“I’ve come on board to join, sir. Isn’t it jolly, just? And I’m promoted to a lieutenancy.”
MʻHearty, Simmons, and every soul in the mess were most pleased to see him, and that evening Murray was the hero of the hour; and a very long and strange story he had to tell of his imprisonment, his harsh treatment, and his making love to the prison-governor’s daughter, through whose cleverness he at last managed to escape, dressed as a grisette.
He kept his messmates laughing till long after seven bells in the first watch; and it must be said that not this night only, but every other night, Murray infused into the mess a joy and jollity to which it had been all winter a stranger.
Meanwhile a greater hero than Jack Mackenzie must hold the stage for a brief spell—namely, Nelson himself. Napoleon Bonaparte, after lying awake for a night or two, gave birth to a grand idea. Hyder Ali, in the south of India, hated the British as one hates a viper, and gladly would have crushed our power under his heel. But he needed help. It occurred to Bonaparte to aid him, and so oust us from our Indian Empire, which was then being quickly built up. It was a pretty idea, and well carried out at the commencement; for Bonny, as our sailors called him, managed to sail from France with thirty thousand veteran, well-tried troops; and having the good luck to elude our fleet, he called at Malta, which he quickly brought to terms, then made straight for Egypt. Here he landed from his fleet, which I believe had orders to return, but did not.
With such men as those old troops of Napoleon’s the conquest of Egypt and the Mamelukes was but a picnic, and all very pleasant for Bonny and his merry men, though sad enough for the country on which these human locusts had alighted. Cairo fell, and the great warrior now set himself to rebuild the constitution of the country and create a native army.
Lord St. Vincent sent the brave one-eyed, one-armed Nelson with a fleet to destroy the French expedition. That he quickly would have done. He speedily would have cooked his hare, but he had to catch it first. Where ever was the French fleet? No one could tell him, and his adventures in search of it would fill a goodly volume. It reads like one long entrancing romance.
Jack Mackenzie, in his Tonneraire—the real name of the ship I am bound not to mention—joined this fleet, and thus was present at the great battle of the Nile.
Poor Nelson was almost worn out with anxiety and watching; but when he arrived at Aboukir Bay and found the foe, all his courage and all his calmness returned, and although the sun was slowly sinking in the west, our Nelson resolved not to wait an hour even, but attack the enemy there and then.