The Gentleman

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Pale and panting, he turned.

"I think that's the last, sir," languidly.

The old Commander removed the plug from his mouth.

"There's two things go to make a British seaman," he growled--"guts
and gumption. Maybe you've got both, as your father had afoor you.
We're like to see e'er the day's out."

He wiped his jack-knife on his breeches, and began to carve his plug
again.

"Now run below and see how things are going with Mr. Lanyon."

The boy went. His passion had long passed. He was sick and weary.
Head and heart ached.

With shaking knees, he tottered below. Had a party of jabbering
Frenchmen met him, he wouldn't have minded. He was too spent.

But no.

All below was calm now and silence; smoke-drift and dying men.

The Gunner was standing at an open port, directing operations.

His passion too had passed. The giant-hero of a few minutes' back
seemed almost small now. And a strange figure he made.

The sweat had coursed through the rouge on his cheeks; and the dye
on his whiskers had run, dripping on to neck and shoulders. He was
naked still, save for his trousers, but wearing his cocked hat a-rake.

The man at his side heaved a French corpse through the port.

"That's the lot," said the Gunner, picking his teeth, and turned with
black and grinning face to the boy.

"Well, sir, what d'ye think? me?--earty fighter, ain't I?"

CHAPTER XIII

AFTER THE FIGHT

I

All was very still on the deck of the _Tremendous_; and those
quiet men lolling in the sun added to the hush.

They sprawled about in all attitudes--on their faces, on their backs,
in each other's arms, as though snoozing. And the snoring noise that
came from one or two of them enhanced the illusion. Only the blank
unwinking eyes of those upon their backs, the expression of the upturned
faces, and the wet red stuff smeared everywhere, showed that they were
not holiday picnickers.

Aft by the binnacle a man sat up against the side watching with appalling
solemnity the blood pat-pat-patting down from a wound in his side.
He dabbed a finger in the mess, and scrawled his name on the deck,

Tom Bleach. R.I.P._

"Tom Bleach--Remember Im Please," he repeated, nodding his head with
portentous gravity.

A white and crimson huddle beside him groaned.

The man of letters frowned at it.

"How d'ye feel, cookie?" he asked.

"Mortal queer," whispered the dying man.

"It do feel queer, dyin," admitted the other solemnly.

A French officer close by opened glazed eyes.

"I too I die," he announced. "What then will I do?"

"Why, pray God forgive you bein French," growled old Ding-dong,
propped against the wheel. "That's your worst crime."

II

The boy came up from below, deathly pale, the wind lifting his hair.
He crossed to the old Commander, reeling faintly among the dead as
he came.

"Lanyon alive?"

"Yes, sir. All well below," in thin and ghostly voice.

The old man nodded satisfaction.

"Starry fighter, ain't he?--Wonderful gift that way. Don't know as
I ever saw his ekal at a pinch."

He looked up at the lad, swaying above him.

"Feel funny?"

The boy did not reply, leaning against the side, a far-away look in
his eyes.

Then he burst into tears.

"There, there!" said the old man soothingly. "Sure to come a bit
okkud-like first start-off. It's been a nasty beginning for you
too--messy fightin, I call it. Look at my quarter-deck! More like a
slaughter-house nor a King's ship."

He mopped at his leg.

"And all the shore-goin folk on their knees in Church all the
time!--Funny to think on, ain't it?"

III

The Gunner came up the ladder.

A sack was cast about his naked shoulders; his cocked hat was on the
back of his head; and a tooth-pick between his lips.

He strolled to the side.

Beneath him the _Cocotte_, smoking like a damped furnace,
the blood trickling from between her seams, was settling fast.

"Got her bellyful all snug," said the Gunner complacently, picking
his teeth.

He strolled off to old Ding-dong, propped on his corpse beside the
wheel.

"Well, sir, you play a pretty stick with a handspike still!--how's
yerself?"

"Tidy," grunted the veteran. "How fur's yon frigate yet? I can't
see over the side, settin on my little sofia."

