At this she began to be frightened much, and her fright grew worse, as I described the unpleasantness of hanging; how I had helped myself to run up nine good men at the yardarm. And a fine thing for their souls, no doubt, to stop them from more mischief, and let them go up while the Lord might think that other men had injured them.
“Your ladyship,” I began again, when I saw all her delicate colour ebbing; “it is not for a poor hunted man to dare to beg a favour.”
“Oh yes, it is, it is,” she cried; “that is the very time to do it. Anything in my power, David, after all you have done for me.”
“Then all that I want of your ladyship is to get me rated aboard of Captain Drake Bampfylde’s ship.”
She coloured up so clearly that I was compelled to look away: and then she said—
“How do you know—I mean who can have told you that—but are you not too—perhaps a little—”
“Too old, your ladyship? Not a day. I am worth half-a-dozen of those young chips who have got no bones to their legs yet. And as for shooting, if his Honour wants a man to train a cannon, I can hit a marlinspike with a round-shot, at a mile and a half, as soon as I learn the windage.”
For I knew by this time that Captain Bampfylde’s ship, the Alcestis, was in reserve, as a feeder for the Royal Navy, to catch young hands and train them to some knowledge of sealife, and smartness, and the styles of gunnery. And who could teach them these things better than a veteran like me?
Miss Carey smiled at my conceit, as perhaps she considered it; “Well, Davy, if you can fire a gun, as well as you can a hayrick—”
“No more, your ladyship, I beseech you. Even walls like these have ears; and every time I see my shadow, I take it for a constable. I am sure there are two men after me—”
“Have you then two shadows?” she asked, in her peculiar pleasant way: “at any rate no one will dare to meddle with you, or any of us, I should hope, in the General’s own house. Come in here. I expect, or at least I think, there is some prospect of a boat from the Alcestis coming up the river this very evening. Perhaps you have some baggage.”
“No, your ladyship, not a bit. They burned me out of all of it. But I saved some money kindly, by special grace of God, at the loss of all my leg-hair.”
I ought not to have said that, I knew, directly after uttering it, to a young lady who could not yet be up to things of that kind.
XLI
The Right Man in the Right Place
The very next day, I was afloat as a seaman of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. None but a sailor can imagine what I felt and what I thought. Here for years I had been adrift from the very work God shaped me for, wrecked before my time by undue violence of a Frenchman. Also I had bred my son up to supply my place a little; and a very noble fellow, though he could not handle cutlash or lay gun as I had done. But he might have come to it if he ever had come to my own time of life. This however had been cut short by the will of Providence; and now I felt bound to make good for it. Only one thing grieved me, viz., to find the war declining. This went to my heart the more, because our Navy had not done according to its ancient fame, anywhere but at Gibraltar and with Admiral Rodney, in the year before I rejoined it. Off the coast of America, things I could not bear to hear; also the loss of the Royal George, the capture of the Leeward Islands, and of Minorca by the French; and even a British sloop of war taken by a French corvette. Such things moved me to the marrow, after all I had seen and done; and all our ship’s company understood that I returned to the service in the hope to put a stop to it. This reclaiming of me to the thing that I was meant for took less time than I might use to bring a gun to its bearings. That beautiful Miss Carey managed everything with Captain Drake, and in less than fifty kisses they had settled my affairs. I could have no more self-respect, if I said another word.
But the King and the nation won the entire benefit of this. It came to pass that I was made a second-instructor in gunnery, with an entire new kit found me, and six-and-twopence a-week appointed, together with second right to stick a fork into the boiler. Of course I could not have won all this by favour; but showed merit. It had however been allowed me, under an agreement (just enough, yet brought about by special love of justice) that I should receive a month ashore at Newton-Nottage, in the course of the spring, whenever it might suit our cruising. My private affairs demanded this; as well as love of neighbours, and strong desire to let them know how much they ought to make of me.
How I disdained my rod and pole, and the long-shore life and the lubberly ways, when I felt once more the bounding of the open water, the spring of the buoyant timbers answering every movement gallantly, the generous vehemence of the canvas, and the noble freedom of the ocean winds around us! The rush up a liquid mountain, and the sway on the balance of the world, then the plunge into the valley, almost out of the sight of God,
