The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 16

Yes. That tallowy nose, those eyes with the wild gleam in them, could not be mistaken. It was Lushy Lanyon.

Somehow he had sc.r.a.ped up a First Lieutenant's uniform: bright blue coat with long tails; white waist-coat, knee breeches, and stockings; black hat c.o.c.kaded, worn athwart-ships; and sword slung from a shoulder belt. And the wonder was that it fitted and became him.

The boy gave his message.

The Gunner bowed ceremoniously.

"Be so good as to give Commander Ardin my compliments, and say I don't pull a lanyard till I can see through her ports."

The other's formal politeness stirred the boy almost to laughter; yet somehow the faded splendour of the man touched him too.

It was as when a great light seeks to shine through smoked gla.s.s. Last night he had seen only the sodden body; now he beheld the soul, shining dimly, it is true, but shining still through its sullied habitation.

The call to action had set it burning. It illuminated the blurred face, notable still. In his youth the man must have been extraordinarily handsome. Even now he was a n.o.ble ruin.

"Ah, you may stare, Mr. Caryll," said the Gunner, reading the other's thoughts. "It was Lushy Lanyon last night; this morning it's _Me_!"

He swelled his chest, and stalked down the deck between his guns, shooting his cuffs.

"Yes, sir. A fight's meat and drink to me. It pulls me together, and makes me remember who I am." He threw back his head--"Magnificent Arry, the man that's played more avock with earts in his day than any other seaman afloat.... It's the whiskers done it," he added simply.

The two men in him were at war: the high and mighty fighting-man and the confidential toper. Each came bobbing out in turns.

"And if you should want to see a main-deck fought as a main-deck should be fought, why, sir, be good enough to take a seat."

He kicked a powder-monkey off his box, and offered it with a bow.

"Can't," said Kit, turning. "No time. See you again later."

The other stooped and peered out of a port.

"Doobious, I should say," he replied, picking his teeth. "Vairy doobious. Ah! ----"

A great black shadow stole across the port. Its effect on the Gunner was miraculous. He shot up like a flame. He was dark; he was terrible; there was something of the majesty of Satan about the man. Some huge sea of life seemed to lift him above himself, and land him among the giants.

"Stand by the starboard battery!" he roared.

CHAPTER XI

COMMODORE MOUCHE

Kit ran up the ladder out of that bellowing Inferno.

The _Tremendous_ and her enemy lay side by side with locked spars; the _Coquette_ becalmed beyond.

Then Kit understood the ruse of that wary old fighter, his Commander.

Old Ding-dong had placed the _Cocotte_ as a bulwark between him and her consort. As he had foreseen, the wind, falling away this hour past, had dropped to nothing now. The _Coquette_ could not bring a gun into action.

Four hundred yards away, she might have been as many miles for all the a.s.sistance she could render her sister-ship.

As the boy came up, the old Commander was leaning against the wheel, bending towards his knee, and breathing hard.

There was a dark and peevish look about his face; and a trickle of red was running down his white knee-breeches.

"Tell ye 'taint etiquette to have men in your tops only in general actions and duels atween ships of the line," he was saying in slow and painful voice, very querulous. "In all my fifty years' experience o sea fightin, I never see sich a thing afoor, never! Dirty trick I call it."

The little Frenchman across the narrow lane of water dividing the ships, chattered excuses, all sympathy and shrugged shoulders.

"Ah, I so grieve. Pain! pain! terrible, n'est-ce-pas?--But what would you, my Captain?--It is no fault of mine. The Emperor's orders. 'I trust you, my Commodore,' says he. 'Coute que coute.'

"Emperor! about as much a h'Emperor as you are Commodore! And you're welcome to tell him so with my compliments," snorted the old man.

He threw his eye aloft.

"Mr. Caryll, take a party o small-arm men aloft, and clear them sneakin blay-guards out of her tops. Else they'll be boardin by the yards."

The boy rushed away.

Beneath his feet the deck staggered and shook. On the lower-deck of the _Tremendous_ h.e.l.l had broken loose, in flame and smoke and horrible bellowings. The little ship was racked. In her agony she quivered from truck to keel.

Suddenly the spars of the _Cocotte_ above him began to crackle and blaze. Plip-plop-plank! the bullets smacked all about him. He was under fire and he didn't like it. He wanted to dodge under the bulwark and lie there; but he daren't. So he ran breathlessly, skipping as a bullet spanked the deck at his feet.

They were in the enemy's main-top, swarms of them, tiny figures, crowding along the spars, grinning at him, he thought.

How on earth with a handful of men, climbing up the rigging under a pelting fire, he would ever clear that lot out!...

Even as he wondered the enemy's main-mast seemed to become alive. It swayed; it shook; it almost danced; the taut shrouds sagged.

At first the boy thought that horror had turned his brain, and he was going mad. He stopped dead and gazed.

Yes, it was coming down, coming towards him, towering, tremendous, like a falling spire.

It came in jerks, tearing its way with a snapping of stays and crashing of spars. Figures, like black birds, seemed to detach themselves, and flop through the air. They were men, thrown clear, and falling with floating coat-tails as they revolved.

One fell with an appalling b.u.mp on the deck of the sloop hard by the wheel, a man in a red coat, bear-skinn'd and gaitered. He did not stir, kneeling, his hands before him, head bowed, in att.i.tude of adoration.

A sudden pool of scarlet seemed to spurt out of the deck and island him.

Kit, his work accomplished for him, ran back to the wheel.

"Reck'n that's the chap as got me," said old Ding-dong, nodding at the dead man with a certain grim friendliness. "A red-coat, d'ye see?--Now what's the meanin o that?--I never yeard tell of a privateer carrying regulars afoor."

The old man was leaning against the wheel. His brow was puckered; and there was a tense, breathless air about his face. It came to the boy with a shock of surprise that a man hard-hit makes just the same sort of face as a man who has got one on the funny bone at cricket.

"Are you hurt?" he asked anxiously.

"Nay, I'm none hurt, but I am hit. They've took fifty years doin it, but they've done it at last. It was yon chap with the bashed skull.