True Blue Part 27

Sad was her state. Her mizen-mast was gone, and her two other masts and bowsprit were desperately wounded; her yards were shattered; all her running and most of her standing rigging was shot away, and her sails were in shreds and tatters. Twenty-three guns lay dismounted; her starboard quarter gallery had been carried away, and her best bower anchor with the starboard cathead was towing under her stem. Her brave Captain was mortally wounded, and she had three officers, eleven marines, and thirty seamen killed, and three officers, nineteen marines and ninety-one seamen wounded. The survivors immediately began to fish the masts, repair the damaged rigging, and to secure the lower-deck ports, through which the water was rushing at every roll. Her adventures were not over, though; for at 3 p.m., on her homeward course, she fell in with the _Jemappes_, wholly dismasted, and moved only by means of her spritsails. The _Brunswick_, which had received, early in the day, considerable annoyance from her, luffed up under her lee for the purpose of capturing her; but her crew displayed the Union-Jack over her quarter, and hailed that she had struck to the English Admiral, at the same time pointing at the _Queen_, then some distance to the south.

The a.s.sertion being credited, the _Brunswick_ stood on, and happily reached Plymouth Sound in safety, where, on the 30th, her brave Captain, John Harvey, died.

Her gallant opponent, meantime, the _Vengeur_, soon after they parted, lost her wounded fore and main masts, the latter in its fall carrying away the head of the mizen-mast. Thus reduced to a complete wreck, she rolled her ports deeply in the water, and the lids of those on the larboard side having been torn or knocked off in her late engagement, she filled faster than ever. Hopeless seemed the fate of all on board.

Her officers scarcely expected that she could float many hours, or indeed minutes, longer.

None of her own consorts could come to her a.s.sistance. Her boats were knocked to pieces; there was no time to construct a raft, and the sea was too rough to launch one. Her decks were covered with the dead and dying; her c.o.c.kpit full of desperately wounded men, not less than two hundred in all. Discipline was at end. Many broke into the spirit-room. Many burst forth into wild Republican songs, and insisted on the tricoloured flag being again hoisted.

Their brave Captain looked on with grief and pain at what was going forward, and did his utmost to restore order. He had a young son with him--a gallant little fellow, who had stood unharmed by his side during the hottest of the fight; and was he now thus to perish? Could he save the boy? There seemed no hope.

Captain Garland had been aloft all day with his gla.s.s, as had also several of his officers, eagerly watching the proceedings of the two fleets. Never for a moment did he doubt on which side victory would drop her wreath of laurel; still his heart beat with an anxiety unusual for him. He had remarked the two ships remaining hotly engaged, yardarm to yardarm out of the line, and he had never lost sight of them altogether. What their condition would be after so desperate and lengthened an encounter he justly surmised, and he at length bore down to aid a friend in capturing an enemy, or to succour one or the other.

The _Ruby_ had more than one ship to contend with on her way, and her boats were summoned by signal to take possession of a prize; so that the evening was drawing on when she, with another ship, and the _Rattler_ cutter, got down to the sinking Frenchman.

Evidently, from the depth of the shattered seventy-four in the water, and the slow way in which she rolled, she had but a short time longer to float. The guns were secured, and every boat that could swim was instantly lowered from the sides of the British ships. The gallant seamen showed themselves as eager to save life as they had been to destroy it.

"Jump, jump, Jean c.r.a.paud!--jump, jump, friends!" they shouted as they got alongside. "We'll catch you, never fear," they added, holding out their arms.

Numbers of Frenchmen, begrimed with powder and covered with blood, threw themselves headlong into the boats, and had it not been for the English seamen, would have been severely injured. Some refused to come, and looked through the ports, shouting, "Vive la Nation!", "Vive la Republique!"

"Poor fools!" cried Paul Pringle sadly; "they'll soon be singing a different tune when the water is closing over their heads. That will bring them too late to their senses."

The boats, as fast as their eager crews could urge them, went backwards and forwards between the sinking Frenchman and the English ships. Some hundreds had been taken off; but still the wounded and many of the drunken remained.

Sir Henry Elmore commanded one of the boats, and True Blue was in her.

In one of her early trips an officer appeared at one of the ports, dragging forward a young midshipman.

"Monsieur," he said, hearing Sir Henry speak French, "I beg that you will take this brave boy in your boat. He wishes to be one of the last to leave the ship, and, as you see, we know not how soon she may go down, and he may be lost. He is our Captain's son, and where his father is I cannot say."

"Gladly--willingly," answered Sir Henry. "And you, my friend, come with the boy."

