n.a.t.c.h a tiny fish from the surface of the softly heaving sea.

On the deck of the little cutter all was in that well-known apple-pie order customary on board a man-of-war, for so Lieutenant Lips...o...b.. in command always took care to call it, and in this he was diligently echoed by the young gentleman who acted as his first officer, and, truth to say, second and third officer as well, for he was the only one--to wit, Hilary Leigh, mids.h.i.+pman, lately drafted to this duty, to his great disgust, from on board the das.h.i.+ng frigate _Golden Fleece_.

"Man-o'-war!" he had said in disgust; "a contemptible little c.o.c.k-boat.

They ought to have called her a boy-o'-war--a little boy-o'-war. I shall walk overboard the first time I try to stretch my legs."

But somehow he had soon settled down on board the swift little craft with its very modest crew, and felt no small pride in the importance of his position, feeling quite a first lieutenant in his way, and for the greater part of the time almost entirely commanding the vessel.

She was just about the cut of a goodsized modern yacht, and though not so swift, a splendid sailer, carrying immense spars for her tonnage, and spreading canvas enough to have swamped a less deeply built craft.

The decks were as white as holystone could make them, the sails and the bell shone in the morning sun like gold, and there was not a speck to be seen on the cabin skylight any more than upon either of the three bra.s.s guns, a long and two shorts, as Billy Waters, who was gunner and gunner's mate all in one, used to call them.

Upon this bright summer morning Hilary Leigh was sitting, with his legs dangling over the side and his back against a stay, holding a fis.h.i.+ng line, which, with a tiny silvery slip off the tail-end of a mackerel, was trailing behind the cutter, fathoms away, waving and playing about in the vessel's wake, to tempt some ripple-sided mackerel to dart at it, do a little bit of cannibalism, and die in the act.

Two had already been hauled on board, and lay in a wooden bucket, looking as if they had been carved out of pieces of solid sea at sunrise, so brilliant were the ripple marks and tints of pink and purple and grey and orange and gold--bright enough to make the gayest mother-o'-pearl sh.e.l.l blush for shame. Hilary Leigh had set his mind upon catching four--two for himself and two for the skipper--and he had congratulated himself upon the fact that he had already caught his two, when there was a sharp s.n.a.t.c.h, the line began to quiver, and for the next minute it was as though the hook was fast in the barbs of a silver arrow that was darting in all directions through the sea.

"Here's another, Billy!" cried the young man, or boy--for he was on the debatable ground of eighteen, when one may be either boy or man, according to one's acts, deeds, or exploits, as it used to say in Carpenter's Spelling.

Hilary Leigh, from his appearance, partook more of the man than the boy, for, though his face was as smooth as a new-laid egg, he had well-cut, decisive-looking Saxon features, and one of those capital closely-fitting heads of hair that look as if they never needed cutting, but settle round ears and forehead in not too tight cl.u.s.tering curls.

"Here's another, Billy," he cried; and a stoutly built sailor amids.h.i.+ps cried, "Cheer ho, sir! Haul away, sir! Will it be a mess o' mick-a-ral for the lads to-day?"

"Don't know, Billy," was the reply, as the beautiful fish was hauled in, unhooked, a fresh lask or tongue of silvery bait put on, and the leaded line thrown over and allowed to run out fathoms astern once again.

Billy Waters, the gunner, went on with his task, rather a peculiar one, which would have been performed below in a larger vessel, but here the men pretty well lived on deck, caring little for the close stuffy quarters that formed the forecastle, where they had, being considered inferior beings, considerably less s.p.a.ce than was apportioned to their two officers.

Billy's work was that of carefully binding or las.h.i.+ng round and round the great ma.s.s of hair hanging from the poll of a messmate, so as to form it into the orthodox pigtail of which the sailors of the day were excessively vain. The tail in question was the finest in the cutter, and was exactly two feet six inches long, hanging down between the sailor's shoulders, when duly lashed up and tied, like a long handle used for lifting off the top of his skull.

But, alas for the vanity of human nature! Tom Tully, owner of the longest tail in the cutter, and the envy of all his messmates, was not happy. He was ambitious; and where a man is ambitious there is but little true bliss. He wanted "that 'ere tail" to be half a fathom long, and though it was duly measured every week "that 'ere tail" refused to grow another inch.