"Within random shot, sir. She's got a slant of wind, and is crowding
all sail to get alongside."

"Then we'd best be sturrin. How are we ridin?"

The Gunner looked over the side.

"Why, middlin deep, sir."

"Then cut the boats away, and the anchors. Stave in the water-casks.
Heave all spare shot and tackle overboard--we need nowt but the boards
we stand on and the guns we fight; and make what sail you can on
her.... I shall bear away for the shore. Don't mean bein took at my
time o life."

IV

A breeze light as a lady's kiss smote the water. The topsails of the
sloop began to fill and flutter.

Deep in the water as a barge, she drew away from her floundering
antagonist. As she did so, the privateer, as though loth to let her
depart unsaluted, barked a sullen farewell.

A roar of triumph from the _Coquette_, clearing now on the
port-bow and a fainter shout from the frigate to starboard, told
their own tale.

The mizzen, struck twenty foot above the deck, came down with a
crash. With it fell the red-cross flag, and the faces of the crew.

"Hand me that striped petticut!" roared the Gunner, pointing to the
tricolour lying entangled in the ruins of the privateer's main-top
on the deck of the sloop. "I want to blow me nose."

He leaped on to the bulwark, flag in hand; and staying himself by
the shroud, blew his nose boisterously on the enemy's colours.

The crew, busy clearing the wreckage of the mizzen, roared delight.

The Gunner jumped down, and spread the flag over the old Commander's
feet as he lay.

"There's the first on em, sir. There's two more to follow."

"Make it so," said the old man grimly.

He was chewing a quid, and a battered cocked hat tilted over his eyes.

V

The Gunner marched away, eyes to his right, eyes to his left. And as
he marched, he swept off his cocked hat.

"Chaps," he called to the remnant of the crew gathered grimy about
the after-hatch. "I thank my God for this booriful sight. Frenchman
to port!" shooting his left arm. "Frenchman to starboard!" shooting
his right. "Frenchman astarn!" with a backward toss. "And God A'mighty
aloft. What more can a Christian ask?"

A shot from the frigate splashed under the bows of the sloop, sluicing
her deck.

"There she spouts!" roared the Gunner, and clapping on his hat ran,
kicking his heels behind him. "Come along, the baby-boys!--the last
fight o the little _Tremendous_--and the best."

III

UNDER THE CLIFF

CHAPTER XIV

SUNDAY EVENING

It was evening.

The little _Tremendous_ lay under the cliff, pounding gently,
gently, on a reef. Her back was broken, she had a heavy list to
starboard, and her bulwark was awash.

The mainmast had gone by the board. The quarterdeck carronades,
loosed from their moorings, sprawled in the wash of the water, a
dead man floating amongst them. The deck was a tangle of wreckage
and bloody sails. From a splintered stump, more like a shaving-brush
than a mast, the red-cross flag still flapped.

Astern of her, in the deep water, lay her enemies in smoking ruins.
The privateer, her foretop in flames, was dishevelled as a virago
after a street fight; while great white clouds puffing out of the
frigate's quarter-gallery told that she was afire.

The sea wallowed about the sloop, green and sleek and greedy. There
was scarcely a ruffle on the water; only a huge slow heaving, as of
some monster breathing deeply, and licking its lips before an orgie.

Firing had long ceased.

Kit, squatting, his back against the mizzen-stump, was coming to with
splitting head.

All through that golden summer afternoon the sloop had drifted
shoreward, privateer and frigate hammering her from either side.
Towards evening, her last shot spent, the frigate boarded. The
Gunner, hoarse as a crow, bloody as a beefsteak, had brought up the
weary remnant of the crew to repel the attack, Kit aiding him
manfully.

Men had been dancing idiotically about the boy; he had heard the
Gunner's raucous voice close in his ear,

"Gad, you're a game un!" and had run at a nightmare man with goggle
eyes.

Then something had happened.

Now all was calm and sunset peace, and dew on the deck among the
blood stains.

And how beautiful it was, this strange twilight quiet, after the howl
and torment of battle!

