The Two Admirals Part 39

"In the days of Columbus, the Spaniards had something to boast of in that way, too, Sir Gervaise," Atwood remarked.

"Ay, but that was a long time ago, and they have got bravely over it. I account for the deficiencies of both the French and Spanish marines something in this way, Greenly. Columbus, and the discovery of America, brought ships and sailors into fashion. But a ship without an officer fit to command her, is like a body without a soul. Fashion, however, brought your young n.o.bles into their services, and men were given vessels because their fathers were dukes and counts, and not because they knew any thing about them."

"Is our own service entirely free from this sort of favouritism?"

quietly demanded the captain.

"Far from it, Greenly; else would not Morganic have been made a captain at twenty, and old Parker, for instance, one only at fifty. But, somehow, our cla.s.ses slide into each other, in a way that neutralizes, in a great degree, the effect of birth. Is it not so, Atwood?"

"_Some_ of our cla.s.ses, Sir Gervaise, manage to _slide_ into all the best places, if the truth must be said."

"Well, that is pretty bold for a Scotchman!" rejoined the vice-admiral, good-humouredly. "Ever since the accession of the house of Stuart, we've built a bridge across the Tweed that lets people pa.s.s in only one direction. I make no doubt this Pretender's son will bring down half Scotland at his heels, to fill all the berths they may fancy suitable to their merits. It's an easy way of paying bounty--promises."

"This affair in the north, they tell me, seems a little serious," said Greenly. "I believe this is Mr. Atwood's opinion?"

"You'll find it serious enough, if Sir Gervaise's notion about the bounty be true," answered the immovable secretary. "Scotia is a small country, but it's well filled with 'braw sperits,' if there's an opening for them to prove it."

"Well, well, this war between England and Scotland is out of place, while we have the French and Spaniards on our hands. Most extraordinary scenes have we had ash.o.r.e, yonder, Greenly, with an old Devonshire baronet, who slipped and is off for the other world, while we were in his house."

"Magrath has told me something of it, sir; and, he tells me the _fill-us-null-us_--hang me if I can make out his gibberish, five minutes after it was told to me."

"_Filius nullius_, you mean; n.o.body's baby--the son of n.o.body--have you forgotten your Latin, man?"

"Faith, Sir Gervaise, I never had any to forget. My father was a captain of a man-of-war before me, and he kept me afloat from the time I was five, down to the day of his death; Latin was no part of my spoon-meat."

"Ay--ay--my good fellow, I knew your father, and was in the third ship from him, in the action in which he fell," returned the vice-admiral, kindly. "Bluewater was just ahead of him, and we all loved him, as we did an elder brother. You were not promoted, then."

"No, sir, I was only a midshipman, and didn't happen to be in his own ship that day," answered Greenly, sensibly touched with this tribute to his parent's merit; "but I was old enough to remember how n.o.bly you all behaved on the occasion. Well,"--slily brushing his eye with his hand,--"Latin may do a schoolmaster good, but it is of little use on board ship. I never had but one scholar among all my cronies and intimates."

"And who was he, Greenly? You shouldn't despise knowledge, because you don't understand it. I dare say your intimate was none the worse for a little Latin--enough to go through _nullus, nulla, nullum_, for instance. Who was this intimate, Greenly?"

"John Bluewater--handsome Jack, as he was called; the younger brother of the admiral. They sent him to sea, to keep him out of harm's way in some love affair; and you may remember that while he was with the admiral, or _Captain_ Bluewater, as he was then, I was one of the lieutenants.

Although poor Jack was a soldier and in the guards, and he was four or five years my senior, he took a fancy to me, and we became intimate.

_He_ understood Latin, better than he did his own interests."

"In what did he fail?--Bluewater was never very communicative to me about that brother."

"There was a private marriage, and cross guardians, and the usual difficulties. In the midst of it all, poor John fell in battle, as you know, and his widow followed him to the grave, within a month or two.

'Twas a sad story all round, and I try to think of it as little as possible."

"A private marriage!" repeated Sir Gervaise, slowly. "Are you quite sure of _that_? I don't think Bluewater is aware of that circ.u.mstance; at least, I never heard him allude to it. Could there have been any issue?"