Billy Waters had a fine tail, but his was only, to use his own words, "two foot one," but it was "half as thick agen as Tom Tully's," so he did not mind. In fact the first glance at the gunner's round good-humoured face told that there was neither envy nor ambition there.

Give him enough to eat, his daily portion of cold water grog, and his 'bacco, and, again to use his own words, he "wouldn't change berths with the king hissen."

"Easy there, Billy messmet," growled Tom Tully; "avast hauling quite so hard. My tail ain't the cable."

"Why, you don't call that 'ere hauling, Tommy lad, do you?"

"'Nuff to take a fellow's head off," growled the other, just as the mids.h.i.+pman pulled in another mackerel, and directly after another, and another, for they were sailing through a shoal, and the man at the helm let his stolid face break up into a broad grin as the chance of a mess of mackerel for the men's dinner began to increase.

"Singing down deny, down deny, down deny down, Sing--"

"Easy, messmet, d'yer hear," growled Tom Tully, straining his head round to look appealingly at the operator on his tail. "Why don't yer leave off singing till you've done?"

"Just you lay that there nose o' your'n straight amids.h.i.+ps," cried Billy, using the tail as if it was a tiller, and steering the sailor's head into the proper position. "I can't work without I sing."

"For this I can tell, that nought will be well, Till the king enjoys his own again."

He trolled out these words in a pleasant tenor voice, and was just drawing in breath to continue the rattling cavalier ballad when the young officer swung his right leg in board, and, sitting astride the low bulwark, exclaimed--

"I say, Billy, are you mad?"

"Mad, sir? not that I knows on, why?"

"For singing a disloyal song like that. You'll be yard-armed, young fellow, if you don't mind."

"What, for singing about the king?"

"Yes; if you get singing about a king over the water, my lad. That's an old song; but some people would think you meant the Pretend--Hallo! look there. You look out there forward, why didn't you hail? Hi! here fetch me a gla.s.s. Catch hold of that line, Billy. She's running for Sh.o.r.eham, as sure as a gun. No: all right; let go."

He threw the line to the gunner just as a mackerel made a s.n.a.t.c.h at the bait, and before the sailor could catch it, away went the end astern, when the man at the helm made a dash at it just as the slight cord was running over the side.

Billy Waters made a dash at it just at the same moment, and there was a dull thud as the two men's heads came in contact, and they fell back into a sitting position on the deck, while the mackerel darted frightened away to puzzle the whole shoal of its fellows with the novel appendage hanging to its snout.

"Avast there, you lubber!" exclaimed Billy Waters angrily. "Stand by, my lad, stand by," replied the other, making a dart back at the helm just as the cutter was beginning to fall off.

"Look ye here, messmet, air you agoin' to make my head s.h.i.+pshape, or air you not?" growled Tom Tully; and then, before his hairdresser could finish tying the last knot, the lieutenant came on deck.

For when Hilary Leigh ran below, it was to seize a long spygla.s.s out of the slings in the cabin bulkhead, and to give his commanding officer a tremendous shake.

"Sail on the larboard bow, Mr Lips...o...b.., sir. I say, do wake up, sir; I think it is something this time."

The officer in question, who was a hollow-cheeked man of about forty, very sallow-looking, and far from prepossessing in his features, opened his eye, but he did not attempt to rise from the bunker upon which he was stretched.

"Leigh," he said, turning his eye round towards the little oval thick gla.s.s window nearest to him, "You're a most painstaking young officer, but you are always mare's-nesting. What is it now?"

"One of those three-masted luggers, sir--a Frenchman--a _cha.s.se maree_, laden deeply, and running for Sh.o.r.eham."

"Let her run," said the lieutenant, closing his eye again; the other was permanently closed, having been poked out in boarding a Frenchman some years before, and with the extinction of that optic went the prospect of the lieutenant's being made a post-captain, and he was put in command of the _Kestrel_ when he grew well.

"But it _is_ something this time, sir, I'm sure."

"Leigh," said the lieutenant, yawning, "I was just in a delicious dream, and thoroughly enjoying myself when you come down and bother me about some confounded fis.h.i.+ng-boat. There, be off. No: I'll come this time."

He yawned, and showed a set of very yellow teeth; and then, as if by an effort, leaped up and preceded the young officer on deck.