The Two Admirals Part 17

"What _can_ the poor fellow mean?" demanded the admiral, more concerned than he remembered ever before to have been, on any similar occasion.

"One could wish to serve him as much as possible, but all this about '_nullus_,' and 'whole blood,' and 'half,' is so much gibberish to me--can you make any thing of it,--hey! Atwood?"

"Upon my word, Sir Gervaise, it seems a matter for a judge, rather than for man-of-war's men, like ourselves."

"It certainly can have no connection with this rising of the Jacobites?

_That_ is an affair likely to trouble a loyal subject, in his last moments, Mr. Rotherham!"

"Sir Wycherly's habits and age forbid the idea that he knows more of _that_, sir, than is known to us all. His request, however, to 'turn the will round,' I conceive to be altogether explicit. Several capital treatises have appeared lately on the 'human will,' and I regret to say, my honoured friend and patron has not always been quite as orthodox on that point, as I could wish. I, therefore, consider his words as evidence of a hearty repentance."

Sir Gervaise looked about him, as was his habit when any droll idea crossed his mind; but again suppressing the inclination to smile, he answered with suitable gravity--

"I understand you, sir; you think all these inexplicable terms are connected with Sir Wycherly's religious feelings. You may certainly be right, for it exceeds my knowledge to connect them with any thing else.

I wish, notwithstanding, he had not disowned this n.o.ble young lieutenant of ours! Is it quite certain the young man is a Virginian?"

"So I have always understood it, sir. He has never been known in this part of England, until he was landed from a frigate in the roads, to be cured of a serious wound. I think none of Sir Wycherly's allusions have the least reference to _him_."

Sir Gervaise Oakes now joined his hands behind his back, and walked several times, quarter-deck fashion, to and fro, in the room. At each turn, his eyes glanced towards the bed, and he ever found the gaze of the sick man anxiously fastened on himself. This satisfied him that religion had nothing to do with his host's manifest desire to make himself understood; and his own trouble was greatly increased. It seemed to him, as if the dying man was making incessant appeals to his aid, without its being in his power to afford it. It was not possible for a generous man, like Sir Gervaise, to submit to such a feeling without an effort; and he soon went to the side of the bed, again, determined to bring the affair to some intelligible issue.

"Do you think, Sir Wycherly, you could write a few lines, if we put pen, ink, and paper before you?" he asked, as a sort of desperate remedy.

"Impossible--can hardly see; have got no strength--stop--will try--if you please."

Sir Gervaise was delighted with this, and he immediately directed his companions to lend their a.s.sistance. Atwood and the vicar bolstered the old man up, and the admiral put the writing materials before him, subst.i.tuting a large quarto bible for a desk. Sir Wycherly, after several abortive attempts, finally got the pen in his hand, and with great difficulty traced six or seven nearly illegible words, running the line diagonally across the paper. By this time his powers failed him altogether, and he sunk back, dropping the pen, and closing his eyes in a partial insensibility. At this critical instant, the surgeon entered, and at once put an end to the interview, by taking charge of the patient, and directing all but one or two necessary attendants, to quit the room.

The three chosen witnesses of what had just past, repaired together to a parlour; Atwood, by a sort of mechanical habit, taking with him the paper on which the baronet had scrawled the words just mentioned. This, by a sort of mechanical use, also, he put into the hands of Sir Gervaise, as soon as they entered the room; much as he would have laid before his superior, an order to sign, or a copy of a letter to the secretary of the Navy Board.

"This is as bad as the '_nullus_!'" exclaimed Sir Gervaise, after endeavouring to decipher the scrawl in vain. "What is this first word, Mr. Rotherham--'Irish,' is it not,--hey! Atwood?"

"I believe it is no move than 'I-n,' stretched over much more paper than is necessary."

"You are right enough, vicar; and the next word is 'the,' though it looks like a _chevaux de frise_--what follows? It looks like 'man-of-war.' Atwood?"

"I beg your pardon, Sir Gervaise; this first letter is what I should call an elongated n--the next is certainly an a--the third looks like the waves of a river--ah! it is an m--and the last is an e--n-a-m-e--that makes 'name,' gentlemen."

"Yes," eagerly added the vicar, "and the two next words are, 'of G.o.d.'"

"Then it is religion, after all, that was on the poor man's mind!"

exclaimed Sir Gervaise, in a slight degree disappointed, if the truth must be told. "What's this A-m-e-n--'Amen'--why it's a sort of prayer."