The lad showed signs of resistance; but True Blue sprang up into the port, aided by a boathook which he held, and, taking the lad round the waist, leaped with him into the boat. The officer refused to come, saying that he had duties to which he must attend; and the boat being now full, Sir Henry had to return to the frigate.

On hastening back to the ship, the officer again appeared. "I will accompany you now," he said, leaping in and taking his seat in the sternsheets. "But I have been searching in vain for our brave Captain Renaudin. What can have, become of him I do not know. If he is lost, it will break that poor boy's heart, they were so wrapped up in each other."

The boat, as he spoke, was rapidly filling with French seamen.

"Shove off! shove off!" cried Sir Henry energetically.

It was time, indeed. There was a general rush from all the decks and ports of the hapless _Vengeur_. Some threw themselves into the water, some headlong into the boats; others danced away, shouting as before; while one, more drunken or frantic than the rest, waved over her counter the tricoloured flag under which the ship had been so gallantly fought.

The boats shoved off and pulled away as fast as they could move; there was danger in delay. The men pulled for their lives. The ship gave a heavy lurch, the madmen shouted louder than ever; and then every voice was silent, and down she went like some huge monster beneath the waves, which speedily closed over the spot where she had been, not a human being floating upwards alive from her vast hull, now the tomb of nearly a third of her crew.

There were many other desperate encounters that day, but none so gallantly fought out to the death as that between the _Brunswick_ and the _Vengeur_. Six line-of-battle ships were secured as prizes. The total loss of the French in killed, wounded, and prisoners was not less than 7000 men, of whom fully 3000 were killed.

The whole loss of the English on the 1st of June, and on the previous days, was 290 killed and 858 wounded. The French having suffered more in their hulls than in their masts and rigging, were able to manoeuvre better than the English; and Admiral Villaret, being content with having secured four of his ships, made no attempt to renew the battle, but under all the sail he could set, with the dismasted ships in tow, stood away to the northward, and by 6 p.m. was completely out of sight, a single frigate only remaining astern to reconnoitre.

Thus ended this celebrated sea-fight, chronicled in the naval annals of England as the glorious First--1st of June. Its immediate results were in themselves not important; but it showed Englishmen what they were ready enough to believe, that they could thrash the Frenchmen as in days of yore; and it taught the French to dread the dogged resolution and stern courage of the English, and to be prepared to suffer defeat whenever they should meet on equal terms.

The news of the victory reached London on the 10th. So important was it considered, that Lord Chatham carried the account of it to the opera, and just after the second act it was made known to the house. A burst of transport interrupted the opera, and never was any scene of emotion so rapturous as the audience exhibited when the band struck up "Rule Britannia!" The same enthusiasm welcomed the news at the other theatres. The event was celebrated throughout the night by the ringing of bells and firing of cannon, and the next day at noon by the firing of the Park and Tower guns. For three successive evenings also the whole metropolis was illuminated.

A few days afterwards, the King himself, with the Queen and Royal Family, went to Portsmouth to visit the fleet. Lord Howe's flag was shifted to a frigate, and the royal standard was hoisted on board the _Queen Charlotte_. The whole garrison was under arms, and the concourse of people was immense. The King, with his own hand, carried a valuable diamond-hilted sword from the Commissioner's house down to the boat. As soon as His Majesty arrived on board the _Queen Charlotte_, with numbers of his ministers and n.o.bles, and the officers of the fleet standing round on the quarterdeck, he presented the sword to Lord Howe, as a mark of his satisfaction and entire approbation of his conduct.

As their Majesties' barges pa.s.sed, the crews cheered, the ships saluted, the bands played martial symphonies, and every sign of a general enthusiasm was exhibited.

The next day, the King gave audience to the officers of Lord Howe's fleet, and to the officers of the army and navy generally; and after their Majesties had dined at the Commissioner's house, they proceeded up the harbour to view the six French prizes which lay there at their moorings.

The primary object for which the fleet had put to sea was not accomplished; the great American convoy was not fallen in with, nor did Admiral Montague succeed in intercepting it, though he himself met Admiral Villaret's defeated Squadron, and might, had the French shown more courage, have been overpowered by it. He avoided an engagement and returned into port; and a day or two afterwards, the expected convoy appeared off the French coast, and gained a harbour in safety.

The _Ruby_ had arrived with the rest of the fleet at Spithead. The seamen treated their prisoners with the greatest kindness and humanity; and even Paul Pringle declared that the Jean c.r.a.pauds were not after all such bad fellows, if you got them by themselves to talk to quietly.

