CHAPTER VIII
IN THE CHANNEL
'Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep:
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.'—CAMPBELL.
ne spring afternoon a gentleman was strolling along the cliff path which led to a little fishing village on the Devonshire coast, some miles from Plymouth. He seemed to be in no particular hurry, and indeed to have no special destination, for he stopped once or twice and looked about him, and turned off a little way into the fields as if he were exploring a country that was new to him.
Presently he came in sight of an old man with a wooden leg, who was standing near the edge of the cliff, scanning the wide expanse of dancing water with a telescope. He was so much absorbed in what he was looking at that he never noticed the stranger until he was close to him, when he touched his hat and wished him good-day.
'You are on the look-out for some ship?' said the gentleman, following the direction of the old man's eyes.
'Ay, sir, but my sight ain't what it was. I could have vowed I saw a sail yonder, but I can't be sure. Take a look, will you kindly, sir? Your eyes are a deal younger than mine.'
The new-comer took the glass accordingly, but though his eyes were younger they had had less practice than the old sailor's, and he was obliged to own that he could see nothing.
'You are more used to looking out for ships than I am,' he said, as he gave the glass back.
'Ay, sir, I was afloat, boy and man, over fifty year, and good for a few year more if the "froggies" had left me my leg. They want men with all their limbs, you see, in these times, though I'm seaworthy yet, I fancy, and if Boney ever got ashore here, I'd let 'em know I'd my arms still.'
'And so you've settled down at home here,' said the stranger, throwing himself down on the short green turf.
'Well, my home ain't just here, sir, so to speak. My folks live further inland, but now and again I get a longing for a breath o' salt, and an old messmate of mine here has given me a corner for a bit. For you see, sir, the old ship's in the Channel now, and one might hear something of her any day, or maybe see her even; and what's more, the captain's got our boy with him, you see.'
'Your son, do you mean?'
'No, no, sir, I'm a single man, and this here's a quarter-deck young gentleman, and will make as fine an officer as any in the service. And when I said to our Miss Angel that I was thinking of coming down here for a bit, where I could keep an eye on him, as it might be, I could see she was pleased. And so here I am and on the look-out, for the captain might be bringing in a prize any day, none more likely, and then I'd make a shift to get in to Plymouth and see them both, and there'd be news for the young ladies. But there, sir, you'll forgive me running on like this; they say at home Kiah's the one for a yarn if you've the time to listen; which is my name, sir, Hezekiah Parker, at your service, Kiah for short, so to say, and my parents thinking it maybe be presuming to call a bit of a boy the whole name of a Bible king.'
'Oh, you won't tire me, Kiah,' said the stranger, lying back on the grass with his arms under his head, while he followed with his eyes the flight of a lark up into the untroubled blue sky. 'I've not so many friends to talk to that I get tired of the sound of their voices.'
'You're maybe not from these parts, sir?'
'No, I've been away from England for years,' was the answer. 'I've had some queer ups and downs, and tried being a prisoner, and come very near to leaving my bones in foreign parts.'
Kiah touched his hat with increased respect.
'I ask your pardon, sir. I didn't guess as you'd seen service.'
'No, not your sort of service, Kiah; nothing so fine. I'm nothing grander than a West Indian planter.'
'Well, sir, it's welcome home to you, all the same.'
'Well, I suppose my country is home,' said the stranger, rather sadly, 'but I don't know about the welcome. I've outstayed the time for that, Kiah, and there's no one now will care to see me back.'
'I wouldn't be too sure of that if I was you, sir, especially if you've women folks belonging to you. It's wonderful, sir, how they keep a man's place warm for him, and a deal more than we deserve, I say, that go knocking about the world all our lives, and coming back useless old hulks when we can't do for ourselves any longer. Why, there's my sister Martha, with a man and children of her own to think about, and yet, when I come back with my hand and a half and my timber toe, "Kiah," says she, "you're kindly welcome, so you are, and you shall have a chair by our fire as long as we have a fire ourselves, my dear." And as for our young ladies, I doubt there'll be nobody sit in the young master's place till he comes back himself to fill it.'
'Oh, you and your young master have been good brothers, I daresay,' said the stranger, looking up at the singing lark with rather sad eyes.
