Part 21 (1/2)
”What! did you have a brush with Mounseer?” the old tar said, greatly interested.
”Yes; we had a bit of a fight with a large privateer off the coast of Spain. Fortunately the old bark carries a long eighteen, as well as her twelves, and when the Frenchman found that we could play at long bowls as well as himself he soon drew off, but not before we had drilled a few holes in his sails and knocked away a bit of his bulwarks.”
”Were you hit, Harry?”
”Yes, two or three shots hulled her, but they did little damage beyond knocking away a few of the fittings and frightening the lady pa.s.sengers. We had a strong crew, and a good many were sorry that the skipper did not hide his teeth and let the Frenchman come close before he opened fire. We should like to have towed him up the river with our flag over the tricolor.”
”There, you see, Harry,” the old sailor said, ”you were just as ready to fight as if you had been on a man-of-war; and while in a sailing s.h.i.+p you only get a chance if one of these privateers happens to see you, in a king's s.h.i.+p you go looking about for an enemy, and when you see one the chances are he is bigger, instead of smaller, than yourself.”
”Ah! well, dad, we shall never quite agree on it, I expect,” the boy said; ”but for all that, I do mean to serve for a few years in a man-of-war. I expect that we may have a chance of seeing some fighting in the West Indies. There are, they say, several French cruisers in that direction, and although we shall have a considerable convoy the Frenchmen generally have the legs of our s.h.i.+ps. I believe that some of the vessels of the convoy are taking out troops, and that we are going to have a slap at some of the French islands. Has there been any news here since I went?”
”Nothing beyond a few rows with the smugglers. The revenue officers have a busy time here. There's no such place for smuggling on the coast as between Portsmouth and Chichester. These creeks are just the places for smugglers, and there's so much traffic in the Channel that a solitary lugger does not attract the attention of the coastguard as it does where the sea's more empty. However, I don't trouble myself one way or the other about it. I may know a good deal of the smuggling, or I may not, but it's no business of mine. If it were my duty to lend a hand to the coast-guard, I should do it; but as it isn't, I have no ill-will to the smugglers, and am content enough to get my spirits cheap.”
”But, dad, surely it's your duty to prevent the king being cheated?”
Harry said with a smile.
”If the king himself were going to touch the money,” the old sailor said st.u.r.dily, ”I would lend a hand to see that he got it, but there's no saying where this money would have gone. Besides, if the spirits hadn't been run, they would not have been brought over here at all, so after all the revenue is none the worse for the smuggling.”
The boy laughed. ”You can cheat yourself, dad, when you like, but you know as well as I do that smuggling's dishonest, and that those who smuggle cheat the revenue.”
”Ah, well!” the sailor said, ”it may be so, but I don't clearly see that it's my duty to give information in the matter. If I did feel as it were going to be my duty, I should let all my neighbors know it, and take mighty good care that they didn't say anything within earshot of me, that I might feel called on to repeat. And now, let's go up to the cottage and see the old woman.”
”I looked in there for a moment,” Harry said, ”as I pa.s.sed. Mother looks as hale and hearty as she did when I left, and so do you, dad.”
”Yes, we have nothing to complain of,” the old man said. ”I have been so thoroughly seasoned with salt water that it would take a long time for me to decay.”
When they got up to the cottage they found that Jane Langley had got breakfast prepared. Rashers of bacon were smoking on the table, and a large tankard of beer stood by, for in those days the use of tea had not become general in this country.
”Have you heard, mother,” Peter Langley said, ”that the boy is to leave us again in forty-eight hours?”
”No, indeed,” the old woman said; ”but this is hard news. I had hoped that you would be with us for a bit, my boy, for we're getting on fast in life, and may not be here when you return.”
”Oh, mother! we will not think of such a thing as that,” Harry said.
”Father was just saying that he's so seasoned that even time cannot make much of such a tough morsel; and you seem as hearty as he is.”
”Aye, boy,” Peter said, ”that be true, but when old oak does come down, he generally falls sudden. However, we won't make our first meal sad by talking of what might be.”
Gayly during the meal they chatted over the incidents of Harry's voyage to India and back. It was his second trip. The lad had had a much better education than most boys in his rank of life at that time, the boatswain having placed him at the age of ten in charge of a schoolmaster at Portsmouth. When Harry had reached that age Peter had retired from the service, and had settled down at Hayling, but for two years longer he had kept Harry at school. Then he had apprenticed him to a firm of s.h.i.+powners in London, and one of the officers under whom Peter had served had spoken to the heads of the firm, so that the boy was put in a s.h.i.+p commanded by a kind and considerate officer, and to whose charge he was specially recommended. Thus he had not forgotten what he had learned at school, as is too often the case with lads in his position. His skipper had seen that he not only kept up what he knew, but that he studied for an hour or so each day such subjects as would be useful to him in his career.
