Athelstane Ford Part 5

There was a lieutenant set above the fellows into whose hands I had fallen, a tall, lantern-jawed, middle-aged man, with a most abominable squint, and to him I addressed myself:

"Sir, I am not in a condition to be pressed by you, I am not a mariner by calling; and, moreover, I am but just risen from a bed of sickness."

He glanced over my dress before he answered, with something of a smile. And, indeed, for a landsman, my costume was something out of the way, for during the time since I had signed articles to Captain Sims I had done my best to equip myself in true sea-dog fas.h.i.+on.

"You surprise me, young sir," the lieutenant said presently, when he had surveyed me. "Your dress tallies but ill with your professions. If you wore but a cutla.s.s, and had a pistol to your belt, I could have sworn you to be a smuggler at the least."

I hung my head at this, for it was my own vanity that had led me into the mess. I could only fall back on my second excuse.

"Nevertheless, you are mistaken, sir," I said. "But however that may be, be pleased to believe me when I tell you that I am scarce yet recovered from several severe wounds."

"Indeed! I thought I had seen you coming out of yonder tavern at a marvellous nimble gait. But my eyes are indifferent bad. Here, Master Veale, what say you, does this young man look too sick for our purpose? He says he is not recovered of his wounds."

The man he applied to, who was master of the s.h.i.+p's cutter, answered him in the same jesting manner.

"I see nothing the matter with un, your honour. But perhaps we had best carry un aboard and let the s.h.i.+p's doctor feel his pulse."

"I protest against this treatment," I said angrily. "In the name of his Majesty, I say, unhandle me."

"Nay," quoth the lieutenant, "my hearing is as indifferent as my eyesight, and I follow you not. Master Veale, if this youngster uses any blasphemy or indecency let him be gagged till we come aboard again."

This threat was enough to silence me, if I had not been otherwise afraid to make a stir. For though I might have got some of the pa.s.sers-by to succour me, it being broad daylight, and these impressments most unpopular among seafaring men, yet I foresaw that it would quickly come to a question of who I was, and if my name once became bruited abroad there were friends of my father's in the town who would have made short work of sending me back to him. And sooner than face the disgrace of this, as I considered it, I was willing to try my luck with King George.

I therefore walked along with the pressgang, by the side of Master Veale, who used me civilly enough when he found I had given up the thoughts of resisting.

I was not a little amazed and delighted when we came out upon the sh.o.r.e, and I caught sight of the _Talisman_, as she was called, riding at her anchor. For she was a great line-of-battle s.h.i.+p, such as I had never yet seen, carrying seventy-four guns upon her three decks, which rose above the water like a huge wall, with the muzzles of the cannon plainly visible through the opening of her portholes. This majestic ma.s.s lay like a floating fortress upon the waves, and overhead her three masts towered up into the very clouds, with their yards set in order, and the ropes crossing from one to the other as intricate as a spider's web. Last of all, from a flagstaff on the stern, brandished the ensign of Great Britain, in defiance of her enemies. And my heart swelled as I gazed upon it, and remembered how that banner had struck terror into the Frenchmen, and Dutch, and Spaniards, in so many great and memorable fights. Perhaps in that moment I had a foretaste of those glorious triumphs of the British arms in which I was hereafter to take a part.

As soon as we were brought on board this fine vessel--and by this time we had pressed two or three others of the Yarmouth men--we were presented to the captain for his inspection.

The captain, it was easy to perceive, was a man of great quality, being, as I learned before long, a nephew of Lord Saxmundham, in Suffolk, who at that time sat upon the Board of Admiralty. He had the most elegant hands and feet of any man I ever saw, and was dressed with great care, having long ruffles of the finest lace to his neck and wrists, and a gold-hilted small-sword by his side. Even my cousin Rupert beside him would have looked but a country boor.

He spoke to the lieutenant who had headed our party, drawling out his words in a fas.h.i.+on absurd in a London fop, but disgusting in the commander of a man-o'-war.

"Well, Mr. Griffiths, what sort of sc.u.m have you got hold of this time? Faugh!" he continued, taking out a pocket napkin to wipe his nose, "I declare the fellows all stink of herrings!"

This last was a downright lie, for I had never so much as stepped into a fis.h.i.+ng smack. And besides, the herring fishery was not yet begun.

"Sir, that is a fault which can soon be amended," returned the lieutenant, biting his lip at the other's insolence. "For the rest, they looked to me to be st.u.r.dy rascals enough, and, I doubt, will make good seamen."

"Yes, looked to you, my good sir; but then, you know, your sight is none of the best," sneered the captain, between whom and his officer there appeared to be some jealousy.

Mr. Griffiths, though he had jested at his infirmity in speaking to me, writhed under this allusion to it from another. He gave his answer with spirit.

"Captain Wilding, I have done what you ordered me in impressing these men. If you don't think them serviceable I shall be happy to set them ash.o.r.e again."

The other waved his napkin between them as if he would have brushed away a fly.

"There, there, my worthy man, that is quite enough! I have seen the tarry scoundrels, and as long as they have not the smallpox, I am content. Bestow them as you please."

Thereupon we were led into the fore part of the s.h.i.+p, to be rated according to our several abilities. And it fell out luckily for me, for the lieutenant, when he discovered that I had had some education, and could cast accounts--a business of which he plainly knew nothing--informed me that he believed the purser stood in need of an a.s.sistant, and offered to recommend me to him. This kindness on his part I gladly closed with, not that I liked the duty better than the common service of a s.h.i.+p, but because I guessed that I should thereby be delivered from the molestations of the crew, there being no greater pleasure to the vulgar of every profession than to rough-handle and abuse those who come newly amongst them. And herein, as it turned out, I had judged rightly, and for so long as I remained upon that s.h.i.+p I suffered no ill-usage, except at the hands of my superiors.