'Not so extra particular for me, sir, though Martha and me was good friends enough; and as for the young gentleman, the ladies aren't his sisters but his aunts, you see, he having neither father nor mother, brother nor sister. Bless 'em, they're that wrapped up in him; and yet they haven't spoilt him, not they. "You see, Kiah," Miss Angel says to me, "we feel like as if we must answer to his dear papa, our brother that's dead, for how we bring up his boy; we daren't be pleasing ourselves, Kiah," says she. Dear, now, that's one thing I'm bound to own I miss down here, them coming in and out. But, if you'll believe it, sir, I've got a letter Miss Angel wrote me herself. I got my mate's missus, that's a fine scholar, to write to her for me, and there come a beautiful answer back; leastways them as read it to me says it's written like a book. I can make shift with a chapter of the Bible, but I can't get on with handwriting, you see. But it sounds just like as if she was talking to me, and she sends me a sovereign for a poor soul that lost her husband in a brush in the Channel last month—she's that feeling, Miss Angel, and she knows what it is to have them belonging to her in danger.'
The gentleman put his hand in his pocket.
'I'll give you something for her too,' he said; 'and mind you, Kiah, there's a worse thing than having those belonging to you in danger, and that's to have no one belonging to you at all. I'm staying at Plymouth for a bit, and I shall see you again.'
'Well, I hope you will, sir, and I'm very grateful to you, I'm sure, and so will she be; and you'll make yourself some friends, I doubt, if you be short of relations.'
And then, after fumbling in his pockets, he produced a letter, wrapped up with much care in a sheet of paper.
'May be, sir, you'd like to see the young lady's letter. No, you needn't read it all at once, for you see it's a long letter and very beautiful, and you being a scholar you'll understand that, and if you're coming in to-morrow you'd bring it back to me.'
The stranger promised and put the precious paper in his pocket, and then strolled away along the cliffs.
He had nowhere particular to go and nothing particular to do, only he liked to be out here, where the breeze blew salt and fresh in his face, and where he could see the dancing, plunging waves, and the beautiful line of coast. He had had plenty of hard work in the last few years, and had been tired and ill when he started a few months before for the country which, as he had said to Kiah, must always be home.
And now he found himself wondering whether it were worth while to get strong again, and to be brave and successful as he had been lately, when there was no one in all the world to whom his success made any difference. He had grown more happy and hopeful since he had come to Plymouth, for in those days, when the safety of England was depending from hour to hour upon her coast defences, the very life and heart of England seemed to be stirring and throbbing in the great seaport town. Even now, in these happier days, when no hostile ships are waiting for our weak moments in the Channel, we can hardly stand on Plymouth Hoe and see the stately ships in the port, and the guns ready to thunder defiance from the citadel, and think of Drake turning cheerily from his game of bowls to meet the Armada 'For God and Queen Bess,' without thrilling and glowing at the thought of the little land that rules the waves. And in those days every one was so eager and patriotic, and so ready and willing to fight Boney if he came, that our traveller had caught the enthusiasm too, and was wondering how he could give to his country's service the life that seemed of little use to any one else. Here, on the coast, where the danger was most real and present, people drew together in the sympathy of the one great anxiety, and the lonely man felt as if, in coming back to England, he had really got among friends, who were all ready to talk and tell the latest news and discuss the common safety with him as if he were indeed one of themselves.
He liked the fisher folk, too, in the villages round about, they were so frank and simple and kindly; and once or twice he had been out in their boats, for after the hot southern climate he had come from he felt as if he could not have too much of the fresh salt air. And there was always excitement, too, in the Channel in those days, when even a fishing-boat might have to make sail and get away at her best speed before a French privateer.
When he got back to Plymouth late in the evening after his talk with Kiah Parker he found every one in a state of great excitement. The landlady of the lodgings he had taken during his stay there was eager to tell him the latest news. A frigate had come into the port just at sundown with a fine prize—a French gun-brig, taken after a stubborn fight in which both vessels had suffered severely. The first lieutenant had brought the ship in, the captain being wounded and disabled, but the whole place was ringing with his praise.
It had been a most brilliant capture, only the greatest daring and most skilful management could have carried it out.
