That, however, was quite a trifle, when compared to his next misfortune. Being gazetted to a ship, and the whole crew proud to sail under him, he left the Downs with the wind abaft, and all hands in high spirits. There was nothing those lads could not have done; and in less than twelve hours they could do nothing. A terrible gale from southwest arose; in spite of utmost seamanship they were caught in the callipers of the Varne, and not a score left to tell of it.
These were things to try a man, and prove the stuff inside him. However, he came out gallantly. For being set afloat again, after swimming all night and half a day, he brought into the Portland Roads a Crappo ship of twice his tonnage, and three times his gunnage; and now his sailors were delighted, having hope of prize-money. That they never got, of course (which, no doubt, was all the better for their constitutions), but their knowledge of battle led them to embark again with him, having sense (as we always have) of luck, and a crooked love of a man whose bad luck seems to have taken the turn. And yet their judgment was quite amiss, and any turn taken was all for the worse. Captain Bampfylde did a thing, which even I, in my hotter days, would rather have avoided. He ran a thirty-two gun frigate under the chains of a sixty-four. He thought that they must shoot over him, while he laid his muzzles to her waterline, and then carried her by boarding.
Nothing could have been finer than this idea of doing it, and with eight French ships out of nine, almost, he must have succeeded. But once more his luck came over, like a cloud, and darkened him. The Frenchmen had not only courage (which they have too much of), but also what is not their gift, with lucky people against them, self-command and steadiness. They closed their lower ports, and waited for the Englishmen to come up. They knew that the side of their ship fell in, like the thatch of a rick, from the lower ports, ten feet above the enemy. They had their nettings ready, and a lively sea was running.
It grieves as well as misbecomes me to describe the rest of it. The Englishmen swore with all their hearts at their ladders, the sea, and everything, and their captain was cast down between the two ships, and compelled to dive tremendously; in a word it came to this, that our people either were totally shot and drowned, or spent the next Sunday in prison at Brest.
Now here was a thing for a British captain, such as the possibility of it never could be dreamed of. To have lost one ship upon a French shoal, and the other to a Frenchman! Drake Bampfylde, but for inborn courage, must have hanged himself outright. And, as it was, he could not keep from unaccustomed melancholy. And, when he came home upon exchange, it was no less than his duty to abandon pleasure now, and cheerfulness, and comfort; only to consider how he might redeem his honour.
In the thick of this great trouble came another three times worse. I know not how I could have borne it, if it had been my case, stoutly as I fight against the public’s rash opinions. For this Captain was believed, and with a deal of evidence, to have committed slaughter upon his brother’s children, and even to have buried them. He found it out of his power to prove that really he had not done it, nor had even entertained a wish that it might happen so. Everybody thought how much their dying must avail him; and though all had a good idea of his being upright, most of them felt that this was nothing, in such strong temptation. I have spoken of this before, and may be obliged again to speak of it; only I have rebutted always, and ever shall rebut, low ideas. Yet if truly he did kill them, was he to be blamed or praised, for giving them good burial? The testimony upon this point was no more than that of an unclad man, which must of course have been worthless; until they put him into a sack, and in that form received it. This fellow said that he was coming home towards his family, very late one Friday night; and he knew that it was Friday night because of the songs along the road of the folk from Barnstaple market. He kept himself out of their way, because they had such a heap of clothes on; and being established upon the sands, for the purpose of washing his wife and children, who never had seen water before, and had therefore become visited, he made a shortcut across the sands to the hole they had all helped to scoop out, in a stiff place where some roots grew. This was his home; and not a bad one for a seaside visit. At any rate he seemed to have been as happy there as any man with a family can experience; especially when all the members need continual friction.
This fine fellow was considering how he could get on at all with that necessary practice, if the magistrates should order all his frame to be covered up; and fearing much to lose all chance of any natural action—because there was a crusade threatened—he lay down in the moonlight, and had a thoroughly fine roll in the sand. Before he had
