The Maid of Sker

as what I had scarcely room for⁠—increase of humility. This is, that though Captain Bampfylde had some little spare time at Plymouth, he had such command of himself that he never went near his beloved Isabel. Nothing could have so checked a man of heartiness and bravery, except the strongest power of honour, and a long time of chastisement. There was a lovely young woman, and here a fine though middle-aged man, her husband; they loved one another with heart and soul, and they never met, but through a telescope! It may have been right, or it may have been wrong⁠—I should have thought it wrong, perhaps, if the case had been my own⁠—but they pledged their honour and kept it. Drake Bampfylde (like his father) had a strength of trust in Providence. But this trust has no landed security, now that the Lord has found the world so clever, that He need not interfere with it.

The seventy-four-gun ship Defence was known to be the fastest sailer in the British Navy; not from her build alone, or balance, but from my careful trim of her sails, and knowledge of how to handle her. Hours and hours I spent aloft, among lifts, and braces, and clue-garnets, marking the draw of every sail, and righting all useless bellying. So that I could now have warranted her the first of our Navy to break the line, if rigged according to my directions, and with me for her master. However (while I lay docked like this, careened I might say, and unlikely ever to carry a keel again), the Defence, without my knowledge even, being new-masted, sailed to join the Channel Fleet, with Heaviside acting as her master; and as might have been expected, fell to leeward one knot in three. And even worse than this befell her; for in the second of those two miserable actions, under Hotham in the year 1795, when even Nelson could do nothing, the Defence having now another captain as well as a stupid master, actually backed her mizzen-topsail, in the rear of the enemy, when the signal was to fill and stand on. However, as even that famous ship the Agamemnon did nothing that day, through getting no opportunity, we must forgive poor Heaviside, especially as he was not captain. But the one who ground his teeth the hardest, and could forgive nobody, was the Honourable Rodney Bluett, now first lieutenant of the Defence. By this time everyone must desire to know why Captain Bampfylde was not there, as he might have been, and might have made himself famous, but for his usual ill-fortune. This had carried him to the East Indies, before the Defence had finished refitting; and there, with none of his old hands near him, he commanded a line-of-battle ship, under Commodore Rainier; and after some hard work, and very fine fighting, drove the brave Dutchmen out of the castle of Trincomalee, in August 1795, which we came to hear of afterwards.

Thus it was that everybody seemed to be scattered everywhere. None of us happened to hold together, except those three poor savages; and they, by a sort of instinct, managed to get over accidents. For they stuck, with that fidelity which is lost by education, to Rodney Bluett, as soon as ever poor Father Davy failed them. But this is a melancholy subject, and must soon be done with.

Let me, then, not dwell upon this visitation of the Lord for a moment longer than the claims of nation and of kin combine to make it needful. Nor did it seem to matter much for a long time what became of me. The very first thing I remember, after months of wandering, has something to do with the hush of waves, and the soft breath of heaven spread over me. Also kind young voices seemed to be murmuring around me, with a dear regard and love, and sense of pretty watchfulness; and the sound of my native tongue as soft as the wool of a nest to my bosom.

Because I was lying in a hammock, slung, by Colonel Lougher’s orders, betwixt the very same mooring-posts (at about half-tide in Newton Bay) which truly enabled the sons of Devon to make such a safe job of stealing his rocks. Not only the Colonel, but Lady Bluett, who generally led his judgment, felt by this time the pleasure of owing true gratitude to somebody. My fatherly care of the young lieutenant had turned him out so nobly.

It misbecomes me to speak of this; and it misbecame me to speak at all, with the sea-breeze flowing over me, the first words of knowledge that I had spoken for how long I know not. Nothing can be too high, or too low, for human nature at both ends; but I ought to have known better than to do the thing I did.

“Give me a pipe,” was all I said; and then I turned away, and cared not whether I got my pipe, or whether the rising tide extinguished me.

“Here is your pipe, sir,” came in a beautiful voice from down below me; “and we have the tinder ready. Bunny, let me do it now.”

That pipe must have saved my life. Everybody said so. It came and went in curls of comfort through the hollow dying places of my head, that had not even blood enough to call for it; and then it never left my soul uneasy about anything. Hammock and all must have gone afloat, with the rapid rise of the spring, except for Colonel Lougher’s foresight.

Who was it that watched me so, and would have waited by my side, until the waves were over her? Who was it that kept on listening, to let me know, while I could not speak? Who was it that gave a little bit of a sigh, every now and then, and then breathed hard to smother it? Who was it, or who could it