The Gentleman

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He blew his nose boisterously.

"Then I ran up my colours to tempt em ashore. And I've been waiting in
hope ever since."

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE FIGHTING MAN

He clapped on his hat.

"And now the first thing to be done is to hold a Council of War with
old Piper."

The boy looked up shyly.

"Could I have something to eat first, sir? I haven't tasted food for
twenty-four hours."

The Parson fussed off to the cupboard.

"Just like me. Just like a man. No thought--no consideration. All
comes of there being no woman about the place."

He brought out a knuckle of ham, a loaf, a pot of jam, and a jug of
milk.

As he did so there came a groaning gurgle from the corner.

The Parson whirled round and shot a denouncing finger at the piled
bed.

"You dare!" he roared.

"I was ony sniffin, sir," whimpered a cockney voice.

Then for the first time Kit saw that in the bed lay a man. A shaven
head, pert and pug-like, and a face shining with sweat protruded. All
the rest was lost beneath that mountain of clothes.

As Kit stared, the man winked a merry brown eye at him.

The boy approached.

"Isn't it rather stuffy under all those clothes?" he asked
compassionately.

"It's like a h'oven, sir--that ot!" chirped the little man.

"You'll go to a much hotter place when you die, if you so much as stir
a finger out," called the Parson with firm cheerfulness. "I'm a
Parson, mind you. I know what I'm talkin about."

"Ah, I know you wouldn't go for to put a pore bloke away for fetchin
his thumb to mop a drop o sweat off his conk," whined the other.

"Ha! you sweat, Knapp?"

"I spouts pushpiration, sir!"

"Capital, capital!" The Parson hopped across the room and bent his ear
to the bed. "I can almost hear him simmer!" He twinkled up at Kit.
"It's the very weather for him. He's in a sweet muck-sweat. Lying
between two feather-beds, ain't you, me boy?"

He sat down on the table beside the eating lad.

"That's Nipper Knapp. He was my batman in the Borderers. I brought him
down here to train, while I was waiting for the French. Such a pretty
little bit o stuff! Arms like legs, and legs like bodies. I'll strip
him for you one day. Only thing is I have to sweat the meat off him
so. Get a belly on him in a day, little pig, if I'd let him."

He spoke of the man much as a farmer speaks of his beasts. The boy's
sensitive soul recoiled.

"He can hear every word," he whispered.

"I don't mind," replied the Parson cheerfully.

"Nor don't I," chirped the voice from the bed.

"And what are you training him for?" asked Kit--"the Church, like
yourself?"

"No, sir!" retorted the Parson shortly. "I'm training him to make the
best use he can of the gifts God has given him--that's his hands and
his feet. He can rattle his dukes, and chuck his trotters, as I never
saw man yet. Strips ten six. All good, too; all guts. You can't glut
him.... I'm backing him to run ten miles in the hour against any man
in England, and fight him to a finish in a 24-ft. ring at the end."

The boy shoved back his plate.

"And have you any other spiritual duties, sir?" he asked.

"I stand over Blob while Piper teaches him his prayers," replied the
Parson sullenly.

"Who is Piper?"

The Parson was staring out of the window.

It was some time before he answered.

"I once asked Nelson who was the bravest man he'd ever met. He
answered like a flash, 'My captain of the foretop aboard the
_Agamemnon_--Ralph Piper. The bravest man,' said Nelson, 'because
the best. He's my hero!' And I remember the voice in which he said it
now."

Kit had risen to his feet.

All his life Nelson had been his hero; and now he was within touch of
his hero's hero.

"Where is he?" with glowing eyes.

"Out there--under the sycamores."

Kit recalled the voice humming the hymn that had welcomed him.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE SAINT

They passed out of the cottage.

A heavy-browed jasmine, the flowers fading now, hung about the door.

The greensward ran smoothly away to a shingle bank that rose, long-
backed and brown, some three hundred yards away. The bank crossed the
horizon like a low breast-work, sweeping away eastward in long roan
curve. On the right it ran into a little blunt hill, green-brown and
bare. Beyond the bank the sea leapt to the eye.