Two brigs had both attacked the English frigate, and she had made a feint of flight and then turned on them and managed to sink one and disable the other. She would have to wait for repairs. So much the good landlady had told before her lodger could ask a question, and when she paused for breath he inquired whether she knew the name of the English ship. Certainly, the Mermaid frigate, Captain Maitland; heaven send he was not badly hurt, poor gentleman! Had there been any loss? Not many killed, she thought, a matter of one or two men, and one officer downed, but a many wounded, they were in hospital; and she branched off into stories of sailor friends of her own, while her lodger tried to remember why the name of the ship and the captain were so familiar to him. It came back to him later in the evening, when he was reading his paper after a solitary supper. It was a midshipman of the Mermaid whom he had nursed in a fever in his far-away West Indian home, and it was the praises of Captain Maitland that the lad was always singing. What a pleasant visitor he had been! What a regretful longing he had left behind him for such another blithe stout-hearted English boy who might call that house his home! His late host wondered if he were in Plymouth, and decided to try and find him out next morning, but one of his fishermen friends came to invite him to go on a two days' cruise, and he accepted readily.
It was a bright day, but there were clouds on the horizon and a fresh breeze springing up; there might be a capful of wind at night, the fisherman said, but the gentleman didn't mind that, he knew. The gentleman said he would like it all the better, and he won the men's hearts as they went along before the wind by his questions about navigation, about rocks and shoals and sandbanks, and the adventures which they were ready enough to tell over again. And their guest had stories of his own to tell, about marvellous adventures with mutinous slaves in the West Indies, and of how he had escaped from their hands to be taken by a French privateer, and was freed by a storm in which the ship went down. And in the interest of the tales and the weather and the fishing he almost forgot about the excitement of the day before, for the bringing in of a prize was a common enough event in war time.
In the afternoon the wind freshened to something like a gale; the fishermen were too busy and alert for talk, and their guest was left to his own thoughts. And then he found himself going back to his conversation with the old sailor. What a good cheery old fellow he was, and what a happy view of life he managed to take after all his ups and downs! And one piece of advice which he had given so frankly to his new acquaintance kept running in the stranger's head, it had been there ever since, though he wouldn't let himself think of it. 'It's wonderful,' Kiah had said, 'how women folks keep a man's place warm for him,' and involuntarily he found himself thinking how it would be if he should test the old man's words on his own account.
'No, it's nonsense for me,' he thought; 'she probably doesn't remember that she ever saw me, and since then she can't have heard very attractive accounts. No, no, better not turn up to be an embarrassment to them if they're alive, for even that I don't know.'
Just then one of the fishermen caught his attention by a remark to his companion: 'Ay, poor old Kiah'll take it hard, such a work as he made about him; but after all he couldn't look for better, only it's hard like when the young uns go.'
'Do you know Kiah Parker?' asked the stranger.
'Ay, surely sir, everybody knows Kiah. Poor old chap, he'll be breaking his heart over his young master, as he calls him, for I doubt 'twas him was drowned off the Mermaid in the tussle the other day.'
'Drowned, was he? Is it certain?' asked the visitor, with sudden interest.
'Ay, so they say, not a doubt of it. It's a pity, he was as smart a middy as any afloat, so they say. I saw the bo's'un myself, that was piping his eye like a baby to think of him safe ashore and the lad at the bottom.'
The stranger did not answer. His thoughts had flown to Kiah's young ladies, waiting and watching at home for the boy whom no favouring wind would blow home to them. How strange it seemed, he thought, that that young life should be cut off when so many would mourn for it, and that he, whose life or death made no difference to any one, should have come safely through so many strange accidents and changes and chances of fortune! And then he suddenly remembered that letter which Kiah had given him, and which had been in his pocket unthought of ever since. He felt as if he hardly liked to look at it now, as if it were presumption to read the words of one on whom so terrible a grief had fallen. But he took it out of his pocket, and unfolded it from its wrapping, and glanced at the beginning by the red light of the stormy sunset which was beginning to blaze in the western sky. And as he did so the heading caught his eye: 'Oakfield Cottage.'
He gave a great start, and half dropped the closely-written sheet. And then he laughed at himself. There might be other Oakfield Cottages in the world besides the one which stirred such a host of boyish memories by the very sound of its name. He turned the letter over to look at the signature. There it was, plain enough in the clear, legible writing:
'Your sincere friend,
'ANGELICA WYNDHAM.'