Warily the boy opened eyes and ears. He was not dead then, not even
wounded, only horribly parched, and how his head ached!

Before him the cliff fell sheer and blank--a white curtain dropped
from heaven.

Over it sea-gulls floated on dream-wings. While from some
remote Down village, church bells swung out the old song--

_Come to Christ,
Come to Christ,
Come, dear children, come to Christ._

The boy, lying on the bloody deck, his feet cushioned on a dead man,
listened with closed eyes to the old call.

Last Sunday at that hour, the blackbirds hopping on the lawn without,
the swifts screaming above, he and mother and Gwen had been singing
hymns together in the schoolroom--rather chokily indeed, for it was
his last Sunday at home.

All that was ages and ages ago. He had lived and died a hundred times
since then.

Now....

There by the wheel, in a puddle of his own blood, lay old Ding-dong,
grey and ghastly. His eyes were closed; his cocked hat with a rakish
forward tilt sat on his nose. He lay with shoulders hunched, his legs
spread helplessly along the deck before him, stubborn chin digging
into the breast of his frock-coat.

One grim fist was frozen to the shattered wheel; the other, grimmer
still, clutched the scent-bottle.

CHAPTER XV

THE VOICE FROM THE POWDER-MAGAZINE

I

A bosun's whistle sounded.

On hands and knees the lad crept along the tilted deck past the old
Commander.

"That you, Mr. Caryll?" came a husky voice. "I canna see over plain."

The old man had not moved, but one eye had opened and was glaring up
from under the eaves of his cocked hat.

"Yes, sir."

"Are they coomin?"

Kit threw a glance seaward.

"The frigate's piped her boats away, sir."

The old man's head, still forward on his breast, did not move; he did
not seem to breathe. All of him was dead save that little eye, cocking
up at the lad from under the tilted hat.

"Canst walk?"

"Yes, sir. I'm not wounded, only stunned."

"Then run below to Mr. Lanyon, and tell him to bide my whistle."

"Where is he, sir?"

"Where he ought to be," growled the old man--"powder-magazine o coorse."

The eye closed: the little ray of soul, still haunting the body, seemed
quenched for ever; but it was not.

"And bring along a brace o round-shot when ye coom back, wilta?" came
the painful voice out of the deeps.

II

Kit slid down the companion ladder.

The lower deck was half awash, and foul with smoke. There was a stink
of dead men, bilge, and powder.

But what a change from when he was last here!

Then sights so ghastly that he dared not recall them: screams of torn
men, rending of torn planks; howling terrors on every side, shattering
his head, bursting his heart, dissipating his mind.

Now silence everywhere, beautiful silence, the silence of Death.

And those leaping devils with the hoarse throats, who had barked
themselves red-hot then, were strangely hushed now. Loosed from their
moorings, they huddled, together beneath him half under water, like
so many great black beasts, cowed, it seemed, almost ashamed; here
a huge breech showing, there a blunt snout, and again a thrusting trunnion.

As he crawled along in the gloom among blackened corpses he thanked
God for the stillness. It was comforting to him as water in the desert
to a man dying. He drank it in gulps.

A sound in the darkness and silence stopped him.

Out of the deeps a shuddering voice rose up to him, mumbling a Litany
of the dead,

"Lord ha mercy on me a sinner--
Lord ha mercy on me a sinner--
Lord ha mercy on me a sinner."

The boy crept to the forehatch and peered down.

One tiny yellow star flickered in the pitch blackness beneath.

"Mr. Lanyon!" His voice was frightened of itself. "Is that you?"

The Litany ceased. Some one cleared his throat.

"That's me, sir," came a voice from the pit. "I'm back where I belong--in
her bow'ls."

The Gunner was squatting in a powder barrel, a lighted purser's glim
between his teeth, and a pistol in one hand. Kit caught the glimmer
of naked shoulders, the wet gleam of eyes, and the shine of sweat on
a face black as a sweep's.