The Parson was walking reverently.

There was about him something of the subdued air of the schoolboy
going to interview a respected master.

"Step quietly," he murmured. "We are going into the presence of a
saint."

In front of the cottage, about two hundred yards from it, a little
knoll, shaded with sycamores, humped up out of the greensward.

At the foot of it, in the shadow of a tree, a tall old man was sitting
bolt upright in a wooden chair with wheels. A brown book had fallen
open beside him; and a musket, propped against the chair, threw a
black shadow across the page.

"Loaded!" muttered the Parson, pointing. "He can draw a cork from a
bottle at a hundred yards."

"More than most saints could," whispered the boy.

"He's a common-sense saint, not the ordinary run," replied the Parson
with a grin.

The old man's back was towards them. He was gazing intently through a
long glass at the privateer. Kit could see nothing but a straight back
and moon-silvered head.

"Piper, I've brought a young gentleman of your Service to see
you," said the Parson in the quiet tone in which a man addresses a
woman or a superior.

The old sailor dropped the glass. His great hands fumbled with the
wheels of his chair, and he slewed himself about.

Kit's heart gave a jerk.

The old man ended abruptly at the thighs!

Irresistibly the boy recalled a doll of Gwen's whose china legs he had
once plucked off in passion, leaving saw-dust stumps.

The Parson saw the look on the boy's face.

"Ah, I should have told you. Lost both legs in the action with the
_Ca Ira_, wasn't it, Piper?"

The doll spoke.

"Not lost, sir--gone before."

Kit glanced at him sharply.

Was he joking?

No; in that grave face lurked no laughter. The old man had said the
thing that he believed in simplest faith. And what a face it was!
nobly large, worn as the earth, and as full of quiet dignity. Pale,
too, but not with the pallor of ill-health. Indeed the old man looked
hard and wholesome as a forest tree. Rather the boy was reminded of a
cathedral seen in February sunshine.

The great upper lip was bare and stiff as clay. The wide mouth curled
up at the corners, as though it often smiled. Friendly eyes, the colour
of forget-me-nots, dwelt on the boy. A stiff white fringe framed all.

And the note of the whole was calm--calm invincible.

Then the boy's eyes fell on those blue bags thrusting out over the
edge of the chair. A question leapt to his lips. It was out before he
could stop it.

"Dud--dud--does it hurt?"

The old man's face broke up and shone. He chuckled.

A saint could laugh, then! the boy felt himself relieved.

"No, sir, thank you, ne'er a bit. And not nigh as much at the time as
you might fancy--a tidy jar like to be sure.... One thing, I don't
suffer from no bunions." He went off again into his deep chuckle; and
again the boy felt comfort at heart.

The saint could joke!

"Tell him about it, Piper," said the Parson; "you and Nelson."

"Why, sir," said the old man, frank as a child, "the Captain were
standin by my gun in the waist, where he'd no business to ha been
reelly by rights. Flop I goes on the broad o my back, when it took me.
He was down on his knees beside me in a second, dabbin with his little
handkercher. 'Don't kneel in that, sir,' says I, 'your white breeches
and all.' 'Ah, dear fellow!' says he, taking my hand, 'dear fellow!
dear fellow!...' Then they carried me off to the cock-pit."

That was the whole story, but it was so simply told that the boy saw
and felt it all.

"Yes, sir. There warn't a man aboard the _Agamemnon_ but'd ha
died for Captain Nelson and proud too."

He put the spy-glass to his eye to hide the fact that he was blinking.

"She's had a rare mauling, surely. I'd just like to know her story."

"Here's the young gentleman can tell you, Piper," chimed in the
Parson.

There was a faint glow in the hollow of the old man's cheeks as he
listened to the boy's tale, and he was rubbing his huge hands together
slowly.

