The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 5

"The Captain turns to me.

"'Where's the nearest land, Willum?' says he, with that twinkle of is'n. Always called me Willum, when he meant mischief, did the Captain.

"'Why, sir,' says I, 'the bottom, I reck'n.'

"'Wrong again,' says he. 'That's the nearest land to me,' and he points at the _Santy Maria_, Don Somebody Somethin's Flag-ship. 'Hard a-starboard, if you please, Mr. Hardin,' says he. 'I'm a-goin to land.'

"So I luffs up alongside, and fell aboard Er Oliness--like a mighty great mountain above us she was, all p.o.o.p, and galleries, and Armada fittins.

"When our bow sc.r.a.ped her quarter,

"'Anybody for the sh.o.r.e!' pipes the Captain; and he jumps into her main-chain....

"Ah, but you should ha heard the men cheer!"

The old man paused, breathing deep.

"Ten minutes a'terwards he was dying acrost my knees on the spar-deck of the Don.

"'Has she struck, Bill?' he whispers, coughing....

"'The three decker's struck, sir,' says I, 'and the four-decker's strikin.'

"He shuts his eyes.

"'Then I can depart in peace,' he sighs. 'Tell Marjory I done my duty.'

"And he up and died."

There was a cough in the darkness.

"So I calls a cutter away, and rowed aboord the _San Josef_, the men blubberin like a pack o babbies, to break it to Nelson. Like twins, them two, Nelson and your father: that like, ye see!

"Well, there was the Commodore on the Don's quarter-deck, Berry beside him, the Spanish Captain afoor him, and behind him a British Jack-Tar tuckin the Spaniards' swords under his arm like so many umberellas.

"I breaks it to him short and straight.

"'Captain Caryll's compliments, sir,' says I. 'And he's dead.'

"Nelson claps his hands to his face as though I'd struck him. Then he falls on my neck afoor em all--Dons too.

"'O Ding-dong!' says he. 'I loved him.'--Just like that. 'I loved him....'

"Yes, that was Nelson all through: one alf woman, t'other alf hero.

"Then he pulls himself together.

"'But there!' he says. 'He lived like an English gentleman; and he died like a British seaman. May I go that way when my time comes.'

And he sweeps off his c.o.c.ked hat as though it might ha been to the King, and--

"'G.o.d bless Kit Caryll,' says he."

The old man blew his nose in the darkness.

"Yes, sir," he continued, "that was your father and my friend," and then suddenly gruff--

"D'you mean takin a'ter him?"

"I mean to try, sir," said the boy huskily.

In the darkness a hand gripped his.

CHAPTER V

REUBEN BONIFACE'S STORY

I

Clear of the harbour, the boy's hat blew overboard.

He tasted his lips, and found them salt.

Never at sea before, yet somehow it was all strangely familiar, and strangely dear.

The feel of the ship, alive beneath his feet; the lift, the plunge, the swaying rhythm of the bows; the roll of the masts against a patch of stars--there was music in them all; a music that stirred his heart; the music of inherited Memory.

The sea was in his blood; and his blood began to sing to it. Old voices from the Past, that Past which is still the Present, woke within him.

Old memories, borne down the ages upon the dark river of race life, haunted him dimly. Old and terrible experiences--murders and mutinies; distresses on rafts; thirsts and screaming madnesses; naked men howling on hen-coops under waste skies, sea-birds wailing desolately overhead; great ships, man-forsaken, G.o.d-forgotten, wallowing blindly amid green mountains that flowed and foamed upon them--shadows in shoals, they rose, glimmered, and were gone in the twilight waters of returning consciousness.

Sea-wolves in beaked ships from the Baltic; pirate-adventurers who had sailed and sacked under the Conqueror; pioneers of new-found lands: blood of his blood, and brain of his brain, they lived again, roused from centuries of sleep by the stir and whiff and secret business of the dark waters.

The mystery of it thrilled the boy: the blind night, the moving waters, the wind in his hair, the crash of spray upon the deck--old friends all, he recognised them as such, and found them beautifully familiar.

He was flowing down the River of Eternal Life and one with it. He was: he had been: he always would be. There was no Death, no Time. Life was One and Everlasting.

His nostrils wide, renewing old impressions, he walked forward, proud and self-composed.

True son of the sea, yet he knew himself her master. She was his woman, to be loved and lorded over. He found himself brooding over her dark beauty with the stern pride of possession. Manhood was rushing in on him: its pa.s.sions, its power, its splendid cruelties. He began to tingle to them.

They had not met, it seemed, to know each other, these two world-old friends, for half a generation. Now once more they came together, heart to heart, man to woman, loving faithfully as ever.