Book: Richard Carvel, Volume 8

W >> Winston Churchill >> Richard Carvel, Volume 8




I glanced at him, surprised at the question. He was staring at the
English shore.

"Mr. Ripley, of Lincoln's Inn, used to be Mr. Manners's lawyer," I
answered.

He took out a little note-book and wrote that down carefully. "And now,"
he continued, "God keep you, my friend. We must win, for we fight with a
rope around our necks."

"But you, Captain Paul," I said, "is--is there no one?"

His face took on the look of melancholy it had worn so often of late,
despite his triumphs. That look was the stamp of fate.

"Richard," replied he, with an ineffable sadness, "I am naught but a
wanderer upon the face of the earth. I have no ties, no kindred,--no
real friends, save you and Dale, and some of these honest fellows whom
I lead to slaughter. My ambition is seamed with a flaw. And all my life
I must be striving, striving, until I am laid in the grave. I know that
now, and it is you yourself who have taught me. For I have violently
broken forth from those bounds which God in His wisdom did set."

I pressed his hand, and with bowed head went back to my station,
profoundly struck by the truth of what he had spoken. Though he fought
under the flag of freedom, the curse of the expatriated was upon his
head.

Shortly afterward he appeared at the poop rail, straight and alert, his
eye piercing each man as it fell on him. He was the commodore once more.

The twilight deepened, until you scarce could see your hands. There was
no sound save the cracking of the cabins and the tumbling of the blocks,
and from time to time a muttered command. An age went by before the
trimmers were sent to the lee braces, and the Richard rounded lazily to.
And a great frigate loomed out of the night beside us, half a pistolshot
away.

"What ship is that?" came the hail, intense out of the silence.

"I don't hear you," replied our commodore, for he had not yet got his
distance.

Again came the hail: "What ship is that?"

John Paul Jones leaned forward over the rail.

"Pass the word below to the first lieutenant to begin the action, sir."

Hardly were the words out of my mouth before the deck gave a mighty leap,
a hot wind that seemed half of flame blew across my face, and the roar
started the pain throbbing in my ears. At the same instant the screech
of shot sounded overhead, we heard the sharp crack-crack of wood rending
and splitting,--as with a great broadaxe,--and a medley of blocks and
ropes rattled to the deck with the 'thud of the falling bodies. Then,
instead of stillness, moans and shrieks from above and below, oaths and
prayers in English and French and Portuguese, and in the heathen
gibberish of the East. As the men were sponging and ramming home in the
first fury of hatred, the carpenter jumped out under the battle-lanthorn
at the main hatch, crying in a wild voice that the old eighteens had
burst, killing half their crews and blowing up the gundeck above them.
At this many of our men broke and ran for the hatches.

"Back, back to your quarters! The first man to desert will be shot
down!"

It was the same strange voice that had quelled the mutiny on the John,
that had awed the men of Kirkcudbright. The tackles were seized and the
guns run out once more, and fired, and served again in an agony of haste.
In the darkness shot shrieked hither and thither about us like demons,
striking everywhere, sometimes sending casks of salt water over the
nettings. Incessantly the quartermaster walked to and fro scattering
sand over the black pools that kept running, running together as the
minutes were tolled out, and the red flashes from the guns revealed faces
in a hideous contortion. One little fellow, with whom I had had many a
lively word at mess, had his arm taken off at the shoulder as he went
skipping past me with the charge under his coat, and I have but to listen
now to hear the patter of the blood on the boards as they carried him
away to the cockpit below. Out of the main hatch, from that charnel
house, rose one continuous cry. It was an odd trick of the mind or soul
that put a hymn on my lips in that dreadful hour of carnage and human
misery, when men were calling the name of their Maker in vain. But as
I ran from crew to crew, I sang over and over again a long-forgotten
Christmas carol, and with it came a fleeting memory of my mother on the
stairs at Carvel Hall, and of the negroes gathered on the lawn without.

Suddenly, glancing up at the dim cloud of sails above, I saw that we were
aback and making sternway. We might have tossed a biscuit aboard the big
Serapis as she glided ahead of us. The broadsides thundered, and great
ragged scantlings brake from our bulwarks and flew as high as the
mizzen-top; and the shrieks and groans redoubled. Involuntarily my eyes
sought the poop, and I gave a sigh of relief at the sight of the
commanding figure in the midst of the whirling smoke. We shotted our
guns with double-headed, manned our lee braces, and gathered headway.

"Stand by to board!"