"Seems the powder's laid, but the match lies yet in the pocket of this
here Gentleman," he said, as Kit concluded. "One thing's clear, sir!
We want that boat!... Now if so be I might make so bold, if you and
the young gentleman'd take the glass, and step across to the Wish
there, you could see all along the shore past Cow Gap to the Head, and
make out what they're up to."

"That's a good notion for a sailor!" cried the Parson briskly. "Come
on, Kit."

"And I'll make my course for the cottage and see all's snug there,"
said the old man. "You never know what's comin next in this world.
It's the wise man as is ready for the worst."

He trundled himself across the grass.

"Here's your book!" cried Kit, and bending picked it from the ground.

As he did so he saw the name.

It was Law's _Serious Call._

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE SIMPLETON

They passed out of the shadow of the sycamore into the sun-glare.

The greensward ran away into shallow creek lying between them and the
little hill beyond. Crossing it, they began the ascent.

"This is the Wish," explained the Parson, climbing; "the Wash really,
because the sea washed round it in old days. It's gone back along
these parts. Old Piper says, when he was a boy, the creek used to fill
at spring-tides."

At the top of the hill Kit looked about him.

The Wish thrust out into the brown beach, a natural watch-tower, some
hundred feet high. This was no doubt the bump of green he had seen
from the dew-pond.

Eastward a long sweep of shingle embraced Pevensey Bay. Westward,
Beachy Head shouldered out into the sea.

It was nearly low tide. Barriers of black rocks bound the sea.

On the edge of it a boy in a blue jersey danced. In his hand was a
sea-weed scourge; and as the sea toppled in tiny ripples at his feet,
he spanked it, leaping back to avoid the touch of the water. As he
leapt he yelled; and in the stillness his pure treble rose to them.

"Hod back, ye saucy thing! hod back, I say!"

The Parson put his hand to his mouth.

"Blob!" he holloaed.

The boy looked up, and with a parting spank came towards them.

"Who's that?" asked Kit, "and what's he doing?"

"Blob--blobbing'," replied the Parson laconically.

"Who's Blob?"

The Parson took up his tale.

"You remember I told you Black Diamond promised to look me up some
time. Well, I knew he'd be as good as his word. So very next day I had
the windows barred, a brace of bullet-proof doors slung, got in a
barrel of powder, and made all snug....

"And just as well I did, too. A couple of days later, just about the
time the bats begin to twitter, I heard the thud of feet on the grass,
and a laugh. They thought they'd taken on an easy job--just walk into
the house, and cop me at my supper. We let em up to within twenty
yards. Then we let em have it, the three of us--Piper, Knapp, and I....

"Such a panic! 'It's a trap!' screams one. 'Blockademen!' yells a
second. Diamond was the only one of the lot to keep his head. ''Bout
ship, boys!' he shouts. 'Call again another day.' And off they
scuttled, quicker than they came....

"'Come on, Knapp!' says I, and bundles out after them, holloaing like
a regiment. One or two turned, and there was a bit of a barney. I
stuck one chap, and was just going to stick another--a fellow in blue
jumping around in a queer kind of way--when all of a sudden he gave a
jab in the back to one of his own chaps.

"Then he turned, and I saw he was a boy about your age, with a face
like a pink moon.

"He came at me like a man, flashing his knife.

"'Here! who are you for?' says I.

"'Whoy, mesalf!' says he.

"'But what you at?' says I.

"'Whoy, foightin!' says he.

"'Who?' says I.

"'Whoy, the nearest!' says he, and smacks at me.

"Then Knapp tripped him from behind, and he was our prisoner....

"He's been with us ever since. Piper's been tryin to make a Christian
of him."

"What's his story?"

"I don't know, and he can't tell us. He knows nothing--not even fear.
I call him Blob, because blob's his nature. Piper found the name Hoad
on his shirt. I daresay his people sold him to the Gap Gang; and they
kept him."

"To be cruel to?" shuddered Kit.