"No one can know it better than myself, as I helped to get the lady off, and was present at the ceremony. That much I _know_. Of issue, I should think there was none; though the colonel lived a year after the marriage. How far the admiral is familiar with all these circ.u.mstances I cannot say, as one would not like to introduce the particulars of a private marriage of a deceased brother, to his commanding officer."

"I am glad there was no issue, Greenly--particular circ.u.mstances make me glad of that. But we will change the discourse, as these family disasters make one melancholy; and a melancholy dinner is like ingrat.i.tude to Him who bestows it."

The conversation now grew general, and in due season, in common with the feast, it ended. After sitting the usual time, the guests retired. Sir Gervaise then went on deck, and paced the p.o.o.p for an hour, looking anxiously ahead, in quest of the French signal; and, failing of discovering them, he was fain to seek his berth out of sheer fatigue.

Before he did this, however, the necessary orders were given; and that to call him, should any thing out of the common track occur, was repeated no less than four times.

CHAPTER XXI.

"Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean--roll Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; Man marks the earth with ruin--his control Stops with the sh.o.r.e;--upon the watery plain The wrecks are all thy deed."

CHILDE HAROLD.

It was broad day-light, when Sir Gervaise Oakes next appeared on deck.

As the scene then offered to his view, as well as the impression it made on his mind, will sufficiently explain to the reader the state of affairs, some six hours later than the time last included in our account, we refer him to those for his own impressions. The wind now blew a real gale, though the season of the year rendered it less unpleasant to the feelings than is usual with wintry tempests. The air was even bland, and still charged with the moisture of the ocean; though it came sweeping athwart sheets of foam, with a fury, at moments, which threatened to carry the entire summits of waves miles from their beds, in spray. Even the aquatic birds seemed to be terrified, in the instants of the greatest power of the winds, actually wheeling suddenly on their wings, and plunging into the element beneath to seek protection from the maddened efforts of that to which they more properly belonged.

Still, Sir Gervaise saw that his ships bore up n.o.bly against the fierce strife. Each vessel showed the same canva.s.s; viz.--a reefed fore-sail; a small triangular piece of strong, heavy cloth, fitted between the end of the bowsprit and the head of the fore-top-mast; a similar sail over the quarter-deck, between the mizzen and main masts, and a close-reefed main-top-sail Several times that morning, Captain Greenly had thought he should be compelled to subst.i.tute a lower surface to the wind than that of the sail last mentioned. As it was an important auxiliary, however, in steadying the ship, and in keeping her under the command of her helm, on each occasion the order had been delayed, until he now began to question whether the canva.s.s could be reduced, without too great a risk to the men whom it would be necessary to send aloft. He had decided to let it stand or blow away, as fortune might decide. Similar reasoning left nearly all the other vessels under precisely the same canva.s.s.

The ships of the vice-admiral's division had closed in the night, agreeably to an order given before quitting the anchorage, which directed them to come within the usual sailing distance, in the event of the weather's menacing a separation. This command had been obeyed by the ships astern carrying sail hard, long after the leading vessels had been eased by reducing their canva.s.s. The order of sailing was the Plantagenet in the van, and the Carnatic, Achilles, Thunderer, Blenheim, and Warspite following, in the order named; some changes having been made in the night, in order to bring the ships of the division into their fighting-stations, in a line ahead, the vice-admiral leading. The superiority of the Plantagenet was a little apparent, notwithstanding; the Carnatic alone, and that only by means of the most careful watching, being able to keep literally in the commander-in-chief's wake; all the other vessels gradually but almost imperceptibly setting to leeward of it. These several circ.u.mstances struck Sir Gervaise, the moment his foot touched the p.o.o.p, where he found Greenly keeping an anxious look-out on the state of the weather and the condition of his own ship; leaning at the same time, against the spanker-boom to steady himself in the gusts of the gale. The vice-admiral braced his own well-knit and compact frame, by spreading his legs; then he turned his handsome but weather-beaten face towards the line, scanning each ship in succession, as she lay over to the wind, and came wallowing on, shoving aside vast mounds of water with her bows, her masts describing short arcs in the air, and her hull rolling to windward, and lurching, as if boring her way through the ocean. Galleygo, who never regarded himself as a steward in a gale of wind, was the only other person on the p.o.o.p, whither he went at pleasure by a sort of imprescriptibly right.