The reader put his hand before his eyes for a moment, seeming to feel again a pair of soft arms round his neck, a curly head pressed against his cheek, while a trembling child's voice whispered to him not to cry because they would wake Betty, and papa and mamma would come back. Little Angel, the little sister whom he had never seen but that once when they grew near together in a few minutes under the shadow of a great grief, she might well have grown into such a woman as old Kiah had spoken of with loving pride.
'Boat ahoy!'
The shout came faint and far away across the gleaming tossing water from where that red glow burned in the west. The fishermen were on the look out at once, a hail in those days might mean something serious; but their passenger sat with the letter unread in his hand, unheeding anything, reading instead a page out of the long ago past.
But after a minute or two the fishermen's excited words brought him back to the present.
'Boat? Not a bit of it. 'Tis a bit of a raft, some poor chap on a spar. English too, 'twas an English shout. Well, and if he was Boney himself we're bound to get him aboard.'
'Where is he?' asked the stranger, shading his eyes from the dazzling sun rays.
onder, sir, don't you see him, there, just where
you're looking? We'll have him aboard in a minute.'
All eyes were fixed on the black moving object in the water, which, as they came nearer, proved to be a large piece of wreckage to which a figure was clinging. Presently it could be seen that the figure was that of a boy, who seemed to be holding to the tossing spars with the last effort of his strength, for when he was hailed again he made no reply, only lifting his head for a moment.
'He'll hardly get hold of a rope,' said one of the men doubtfully; 'he's about done for, that last hail was as much as he could do.'
The next moment the mass of wreckage disappeared for a moment, and when it rose again there was a cry of dismay from the boat, for the boy was gone. Another minute showed him lifted high on the crest of a wave, and, before any one else could move, the strange gentleman was overboard and striking out boldly towards him. A few breathless moments, then he had hold of him, and immediately a rope, thrown by a powerful arm, struck the water close to them. It was the work of a minute to knot it about his waist, and he and his unconscious burden were dragged on board amid the congratulations of the fishermen.
'Well done, sir! Didn't know you could swim like that. Never gave us a chance, no more you did. Take a sup o' this,' and a can was put to his lips; 'never mind about the lad, he'll do well enough. Lift his head a bit, Jack, and loose his jacket. What's that bag hung round his neck? Why, bless us, he's an officer, he is—see his clothes; may be 'tis Kiah's middy; there'd be a thing if we'd picked him up!'
'He's alive, isn't he?' gasped the stranger.
'Alive, sir? Bless you, yes! he's coming round this minute; give us the can there, Tom; turn his face this way. How now, sir; won't you live to drub the "froggies" again, eh?'
Even as he spoke the boy's eyelids fluttered, and then a pair of wide grey eyes looked wonderingly round the group. He closed them again, drew a long breath, and then looked about him with understanding coming back to his face.
'Where am I?' he asked, and at the same moment his fingers seemed to be seeking for something.
'Aboard the Elizabeth of Plymouth, sir, thanks to this here gentleman that took to the water for you when you and your raft parted company. Is it a bit of a leather bag you might be looking for, sir?'
'Yes, is it here?' said the boy eagerly, and trying to lift his head; 'there are French papers in it, despatches I think. I dived after them when they threw them overboard; I kept them as dry as I could.'
'Safe they are, sir, and wonderful dry considering,' said one of the men after a hasty examination.
'You bean't the young gent from the Mermaid frigate, I suppose?' said another, pushing his head into the group.
'I'm Godfrey Wyndham, H.M.S. Mermaid', said the boy faintly, and then, with sudden eagerness, 'Do you know anything about her?'
'Safe in Plymouth, sir, with a nice prize behind her. Every one taking on fine about you, sir.'
'Thank God!' the boy said simply and reverently. At the same moment there was an exclamation:
'What's wrong with the gentleman?'
The stranger had pushed his way through the group and was leaning over the boy, looking whiter than Godfrey himself, and with a strange hungry gaze in his eyes. The kindly fishermen took hold of him, for he was trembling from head to foot.
'You let him be, sir, he'll do all right. Come you below and have a drop o' something, you're dead beat. There, sir, let him be a bit, and he'll talk to you fast enough. He's a tough little heart of oak, he is; let him be a bit and he'll do.'
'What did he say his name was?' said the stranger, kneeling down by the young midshipman and trying to steady his voice.