After breakfast the pair again went out onto the sandhills, Peter, as usual, carrying a huge telescope with him, with which he was in the habit of surveying every s.h.i.+p as she rounded the west of the island and came running in through the channel to Portsmouth. Most of the men-of-war he knew in an instant, and the others he could make a shrewd guess at. Generally when alone with Harry he was full of talk of the sea, of good advice as to the lad's future bearing, and of suggestions and hints as to the best course to be adopted in various emergencies. But to-day he appeared unusually thoughtful, and smoked his pipe, and looked out in silence over the sea, scarcely even lifting his telescope to his eye.
”I've been thinking, Harry,” he said at last, ”that as you are going away again, and, as the old woman says, you may not find us both here when you come back, it is right that I should tell you a little more about yourself. I once told you, years ago, that you were not my son, and that I would give you more particulars some day.”
The lad looked anxiously up at the old sailor. It was a matter which he had often thought over in his mind, for although he loved the honest tar and his good wife as much as he could have done his natural parents, still, since he had known that he was their adopted son only, he had naturally wondered much as to who his parents were, and what was their condition in life.
”I thought it as well,” the old sailor began, ”not to tell you this here yarn until you were getting on. Boys' heads get upset with a little breeze, especially if they have no ballast, and though it isn't likely now that you will ever get any clew as to your birth, and it will make no difference whether it was a duke or a s.h.i.+p's caulker who was your father, still it's right that you should know the facts, as no one can say when they start on a voyage in life what craft they may fall aboard before they've done. It may be, Harry, that as you intends to stick to the merchant service--saving, of course, that little time you mean to serve on board a king's s.h.i.+p--you may rise to be a skipper, and perhaps an owner. It may be, boy, that as a skipper you may fall in love with some taut craft sailing in your convoy. I've seen such things before now, and then the fact that you might be, for aught you know, the son of a marquis instead of being that of a boatswain, might score in your favor. Women have curious notions, and though, for my part, I can't see that it makes much difference where the keel of a craft was laid as long as it's sound and well-built, there are those who thinks different.
”Well, to tell you the yarn. It were nigh fourteen years ago that I was boatswain aboard the _Alert_ frigate, as taut a craft as ever sailed. We had a smart captain and as good a crew as you'd want to see. We were cruising in the West Indies, and had for months been, off and on, in chase of a craft that had done much damage there. She carried a black flag, and her skipper was said to be the biggest villain that ever even commanded a pirate. Scarce a week pa.s.sed but some s.h.i.+p was missing. It mattered little to him whether she sailed under the English, the French, or the Spanish flag; all was fish to him. Many and many a vessel sailed laden that never reached Europe.
Sometimes a few charred timbers would be thrown up on the sh.o.r.e of the islands, showing that the s.h.i.+p to which they belonged had been taken and burned before she had gone many days on her way. Often and often had the pirate been chased. She was bark-rigged, which was in itself a very unusual thing with pirates--indeed, I never knew of one before.
But she had been, I believe, a merchantman captured by the pirate, and was such a beauty that he hoisted his flag on her, and handed his own schooner over to his mate. Somehow or other he had altered her ballast, and maybe lengthened her a bit, for those pirates have a rendezvous in some of the islands, where they are so strong that they can, if need be, build a s.h.i.+p of their own. Anyhow, she was the fastest s.h.i.+p of her cla.s.s that ever was seen on those seas, and though our cruisers had over and over again chased her, she laughed at them, and would for a whole day keep just out of reach of their bow-chasers with half her sails set, while the cruisers were staggering under every rag they could put on their masts. Then when she was tired of that game she would hoist her full canvas and leave the king's vessel behind as if she was standing still. Once or twice she nearly got caught by cruisers coming up in different directions, but each time she managed to slip away without ever having a rope or stay started by a shot. We in the _Alert_ had been on her footsteps a dozen times, but had had no more luck than the rest of them, and the mere name of the _Seamew_ was sufficient to put any one of us into a pa.s.sion. There wasn't one of the s.h.i.+p's company, from the captain down to the powder-monkey, who wouldn't have cheerfully given a year's pay to get alongside the _Seamew_. The _Alert_ carried thirty-two guns, and our crew was stronger than usual in a vessel of that size, for there was a good deal of boat service, and it was considered that at any moment 'Yellow Jack' might lay a good many hands up--or down, as the case may be. Well, one night we were at anchor in Porto Rico, and the first lieutenant had strolled up with two of the middies to the top of a hill just before the sun went down. He had taken a gla.s.s with him.