Frank Mildmay; Or, The Naval Officer

by Frederick Marryat

This boy was soon afterwards made a post-captain; but fortunately for the service, died on his passage to England.

There was certainly some difference between this examination and mine; but when it was over, I rejoiced at the severity of my ordeal. My pride, my darling pride, was tickled at the triumph of my talents; and as I wiped away the perspiration from my forehead, I related my difficulties, my trials, and my success, with a degree of self-complacency that in any other person I should have called egregious vanity. One good effect resulted from my long examination, which continued an hour and a half—this was, that the captains passed all the other midshipmen with very few questions. They were tired of their employment; and thus it was only the poor unlucky devils that took off the fiery edge of their morning zeal, who suffered; and among "the plucked," it was known there were much cleverer fellows than many of those who had come off with flying colours.

There was one circumstance which amused me. When the captains came on deck, the little Chili Vinegar called me to him, and enquired whether I was any relation of Mr ——. I replied that he was my uncle.

"Bless my soul, Sir! why he is my most intimate friend. Why did you not tell me you were his nephew?"

I answered with an affected humility, very nearly allied to impertinence, that I could not see by his face that he knew my uncle; nor, indeed, had I known it, should I have thought it delicate to have mentioned it at such a time; as it might not only have implied a want of confidence in my own abilities, but also a suspicion that he might, by such a communication, have been induced to deviate from the rigid path of his duty, and might therefore have received it as a personal affront.

"All that is very fine, and very true," said the veteran; "but when you have an older head upon your shoulders, and have seen a little more of our service, you will learn to trust at least as much to friends as to merit; and rely on it, that if you could make yourself out cousin-german to the old tom-cat at the Admiralty, you would fare all the better for it. However, it's all over now, and there's an end of it; but make my compliments to your uncle, and tell him that you passed your examination in a manner highly creditable to you."

So saying, he touched his hat to the serjeant's guard, and slipped down the side into his gig. As he descended, I said to myself, "D——n your monkey face, you coffee-coloured little rascal—no thanks to you if I have passed. I suppose your father was breeches-mender to the first lord's butler, or else you shared your mother's milk with a lord in waiting, and that's the way you got the command of the ——."

Elated with the result of the day, I threw myself into the mail that evening, and reached my father's house in a short time after. My reception was kind and affectionate; but death had made sad havoc in my family during my late absence. My elder brother and two sisters had been successively called to join my poor mother in heaven, and all that remained now to comfort my father was a younger sister and myself. I must confess that my father received me with great emotion; his own heavy afflictions from the loss of his children, and the dangers I had undergone, as well as the authentic assurances he had received of my good conduct were more than sufficient to bury all my errors in oblivion; and he appeared, and I have no doubt really was, fonder and prouder of me than ever.

As to what my own feelings were on this occasion, I shall not attempt to disguise them. Sorry I certainly was for the death of my nearest relatives; but when the intelligence reached me, I was in the midst of the most active service. Death in all its forms had become familiar to me; and so little impression did the event make on my mind, that I did not interrupt the thread of my history to speak of it when it occurred. I take shame to myself for not feeling more; but I am quite sure, from this one instance in my life, that the feelings are blunted in proportion to the increase of misery around us; that the parent who, in a moment of peace and domestic tranquillity, would be agonized at the loss of one child, would view the death of ten with comparative indifference, when surrounded by war, pestilence, or famine.

My feelings, never very acute in this respect, were completely blunted by my course of life. Those fond recollections which, in a calm scene, would have wrung from me some tears to their memory, were now drowned or absorbed in the waste, the profligacy, and the dissipation of war; and shall I add, that I easily reconciled myself to a loss which was likely so much to increase my worldly gain. For my eldest brother, I own that, even from childhood, I had felt a jealousy and dislike, fostered, as I think, in some measure unwisely, and in part unavoidably, by the conduct of my parents. In all matters of choice or distinction, Tom was to have the preference, because he was the oldest: this I thought hard enough; but when Tom had new clothes at Midsummer and Christmas, and his old ones were converted to my use, I honestly own I wished the devil had Tom. As a point of economy, perhaps, this could not be avoided; but it engendered a hatred towards my brother which often made me, in my own little malignant mind, find excuses for the conduct of Cain.