The sailor hero

by F. C. Armstrong

“Don’t you imagine, my boy,” said the Lieutenant, laughing, “that I am going to wait for that, with this fine, hot war. Wait awhile—we shall go to work directly.”

Whilst Mr. Stanmore was making his inquiries concerning Sir Oscar de Bracy, William Thornton set out for a visit to the cottage of his generous and kind-hearted protector, the coxswain, there to remain a week with him. He found the old couple hale and hearty. The coxswain felt so proud of his adopted son, and so elated at his conduct during the time he had served with Lord Hood, that he swore roundly he was sure to be an admiral. The old man also felt intensely anxious concerning Mr. Stanmore’s inquiries with respect to our hero’s parentage.

He recollected very well, when he first saw the child on the deck of the Surveillante frigate, that the men said the boy’s name was Oscar. Indeed the child, when questioned, lisped some kind of word like Oscar, but that he considered an outlandish name, and was sure it was not real, but some pet term; it was not ship-shape: so he called him William, after himself.

At the termination of a week, our hero returned to London, having received a letter from Lieutenant O’Loughlin, stating that he had been appointed First Lieutenant of the Diamond frigate, commanded by Sir Sidney Smith, who was very anxious to see him in London, and wished him to serve the rest of his time as midshipman with him. This was agreeable tidings to our hero; so, taking an affectionate leave of his early protector, he proceeded to London. Through Lord Hood’s interest he got appointed to the Diamond. Whilst in London he was constantly at Madame Volney’s. Mabel was at Mrs. Samson’s; no tidings of her mother having reached England had yet been received, which caused much uneasiness to the young man, as well as to his protégée, for he feared some untoward event had baffled Jean Plessis’s endeavours to rescue the Duchess.

Mr. Stanmore was at length enabled to give our hero the result of his inquiries respecting Sir Oscar de Bracy.

“It appears,” said the solicitor one day, when our hero was dining with him previous to his departure for Plymouth, where the Diamond frigate was stationed; “it appears that Sir Oscar de Bracy is the last of a very old Irish family, who settled in that country about the time of Elizabeth, having conquered by the sword a large tract of territory in the west, and the head of that family was created a baronet by James the First.

“Since that period, from one cause or another, their fortunes have declined, and the property become divided, so that at present the family of de Bracy is represented only by Sir Oscar, the last male descendant of the Irish de Bracys. He had a sister, who is said to have died abroad when very young. Sir Oscar de Bracy and this sister, it seems, were left orphans, with only a small estate, near Bantry—I think about five hundred a year. The former became a commander in the navy, and, it is said, succeeded to a very large portion of the forfeited estates of the Kerry de Bracys—six or seven thousand a-year, I hear—by the death of a distant kinsman. Who he married I have not yet learned, now he is Governor of ——, in India; but is shortly expected home.

“I have ascertained, after some difficulty, that Lady de Bracy and her child embarked, with their attendants, in the Spitfire gun brig, to proceed to Plymouth, with the intention of going out to India in the Penelope frigate. But neither the brig, nor any human being belonging to her, was ever seen or heard of from the time she left Bantry. Now, by comparing dates, there appears to me no question in the world but that the Spitfire brig was the vessel run down by the French ship the Surveillante, and that you are the child saved in the long boat, jolly-boat, or whatever name you sailors give to those affairs. It would be amazingly satisfactory if we had that Lieutenant Volney’s written statement, and the picture; but as that is out of the question, I fear, we can only state facts as they are to Sir Oscar, when he arrives in England, and, no doubt, your likeness to him or your poor mother, or the proofs we can show, with old Thornton’s statement, added to Madame Volney’s, will be quite sufficient to convince your father. Nature will do something.”

Such was the substance of the information our hero received. He had only to remain patient, till time, which reconciles most things, should bring him and his father together. He, accordingly, shortly after, proceeded to Plymouth, and joined the Diamond, and, after three years’ more service, he, as we said, passed his examination, and became third Lieutenant of the Diamond, and proceeded to cruise off Brest.

The last letters he had received were from Mr. Stanmore, stating that Sir Oscar had stopped, from ill-health, at the Cape; no tidings had been heard of the Duchess, and that Mabel Arden had grown into a lovely girl; that Sir Godfrey Etherton was dangerously ill, and that young Howard Etherton had quitted the service and returned home.