"I was ummin all the bawdy bits I know to keep me company," called
up a voice husky as a ghost's and cheery as a robin's: "It's lonesome-like
kickin your heels in the dark against the powder bar'l you're goin
to ell in next minute. Not that it's ell I mind. Ell's all right once
you're there. It's the gettin there's the trouble--the messin about
and waitin and that."

"You won't have to wait long now," replied Kit in a voice so still
and solemn that he hardly recognised it himself. Nothing was very real
to him. Even the words he uttered were not his own: they were machine-made
somehow.

"They'll be alongside in a minute. Commander Harding says you're to
wait for his whistle. Then--"

"Amen. So be it. God save the King."

The Gunner dropped his voice to a whisper, rolling up his eyes.'

"Say, Sonny, are you afraid?"

"No. I can't take anything in."

"Nor'm I; and ain't got no cause neether," came the voice from the
darkness, defiant almost to truculence. "I only ad but the two
talents--lovin and fightin; and they can't say I've id eether o them
up in a napkin. They can't chuck that in me face."

He spat philosophically between his thighs.

"On'y one thing I wish," he continued confidentially. "I wish all the
totties was settin atop o that clift to see Magnificent Arry go aloft.
Ah, you mightn't think it to see me now, Mr. Caryll, squattin
mother-naked in this bar'l, but I been a terror in me time. Sich a
way with em and all!"

"You might think about something more decent just now," said the boy
coldly. "Good-bye. I'm afraid you haven't lived a very good life."

As the boy groped his way back, the parched voice pursued him from
the nether hell.

"My respects to the old man. We seen a tidy bit together, him and me;
but reck'n this last little bust-up bangs the lot. I'd ha gone through
a world without women for its sweet sake, blest if I wouldn't.... And
now," came the voice in a sort of chant, "avin lived like a blanky
King I'm goin to die like a blanky cro. Arry the Magnificent always
and for h'ever!"

CHAPTER XVI

MAGNIFICENT ARRY GOES ALOFT

Old Ding-Dong lay as the boy had left him.

"Got them round-shot?" hoarsely.

"Yes, sir."

"Stuff em in my tails then."

The boy obeyed.

"Ah, that's better," sighed the old man comfortably. "No fear I shall
break adrift o my moorings." He slipped the scent-bottle into his
breast-pocket and patted it. "She'll lay snug along o me, she will."

He closed his eyes.

Kit, kneeling at his side, held a pannikin to his lips.

"Water, sir. Will you have a drop?"

"Nay, thank ee, ma lad. I'll bide till t'other side. Shan't be long
now."

Kit drank greedily. He could hear the oars of the approaching
boat; he had at the most some two minutes of life, but O! the delight
of that draught.

A hand grasped his.

"Mr. Caryll," said the old Commander in strange and formal voice, "I've
sent for you upon the quarter-deck to thank you for your gallantry
in your first action, which is also, I fear, your last.... Can you
swim?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, then, slip overboard, if you've a mind, and make shift for
yourself."

"No, sir, thank you. I'll stand by the ship."

The old man grunted satisfaction.

"Then say your prayers."

He put the whistle between his teeth.

The flag he had kept flying, nailed to the splintered mizzen, curled
languidly above his head.

The old mail, dying in its shadow, eyed it with silent content.

"Are they coomin, Mr. Caryll?"

"Yes, sir--near now."

"Lay low," whispered the old man, "and we'll bag the lot, God helpin
us."

The sound of oars ceased. Out of the silence a voice hailed.

"Any one alife on board?"

Old Ding-dong hearkened, his cocked hat far over his eyes.

That look of the Eternal Child, arch and mischievous, played among
the wrinkles about his eyes.

"Cuckoo!" he muttered. "Cuckoo!"

Kit giggled.

He knew the ship was about to be blown up; but he didn't take much
interest in it himself. It didn't seem to affect him. Somehow he was
so far away. All that was happening was happening in a dream-world
of which he was a spectator only. True he felt a vague discomfort at
the heart; but he knew that in a minute he should wake up--to find
mother's eyes smiling into his, and her laughing voice saying,

"My dear boy, what _have_ you been dreaming about?"