"Well done, old Planter!" cried Sir Gervaise, heartily, as soon as his eye had taken in the leading peculiarities of the view. "You see, Greenly, she has every body but old Parker to leeward, and she would have him there, too, but he would carry every stick he has, out of the Carnatic, rather than not keep his berth. Look at Master Morganic; he has his main course close-reefed on the Achilles, to luff into his station, and I'll warrant you will get a good six months' wear out of that ship in this one gale; loosening her knees, and jerking her spars like so many whip-handles; and all for love of the new fashion of rigging an English two-decker like an Algerian xebec! Well, let him tug his way up to windward, Bond-street fashion, if he likes the fun. What has become of the Chloe, Greenly?"

"Here she is, sir, quite a league on our lee-bow, looking out, according to orders."

"Ay, that is her work, and she'll do it effectually.--But I don't see the Driver!"

"She's dead ahead sir," answered Greenly, smiling; "_her_ orders being rather more difficult of execution. Her station would be off yonder to windward, half a league ahead of us; but it's no easy matter to get into that position, Sir Gervaise, when the Plantagenet is really in earnest."

Sir Gervaise laughed, and rubbed his hands, then he turned to look for the Active, the only other vessel of his division. This little cutter was dancing over the seas, half the time under water, notwithstanding, under the head of her main-sail, broad off, on the admiral's weather-beam; finding no difficulty in maintaining her station there, in the absence of all top-hamper, and favoured by the lowness of her hull.

After this he glanced upward at the sails and spars of the Plantagenet, which he studied closely.

"No signs of _de Vervillin_, hey! Greenly?" the admiral asked, when his survey of the whole fleet had ended. "I was in hopes we might see something of _him_, when the light returned this morning."

"Perhaps it is quite as well as it is, Sir Gervaise," returned the captain. "We could do little besides look at each other, in this gale, and Admiral Bluewater ought to join before I should like even to do _that_."

"Think you so, Master Greenly!--There you are mistaken, then; for I'd lie by him, were I alone in this ship, that I might know where he was to be found as soon as the weather would permit us to have something to say to him."

These words were scarcely uttered, when the look-out in the forward cross-trees, shouted at the top of his voice, "sail-ho!" At the next instant the Chloe fired a gun, the report of which was just heard amid the roaring of the gale, though the smoke was distinctly seen floating above the mists of the ocean; she also set a signal at her naked mizzen-top-gallant-mast-head.

"Run below, young gentleman," said the vice-admiral, advancing to the break of the p.o.o.p and speaking to a midshipman on the quarter-deck; "and desire Mr. Bunting to make his appearance. The Chloe signals us--tell him not to look for his knee-buckles."

A century since, the last injunction, though still so much in use on ship-board, was far more literal than it is to-day, nearly all cla.s.ses of men possessing the articles in question, though not invariably wearing them when at sea. The midshipman dove below, however, as soon as the words were out of his superior's mouth; and, in a very few minutes, Bunting appeared, having actually stopped on the main-deck ladder to a.s.sume his coat, lest he might too unceremoniously invade the sacred precincts of the quarter-deck, in his shirt-sleeves.

"There it is, Bunting," said Sir Gervaise, handing the lieutenant the gla.s.s; "two hundred and twenty-seven--'a large sail ahead,' if I remember right."

"No, Sir Gervaise, '_sails_ ahead;' the number of them to follow. Hoist the answering flag, quarter-master."

"So much the better! So much the better, Bunting! The number to follow?

Well, _we'll_ follow the number, let it be greater or smaller. Come, sirrah, bear a hand up with your answering flag."

The usual signal that the message was understood was now run up between the masts, and instantly hauled down again, the flags seen in the Chloe descending at the same moment.

"Now for the number of the sails, ahead," said Sir Gervaise, as he, Greenly, and Bunting, each levelled a gla.s.s at the frigate, on board which the next signal was momentarily expected. "Eleven, by George!"