"Rodney—Rodney," said he, ponderingly, when the Consul introduced me; "you ought to have been a sailor, for your name is well known in the service;" and his words brought the memory of my poor mother's ambition back to me, and I thought of the old picture which hung in the dining-room at home.
After a brief conference with his shipmates Tattooed Tom now came forward, and twirling his fragment of a hat, said that "if the noble captain had no objection, as he, Ned Carlton, Probart, and the other poor fellows of the Eugenie were out of a berth, and at uncommon low water, they would gladly ship aboard the Active, and enter her Majesty's service."
Captain B——, who saw at a glance that they were all first-class seamen, readily accepted the offer, and promised them the usual bounty; on which they gave three loud cheers for the Queen, and it came from their throats not the less heartily that they were far away from her and in a foreign land, all tattered as they were, with scarcely a shirt to their backs.
"Heaven bless you, my lads," said Hislop; "this is the best thing you can do; and believe me, Captain B——, you will find my old shipmates neither waisters nor green-hands, but thorough A.B.'s."
As they all loved him, another cheer for Hislop followed, and while the captain went off to the Active in his gig, we all adjourned to a posada to have a last friendly glass together.
Soon after, as the war steamer was to sail that evening, a boat under a midshipman came off for us, and then we bade farewell to José Estremera, to his mate, Manuel Gautier, to Fra Anselmo, and the old Governor of Surabaya.
"Come, Dick—we have no time to lose," said Hislop; "let us be off to the ship while daylight lasts; these fellows in Teneriffe haven't missed their diamond yet!"
I shall never forget my emotions of joy when the boat with Hislop and the rest of us came sheering alongside the Active.
She was so clean, so trig, so square aloft; with the bright copper gleaming in the water below; her black bulwarks and red portholes, through which her sixty-eights and thirty-twos peered above the brine; the snow-white hammock cloths, with the gold epaulets of the lieutenant of the watch glittering above them; the red-coated marines on her poop and forecastle; the great scarlet ensign of "Old England" floating at the gaff-peak:—and that no part of the illusion might be wanting, a little marine fifer, playing shrilly but sweetly "Home, sweet home," in one of the boats that lay alongside by the guess-warp boom.
She was so thoroughly British in her aspect, so unlike any thing we had seen in the seas we had traversed, that we felt at home the moment our feet were on her deck of good old English oak—ay, as much at home as if we stood upon the chalky South Foreland, and saw the green hop-fields of fertile Kent at our feet, with the gray towers of Dover and the white spires of Deal in the distance. Old Lambourne uttered a shout, and pointed to the Union Jack.