THE CAPTURE
At breakfast, which was necessarily delayed on board the _Aurora_, the
conversation, as may be supposed, was almost entirely concerned with
undoubtedly the most memorable incident--the meeting with Nelson--in
the lives of Captain Acton and Sir William. The _Aurora_ had hauled out
of the Fleet with a dipping flag, and with wings eagerly straining to
the breath of the strengthening blue breeze that gushed with a tropic
warmth over the little seas which creamed and purred in heads that
would easily grow spiteful and change their fountain-like music into a
harsh hissing as of serpents, was heading as true a course as Captain
Weaver could imagine for the barque that Captain Acton wanted.
Nelson's reference to Mr Lawrence's brilliant action was going to prove
an overwhelming memory to the Admiral.
"When I think, sir," he exclaimed, as they breakfasted, "what a few
syllables of applause signify in the mouth of such a man as the hero
of the Nile, I feel as if I could spring overboard and drown myself
when I reflect that my unhappy son quitted the glorious Service under
ignoble circumstances, and that by remaining he might have come under
the command of Nelson, and gained the splendid renown which scarce a
sea officer who has served under that great man but has won."
"I for one should not need to meet Lord Nelson and hear him speak of
your son to fully agree in what you say, Sir William," said Lucy.
Her father looked at her with a questioning gaze, but made no remark.
Nearly all the talk at that breakfast table was about Nelson and his
ships and his pursuit of Villeneuve, but shortly before the three arose
the conversation had been deflected by a remark of Lucy, on which the
Admiral said: "If this breeze holds we shall be heaving the _Minorca_
into sight the day after to-morrow, or at latest the following day.
There can be no doubt that the schooner is fair in her wake. The
_Whitby_ brig seems to have steered a straight course from her to
us; and now, sir, Lord Nelson's remark comes home: we are unarmed.
The barque carries four guns with which she can pelt us without our
being able to make a reply. If she wings us she will escape, and
since she will very well know who we are that are in pursuit of her,
is my son likely to proceed to Rio? Will he not take advantage of
our being crippled to shift his course, and go away to some place,
unconjecturable by us, where he will be able to communicate with his
scoundrel friend at Rio and the Don with the long name who is to have
the management of the nefarious business?"
"You will know, sir," replied Captain Acton, "one of Nelson's favourite
sayings: at sea something must be left to chance. I count upon the
crew of the _Minorca_, when they sight the _Aurora_ and understand
her mission, which they will guess without explanation, backing her
main-topsail in defiance of your son's firearms and calling upon us to
take possession. If this does not happen, I shall not be at a loss, and
meanwhile, Sir William, let us get a view of the barque."
After breakfast Captain Acton and Lucy walked the deck, whilst the
Admiral, with his big pipe, seated himself right aft all alone, for
this little ship was steered by a wheel in front of the deck-house;
he sat puffing out clouds of tobacco with his eyes fixed upon the
glimmering phantoms of the British Fleet, which hovered in the
north-east quarter in a few dim, waning gleams; and the moods of his
mind were faithfully reproduced in his jolly, honest, well-bred,
kindly face.
The breeze blew bright and warm, and sang sweetly aloft. The brilliant
horizon ahead slided up and down past the prismatic edges of the clear
and shapely sails which yearned in steady breasts from mast-head to
jibboom and bowsprit ends; the parted water rolled past in wool-white
lines of yeast; the heavens were alive with the clouds of the air.
Nothing was in sight but Nelson's Fleet, fading.
Lucy had related much, but she had much more to tell, and she narrated
to her father fresh stories of her madness, and drew several graphic
pictures of Mr Lawrence whilst he laboured under the various sensations
her genius as an untutored artist excited. She spoke with contempt of
Mr Eagle, whilst she had little or nothing to say about Mr Pledge. Her
narratives were marked by a strong leaning in favour of Mr Lawrence.
Her father could not mistake. Her prejudice, indeed her fondness, was
expressed not so much in her admirable recitals and her references to
the dignified and gentlemanly manner with which Mr Lawrence had treated
her, with which he had received her aggravating, indeed her venomous,
references to his past and present conduct, as in the pause, the soft,
thoughtful smile, the brief exclamation, the sigh, and now and again
the little but significant remark.
"But it is impossible, Lucy," said Captain Acton, "to make a hero out
of such a fellow as this: a man who forges sealed orders supposed to be
written by me! A rogue who not only steals my property, but kidnaps my
daughter by a lie!"
"He must have done well, sir, for Nelson to have remembered him,"
said Lucy. "And, oh, papa, will not you make some allowance for the
misconduct of a man who is tempted by--by----"
"By what, my dear?"