The boats were drawing nearer again, wary as hunters drawing on a
dying lion.

Old Ding-dong heard them, and smiled.

The little _Tremendous_ was a sheer hulk; her back was broken;
her crew were dead--and still they feared her!

The old seaman's heart warmed within him. That one sweet moment paid
him generously for fifty years of toil, of battle, of chagrin.

And as though thrilling to the emotion of the man who had loved her
for so long, the little ship trembled as she settled deeper.

The old man patted the deck.

"There! it wonna urt you, my dear," he said soothingly. "Too suddint."

A tricorne rose over the bulwark.

An officer cast his eyes up and down the deck, swift and alert as a
bird.

"Anybody alife on board?" he repeated, and in the vast silence
his voice came small and very shrill.

He clambered over the bulwark, and came up the steep deck monkey-wise.

At the foot of the mizzen he paused.

Kit, crouching in a heap close by, noticed his boots, old, split across
the toe, dingy white socks showing through. He found himself wondering
whether the man had corns.

Clinging to the stump the Frenchman drew his sword, and looked up at
the red-cross flag flapping sullen defiance overhead.

"Dans le nom de l'Empereur!" he cried pompously.

A whistle, swift as the arrow of death, pierced him to the heart.

CHAPTER XVII

THE GRAVE OF THE LITTLE _TREMENDOUS_

I

A roar drowned the boy's senses, sweeping his mind away on a
mountainous billow of sound.

Earth and sea were a bubble beneath his feet, swelling and sailing;
and he was walking on the bubble, and toppling backwards as he walked.

He felt himself smiling in a foolish way. There was no pain then about
dying, he thought with a pleased and remote surprise--only this silly
smiling content.

Things hit him outside. He was aware of them; but they did not hurt.
His body was wood, dull to sensation. He himself was within somewhere,
snug and safe. He had heard the parson at home talk about eternal life.
Now he knew what the man meant. To be alive yet above pain, to be dead
yet dimly comfortable--that was the heavenly life. It was very curious,
and not half bad.

And--he had been there before. When and where, he could not recollect.
But all was friendly, all familiar.

Suddenly there came a change, and for the worse. A great wet cloud
swamped him. The light went out. All about him was cold, and dark,
and clinging. Was this the grave and gate of Death?

He shuddered, and yet was not greatly afraid.

Everything was so far away, on the circumference of being, as it were;
and he at the centre, safe and warm, was mildly interested--little
more.

Somehow he knew he was in the sea, walking dream-waters; whether
conscious, or unconscious, in the spirit or out of it, he knew not,
and didn't greatly care.

Grotesque yet beautiful impressions of things familiar flitted across
his mind. He saw his mother in a cocked hat; Cuddie Collingwood, his
pet canary, strutting the maindeck and picking his teeth; and Gwen
with a tarred pigtail, her brawny bosom tattooed with dancing-girls.

She was making faces at him, the faces that none but Gwen could make;
and he was about to shoot his tongue back brotherly, when there came
another change, terrible this time.

There was a singing in his ears; a sense of suffocation and appalling
impotence. He was rushing back to the world of sense and pain--in time,
no doubt, to die, when he thought he was through that trouble. Just
his luck!

He was throttled, battling, distraught. About him was the rush and
smother of waters. A secret power clutched him about the waist and
tugged him back. For the first time in his life he felt the aweful
and inexorable grip of Necessity; and his heart screamed.

Then with a bob and a gasp, he was up; the water in his nostrils; and
his hands clinging to a spar.

II

About him was a fog of smoke, and the throes of water in torment,
sucking, spewing, pouncing.

Then a great swell, roaring into foam, lifted him. He was swung out
of the stinging smother, away from the shock and battle of waters,
out and out under the calm sky.

Beneath him a sheer white wall rose. There was no top to it, and no
bottom. He could have screamed. It was so huge, so blank, so
incomprehensible. It fell from heaven. Was it the skirt of God?

