“We had a broad-set sailor on board the Royal Sovereign, who was always getting into scrapes for chalking caricatures of the officers on the bunks and cabin-doors; but there wasn’t a man fore or aft that hadn’t at some time or other coaxed a picture or portrait out of him, to send to mother or sweetheart, and never a Jack Tar amongst them would split on good-natured Ben Travis.”
Down dropped the shaking hand that held the letter. Ben Travis! What strange coincidence was this?
“His father had been a Liverpool shipbroker, and Ben took to me because I was a Lancashire lad like himself, though he was old enough to be my father. He had been pressed, and as I was the youngest middy, and he the master of the forecastle, many a time had he told me the sad story of his life. His father had died without a will, and Ned his eldest brother had laid his clutches on everything but a hundred pounds or so, which had been the mother’s. Ben turned his back on Liverpool and his brother, and being smart with his pencil, took to that to get a living. He wandered about to pick up bits of scenery, and at Crumpsall fell in with a widow and her daughter, both named Ann Crompton, and went to lodge with them. After awhile he married the lass, and thinking if he meant to earn a living for his wife and the child that was coming he’d best seek a large town, he removed to Manchester, and took an old cottage in Smedley Vale, where he hoped to turn his talent to account.”
The paper rattled, and Jabez leaned against the window-frame, as much for support as light, as he read on with panting lips.
“He tried portrait-painting, but lacked a patron; he turned his head to pattern-designing, but no one would employ a raw beginner. His money was dwindling, and a birth was near at hand. He doted on his wife, and for her sake wrote to his brother, who was married when their father died. Ned wrote back, enclosing a bank-note, and begging to see him at once. His wife had died, leaving a baby-boy, whom he had christened Ben, after his runaway brother. Ned said her loss was killing him, and he wished to leave his boy in his brother’s care before he died. Poor Ben Travis kissed his wife, and went by coach to Liverpool. Before he could reach his brother’s office in Castle-street, near the docks, he was pounced upon by a press-gang, dragged on board a ship in the Mersey, and never saw brother, or wife, or home again. I have seen Ben’s tears roll down his weather-beaten cheeks many a time as he told this. He was one of the first sent down to the cock-pit at the battle of Trafalgar, and when Admiral Nelson’s glorious remains went home to be buried, Ben went likewise, to hospital, and I lost sight of him. When I was exchanged to the Excellent, Ben turned up again, hearty, but aged with grief. He had sought his dear ones, but a flood had swept through Smedley Vale in 1799, and left no trace of his home. A man at the dye-works remembered something about an old woman they called stiff-backed Nan being killed by the falling house in trying to save a baby; but Ben could learn no more, and his own impression was that wife, child, and mother-in-law had perished in the same catastrophe. He went to Liverpool. Death had swept off his brother; executors swept off the son Ben, his namesake. He went back to sea, and I saw the brave Ben Travis drowned in trying to save a bumboat woman, who fell overboard off Spithead.
“And now, mother, you used to be a good hand at patch-work—piece my story and your story together, and see if Ellen’s poor cradle-friend is not near of kin to your rich friend, Mr. Benjamin Travis, with quite as good a right to be called Mr. Travis too.
“I should have a rough sketch of the old sailor, drawn with a quid of ’bacca on the fly-leaf of his Prayer-book. I’ll look it up for Nell.”