Such was the state of matters when our hero, Bill Bowls, was conveyed on board the Waterwitch, a seventy-four gun frigate, and set to work at once to learn his duty.
Bill was a sensible fellow. He knew that escape from the service, except in a dishonourable manner, was impossible, so he made up his mind to do his duty like a man, and return home at the end of the war (which he hoped would be a short one), and marry Nelly Blyth. Poor fellow, he little imagined what he had to go through before—but hold, we must not anticipate the story.
Well, it so happened that Bill was placed in the same mess with the man whose nose he had treated so unceremoniously on the day of his capture. He was annoyed at this, but the first time he chanced to be alone with him, he changed his mind, and the two became fast friends. It happened thus:—
They were standing on the weather-side of the forecastle in the evening, looking over the side at the setting sun.
“You don’t appear to be easy in your mind,” observed Ben Bolter, after a prolonged silence.
“You wouldn’t be if you had left a bride behind you,” answered Bill shortly.
“How d’ye know that?” said Ben; “p’r’aps I have left one behind me. Anyhow, I’ve left an old mother.”
“That’s nothin’ uncommon,” replied Bill; “a bride may change her mind and become another man’s wife, but your mother can’t become your aunt or your sister by any mental operation that I knows of.”
“I’m not so sure o’ that, now,” replied Ben, knitting his brows, and gazing earnestly at the forebrace, which happened to be conveniently in front of his eyes; “see here, s’pose, for the sake of argiment, that you’ve got a mothers an’ she marries a second time—which some mothers is apt to do, you know,—and her noo husband has got a pretty niece. Nothin’ more nat’ral than that you should fall in love with her and get spliced. Well, wot then? why, your mother is her aunt by vartue of her marriage with her uncle, and so your mother is your aunt in consikence of your marriage with the niece—d’ye see?”
Bill laughed, and said he didn’t quite see it, but he was willing to take it on credit, as he was not in a humour for discussion just then.