The boatswains' whistles trilled through the ship, pikes were seized, and
pistol and cutlass buckled on. But even as we waited with set teeth, our
bows ground into the enemy's weather quarter-gallery. For the Richard's
rigging was much cut away, and she was crank at best. So we backed and
filled once more, passing the Englishman close aboard, himself being
aback at the time. Several of his shot crushed through the bulwarks in
front of me, shattering a nine-pounder and killing half of its crew. And
it is only a miracle that I stand alive to be able to tell the tale.
Then I caught a glimpse of the quartermaster whirling the spokes of our
wheel, and over went our helm to lay us athwart the forefoot of the
'Serapis', where we might rake and rush her decks. Our old Indiaman
answered but doggedly; and the huge bowsprit of the Serapis, towering
over our heads, snapped off our spanker gaff and fouled our mizzen
rigging.

"A hawser, Mr. Stacey, a hawser!" I heard the commodore shout, and saw
the sailing-master slide down the ladder and grope among the dead and
wounded and mass of broken spars and tackles, and finally pick up a
smeared rope's end, which I helped him drag to the poop. There we found
the commodore himself taking skilful turns around the mizzen with the
severed stays and shrouds dangling from the bowsprit, the French marines
looking on.

"Don't swear, Mr. Stacey," said he, severely; "in another minute we may
all be in eternity."

I rushed back to my guns, for the wind was rapidly swinging the stern of
the Serapis to our own bow, now bringing her starboard batteries into
play. Barely had we time to light our snatches and send our broadside
into her at three fathoms before the huge vessels came crunching
together, the disordered riggings locking, and both pointed northward to
a leeward tide in a death embrace. The chance had not been given him to
shift his crews or to fling open his starboard gun-ports.

Then ensued a moment's breathless hush, even the cries of those in agony
lulling. The pall of smoke rolled a little, and a silver moonlight
filtered through, revealing the weltering bodies twisted upon the boards.
A stern call came from beyond the bulwarks.

"Have you struck, sir?"

The answer sounded clear, and bred hero-worship in our souls.

"Sir, I have not yet begun to fight."

Our men raised a hoarse yell, drowned all at once by the popping of
musketry in the tops and the bursting of grenades here and there about
the decks. A mighty muffled blast sent the Bon homme Richard rolling to
larboard, and the smoke eddied from our hatches and lifted out of the
space between the ships. The Englishman had blown off his gun-ports.
And next some one shouted that our battery of twelves was fighting them
muzzle to muzzle below, our rammers leaning into the Serapis to send
their shot home. No chance then for the thoughts which had tortured us
in moments of suspense. That was a fearful hour, when a shot had scarce
to leap a cannon's length to find its commission; when the belches of the
English guns burned the hair of our faces; when Death was sovereign,
merciful or cruel at his pleasure. The red flashes disclosed many an act
of coolness and of heroism. I saw a French lad whip off his coat when a
gunner called for a wad, and another, who had been a scavenger, snatch
the rammer from Pearce's hands when he staggered with a grape-shot
through his chest. Poor Jack Pearce! He did not live to see the work
'Scolding Sairy' was to do that night. I had but dragged him beyond
reach of the recoil when he was gone.

Then a cry came floating down from aloft. Thrice did I hear it, like one
waking out of a sleep, ere I grasped its import. "The Alliance! The
Alliance!" But hardly had the name resounded with joy throughout the
ship, when a hail of grape and canister tore through our sails from aft
forward. "She rakes us! She rakes us!" And the French soldiers tumbled
headlong down from the poop with a wail of "Les Anglais font prise!"
"Her Englishmen have taken her, and turned her guns against us!" Our
captain was left standing alone beside the staff where the stars and
stripes waved black in the moonlight.

"The Alliance is hauling off, sir!" called the midshipman of the
mizzen-top. "She is making for the Pallas and the Countess of
Scarborough."

"Very good, sir," was all the commodore said.

To us hearkening for his answer his voice betrayed no sign of dismay.
Seven times, I say, was that battle lost, and seven times regained again.
What was it kept the crews at their quarters and the officers at their
posts through that hell of flame and shot, when a madman could scarce
have hoped for victory? What but the knowledge that somewhere in the
swirl above us was still that unswerving and indomitable man who swept
all obstacles from before him, and into whose mind the thought of defeat
could not enter. His spirit held us to our task, for flesh and blood
might not have endured alone.