"By love," said Lucy, hanging her head, whilst the blush that came
into her cheeks was like the revelation of the glory of the red rose
to the first delicate light of sunrise. Then with a sudden impulse of
confidence she added fluently: "He was wasting his time at Old Harbour
Town. He fell into vicious habits and modes of getting money which
he detested, but the opportunities offered, and strong as he is as a
sailor, he proved himself weak as a man."
"As a gentleman!" said Captain Acton, who followed his daughter's words
with mingled impatience and wonder.
"I feel that I am greatly to blame in this dreadful trouble," said
Lucy. "I am sure that it was his love for me, his desire to gain me as
his wife, his horror at the prospect of being an outcast through debt,
his resolution to lead an honest life and perhaps a noble life, should
I become his wife and should he obtain your forgiveness; these things I
am convinced drove him into a sort of madness in which he invented this
desperate plot which could never be forgiven in any man who was not as
brave and well-bred as Mr Lawrence, nor as--as----"
"D'ye mean handsome, Lucy?" said Captain Acton. "For the dog is that."
"But what is to happen to him," said Lucy, "if you carry him back
to England? I would rather hear," she cried, with an emphasis which
may have borrowed note and complexion from the impulse of her
late impersonations of madness, "of the _Minorca_ having sunk and
carried him down to the bottom of the sea with her, than live to
witness his degradation and perhaps his death and the misery and the
broken-heartedness that must come to his dear old father, if you do not
prove his friend, and help to reclaim a nature that in its essence is
beautiful, and a fulfilment of the purest woman's ideal."
Captain Acton walked half the length of the extent of deck they were
pacing, before he spoke. "Your dear mother," said he calmly, "whose
genius as an actress I cannot help thinking has descended to you,
though never once in all your life have you given me reason for
suspecting the existence of a gift, not wonderful by mere power of
mimicry, but astonishing by its art of persuading and convincing the
beholder that what he sees is the living thing itself: your sweet and
blessed mother, though a staunch upholder of her sex, was fond of a
saying which she had found in Pope:
'Nothing so true as what you once let fall,
Most women have no character at all.'
She meant by this, as Pope, or rather Horace, held, that a woman may
have a very great genius, and yet be so weak in the significant and
quint-essential actions of her life as to prove herself characterless.
You have behaved with amazing heroism. You found yourself in the hands
of one of the most unscrupulous of men----"
"No, sir," she said.
"You are placed in the most helpless situation a woman could find
herself in: at sea, locked up in a cabin, and all the crew, who might
otherwise have helped you, believing that you were running away with
Mr Lawrence, and that your imprisonment and your representations and
your madness were part of a programme preconcerted between you and
your lover. You realise the horrors and peril of your position, and
by virtue of the mother's genius that came to your help, you decided
upon a behaviour which you magnificently conducted. So much for the
better part of you: but what remains? To be wooed--shall I say won?--it
is necessary for your sweetheart to act the part of a scoundrel. He
must steal my ship and kidnap my only child, and heap lie upon lie,
and then, to be sure, he is a very pretty gentleman, a noble, gallant
rogue, at root a man of a lordly soul, of a most chivalrous and
fighting spirit to be made much of--in short, to fall desperately in
love with."
Lucy bit her under-lip, but certainly the general expression of her
face was not one of displeasure.
"So, my dear, you see that your mother was right in putting faith in
her quotation, 'Most women have no characters at all.'"
Whether Lucy would have replied to this cannot be known, for just then
the hand stationed aloft sung out: "Sail ho!"
"Where away?"
"Right ahead, sir."
But the stranger remained so long invisible from the deck whilst she
could be easily distinguished from the height of the fore-topgallant
and then from the fore-topsail yard, and then from midway the altitude
of the fore-shrouds, that it was not before the afternoon had passed
into a golden brightness of westering sunlight that the ship right
ahead revealed her canvas to the quarterdeck of the _Aurora_.
From the moment the ship in sight was reported expectation aboard the
_Aurora_ sprang and grew. Was she the _Minorca_? She was undoubtedly
square-rigged, but the lenses of the comparatively feeble telescopes
of those days could not determine before it fell dusk, whether she was
rigged aft with square yards or merely with the mizzen and gaff topsail
which made the _Minorca_ a barque.
The Admiral was restless; he paced the deck with unwearied legs, and
when the sail ahead had hove her canvas into view, he sent endless
searchings of her through his telescope, but never could arrive at an
opinion. Captain Acton was self-possessed, and his manner was marked by
contemplation as though the possibilities the ship in sight suggested
filled him with earnest and bewildering considerations.
Lucy was of opinion that the ship must prove the _Minorca_. She well
understood that the two vessels could not be far asunder, and quite
rationally concluded that the sail ahead was the barque. It would
have needed, however, a keener gaze than either Captain Acton or the
Admiral was capable of bringing to bear, to penetrate to the girl's
thoughts. Whilst the distant vessel leaned like a small orange flame
gently blown sideways by the wind upon the early evening purple of the
horizon, Lucy would overhang the rail with her brooding, beautiful
eyes dwelling upon that far-off vision, and the expression of her face
was in these intervals of motionless posture and steadfast regard, as
though she was asleep and dreamt, and that her dream was partly sweet
and partly vexing and bitter, so that her whole look was that of one
who slumbers, through whose sealed lids a vision of sleep slides to the
heart to trouble its pulse.
