The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 104

Out on the uncritical sea he had almost thought himself a hero: in here, eye to eye with Nelson, he knew himself just a pinch-beck boy.

The silence grew upon him. He found himself listening to his own voice, and half wondering whether he was not dreaming. This almighty little man, so careless, so terrible, chilled him to the core.

He stumbled, sought his mind like a schoolboy posed for a word, sought in vain, and stopped dead.

Nelson drummed upon the table.

"Is that all?"

"All, sir?"

The other strummed impatiently.

"I'm _Lord_ Nelson."

The boy was dumb, his heart flaring.

And this was the man the nation worshipped!

Nelson turned his eye upon the boy. There was a sardonic droop about his lips.

"Mr. Carvell," he said slowly, "I have been a midshipman myself. Is this a joke?"

Kit flamed. He had given himself freely for this man, had died a hundred deaths for him--for this!

"If it's a joke, my lord," white-hot and thrilling, "it's a joke for which a good many men have died."

He saw once more the lower deck of the _Tremendous_. He recalled the man in the powder-magazine, and old Ding-dong dying beneath the cliff. He thought of Piper outside that door.

Nelson turned on the boy in a white blast.

"I am Admiral Lord Nelson. You're Mr. Midshipman Carvell. And I'll trouble you not to forget it."

He held out his hand.

"Your papers."

"There are none, sir--my lord. All burnt."

"Pah!" cried Nelson, and turned with a stamp.

On the table was a chart, a pistol at the corner of it acting as paper-weight.

He bent over it.

Kit, with bleeding heart, gazed at his back, blue-coated and white-breeched.

A darn in the seat of the breeches held his gaze. It seemed so odd somehow that Nelson's breeches should be darned. It was the last thing he should have suspected of the hero of Aboukir Bay. He longed to put out his finger and feel it, that darn in Nelson's breeches. Was it real?--or was it a dream-darn? It was real; he could swear it. And it helped him.

There was something comfortably human about it. After all, then, a hero was only flesh and blood: he wore darned breeches.

Sometimes the boy wore darned breeches himself, his mother compelling him. There was something in common, then, between him and his hero.

Nelson turned suddenly to find the boy's eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with laughter.

Across his face swept a great white anger.

"This is scarcely a matter for giggling, Mr. Carvell," he cried terribly.

"It seems to me that you by no means realise the _astounding_ nature of the charge you bring. If it prove true, it means the hanging of a brother-officer before the Fleet. If not--His Majesty will have no further need of your services."

"The powder-magazine will tell its own story," replied Kit, curt as an insulted girl. "Ask it."

Nelson's eye flashed.

"I'm not in the habit of receiving suggestions from my midshipmen, Mr.

Carvell."

"You doubt my word!" with a sob.

"I doubt your story, sir. And I've good reason to. My officers are not in the habit of selling me. But we can soon have the truth."

He opened the door.

"Desire Mr. Dark to be good enough to step this way," he called to the sentry outside, and shut the door again.

"Mr. Dark is my Gunner and the officer against whom you bring your charge--a charge of such a nature as _never_, never in all the years of my service, have I known one officer to bring against another."

He was pacing rapidly up and down the cabin, his stump flapping.

"I have tried to serve you, sir," said Kit in twilight voice, and said no more.

His face was a thought paler than before; his eyes a shade darker. He was bracing himself for a last fight.

Something about the boy, his twilight voice, his pallor, those dark and hunted eyes, struck Nelson.

He stopped his pacing.

"You've nothing to fear, Mr. Carvell," he said less sternly--"if your story prove true."

"It is true, my lord," replied the boy steadfastly.

"G.o.d forbid," shuddered the great seaman, and resumed his walk.

II

There was a knock.

Dark entered, sombrely magnificent.