We had now but one of our starboard nine-pounders on its carriage, and
word came from below that our battery of twelves was all but knocked to
scrap iron, and their ports blown into one yawning gap. Indeed, we did
not have to be told that sides and stanchions had been carried away, for
the deck trembled and teetered under us as we dragged 'Scolding Sairy'
from her stand in the larboard waist, clearing a lane for her between the
bodies. Our feet slipped and slipped as we hove, and burning bits of
sails and splinters dropping from aloft fell unheeded on our heads and
shoulders. With the energy of desperation I was bending to the pull,
when the Malay in front of me sank dead across the tackle. But, ere I
could touch him, he was tenderly lifted aside, and a familiar figure
seized the rope where the dead man's hands had warmed it. Truly, the
commodore was everywhere that night.

"Down to the surgeon with you, Richard!" he cried. "I will look to the
battery."

Dazed, I put my hand to my hair to find it warm and wringing wet. When I
had been hit, I knew not. But I shook my head, for the very notion of
that cockpit turned my stomach. The blood was streaming from a gash in
his own temple, to which he gave no heed, and stood encouraging that
panting line until at last the gun was got across and hooked to the
ring-bolts of its companion that lay shattered there. "Serve her with
double-headed, my lads," he shouted, "and every shot into the
Englishman's mainmast!"

"Ay, ay, sir," came the answer from every man of that little remnant.

The Serapis, too, was now beginning to blaze aloft, and choking
wood-smoke eddied out of the Richard's hold and mingled with the powder
fumes. Then the enemy's fire abreast us seemed to lull, and Mr. Stacey
mounted the bulwarks, and cried out: "You have cleared their decks, my
hearties!" Aloft, a man was seen to clamber from our mainyard into the
very top of the Englishman, where he threw a hand-grenade, as I thought,
down her main hatch. An instant after an explosion came like a, clap of
thunder in our faces, and a great quadrant of light flashed as high as
the 'Serapis's' trucks, and through a breach in her bulwarks I saw men
running with only the collars of their shirts upon their naked bodies.

'Twas at this critical moment, when that fearful battle once more was
won, another storm of grape brought the spars about our heads, and that
name which we dreaded most of all was spread again. As we halted in
consternation, a dozen round shot ripped through our unengaged side, and
a babel of voices hailed the treacherous Landais with oaths and
imprecations. We made out the Alliance with a full head of canvas, black
and sharp, between us and the moon. Smoke hung above her rail. Getting
over against the signal fires blazing on Flamborough Head, she wore ship
and stood across our bows, the midshipman on the forecastle singing out
to her, by the commodore's orders, to lay the enemy by the board. There
was no response.

"Do you hear us?" yelled Mr. Linthwaite.

"Ay, ay," came the reply; and with it the smoke broke from her and the
grape and canister swept our forecastle. Then the Alliance sailed away,
leaving brave Mr. Caswell among the many Landais had murdered.

The ominous clank of the chain pumps beat a sort of prelude to what
happened next. The gunner burst out of the hatch with blood running down
his face, shouting that the Richard was sinking, and yelling for quarter
as he made for the ensign-staff on the poop, for the flag was shot away.
Him the commodore felled with a pistol-butt. At the gunner's heels were
the hundred and fifty prisoners we had taken, released by the master at
arms. They swarmed out of the bowels of the ship like a horde of
Tartars, unkempt and wild and desperate with fear, until I thought that
the added weight on the scarce-supported deck would land us all in the
bilges. Words fail me when I come to describe the frightful panic of
these creatures, frenzied by the instinct of self-preservation. They
surged hither and thither as angry seas driven into a pocket of a
storm-swept coast. They trampled rough-shod over the moaning heaps of
wounded and dying, and crowded the crews at the guns, who were powerless
before their numbers. Some fought like maniacs, and others flung
themselves into the sea.

Those of us who had clung to hope lost it then. Standing with my back
to the mast, beating them off with a pike, visions of an English
prison-ship, of an English gallows, came before me. I counted the
seconds until the enemy's seamen would be pouring through our ragged
ports. The seventh and last time, and we were beaten, for we had not men
enough left on our two decks to force them down again. Yes,--I shame to
confess it--the heart went clean out of me, and with that the pain
pulsed and leaped in my head like a devil unbound. At a turn of the hand
I should have sunk to the boards, had not a voice risen strong and clear
above that turmoil, compelling every man to halt trembling in his steps.

"Cast off, cast off! 'The Serapis' is sinking. To the pumps, ye fools,
if you would save your lives!"

That unerring genius of the gardener's son had struck the only chord!

They were like sheep before us as we beat them back into the reeking
hatches, and soon the pumps were heard bumping with a renewed and a
desperate vigour. Then, all at once, the towering mainmast of the enemy
cracked and tottered and swung this way and that on its loosened shrouds.
The first intense silence of the battle followed, in the midst of which
came a cry from our top:

"Their captain is hauling down, sir!"