"Not they," laughed the Parson. "He was plump as a little pig. They'd
be kind to him because he wasn't right--superstition, you see. Kept
him to bring em luck, probably. A kind of idol."

The boy in the blue jersey was coming up the hill towards them,
slobbering at the mouth. His hands were in his pockets, and he
lolloped along on his toes.

"Oi druv her back," he announced with complacent cunning. "She was
creepin in on us, sloy-loike."

His face was that of a babe. Clearer eyes Kit had never seen, nor a
more perfect mouth. But for the ears, large and flap, it might have
been the face of a cherub, poised on the gawky body of fifteen. The
expression, by no means vacant, was of slow and staring interest.
Certainly this was no congenital idiot. Probably some chance blow on
the head in infancy had arrested mental growth. The flesh had gone on;
the mind had stopped. A baby-soul was sheathed in the body of a boy.

The two lads were much of a height, and much of an age. But what a
difference between them!

The one was limp as a lolling flower, the other alert as a sword, and
as keen. Experience had written nothing on the face of the simpleton.
All there was blank as the moon. The haggard cheeks and anxious eyes
of the other told that he had already drunk deep of the bitter waters
of life.

Blob was staring at Kit with the solemn interest of a babe.

Then he pointed a finger.

"Boy!" he bleated.

"Call me 'sir'!" ordered Kit imperiously. "And take your hands out of
your pockets when you talk to me."

"Go home, Blob!" said the Parson, patting him. "Home!" pointing,
"Home! and stop making a blob o yourself for the present, there's a
good boy. Mr. Piper wants you to help him."

Blob shook a slow head.

"Nay," he said in musical Sussex. "Oi'll boide with Maaster Sir."

Here was another boy in a land of men. In a dim way he felt their
kinship.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE FLAP OF A FLAG

The Parson was staring through the spy-glass at Beachy Head.

A mile and a half away, it lay in misty splendour, not unlike a lion
sleeping.

At the foot of it a few tiny black figures moved among the rocks.

"I make out about a score of em," he said. "The boat's beached, and a
man over it. I can catch the glint on his gun-barrel. We can't get at
em except along the shore, hang it! They'd see us coming a mile off."

"If we can't get at the boat," said Kit, "neither can the Gentleman."

"That's truth," mused the Parson, dropping the glass.

"He'll prowl about till night-fall probably. Then he'll have a chance
--if they've got liquor. The boat's his one hope. He's in a tightish
place, mind!--enemy's country; wings clipped; his old friends his best
enemies."

"And he doesn't know whether the privateer's a Frenchman or not," said
Kit. "Though, of course, he might come down to the shore and signal
her--on chance."

"Not while it's light," replied the Parson grimly; "If he signalled
from anywhere it'd be from here. And here I squat till dark. After
dark he can signal till he's black in the face--he hasn't got a
lantern."

The boy's anxious eyes were sea-ward.

The old pain of heart, forgotten for the moment in the cottage, had
returned, the old sickening sense of failure. After all, the
responsibility was _his_, and his alone. It was in _him_ old
Ding-dong had trusted; it was to _him_ the scent-bottle had been
bequeathed; the fate of Nelson rested on _his_ shoulders.

Hither and thither his mind darted, seeking a way of escape from the
net of circumstance.

"If we could only make sure of his thinking her an Englishman!" he
fretted.

"She's flying no colours," said the Parson, "that's one good thing."

"I wish she'd fly the Union Jack," replied the boy.

The remark annoyed the Parson, practical or nothing.

"What's the good of wishing what can't be?" he snarled. "You might
leave that to the women."

"Why can't it be?" retorted the boy hotly.

A sound behind him caught his ears. He turned to see the flag in the
cottage chimney ruffling it behind the sycamores.

It flashed a message to his heart.

"By Jove, sir!" he panted. "I've got it."

The blood had rushed to his face, and ebbed as suddenly.

"Lend me your flag, and I'll swim out with it after dark!"

The Parson stared.

"To the privateer?"

"Why not? It can't be more than a few hundred yards. I've often done
more."