But before this was settled I had a favour to ask of the worthy lieutenant.

"One thing I must bargain for, with your leave, Lieutenant Griffiths,"

I said to him, speaking boldly, as I discerned him to be favourable to me, "and that is, that if we should come to fighting with the enemy I am to take part with the rest."

Mr. Griffiths laughed when he heard this demand.

"Why, there now," he cried, slapping his thigh, "if I couldn't have sworn that you were one of the sort we wanted directly I clapped eyes on you! Never fear, lad, you shall have your fill of fighting before we go into dock again; for--I will tell you so much--we are under orders to join Admiral Watson's fleet at the Nore, and a man with a healthier stomach for such work never hoisted pennant on a three-decker."

"I am glad, at all events, that we shall sail under a fighting admiral," I responded saucily, "for, as for our captain----"

He stopped me at this point in a manner which terrified me, hurling a string of curses at my head sufficient to have sunk me through the deck.

"Hold your impertinent tongue!" he said in conclusion. "I would have you know better than to pa.s.s remarks on your officers in my hearing. I have had men put in irons for less. Follow me this minute to the purser, and remember you are on board of one of his Majesty's s.h.i.+ps, and not a dirty herring smack."

By which I saw that, however this gentleman secretly despised his commanding officer, he was too honourable to encourage the tattle of his inferiors. In this no doubt he showed his breeding; for it was his boast that he was sprung from one of the most ancient families in Wales, where the gentry, he was wont to say, are of older lineage than those of any other country in the world.

The purser proved to be a Scotchman, against which nation I had taken a strong prejudice, on account of the wicked and unnatural support given by them to the Chevalier in his b.l.o.o.d.y invasion of this kingdom, and which prejudice has since been further confirmed in me by the late mean and notorious conduct of Lord Bute. However, I found Mr.

Sanders, the purser, to be a respectable, religious man, having as little love for Papists and Jacobites as I had myself. He received me without much civility, but if he showed me no great favour neither did he do me any injury, and in his accounts he cheated the crew as little as any purser I ever heard of.

But not to linger over these matters, the only thing that befell me during our voyage to the Nore was an extraordinary painful sickness and retching, the anguish of which I could not have believed possible to be borne, and which many times made me wish I had never quitted my father's house. During the continuance of this malady I was rendered quite unable to do my duty, to Mr. Sanders's no small discontent, and was left to the sole companions.h.i.+p of an Irishman, one Michael Sullivan, who became much attached to me, and soothed my sufferings by every means in his power. He was a corporal of the Marines, and had been three times promoted to be sergeant for his bravery in action, and three times degraded again for drunkenness. Among his comrades he was known as Irish Mick: and here I observed a peculiarity which I have found amongst others of that nation; for though he would continually be boasting of his country, and exalting the Irish race above every other on the face of the earth, yet no sooner did any of us remark on it to him that he was an Irishman than he straightway fell into a violent pa.s.sion, as if we had laid some insult upon him.

While I lay thus ill, as I have said, I lost all thoughts of the quest I had meant to undertake for Marian, and would not have cared if the s.h.i.+p had been bound for the infernal regions. But as soon as I was recovered sufficiently to come on deck, whither I was very kindly a.s.sisted by the Irishman, I grew exceedingly curious as to our destination.

"Does any one know whither we are bound when we have joined the Admiral's fleet?" I asked of Sullivan.

"Faith, and it's that same question I'm just after putting to the boatswain's mate," he answered, "and the sorrow a soul on board that knows any better than myself and yourself."

He p.r.o.nounced his speech with a very rich brogue, which I shall no more attempt to imitate than Captain Wilding's affectation. For indeed there seem to be as many ways of p.r.o.nouncing English as there are people that speak it, and even in Norfolk itself I have met with people who were not free from something like the Suffolk tw.a.n.g.

Seeing, I suppose, that I was disappointed by this answer, he leant over and whispered in my ear--

"But it's my belief that King George is tired of the peace with the French, and that he's sending us out to sink a few of their s.h.i.+ps and maybe bombard a town or two, just by way of letting them know that we're ready to begin again."

I answered him impatiently, for my sickness had made me fretful.

"I believe you are a fool, Mick! It is well known that we never go to war with the French unless they have first provoked us."

"Well, and sure haven't they provoked us enough by all their doings in America and the Indies, not to mention the battle of Fontenoy, which my own cousin Dennis helped them to win, more by token; though he got a bullet in his left arm before the fighting begun, and had to content himself with cheering while the others were at it."

"That will do," I said crossly, for I had heard of the battle of Fontenoy and his cousin Dennis before, and it was a sore point between us. Nor could I understand how a man who had the privilege of being born a British subject, though liable to the proper severities of the penal code against Papists, could traitorously desert his allegiance and take service with our natural enemies.

However, I learned nothing further of our destination till we reached the Nore, which we did about the end of the third day. Here we found the rest of the squadron a-waiting us, and, the _Talisman_ being the biggest s.h.i.+p in company, Admiral Watson immediately hauled down his pennant off the _Victory_, of fifty guns, and came aboard of us.

I was leaning over the chains with Sullivan when the barge came alongside, and could see a gentleman in the stern, sitting beside the Admiral, in a military uniform, and having a very resolute and commanding countenance.

"Who is that?" I asked.