The sound which broke from our men could scarce be called a cheer. That
which they felt as they sank exhausted on the blood of their comrades may
not have been elation. My own feeling was of unmixed wonder as I gazed
at a calm profile above me, sharp-cut against the moon.

I was moved as out of a revery by the sight of Dale swinging across to
the Serapis by the main brace pennant. Calling on some of my boarders, I
scaled our bulwarks and leaped fairly into the middle of the gangway of
the Serapis.

Such is nearly all of my remembrance of that momentous occasion. I had
caught the one glimpse of our first lieutenant in converse with their
captain and another officer, when a naked seaman came charging at me. He
had raised a pike above his shoulder ere I knew what he was about, and my
senses left me.




CHAPTER LIII

IN WHICH I MAKE SOME DISCOVERIES

The room had a prodigious sense of change about it. That came over me
with something of a shock, since the moment before I had it settled that
I was in Marlboro' Street. The bare branches swaying in the wind outside
should belong to the trees in Freshwater Lane. But beyond the branches
were houses, the like of which I had no remembrance of in Annapolis. And
then my grandfather should be sitting in that window. Surely, he was
there! He moved! He was coming toward me to say: "Richard, you are
forgiven," and to brush his eyes with his ruffles.

Then there was the bed-canopy, the pleatings of which were gone, and it
was turned white instead of the old blue. And the chimney-place! That
was unaccountably smaller, and glowed with a sea-coal fire. And the
mantel was now but a bit of a shelf, and held many things that seemed
scarce at home on the rough and painted wood,--gold filigree; and China
and Japan, and a French clock that ought not to have been just there.
Ah, the teacups! Here at last was something to touch a fibre of my
brain, but a pain came with the effort of memory. So my eyes went back
to my grandfather in the window. His face was now become black as
Scipio's, and he wore a red turban and a striped cotton gown that was too
large for him. And he was sewing. This was monstrous!

I hurried over to the tea-cups, such a twinge did that discovery give me.
But they troubled me near as much, and the sea-coal fire held strange
images. The fascination in the window was not to be denied, for it stood
in line with the houses and the trees. Suddenly there rose up before me
a gate. Yes, I knew that gate, and the girlish figure leaning over it.
They were in Prince George Street. Behind them was a mass of golden-rose
bushes, and out of these came forth a black face under a turban, saying,
"Yes, mistis, I'se comin'."

"Mammy--Mammy Lucy!"

The figure in the window stirred, and the sewing fell its ample lap.

"Now Lawd'a mercy!"

I trembled--with a violence unspeakable. Was this but one more of those
thousand voices, harsh and gentle, rough and tender, to which I had
listened in vain this age past? The black face was hovering over me now,
and in an agony of apprehension I reached up and felt its honest
roughness. Then I could have wept for joy.

"Mammy Lucy!"

"Yes, Marse Dick?"

"Where--where is Miss Dolly?"

"Now, Marse Dick, doctah done say you not t' talk, suh."

"Where is Miss Dolly?" I cried, seizing her arm.

"Hush, Marse Dick. Miss Dolly'll come terectly, suh. She's lyin' down,
suh."

The door creaked, and in my eagerness I tried to lift myself. 'Twas Aunt
Lucy's hand that restrained me, and the next face I saw was that of
Dorothy's mother. But why did it appear so old and sorrow-lined? And
why was the hair now of a whiteness with the lace of the cap? She took
my fingers in her own, and asked me anxiously if I felt any pain.

"Where am I, Mrs. Manners?"

"You are in London, Richard."

"In Arlington Street?"

She shook her head sadly. "No, my dear, not in Arlington Street. But
you are not to talk."

"And Dorothy? May I not see Dorothy? Aunt Lucy tells me she is here."

Mrs. Manners gave the old mammy a glance of reproof, a signal that
alarmed me vastly.

"Oh, tell me, Mrs. Manners! You will speak the truth. Tell me if she is
gone away?"

"My dear boy, she is here, and under this very roof. And you shall see
her as soon as Dr. Barry will permit. Which will not be soon," she added
with a smile, "if you persist in this conduct."

The threat had the desired effect. And Mrs. Manners quietly left the
room, and after a while as quietly came back again and sat down by the
fire, whispering to Aunt Lucy.

