Mary Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale

by R. D. Blackmore

“For this I have lived, and for this it would be worth my while to die, having no one left, I dare say now, in all the world to care for me.”

Thus spake the junior lieutenant of that British ship, the Victory—a young man after the heart of Nelson, and gazing now on Nelson's face. No smarter sailor could be found in all that noble fleet than this Lieutenant Blyth, who once had been the captain of all smugglers. He had fought his way up by skill, and spirit, and patience, and good temper, and the precious gift of self-reliance, failing of which all merit fails. He had always thought well of himself, but never destroyed the good of it by saying so; and whoever praised him had to do it again, to outspeak his modesty. But without good fortune all these merits would never have been successes. One of Robin's truest merits was that he generally earned good luck.

However, his spirits were not in their usual flow of jocundity just now, and his lively face was dashed with care. Not through fear of lead, or steel, or wooden splinter, or a knock upon the head, or any other human mode of encouraging humanity. He hoped to keep out of the way of these, as even the greatest heroes do; for how could the world get on if all its bravest men went foremost? His mind meant clearly, and with trust in proper Providence, to remain in its present bodily surroundings, with which it had no fault to find. Grief, however—so far as a man having faith in his luck admits that point—certainly was making some little hole into a heart of corky fibre. For Robin Lyth had heard last night, when a schooner joined the fleet with letters, that Mary Anerley at last was going to marry Harry Tanfield. He told himself over and over again that if it were so, the fault was his own, because he had not taken proper care about the safe dispatch of letters. Changing from ship to ship and from sea to sea for the last two years or more, he had found but few opportunities of writing, and even of those he had not made the utmost. To Mary herself he had never once written, knowing well that her father forbade it, while his letters to Flamborough had been few, and some of those few had miscarried. For the French had a very clever knack just now of catching the English dispatch-boats, in most of which they found accounts of their own thrashings, as a listener catches bad news of himself. But none of these led them to improve their conduct.

Flamborough (having felt certain that Robin could never exist without free trade, and missing many little courtesies that flowed from his liberal administration), was only too ready to lament his death, without insisting on particulars. Even as a man who has foretold a very destructive gale of wind tempers with the pride of truth the sorrow which he ought to feel for his domestic chimney-pots (as soon as he finds them upon his lawn), so Little Denmark, while bewailing, accepted the loss as a compliment to its own renowned sagacity.

But Robin knew not until last night that he was made dead at Flamborough, through the wreck of a ship which he had quitted a month before she was cast away. And now at last he only heard that news by means of his shipmate, Jack Anerley. Jack was a thorough-going sailor now, easy, and childish, and full of the present, leaving the past to cure and the future to care for itself as might be. He had promised Mr. Mordacks and Robin Cockscroft to find out Robin Lyth, and tell him all about the conviction of John Cadman; and knowing his name in the navy and that of his ship, he had done so after in-and-out chase. But there for the time he had rested from his labors, and left “Davy Jones” to send back word about it; which that Pelagian Davy fails to do, unless the message is enshrined in a bottle, for which he seems to cherish true naval regard.

In this state of things the two brothers-in-law—as they fully intended to be by-and-by—were going into this tremendous battle: Jack as a petty officer, and Robin as a junior lieutenant of Lord Nelson's ship. Already had Jack Anerley begun to feel for Robin—or Lieutenant Blyth, as he now was called—that liking of admiration which his clear free manner, and quickness of resource, and agreeable smile in the teeth of peril, had won for him before he had the legal right to fight much. And Robin—as he shall still be called while the memory of Flamborough endures—regarded Jack Anerley with fatherly affection, and hoped to put strength into his character.

However, one necessary step toward that is to keep the character surviving; and in the world's pell-mell now beginning, the uproar alone was enough to kill some, and the smoke sufficient to choke the rest. Many a British sailor who, by the mercy of Providence, survived that day, never could hear a word concerning any other battle (even though a son of his own delivered it down a trumpet), so furious was the concussion of the air, the din of roaring metal, and the clash of cannon-balls which met in the air, and split up into founts of iron.

No less than seven French and Spanish ships agreed with one accord to fall upon and destroy Lord Nelson's ship. And if they had only adopted a rational mode of doing it, and shot straight, they could hardly have helped succeeding. Even as it was, they succeeded far too well; for they managed to make England rue the tidings of her greatest victory.

In the storm and whirl and flame of battle, when shot flew as close as the teeth of a hay-rake, and fire blazed into furious eyes, and then with a blow was quenched forever, and raging men flew into pieces—some of which killed their dearest friends—who was he that could do more than attend to his own business? Nelson had known that it would be so, and had twice enjoined it in his orders; and when he was carried down to die, his dying mind was still on this. Robin Lyth was close to him when he fell, and helped to bear him to his plank of death, and came back with orders not to speak, but work.

Then ensued that crowning effort of misplaced audacity—the attempt to board and carry by storm the ship that still was Nelson's. The captain of the Redoubtable saw through an alley of light, between walls of smoke, that the quarter-deck of the Victory had plenty of corpses, but scarcely a life upon it. Also he felt (from the comfort to his feet, and the increasing firmness of his spinal column) that the heavy British guns upon the lower decks had ceased to throb and thunder into his own poor ship. With a bound of high spirits he leaped to a pleasing conclusion, and shouted, “Forward, my brave sons; we will take the vessel of war of that Nielson!”