“Boz, you have always spoken the truth,” whispered the dying lieutenant. “I trust in Him; I die happy.”
The action was still raging. Another round-shot took off Uncle Boz’s leg.
“I don’t mind,” he observed, as the surgeon finished the job for him; “there’s the pension to come, and that’ll help keep poor Graham’s children.”
It’s my belief that he did look after those children, as if he felt that God was watching everything he did for them, or said to them; and the best of fathers could not have managed them better. They both entered the navy, and were an honour to the service. They naturally called him uncle, and so their friends and other children of old shipmates came to call him so, we among others; and as we were always talking of what Uncle Boz had said and done, he became generally known by that name. His name wasn’t Boz, though. His real name was Boswell. He was no relation, however, to Dr Johnson’s famous biographer, and he was a very different sort of person, I have an idea. I never saw him angry except once, when some one asked him the question.
“No, sir; I have the privilege, and I take it to be a great one, of being in no way connected with the dirty little lickspittle—there!” he replied, as if with a feeling of relief at having thus delivered himself.
Miss Deborah Boswell was shorter and more feminine than her brother, seeing that icy gales, and salt-water, and hot suns had not played havoc with her countenance, but she was fully as round and jolly.
Uncle Boz was, as may have been surmised, a lieutenant in the navy. He got no promotion for losing his leg, and though he went to sea for some time after that, a lieutenant he remained, and what was extraordinary, a perfectly contented and happy one. Not a grumble at his ill fortune did I ever hear. Not a word of abuse hurled at the big-wigs at the head of affairs. And Tom Bambo,—Tom Bambo had followed Uncle Boz for many long years over the salt ocean. Tom had been picked up (the only survivor of some hundreds) from a sunken slave ship off the coast of Africa. Uncle Boz had on that occasion hauled him with his own hands into the boat. He was grateful then. Falling overboard afterwards during a heavy gale, in the same locality, where sharks abounded, when all hope of being saved had abandoned him, Uncle Boz from the topsail of the ship saw him struggling.
“I cannot let that poor negro perish,” he cried. “Pass me that grating.” Grating in hand, he plunged overboard, swam to Bambo with it, and a boat being lowered, both were picked up. Bambo well understood the risk the brave lieutenant had run for his sake.
“Ah, Massa Boz, me lub you as my own soul,” he exclaimed, coming up to him with tears in his eyes.
Uncle Boz had taught him that he had a soul.