The fishermen shook their heads; they didn't rightly catch, only he belonged to the Mermaid, they were sure of that. Did the gentleman know him?
'I am not sure; perhaps I do,' said the stranger briefly, and he made a movement as if to carry the boy down to the cabin himself. Two or three pairs of stout arms were ready to help him, and plenty of hearty voices to assure him that the young gentleman would be all right; they'd get his wet clothes off and let him sleep, he was bound to be about done; he'd be all right in no time. And Godfrey fulfilled their prediction by sinking into the sound healthy sleep of a tired boy, with a dreamy sense of satisfaction that the Mermaid and the despatches were all safe. But the strange gentleman did not take the advice of his hosts and follow the boy's example. All that night he spent awake and watchful by Godfrey's side. He had had a good many hard hours in his life, but none that seemed quite so long as those night hours in the narrow cabin of the fishing smack, while the boat rocked on the heaving Channel, and the swinging lamp over his head showed him the sleeping face of the young sailor to whom the sound of wind and waves was the most familiar lullaby. How he studied the still young face by the uncertain light, trying to trace in the broad-chested sturdy midshipman some memory of a white-faced eager little boy who had once looked up wonderingly into his own sad eyes! And if he turned his eyes from him for a moment, it was to decipher by the dim lamplight that letter of Kiah's with the heading and the signature that were so familiar. And when the agony of uncertainty grew almost unbearable, he dropped his head in his hands by the boy's side with the half-stifled murmur:
'If it might be—far, far beyond my deserving—but if it might be!'
He scarcely noticed how the grey light of dawn grew stronger about them, how the gale dropped and the boat sped along before a steady breeze, until Godfrey suddenly opened his eyes and looked up with the puzzled wondering gaze that thrilled the watcher through and through with vivid recollection.
'I know I'm not on board the Mermaid' he said, 'but I can't remember how I came here, and what boat this is.'
'You are on board a fishing smack from Plymouth,' said the stranger, struggling hard to speak calmly; 'you were picked up last night clinging to some wreckage in mid-Channel.'
Godfrey's face brightened with quick understanding.
'I know, I know,' he said, 'and the papers are all right, and the Mermaid too. That's the last thing I remember. I feel as if I'd been asleep for weeks. I wonder if I shall get long enough leave to run home, it would be rare to tell them all?' Then looking up doubtfully at his companion, he added:
'I'm sure I ought to know you, sir; I beg your pardon, but I can't put your name to you.'
'Where do you think you have seen me?' asked the stranger eagerly.
'I don't remember, sir. It's very stupid of me. Is—is anything wrong, sir? Can I do anything?'
'Yes,' cried the stranger, with his self-control breaking down, 'you can tell me in mercy the name of your father.'
'My father's name was Bernard Wyndham,' said Godfrey wonderingly. 'He was killed in the West Indies some years ago. I say, what is it, sir—you're ill, aren't you? I'll fetch——'
But the stranger had fast hold of him.
'Don't fetch any one,' he gasped, 'I want you, only you. Godfrey, my boy, my son, look at me, don't quite forget me—you say you've seen me before! Godfrey, believe me—don't say you can't believe me, my boy, my only child!'
The colour rushed into Godfrey's face.
'I—I don't understand,' he faltered. 'Why didn't you come?'
'Because I thought you were dead, my little boy; because they told me every one died together, and you too. Because when I got free and came back they showed me the graves and told me yours was one.'
Still Godfrey held back doubtfully, though the pale eager face was so strangely familiar.
'But why didn't you come home?' he asked; 'they've been so unhappy about you, the aunts have. Why didn't you let them know?'
'Because I was a coward, Godfrey; because I never knew they cared for me—why should they? Ay, and why should you?'
He had turned his head away, when he suddenly felt himself seized in such an embrace as Godfrey generally kept for Angel and Betty.
'Father,' cried the eager young voice, 'papa, I'm a brute, I didn't understand! I know you now—I half knew you all the time. Why, they've talked about you all these years, they never let me forget. I say, I mustn't make a baby of myself, I'm an officer, you know, but it makes one feel as if one was standing on one's head to think of bringing you home to them.'
And I don't think that Godfrey disgraced the King's uniform, even if he laid his curly head down on his new found father's shoulder and hugged him as he hugged his Aunt Angel.
