As soon as the ship was given up, we hauled up our courses and ran off a little, rove new braces, and made ready to capture the frigate, which, although badly cut up, showed no disposition to surrender, and stood gallantly by her consort. In half an hour we were ready to go into action again, if necessary, with another ship of the line.
We got within range,—the sea had gone down much,—and giving the Xantippe our broadside, brought down the tricolor which the Frenchmen had nailed to the stump of the mizzenmast. She proved to have on board near a million sterling, which, with the Indomptable, was the richest prize taken in for years preceding.
The admiral and captain got eleven thousand pounds sterling each. The senior officers received two thousand five hundred pounds sterling each. The juniors got two thousand pounds sterling, the midshipmen and petty officers one thousand five hundred pounds sterling, and every seaman got seven hundred pounds sterling, and the landsmen and boys four hundred pounds sterling in prize-money. And I say it with diffidence, we got much more in glory; for the two French ships were not only beaten, but beaten in the most seamanlike manner. Sir Peter ever after kept the anniversary as his day of glory, putting on the same uniform and cocked hat he had worn, and going to church, if on shore, with Lady Hawkshaw on his arm, and giving thanks in a loud voice.
IV
We took the Xantippe home—the Indomptable went to the bottom of the Bay of Biscay—but before our prize-money was settled up, we were off again; Sir Peter dearly loved cruising in blue water. It was near two years before we got back to England to spend that prize-money; for, except the captain and Mr. Buxton and some of the married officers, I know of no one who saved any. Sir Peter, I understood afterward, spent much of his in a diamond necklace and tiara for Lady Hawkshaw, in which he was most egregiously cheated by a Portuguese money-lender, and the balance he put into a scheme for acclimating elephants in England, which was to make him as rich as Crœsus; but he lost a thousand pounds on the venture, besides his prize-money. In those two years I grew more and more fond of Giles Vernon. We generally contrived to have our watch together, and we were intimate as only shipmates could be. He talked much of what he meant to do when he got ashore with money to spend, and assured me he had never had above twenty pounds of his own in his life. In the course of many nights spent in standing watch together, when the old Ajax was sailing like a witch,—for she was a capital sailer at that time,—he told me much about his early youth, and I confided to him the story of Betty Green. Giles’ career had been the common one of the younger branches of a good family. His father had been a clergyman, and, dying, left several daughters, who married respectably, and this one son, who was put in the sea-service very young. At that time, several lives stood between Giles and the title and estates of Sir Thomas Vernon, and other lives stood between Giles and Overton; but those had passed away, leaving these two distant kinsmen as heirs to a man that seemed rightfully to have earned his title of “wicked Sir Thomas.” I asked Giles if he knew why Sir Thomas, who so cordially hated his heirs, had never married. Giles replied that Sir Thomas showed no inclination to marry until he was near forty. Then his reputation was so well established that he was generally looked askant upon; his character for truth was bad and at cards was worse. But he had induced a lady of rank and wealth to become engaged to be married to him. His treatment of her was so infamous that her whole family had declared war against him, and had succeeded in breaking off several very desirable alliances he would have liked to make. Of course a man of his rank and wealth could find some woman—alas!—to take him; but Sir Thomas was bent on money, with an inclination toward rank, and was the last man on earth to marry unless he had a substantial inducement; and several more years had passed without his being able to effect the sort of marriage he desired. Meanwhile, his health had broken down, and he was now a shattered man and prey for the doctors. All this was very interesting to me, especially as Sir Thomas’ two heirs would one day have the experience of shooting at each other, and possibly deciding the matter of heirship by the elimination of one or the other from the question.
We both got promotion, of course, and that brought us into the gun-room; but we were as intimate there as in our reefer days in the cockpit. On a glorious October morning in 1799, our anchor kissed the ground in Portsmouth harbor.
When we reached Portsmouth, the news of our good fortune had preceded us, and we were welcomed with open arms by men, women, and children—especially the women. All the prize-money brought back by any single ship during the war was insignificant compared with ours. The men were seized with a kind of madness for spending their money. The spectacle of an ordinary seaman parading the streets of Portsmouth with a gold-laced hat, a gold-headed stick, and watches and jewelry hung all over him was common enough, and he was sure to be an Ajax man. Sad to say, the pimps, and the worst class of men and women soon got the money away from our poor fellows.
The officers, in their way, were but little behind the men in their lavishness. Champagne was their common drink, and several of them invested in coaches!—the last thing they would ever have a chance of using.
Giles Vernon, although the most wasteful and profuse man I ever saw, desired to spend his money in London, Portsmouth being too small a theater for him. But the pressing affair of the satisfaction he owed Captain Overton had to be settled. After much hard thinking, Giles came to me on the day after we reached Portsmouth, and said,—
“Dicky boy, read this letter and give me your opinion of it.”