“I am going to pay a farewell visit to some friends, and then I have a great mind to go to sea. I am sick of a shore life, and wish I had gone three or four years ago.”
“Not too late now,” answered Tuttle. “You are rather old for an officer, and I suppose you would be too proud to go before the mast.”
“No, indeed I would not,” answered Harry. “I am ready to go anyhow. If I’m worth anything I hope to work my way up, as others have done, and if I am worth nothing I must take my chance with the rest.”
“Very rightly said, Harry; active hands like you are wanted. I am thinking of going to Portsmouth to look out for a ship, and if you take my advice you will volunteer on board the same. I will soon teach you your duties, and you will be a petty officer before many months are over. There were plenty of gentlemen’s sons on board the last ship I served in, or at all events they said they were. Some of them were pretty wild blades, to be sure, and were ‘King’s hard bargains;’ but that’s not your style, I have a notion, and so, as I said before, come along with me. I will rig you out as a seaman. And now I come to think on’t, you are a better one already than many a chap who has been two or three years afloat. There are some cut out for sailors, and there are others nothing can be made of.”
This proposition jumped exactly with Harry’s present notions.
“I have no time to lose,” said Harry, “and I want to get rid of my present long shore toggery as soon as possible.”
“Well, then, mate,” said Jacob, “my old mother’s cottage, where I am stopping, is not far from here, and if you like to come, I’ll rig you out in a seaman’s suit, which I only got the other day, and never yet put on. You can pay me for it or not, as you think fit; you are welcome to it, at all events.”
Rapid action was to Harry’s taste. Within half an hour of the time he fell in with Jacob Tuttle few would have recognised in the smart, young, sailor-like-looking lad, the sedate London-dressed merchant’s clerk. Harry felt freer than before in his new dress, and promising to return to old Dame Tuttle’s cottage, he hurried away towards Stanmore. It was dusk when he approached the house; but he knew every path and sylvan glade in the grounds, and had already thought of the best place in which to watch for a chance of meeting Mabel. By climbing a high paling he got round to the garden side of the house. Lights were in several windows. He could, he thought, approach the drawing-room—Mabel might be there alone. He would then ask her to come out and talk with him. The most secure approach to it was by a long straight avenue overshadowed by trees which led up one side of the grounds. He hurried along it, keeping as much as possible on the turf on one side, that he might run no risk of making a noise, when he heard footsteps approaching, and presently a man’s figure appeared in the centre of the walk. Who could it be? It might possibly, he thought, be the colonel, though it was not his custom to walk out at night. Harry drew behind a tree by which he was completely concealed. The person passed on, but so thick was the gloom that Harry could not distinguish his features. By his height it was certainly not the colonel. The person went up the avenue, then turned, and walked once more in the direction of the house. Harry did not move for fear of being discovered: he watched the person narrowly. A gleam of light came through an opening in the trees. He saw clearly the outline of the figure. His jealous feelings told him at once that it was the Baron de Ruvigny.
“I thought he loved poor Lucy,” he muttered to himself. “But Mabel! can it be to see her that he comes here? I might give her up for her own sake, but I would never yield her to a Frenchman.”
He came forward from his concealment, and confronted the young Frenchman.