"Well, what if you did get there?" curt and sarcastic. "Summon her to
surrender, else you'd take her by storm and put the lot to the sword,
I suppose?"

"Why, board her, sir, and run the flag up! She's not a man-of-war.
They'll be keeping no watch, likely as not."

The boy was in a white blaze.

"They won't see it till broad daylight!" he panted, pressing. "And by
that time the Gentleman, if he's hanging about, will see it too. If
they haul it down then and run up the tricolour, he'll think it's a
decoy."

There was something contagious about the lad's white-hot enthusiasm.

The light was coming and going in the Parson's eyes.

The scheme was as mad as you like. Still, there was a chance of
success, a fighting chance. And was it not the only one?

Himself he no more doubted the lad's story than he doubted that a
month since he had crossed swords with Fighting Fitz. But who else
would believe?

Of course he must send Knapp over to Lewes at once to report to Beau
Beauchamp, the Commandant there; but what would come of that?

Loving his old Service with passionate jealousy, he was not blind to
the weakness of its traditional logic: it was not probable; therefore
it was not true; and so to sleep again, dear boys!

And Beau Beauchamp, of all men!

The Parson had not yet forgotten the reception that heavy sensualist
had given to his report that Fighting Fitz was riding up and down the
land just outside his lines.

"_May I, sir?_"

The boy was burning at his side. Perforce the Parson began to smoulder
too.

The adventure had just that smack of romance about it that tickled
this man of prose. Could he have run the risk himself, he who could
hardly swim to the bottom, he would have ventured it with laughing
heart. Was he justified in staying the sailor-boy?

No, no, no! his heart thundered the answer at him.

There must always be a risk. And was ever risk better worth running
than this one? But what a boy!

He was flaming merrily now.

"May I, sir?"

He turned to the lad, pale beside him, and smacked a hand into his.

"Kit!" he cried with gusty laughter, "you should have been a soldier!"

CHAPTER XL

THE SWIM IN THE DARK

Kit awoke with the horrors.

All was black about him, and a great hand lay on his breast.

He gripped it, gurgling.

A calm voice, already strangely familiar, reassured him.

"By your leave, sir, it's about time for you to rouse and bitt."

It was Nelson's old foretop-man. The moon, slanting through the
window, shone on his white head and those tranquil, big-dog eyes of
his.

Kit relaxed his hold.

"That you, Piper?" he sighed. "I was dreaming of Fat George. What's
the time?"

"It's a little better'n two o'clock, sir; you've had a tidy sleep. The
tide's pretty near down, and the moon's a-nigh off the water. By than
you get alongside there'll likely be a bit o' mist on the water crep
up from the eastud with the sun."

The boy slipped off his clothes, shivering.

"Where's Mr. Joy?"

"He came in from the Wish just on midnight. 'No Knapp yet?' says he.
'Then I shall make a reconnaissance in force myself.' 'Beggin your
pardon, sir,' says he, don't see the force--one man agin a score.'
'Ah,' says he, 'you forget my lady.' And he whips up his Polly, and
off he pops over the grass like a lad a-courtin." The old man chuckled
as he told.

"What's Knapp up to?" trembled the boy.

"Why, sir, gone over to Lewes for the soldiers, and should ha been
back hours sen."

"Wonder why he's not?"

"Got fightin and foolin on the road, sir, I'll lay," chuckled the old
man. "Like a lamb with the heart of a lion is Knapp, sir. Frisks into
trouble, and then fights out again. This is first time he's been let
out of hissalf since he went into training. So he's all of a bubble
like. Bubble or bust--that's how Knapp feels."

Stripped, the boy stood up in the darkness.

"Got the flag, Piper?"

"Here it be, sir. How'll you carry it?"

"So." He wound it up in a coil and tied it about his neck, scarf-like.

"Now I'm ready."

II

The old man wheeled out to the edge of the shadow of the house.

