Will Weatherhelm: The Yarn of an Old Sailor

by William Henry Giles Kingston

The Cleopatra was ours. Never did I witness a more fearful sight. The decks fore and aft were slippery with gore, and covered with the dead and dying. During the short time we had been engaged, upwards of sixty had been struck down who, not an hour before, full of health and spirits, had attempted to reply to our cheer. Among them, on one side of the quarter-deck, lay the gallant Captain Mullon, surrounded by a mass of gore, for a round shot had torn open his back and carried away the greater part of his left hip. In one hand he was holding a paper, at which, strange as it may seem, he was biting away and endeavouring to swallow. I, with two other men, went up to him to ascertain what he was about. In the very act his hand fell, his jaw dropped, and there was the paper sticking in his mouth. He was dead. It evidently, however, was not the paper he intended to destroy, but, as it turned out, was his commission; for in his right pocket was found the list of coast signals used by the French, which, with his last gasp, he was thus endeavouring to prevent falling into the hands of the British.

Without loss of time one hundred and fifty prisoners were removed on board the Nymph, and just as the last had stepped on board the ships separated.

The third lieutenant, who had been sent on board with a prize crew, at once set to work to repair the damages which the Cleopatra had received, while all hands in the Nymph were actively employed in the game way. When we came to look at our watches, we found that we had dished up the enemy in just fifty minutes from the time the first shot had been fired at her until her flag was hauled down.

“Pretty quick work,” said Dick Hagger to me as we were working together repairing the rigging. “I told you the captain would be sharp about it; he always is at all he undertakes.”

On making up the butcher’s bill, however, as the purser called it, we found that although the Frenchmen out of three hundred and twenty men and boys had lost sixty-three, we, out of our two hundred and forty, had had no less than twenty-three killed and twenty severely wounded, making fifty in all. Of these, the gentlemen belonging to the midshipmen’s berth had suffered most severely, for four of them had been killed and two wounded. Of the senior officers, none had been killed; but the second lieutenant had been wounded, as was the lieutenant of marines, with six of his men.

As soon as sail could be got on the two frigates, we, to my great joy, steered a course for the Isle of Wight. I now felt more thankful than ever that I had escaped, as there seemed every probability that I should be able to see my dear wife, or at all events communicate with her. As soon as I went below, though I could with difficulty keep my eyes from closing, I opened my letter and added a few lines describing the action, and then placed it in my pocket, ready to send off on the first opportunity.

In spite of the poor fellows suffering below, and the number of shipmates we had lost, we felt very happy as with a fair breeze we sailed in through the Needles, our well-won prize following in our wake.

Never did those high-pointed rocks look more white and glittering or the downs more green and beautiful, while the blue sea sparkling in the sunlight seemed to share our joy. The people on the shore, as we passed the little town of Yarmouth, waved to us, and threw up their hats, and the flags from many a flagstaff flew out to the breeze.

As soon as we brought up at Spithead, I eagerly looked out for a boat going to the shore, by which to send my letter, hoping to have it delivered at once, instead of letting it go through the post office; but, as it was late in the evening, no shore boats came off, and I had to wait all the night, thinking how little my dear wife supposed I was so near her.

I turned out at daybreak, before the hammocks were piped up, that I might take a look at the spot where I thought she was living. Suddenly a sickness came over me. What if she should have been taken ill when I was so rudely torn from her! Perhaps she had never recovered, and was even now numbered among the dead. I could scarcely refrain from jumping overboard and trying to swim to Southsea beach. It seemed so near, and yet I knew that I could not do it. Then I thought I would go boldly up to the first lieutenant and tell him how treacherously I had been carried off,—snatched, as it were, from the arms of my young wife,—and ask him to give me leave for a few hours, promising faithfully to come back at the time he might name. Then I reflected that the ship was short-handed, that we had the prisoners to guard, and that until she had been brought up safe in Portsmouth harbour, every man would be required for duty.