"This is the form in which it is usual to commence wills, I believe, Sir Gervaise," observed the secretary, who had written many a one, on board ship, in his day. "'In the name of G.o.d, Amen.'"

"By George, you're right, Atwood; and the poor man was trying, all the while, to let us know how he wished to dispose of his property! What could he mean by the _nullus_--it is not possible that the old gentleman has nothing to leave?"

"I'll answer for it, Sir Gervaise, _that_ is not the true explanation,"

the vicar replied. "Sir Wycherly's affairs are in the best order; and, besides the estate, he has a large sum in the funds."

"Well, gentlemen, we can do no more to-night. A medical man is already in the house, and Bluewater will send ash.o.r.e one or two others from the fleet. In the morning, if Sir Wycherly is in a state to converse, this matter shall be attended to."

The party now separated; a bed being provided for the vicar, and the admiral and his secretary retiring to their respective rooms.

CHAPTER X.

"Bid physicians talk our veins to temper, And with an argument new-set a pulse; Then think, my lord, of reasoning into love."

YOUNG.

While the scene just related, took place in the chamber of the sick man, Admiral Bluewater, Mrs. Dutton, and Mildred left the house, in the old family-coach. The rear-admiral had pertinaciously determined to adhere to his practice of sleeping in his ship; and the manner in which he had offered seats to his two fair companions--for Mrs. Dutton still deserved to be thus termed--has already been seen. The motive was simply to remove them from any further brutal exhibitions of Dutton's cupidity, while he continued in his present humour; and, thus influenced, it is not probable that the gallant old sailor would be likely to dwell, more than was absolutely necessary, on the unpleasant scene of which he had been a witness. In fact, no allusion was made to it, during the quarter of an hour the party was driving from the Hall to the station-house.

They all spoke, with regret,--Mildred with affectionate tenderness, even,--of poor Sir Wycherly; and several anecdotes, indicative of his goodness of heart, were eagerly related to Bluewater, by the two females, as the carriage moved heavily along. In the time mentioned, the vehicle drew up before the door of the cottage, and all three alighted.

If the morning of that day had been veiled in mist, the sun had set in as cloudless a sky, as is often arched above the island of Great Britain. The night was, what in that region, is termed a clear moonlight. It was certainly not the mimic day that is so often enjoyed in purer atmospheres, but the panorama of the head-land was clothed in a soft, magical sort of semi-distinctness, that rendered objects sufficiently obvious, and exceedingly beautiful. The rounded, shorn swells of the land, hove upward to the eye, verdant and smooth; while the fine oaks of the park formed a shadowy background to the picture, inland. Seaward, the ocean was glittering, like a reversed plane of the firmament, far as eye could reach. If our own hemisphere, or rather this lat.i.tude, may boast of purer skies than are enjoyed by the mother country, the latter has a vast superiority in the tint of the water.

While the whole American coast is bounded by a dull-looking sheet of sea-green, the deep blue of the wide ocean appears to be carried close home to the sh.o.r.es of Europe. This glorious tint, from which the term of "ultramarine" has been derived, is most remarkable in the Mediterranean, that sea of delights; but it is met with, all along the rock-bound coasts of the Peninsula of Spain and Portugal, extending through the British Channel, until it is in a measure, lost on the shoals of the North Sea; to be revived, however, in the profound depths of the ocean that laves the wild romantic coast of Norway.

"'Tis a glorious night!" exclaimed Bluewater, as he handed Mildred, the last, from the carriage; "and one can hardly wish to enter a cot, let it swing ever so lazily."

"Sleep is out of the question," returned Mildred, sorrowfully. "These are nights in which even the weary are reluctant to lose their consciousness; but who can sleep while there is this uncertainty about dear Sir Wycherly."

"I rejoice to hear you say this, Mildred,"--for so the admiral had unconsciously, and unrepelled, begun to call his sweet companion--"I rejoice to hear you say this, for I am an inveterate star-gazer and moon-ite; and I shall hope to persuade you and Mrs. Dutton to waste yet another hour, with me, in walking on this height. Ah! yonder is Sam Yoke, my c.o.xswain, waiting to report the barge; I can send Sir Gervaise's message to the surgeons, by deputy, and there will be no occasion for my hastening from this lovely spot, and pleasant company."