Fate, in some inexplicable way, had carried me into the enemy's country
and made me the guest of Mr. Marmaduke Manners. As I lay staring upward,
odd little bits of the past came floating to the top of my mind,
presently to be pieced together. The injuries Mr. Marmaduke had done me
were the first to collect, since I was searching for the cause of my
resentment against him. The incidents arrived haphazard as magic
lanthorn views, but very vivid. His denial of me before Mr. Dix, and his
treachery at Vauxhall, when he had sent me to be murdered. Next I felt
myself clutching the skin over his ribs in Arlington Street, when I had
flung him across the room in his yellow night-gown. That brought me to
the most painful scene of my life, when I had parted with Dorothy at the
top of the stairs. Afterward followed scraps of the years at Gordon's
Pride, and on top of them the talk with McAndrews. Here was the secret
I sought. The crash had come. And they were no longer in Mayfair, but
must have taken a house in some poorer part of London. This thought cast
me down tremendously.

And Dorothy! Had time changed her? 'Twas with that query on my lips I
fell asleep, to dream of the sun shining down on Carvel Hall and Wilmot
House; of Aunt Hester and Aunt Lucy, and a lass and a lad romping through
pleasant fields and gardens.

When I awoke it was broad day once more. A gentleman sat on the edge of
my bed. He had a queer, short face, ruddy as the harvest moon, and he
smiled good-humouredly when I opened my eyes.

"I bid you good morning, Mr. Carvel, for the first time since I have made
your acquaintance," said he. "And how do you feel, sir?"

"I have never felt better in my life," I replied, which was the whole
truth.

"Well, vastly well," says he, laughing, "prodigious well for a young man
who has as many holes in him as have you. Do you hear him, Mrs.
Manners?"

At that last word, I popped up to look about the room, and the doctor
caught hold of me with ludicrous haste. A pain shot through my body.

"Avast, avast, my hearty," cries he. "'Tis a miracle you can speak,
let alone carry your bed and walk for a while yet." And he turned to
Dorothy's mother, whom I beheld smiling at me. "You will give him the
physic, ma'am, at the hours I have chosen. Egad, I begin to think we
shall come through.

"But pray remember, ma'am, if he talks, you are to put a wad in his
mouth."

"He shall have no opportunity to talk, Dr. Barry," said Mrs. Manners.

"Save for a favour I have to ask you, doctor," I cried.

"'Od's bodkins! Already, sir? And what may that be?"

"That you will allow me to see Miss Manners."

He shook with laughter, and then winked at me very roguishly.

"Oh!" says he, "and faith, I should be worse than cruel. First she
comes imploring me to see you, and so prettily that a man of oak could
not refuse her. And now it is you begging to see her. Had your eyes
been opened, sir, you might have had many a glimpse of Miss Dolly these
three weeks past."

"What! She has been watching with me?" I asked, in a rapture not to be
expressed.

"'Od's, but those are secrets. And the medical profession is
close-mouthed, Mr. Carvel. So you want to see her? No," cries he, "'tis
not needful to swear it on the Evangels. And I let her come in, will you
give me your honour as a gentleman not to speak more than two words to
her?"

"I promise anything, and you will not deny me looking at her," said I.

He shook again, all over. "You rascal! You sad dog, sir! No, sir,
faith, you must shut your eyes. Eh, madam, must he not shut his eyes?"

"They were playmates, doctor," answers Mrs. Manners. She was laughing a
little, too.

"Well, she shall come in. But remember that I shall have my ear to the
keyhole, and you go beyond your promise, out she's whisked. So I caution
you not to spend rashly those two words, sir."

And he followed Mrs. Manners out of the room, frowning and shaking his
fist at me in mock fierceness. I would have died for the man. For a
space--a prodigious long space--I lay very still, my heart bumping like a
gun-carriage broke loose, and my eyes riveted on the crack of the door.
Then I caught the sound of a light footstep, the knob turned, and joy
poured into my soul with the sweep of a Fundy tide.

"Dorothy!" I cried. "Dorothy!"

She put her finger to her lips.

"There, sir," said she, "now you have spoken them both at once!"

She closed the door softly behind her, and stood looking down upon me
with such a wondrous love-light in her eyes as no man may describe.
My fancy had not lifted me within its compass, my dreams even had not
imagined it. And the fire from which it sprang does not burn in humbler
souls. So she stood gazing, those lips which once had been the seat of
pride now parted in a smile of infinite tenderness. But her head she
still held high, and her body straight. Down the front of her dress fell
a tucked apron of the whitest linen, and in her hand was a cup of
steaming broth.

"You are to take this, Richard," she commanded. And added, with a touch
of her old mischief, "Mind, sir, if I hear a sound out of you, I am to
disappear like the fairy godmother."

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