Then he saw the dark crest miles overhead, and knew it for a cliff.
He was right beneath it, and swinging towards it.

Suddenly he became aware of a badger-grey head bobbing beside him
on the spar.

"Hullo, sir!" he gasped.

A voice spluttered,

"Pockets sprung a leak!--tailor! ruffian!"

A great following swell lifted them.

"Hold fast, sir!" called Kit. "This'll throw us up."

The swell drove forward, toppling to a fall; curled, and crashed down.

Kit found himself on hands and knees, banged, dripping, dizzy, in a
hiss and turmoil of waters. The backward sweep of the waves almost
carried him with it. But his hands were in the shingle up to the wrist,
anchoring him. The body of water passed him. A thousand tresses of
foam reminding him of his Granny's hair swept across his fingers.

He looked up. He was kneeling on a tiny strip of beach at the foot
of the cliff. On his left sprawled the old Commander. His knees, cocked
by the receding wave, swayed and toppled now; the legs wooden and
dreadful as a dummy's.

Kit crawled towards him.

"Are you hurt, sir?"

The old man answered nothing. His eyes were shut, his arms wide. He
lay upon his back on the wet and running shingle, his white knee-breeches
sodden and rusty with blood, the square chin heavenward.

Another of those sleek green monsters stole towards them out of the
smoke.

In an agony the lad tried to drag the old man back under the cliff.
He might as well have attempted to lift a cask of lead.

"O, what shall I do?" wailed the boy to heaven.

"Why, cut and run," answered the voice from earth.

Then the wave was on them, swooping, worrying, white-toothed.

Kit did his best. Kneeling behind the old man, he heaved him into a
sitting position, and propped him there, as the tumult of waters
sluiced about them. Over the limp legs, up the great chest, the wave
swept greedily; but the badger-grey head stayed above the flood.

Then the water withdrew, blind and baffled.

Kit lowered the grey head.

"Thank ee," grunted the old man, and seemed to sleep.

Kit made no answer. He was watching the sea with dreadful anxiety.
Was it coming up? Was it going down? Were there to be more of those
smothering floods? If so, they were lost. He knew he could not
lift again that leaden old man.

No. The worst was over. A lesser wave swept towards them. It tossed
those wooden legs, dreadfully sporting with them, and fled, snarling.

The boy bent with thankful heart.

"That's all, sir. It won't come again. It's the swell made by the
explosion--not the tide."

"Ah," said the other sleepily; and opened his eyes.

Seaward hung a huge toad-stool of smoke. Out of the heart of it came
the clash and cry of torn waters. All else was still, save for the
scream of disturbed sea-birds.

Through the frayed and drifting edge of the smoke could be seen the
frigate and the spars of the privateer; and sticking out of the water,
a jagged mizzen--all that was left of the little _Tremendous_.

As his eye fell on the splintered stump the old Commander lifted a
hand to his forehead.

"Plucky little packet," he muttered. "Plucky little packet."

CHAPTER XVIII

OLD DING-DONG'S REVENGE

Old Ding-dong lay at the foot of the cliff among the chalk boulders,
his limp white legs glimmering in the twilight.

To Kit, kneeling at his side, it seemed that only the old man's slow
blinking eyelids were alive. The horror of it thrilled the boy, and
woke the woman in him. He was not repelled; he was drawn closer.

Taking off his coat, he rolled it, sopping as it was, and stuffed it
beneath the other's head.

Propped so, the old man lay in the falling gloom, head quaintly cocked,
and chin crushed down on his chest.

"Are you comfortable, sir?"

"Comforubble as a man can be that canna feel," the other grunted.
"My back's bruk. I'm dyin uppuds."

Stealthily the boy took the old man's hand in his. A faint tightening
of the clay-cold fingers surprised him.

The dusk was falling fast. At their feet the sea still crashed uneasily.
Above them the cliff showed white. Under the moon one red star sparkled.
From out of the smoke they could hear the sound of oars and voices.
Boats were searching amid the wreckage.

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