The orders were soon given to the c.o.xswain. A dozen boats, it would seem, were in waiting for officers ash.o.r.e, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour; and directions were sent for two of them to pull off, and obtain the medical men. The coach was sent round to receive the latter, and then all was tranquil, again, on the height. Mrs. Dutton entered the house, to attend to some of her domestic concerns, while the rear-admiral took the arm of Mildred, and they walked, together, to the verge of the cliffs.

A fairer moonlight picture seldom offered itself to a seaman's eye, than that which now lay before the sight of Admiral Bluewater and Mildred.

Beneath them rode the fleet; sixteen sail of different rigs, eleven of which, however, were two-decked ships of the largest size then known in naval warfare; and all of which were in that perfect order, that an active and intelligent commander knows how to procure, even from the dilatory and indifferent. If Admiral Bluewater was conspicuous in man[oe]uvring a fleet, and in rendering every vessel of a line that extended a league, efficient, and that too, in her right place, Sir Gervaise Oakes had the reputation of being one of the best seamen, in the ordinary sense of the word, in England. No vessel under his command, ever had a lubberly look; and no ship that had any sailing in her, failed to have it brought out of her. The vice-admiral was familiar with that all-important fact--one that members equally of Congress and of Parliament are so apt to forgot, or rather not to know at all--that the efficiency of a whole fleet, as a fleet, is necessarily brought down to the level of its worst ships. Of little avail is it, that four or five vessels of a squadron sail fast, and work well, if the eight or ten that remain, behave badly, and are dull. A separation of the vessels is the inevitable consequence, when the properties of all are thoroughly tried; and the division of a force, is the first step towards its defeat; as its proper concentration, is a leading condition of victory. As the poorer vessels cannot imitate the better, the good are compelled to regulate their movements by the bad; which is at once essentially bringing down the best ships of a fleet to the level of its worst; the proposition with which we commenced.

Sir Gervaise Oakes was so great a favourite, that all he asked was usually conceded to him. One of his conditions was, that his vessels should sail equally well; "If you give me fast ships," he said, "I can overtake the enemy; if dull, the enemy can overtake me; and I leave you to say which course will be most likely to bring on an action. At any rate, give me _consorts_; not one flyer, and one drag; but vessels that can keep within hail of each other, without anchoring." The admiralty professed every desire to oblige the gallant commander; and, as he was resolved never to quit the Plantagenet until she was worn out, it was indispensably necessary to find as many fast vessels as possible, to keep her company. The result was literally a fleet of "horses," as Galleygo used to call it; and it was generally said in the service, that "Oakes had a squadron of flyers, if not a flying-squadron."

Vessels like these just mentioned, are usually symmetrical and graceful to the eye, as well as fast. This fact was apparent to Mildred, accustomed as she was to the sight of ships and she ventured to express as much, after she and her companion had stood quite a minute on the cliff, gazing at the grand spectacle beneath them.

"Your vessels look even handsomer than common, Admiral Bluewater," she said, "though a ship, to me, is always an attractive sight."

"This is because they _are_ handsomer than common, my pretty critic.

Vice-Admiral Oakes is an officer who will no more tolerate an ugly ship in his fleet, than a peer of the realm will marry any woman but one who is handsome; unless indeed she happen to be surpa.s.singly rich."

"I have heard that men are accustomed to lose their hearts under such an influence," said Mildred, laughing; "but I did not know before, that they were ever frank enough to avow it!"

"The knowledge has been imparted by a prudent mother, I suppose,"

returned the rear-admiral, in a musing manner; "I wish I stood sufficiently in the parental relation to you, my young friend, to venture to give a little advice, also. Never, before, did I feel so strong a wish to warn a human being of a great danger that I fear is impending over her, could I presume to take the liberty."

"It is not a liberty, but a duty, to warn any one of a danger that is known to ourselves, and not to the person who incurs the risk. At least so it appears to the eyes of a very young girl."

"Yes, if the danger was of falling from these cliffs, or of setting fire to a house, or of any other visible calamity. The case is different, when young ladies, and setting fire to the heart, are concerned."

"Certainly, I can perceive the distinction," answered Mildred, after a short pause; "and can understand that the same person who would not scruple to give the alarm against any physical danger, would hesitate even at hinting at one of a moral character. Nevertheless, if Admiral Bluewater think a simple girl, like me, of sufficient importance to take the trouble to interest himself in her welfare, I should hope he would not shrink from pointing out this danger. It is a terrible word to sleep on; and I confess, besides a little uneasiness, to a good deal of curiosity to know more."

"This is said, Mildred, because you are unaccustomed to the shocks which the tongue of rude man may give your sensitive feelings."