Young Renaudin, the son of the brave Captain of the _Vengeur_, during their ten days' pa.s.sage home, became a great pet among the officers and midshipmen. Still his spirits were very low, and he was very despondent, believing that his father was lost to him for ever. He had especially attached himself to Sir Henry Elmore and Johnny Nott, who, remembering their own preservation from foundering, had a fellow-feeling for him, and more especially looked after all his wants, while True Blue was appointed to attend on him.

The day after their arrival, Sir Henry got leave to go on sh.o.r.e and take their young prisoner, as well as Nott and True Blue, with him. Scarcely had they touched the point, than the boy sprang from the boat, and, breathless with excitement, rushed into the arms of a gentleman who had just landed with some English officers.

"_Mon pere! mon pere_!" exclaimed the boy.

"_Mon fils_! _mon fils_!" cried the gentleman, enclosing him in his arms and bursting into tears.

It was the gallant Captain of the _Vengeur_.

"Next to winning the battle, I would sooner have seen that meeting between the brave French Captain and his son than anything else I know of!" exclaimed True Blue as he recounted the adventure to Tim Fid, Harry Hartland, and other messmates on board the _Ruby_.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

A considerable time had pa.s.sed after that celebrated 1st of June, and the French had learned to suspect who were to be the masters at sea, whatever they might have thought of their own powers on sh.o.r.e, when a fine new corvette of eighteen guns, the _Gannet_, was standing across the British Channel on a cruise. Her master and commander was Captain Brine, long first lieutenant of the _Ruby_. Her first lieutenant was a very gallant officer, Mr Digby; and her second was Sir Henry Elmore, who was glad to go to sea again with his old friend Captain Brine. She had a boatswain, who had not long received his warrant for that rank, Paul Pringle by name; her gunner was Peter Ogle, and her carpenter Abel Bush; while one of her youngest though most active A.B.s was Billy True Blue Freeborn. She had a black cook too. He was not a very good one; but he played the fiddle, and that was considered to make amends for his want of skill.

"For why," he used to remark, "if my duff hard, I fiddle much; you dance de more, and den de duff go down--what more you want?"

True Blue's three G.o.dfathers had resolved to become warrant-officers if they could, and all had studied hard to pa.s.s their examinations, which they did in a very satisfactory way.

Their example was not lost upon True Blue. "I have never been sorry that I am not on the quarterdeck," said he one day to Paul. "But, G.o.dfather, I shall be if I cannot become a boatswain. That's what I am fitted for, and that's what my father would have wished me to be, I'm sure."

"That he would, Billy," answered Paul. "You see a boatswain's an officer and wears a uniform; and he's a seaman, too, so to speak, and that's what your father wished you to be; and I'll tell you what, G.o.dson, if some of these days, when you're old enough, you becomes a boatswain, and when the war's over you goes on sh.o.r.e and marries Mary Ogle, so that you'll have a home of your own when I am under hatches, that's all I wishes for you. It's the happiest lot for any man--a good wife, a snug little cottage, a garden to dig in, with a summer-house to smoke your pipe in, and maybe a berth in the dockyard, just to keep you employed and your legs going, is all a man like you or me can want for, and that is what I hope you may get."

Some young men would have turned the matter off with a laugh, but True Blue replied, "Ay, G.o.dfather, there isn't such a girl between the North Foreland and the Land's End so good and so pretty to my mind as Mary Ogle; and that I'll maintain, let others say what they will."

"True, boy, true!" cried Paul, slapping him affectionately on the shoulder. "You are right about Mary; and when a lad does like a girl, it's pleasant to see that he really does like her right heartily and honestly, and isn't ashamed of saying so."

The _Gannet_ had altogether a picked crew, and Captain Brine was on the lookout to give them every opportunity of distinguishing themselves.

There were, to be sure, some not quite equal to the rest. Tim Fid and Harry Hartland had joined with True Blue, and poor Gregory Gipples had managed still to hang on in the service, though, as his messmates observed, he was more suited to sweep the decks than to set the Thames on fire.

As yet the saucy little _Gannet_, as her crew delighted to call her, had done nothing particularly to boast of, except capturing and burning a few _cha.s.se-marees_, looking into various holes and corners of the French coast, exchanging shots with small batteries here and there, and keeping the French coastguard in a very lively and active condition, never knowing when they might receive a nine-pound round-shot in the middle of one of their lookout towers, or be otherwise disturbed in their nocturnal slumbers.

Captain Brine was up the coast and down the coast in every direction; and if he could manage to appear at a point where the wind was least likely to allow him to be, by dint of slashing at it in the offing against a head wind, or by creeping in sh.o.r.e with short tacks, he was always more pleased and satisfied, and so were his crew.

The wind was north-east, the ship's head was south; it was in the month of March, and the weather not over balmy.