“Ah, and now I know you. You are Waller,” replied I. “Well, old fellow, I’m glad you’ve got your promotion.”
“But the doctor says we must on no account have any talking; so come away, Henry; and here, Jack, is the fruit for Mr D’Arcy. He may eat as much of it as he likes,” said Miss Alice.
I recollect this scene; but I fancy after it I got a relapse, through which, however, I was mercifully carried, after a tough contest with death. Oh! how tenderly and kindly I was nursed; every want was attended to—every wish gratified, almost before expressed—by an old black woman, who, day or night, scarcely ever left my bedside. I quite loved her good, old, ugly face—for ugly it was, without the possibility of contradiction, according to all European notions of beauty, though some of the descendants of Ham, in her own torrid land, might at one time have thought it lovely. She was assisted in her labours by a damsel of the same ebon hue, who had been saved out of the slave ship; and I believe that the attention of the two women was redoubled on account of the way I had treated their unhappy countrymen on board that vessel. Jack Stretcher had been obliged to rejoin the brig, and had gone away in her. I was, however, frequently favoured by a visit from Miss Alice Marlow and her kind father, in whose house I remained for many months, treated as if I had been a well-loved son. At length I was one morning riding down by the seashore, when the wide-spread canvas of a man-of-war caught my sight, standing in for the land. I recognised her at once as the Opossum, and was therefore not surprised when, some hours afterwards, Waller walked into Mr Marlow’s drawing-room. Captain Idle and the doctor followed soon afterwards, and a consultation having been held, I was pronounced fit for duty, and compelled, with many regrets, to leave my kind friends, and to go on board. The brig soon afterwards returned to the coast of Africa, where we took some slavers, went through various adventures, and lost several officers and men with fever; and I again fell sick, so that my life was despaired of. Now, entertaining as these sort of things may be to read about, no one was sorry when, one fine morning, another brig-of-war hove in sight, bringing us orders to return home. “Hurra for old England!” was the general cry, fore and aft. “Hurra! hurra!”
At length I once more found myself an inmate of Daisy Cottage, and many happy weeks I spent there—perhaps the happiest in my life—in the society of my uncle and aunt and young cousins. I there slowly, but effectually, recovered from the effects of the African climate, and the hardships I had lately gone through, and was ultimately pronounced as fit as ever for service. When Larry Harrigan heard that I was ill, he came over to Ryde, and could scarcely be persuaded to leave me for a moment, till assured by the doctor that I was in no danger whatever, but even he seemed much to doubt the judgment of the learned disciple of Galen. Afterwards he allowed very few days to pass without coming to set me, till I was strong enough to return his visits, which I did not fail to do. The good, kind old man! He never went back to Ireland, but lived on at Southsea, in perfect comfort, till he and his wife reached a green old age. He used to tell me, confidentially, that there was an honest navy agent, who had found him out, and insisted on paying him a wonderful interest for a certain share of prize-money, which he had fortunately neglected to claim in his younger days. It was, in truth, a way I took of contributing to maintain the old man in comfort, without his feeling that he was a pensioner on my bounty.
Some time after I had been at home, I heard from my gallant friend Waller, who had gone back to Barbadoes. He gave me a piece of information, at which I own I was not very much surprised, namely, that he was on the point of bringing Miss Alice Marlow to England as his bride. “I hope that she will prove worthy of him, for a finer fellow does not exist,” said I.
A short time before I left Daisy Cottage to join my next ship, I was sitting in the drawing-room, when Sir Richard Sharpe was announced, and in walked Dicky himself. We almost wrung each other’s hands off before we could speak, and then we did indeed rattle away. His father was dead, he told me.
“I have been compelled to deprive the navy of my services,” said he, with perfect gravity. “But you see that I have my estates to look after, and my mother and sisters’ welfare to attend to; and I could not fulfil my duties in these respects were I to remain afloat. Do you know, D’Arcy, I am very glad indeed that I went to sea,” he continued, more seriously. “It made me think much less of myself, and cured me of many faults; for I am very sure that I should have been spoiled had I remained at home. They always let me have too much of my own way, and that is bad for the best of us. Now in the service I got cobbed and mast-headed, and made to do what I was told; and I’m all the better for the discipline, though I did not like it at the time. Then I learned a very important lesson,—that every man, whatever his position, has his duties to perform; and that, if he does not do them to the best of his power, he must certainly expect to be disrated.”
“You mean to say that you learned this out of the man-of-war’s Homily-book,—the Station Bill,” said I, smiling at my own conceit.
I must explain that this Station Bill is a book in which is entered the place which every man on board is to occupy, as well as the duties he is especially to attend to, though at the same time he is expected to do his very utmost in performing any other work which may be necessary.
“That’s just it,” replied Sir Richard. “I used to think that the captain of a man-of-war had a good deal to do to keep his ship in good order; but I can tell you that I feel that the owner of a large estate has many more and multifarious duties; and that in a great degree every soul upon it is committed by God to his care, and at his hands will they be required.”