The commander of the Zebra was indeed a man in a thousand. Hardly a finer fellow in every respect than Robert Faulknor ever trod the quarter-deck of a British man-of-war in any age. He could not, perhaps, well help being so. If ever a British naval officer had the sea 'in his blood,' as the old saying went, Faulknor had it. Not many families ever did more for the Sea Service than the Faulknors of Hampshire in the eighteenth century. A round dozen of its sons, as captains and admirals, walked the quarter-deck in the times between Queen Anne and William the Fourth. As a fact, he owed his very origin to a naval romance. His father was 'Bob Faulknor of the Bellona,' perhaps the most popular man in the service in his day, who in the first year of George the Third's reign took a big French 74, the Courageux, off the coast of Spain, in a ship-to-ship duel fought out to the bitter end, and won a fortune and a beautiful bride, our hero's mother, at one and the same time. The newspapers were full of the dashing fight, a story full of incidents of heroism on the part of the Bellona's captain, and the young lady reading the story there, gave her heart to the gallant captain she had never seen. Meeting 'Captain Bob' on his return to England at a ball, quite by chance, he for his part, in turn, fell violently in love with her, and they married and lived afterwards the happiest of wedded lives. Commander Faulknor's grandfather was old Admiral Balchen's flag-captain, who was lost with his veteran chief and upwards of a thousand officers and men, in the wreck of the Victory of George the Second's fleet, the predecessor of Nelson's Victory, off the Caskets near Alderney, one stormy October night of the year 1744. Commander Faulknor's great-grandfather got his lieutenant's commission three years after the battle of La Hogue, fought all through 'Queen Anne's War,' and died in George the First's reign, Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital. Such was the stock that Commander Faulknor came of.
Faulknor gave orders to let fall the foresail and hoist every stitch of canvas that the ship's masts would stand. Then he again headed the Zebra up the bay, pointing in directly for the ramparts of Fort Louis. All round her, as the little sloop dashed forward, the water leaped and splashed, torn into spray under the tornado of grape and canister and round shot—any single one of which hitting the Zebra fairly must have torn the little vessel open and sent her to the bottom like a stone—with which the French batteries met her as she came on. But it made no difference. A special Providence—in the form of a drizzling squall that suddenly came on, blowing in from the sea right in the faces of the French gunners—seemed to be protecting the ship and her men, and she passed through practically unscathed. One shot cut the main-topmast away, but that was all. The balls whizzed through the rigging and within a few inches of the men's heads but not a single man was harmed.
At the instant that the Zebra was seen to make sail and move ahead, the boats of the squadron set off rowing after her at their best speed, while the Naval Brigade batteries on shore, facing the flanking bastions of Fort Louis on either side, redoubled their fire on the enemy's works to distract the attention of the French as far as possible. At the same time, to hold Fort Bourbon on the hill behind Fort Louis in check and prevent reinforcements being sent down to assist the lower fort, the British siege batteries up above burst out into a tremendous fire of round-shot and shell that swept the French ramparts in the upper fort from end to end.
On board the Zebra it was an anxious time for every one; and with it all, simultaneously, Commander Faulknor had yet another trial sprung upon him. The risk from the enemy's shot was not the severest ordeal that the captain of the Zebra had to go through. By an extraordinary coincidence, exactly the same thing happened on board the Zebra as had already happened with such unfortunate results on board the Asia.[62] The pilot's nerve failed. The pilot of the Zebra was an old man-of-war's man, who had been employed for many years in the West Indies on account of his pilot knowledge of the islands. He now broke down at the critical moment. But, as has been said, Commander Faulknor was not a Captain Brown.
As he gave the pilot the order 'to place the sloop close under the walls of Fort Royal,' he instinctively noticed that something was wrong. The man, he thought, seemed to hesitate. He turned aside to one of his officers.
'I think Mr. —— seems confused, as if he doesn't know what he is about. Has he been in action before?'
'Many times, Sir,' was the reply; 'he has been twenty-four years in the service.'
But Faulknor was not satisfied. He eyed the pilot closely and then stepped up to him and asked him a trifling question to test him. His suspicions were fully confirmed. The pilot's 'agitation was such as to render him incapable of giving any answer.' Recovering himself to some extent a moment later the wretched man, keeping his eyes on the deck, in a low voice addressed Faulknor, who was bending over him, with this startling admission:
'I see your Honour knows me. I am unfit to guide her. I don't know what is come over me. I dreamt last night I should be killed, and I am so afraid I don't know what I am about. I never in all my life felt afraid before.'