All about was black and silver in the moon. A faint breeze ruffled the
sycamores upon the knoll. Stars strewed the heavens. Beyond the
shingle-bank the sea glistened like satin.

It was very still, very cold, very lonely.

Kit set his teeth to prevent them chattering. The night air kissed him
coldly, and the moon, white above the inky Downs, glistened on his
shoulders.

"There she lays, in the Channel off the Boulder Bank," whispered the
old man, pointing to the privateer, dull-black against the glitter.
"And it's my belieft there's not a sober man aboard of her. All stow'd
away dead drunk under hatches--that's my belieft, sir. They kep it up
from dark till midnight--dancin, drummin, fightin, and all manner.
More like a cage full? wild beasties from Bedlam than a Christian
ship. And for the last hour she might ha been a hulk full o corpuses."

He dropped his voice still further.

"He's in it, sure!" jerking his thumb starward. "Made em blind to the
world for His own good purpose--which is as you should lay em aboard
unbeknownst and knife the blessed lot if so be it was your fancy."

The boy choked a laugh brimming on the edge of being. The old man's
solemnity, his profound simplicity, touched the springs of mirth
within him.

"Perhaps," he panted. "I hope so."

"Ah! I'm certain sure," replied the other with firm confidence.

Faith, the most infectious quality in the world because the truest,
seized the boy's heart and lifted it.

"Good-bye, Piper."

"Good luck, sir."

The lad plunged into the moonlight.

III

A moon-clad wisp, he flitted across the greensward, the fringe of the
flag-scarf fluttering behind him. It was a fine thing to do, but he
wished devoutly somebody else had the doing of it. On the Wish in the
sunshine, the Parson at his side, when the idea first struck him, it
had seemed splendid. Now, alone in the dark, with the idea to
translate into reality, he saw it very differently. It gave him no
thrill of glory. He felt exactly as he had felt last March on the way
to the dentist to have a tooth out--a mean sense of his own
mortality, and an earnest desire to run away.

The turf shaded off into long bents growing out of sand; and that
again ran away into shingle. As he breasted the bank, his hands
succouring his feet, he heard steps behind him.

"Who's that?" he snarled, crouching.

Blob was standing at gaze a little way behind him.

"What ye want?"

The boy made no answer, staring with round moon-eyes.

"He's noiked," came a musing voice. "Oi dew loike to see un."

He shot out a finger, and, flinging back his head, gurgled laughter.

"Here, boy!" called Kit. "As you are there, you can carry me over
these pebbles."

He leapt on the other's back, and Blob, sturdy as he looked limp,
crashed down the shingle and across the stretch of wet sand at a
loose-jointed canter.

"That'll do, my boy, thank you," said Kit, slipping down at the edge
of the tide. "I'd give you a penny, only I've not got one. No, you
can't come any further. It's too dangerous. This is a job for
officers."

He began to paddle out, the ripples playing about his ankles.

Blob's presence braced him to his task. It called to his spirit of a
gentleman. He would just show this lout what blood meant.

Blob followed him with awed eyes.

"She's aloive," he warned his brother-boy. "She'll swallow ee."

"No, she won't," Kit replied. "She's an old friend of mine."

IV

The boy could swim at an age when to most lads walking is still an
accomplishment. Now he waded quietly down a sandy reach between black
rocks.

The water was warmer than the air. When it clasped his waist, he
trusted himself to it faithfully.

The sea was his mother, and the mother of his race. Her arms were
about him; her spirit entered into his. How pure she was, how strong,
how good! He kissed her cool brow and dropped his head upon her bosom.
Turning on his back, he saw the wall of the Downs, black beneath
glorious stars. On the top of the wall poised the moon, peeping over
the brim of the world at him. He waved to her, laughing: she too was a
friend. And the moon, wise as innocent, smiled back.

He swam leisurely, without splash, almost without ripple, quiet as the
tide.

He had the world to himself, and loved the loneliness.

Out here, the sea about him, the night above, he could feel the slow
tides of God pushing onwards through the dark of Time.

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