The Two Admirals

by James Fenimore Cooper

Alston.

We shall now ask permission of the reader to advance the time just eight-and-forty hours; a liberty with the unities which, he will do us the justice to say, we have not often taken. We must also transfer the scene to that already described at Wychecombe, including the Head, the station, the roads, and the inland and seaward views. Summer weather had returned, too, the pennants of the ships at anchor scarce streaming from their masts far enough to form curved lines. Most of the English fleet was among these vessels, though the squadron had undergone some changes. The Druid had got into Portsmouth with la Victoire; the Driver and Active had made the best of their way to the nearest ports; with despatches for the admiralty; and the Achilles, in tow of the Dublin, with the Chloe to take care of both, had gone to leeward, with square yards, in the hope of making Falmouth. The rest of the force was present, the crippled ships having been towed into the roads that morning. The picture among the shipping was one of extreme activity and liveliness. Jury-masts were going up in the Warspite; lower and top-sail-yards were down to be fished, or new ones were rigging to be sent aloft in their places; the Plantagenet was all a-tanto, again, in readiness for another action, with rigging secured and masts fished, while none but an instructed eye could have detected, at a short distance, that the Cæsar, Carnatic, Dover, York, Elizabeth, and one or two more, had been in action at all. The landing was crowded with boats as before, and gun-room servants and midshipmen's boys were foraging as usual; some with honest intent to find delicacies for the wounded, but more with the roguish design of contributing to the comforts of the unhurt, by making appeals to the sympathies of the women of the neighbourhood, in behalf of the hurt.

The principal transformation that had been brought about by this state of things, however, was apparent at the station. This spot had the appearance of a place to which the headquarters of an army had been transferred, in the vicissitudes of the field; warlike sailors, if not soldiers, flocking to it, as the centre of interest and intelligence. Still there was a singularity observable in the manner in which these heroes of the deck paid their court; the cottage being seemingly tabooed, or at most, approached by very few, while the grass at the foot of the flag-staff was already beginning to show proofs of the pressure of many feet. This particular spot, indeed, was the centre of attraction; there, officers of all ranks and ages were constantly arriving, and thence they were as often departing; all bearing countenances sobered by anxiety and apprehension. Notwithstanding the constant mutations, there had been no instant since the rising of the sun, when some ten or twelve, at least, including captains, lieutenants, masters and idlers, had not been collected around the bench at the foot of the signal-staff, and frequently the number reached even to twenty.

A little retired from the crowd, and near the verge of the cliff, a large tent had been pitched. A marine paced in its front, as a sentinel. Another stood near the gate of the little door-yard of the cottage, and all persons who approached either, with the exception of a few of the privileged, were referred to the sergeant who commanded the guard. The arms of the latter were stacked on the grass, at hand, and the men off post were loitering near. These were the usual military signs of the presence of officers of rank, and may, in sooth, be taken as clues to the actual state of things, on and around the Head.

Admiral Bluewater lay in the cottage, while Sir Gervaise Oakes occupied the tent. The former had been transferred to the place where he was about to breathe his last, at his own urgent request, while his friend had refused to be separated from him, so long as life remained. The two flags were still flying at the mast-heads of the Cæsar, a sort of melancholy memorial of the tie that had so long bound their gallant owners in the strong sympathies of an enduring personal and professional friendship.

Persons of the education of Mrs. Dutton and her daughter, had not dwelt so long on that beautiful head-land, without leaving on the spot some lasting impressions of their tastes. Of the cottage, we have already spoken. The little garden, too, then bright with flowers, had a grace and refinement about it that we would hardly have expected to meet in such a place; and even the paths that led athwart the verdant common which spread over so much of the upland, had been directed with an eye to the picturesque and agreeable. One of these paths, too, led to a rustic summer-house—a sort of small, rude pavilion, constructed, like the fences, of fragments of wrecks, and placed on a shelf of the cliff, at a dizzy elevation, but in perfect security. So far from there being any danger in entering this summer-house, indeed, Wycherly, during his six months' residence near the Head, had made a path that descended still lower to a point that was utterly concealed from all eyes above, and had actually planted a seat on another shelf with so much security, that both Mildred and her mother often visited it in company. During the young man's recent absence, the poor girl, indeed, had passed much of her time there, weeping and suffering in solitude. To this seat, Dutton never ventured; the descent, though well protected with ropes, requiring greater steadiness of foot and head than intemperance had left him. Once or twice, Wycherly had induced Mildred to pass an hour with him alone in this romantic place, and some of his sweetest recollections of this just-minded and intelligent girl, were connected with the frank communications that had there occurred between them. On this bench he was seated at the time of the opening of the present chapter. The movement on the Head, and about the cottage, was so great, as to deprive him of every chance of seeing Mildred alone, and he had hoped that, led by some secret sympathy, she, too, might seek this perfectly retired seat, to obtain a moment of unobserved solitude, if not from some still dearer motive. He had not waited long, ere he heard a heavy foot over his head, and a man entered the summer-house. He was yet debating whether to abandon all hopes of seeing Mildred, when his acute ear caught her light and well-known footstep, as she reached the summer-house, also.

"Father, I have come as you desired," said the poor girl, in those tremulous tones which Wycherly too well understood, not to imagine the condition of Dutton. "Admiral Bluewater dozes, and mother has permitted me to steal away."

"Ay, Admiral Bluewater is a great man, though but little better than a dead one!" answered Dutton, as harshly in manner as the language was coarse. "You and your mother are all attention to him; did I lie in his place, which of you would be found hanging over my bed, with pale cheeks and tearful eyes?"

"Both of us, father! Do not—do not think so ill of your wife and daughter, as to suppose it possible that either of them could forget her duty."

"Yes, duty might do something, perhaps; what has duty to do with this useless rear-admiral? I hate the scoundrel—he was one of the court that cashiered me; and one, too, that I am told, was the most obstinate in refusing to help me into this pitiful berth of a master."