Captain Weaver believed that the vessel was the _Minorca_: because,
first, she carried royals; next, because she happened to be where she
was; third, the leisureliness with which the _Aurora_ rose her seemed
to prove that her pace was that of the barque. But the dusk drew round;
the gloom of night came along in that thickness of shadow which under
such heights as the _Aurora_ was then sailing, seemed swift to persons
accustomed to the northern twilights. And at the hour in which the
shades of the coming night had with their viewless fingers effaced the
stranger from the sight of the _Aurora_, and shaken some stars into
their places, the sail had been risen by the _Aurora_, till on the
heave of the swell her hull to the height of her bulwarks from the edge
of the sea was visible. And then she was steeped in darkness.
The moon was without power until shortly after midnight; her light
silvered the sails of the ship ahead, and she grew out of the gloom
into a fairy-like fantasy that might have been some symmetrical form
of moon-touched mist fleeting down the wind, or some snow-robed height
whose base lay behind the horizon.
The Admiral was on deck, and so was Captain Acton, and Captain Weaver
had also stepped out of the deck-house to take a look round. The
stranger was now sufficiently near to be determinable by the glass even
in moonshine; and so soon as she sprang into being under the magical
flourish of the wand of the moon, it was known for a surety that she
was not the _Minorca_. She was square-rigged aft, and made a big,
broad cloud as she rolled along under topgallant, topmast, and lower
stun-sails. The breeze that had blown throughout the day still blew,
and the circumstance of the stranger having kept ahead of the _Aurora_
for many hours was proof of her nimble keel.
"She sails faster than the _Minorca_, gentlemen," said Captain Weaver.
"She has the appearance of a frigate," said Captain Acton, working
away at her with his glass.
"Is that _your_ opinion, sir?" Captain Weaver asked the Admiral.
After a pause, during which he carefully scrutinised the vessel, "She
has every appearance of being a frigate," the Admiral answered.
Of what nation, if an armed ship? A wide berth was to be given to the
Tricolour or the Spanish Flag. After much debate the order was given
for sail to be reduced that the _Aurora's_ pace might not outmeasure
that of the stranger, until break of day should yield a better idea of
her character. Meanwhile she must be closely watched, and at the first
shift of the stranger's helm the _Aurora_ must out with all wings and
slide away from gun range with the despatch the wind could give her.
The dark moonlit hours thus passed, and the _Aurora_ followed the
stranger, but at a distance that was out of cannon reach.
At daylight the vessel proved to be a frigate; she was painted black,
with red gun-ports and red tompions. But this was no evidence of her
nationality, for it was only comparatively recently that Nelson had
caused ships under his command to carry white bands which the portholes
for the guns chequered with black squares. And many ships of the State
in 1805 were black in hull and some of them yellow.
"We must take our chance," said Captain Acton to Weaver, "and end our
doubts in the only possible way. See that our ensign blows clear for
the eyes aboard of her."
As the ship ahead was almost stern on, they ran the British ensign to
the _Aurora's_ mizzen-mast head whence it streamed, a "meteor flag," in
the silver-white glory of the sun. In a few moments the English colours
were hoisted aboard the stranger, on which the Admiral delivered a
British cheer, which was caught up and re-echoed by a few of the crew
forward.
Immediately every stitch of canvas that the schooner carried was
set, and bending to the pressure of the fine breeze that was now
flashing from right abeam, gracing the multitudinous run of the surge
with the various splendours of the morning's light; the three-masted
American-built clipper _Aurora_ thrashed through it in her pursuit of
the black British frigate at a rate of sailing that within three hours
brought her within speaking distance of the man-of-war.
Before this happened, however, Captain Acton had called a council of
his daughter and the Admiral, and a resolution had been arrived at of
which the nature will appear in a few moments.
The frigate seemed unquestionably of foreign build; but the name
_Phoebe_, written in large characters upon her stern over which from
the peak of the mizzen-gaff streamed the flag of our country, was a
warranty that whatever nationality her builders had boasted, she was
now a British ship. She was somewhat old in years, as was manifested
by her fore-mast that was stepped too far forward to please a critical
eye, whilst her main-mast stood too far aft, its nearness to the
mizzen-mast offending the gaze by an appearance of crowding. But she
was very spick and span: as fresh as though just launched; her glossy,
black sides trembled with the lustre of the sea; her canvas was
spacious and superb in cut and set. The white line of hammock cloths
delightfully contrasted with the gilt rope of beading which ran the
length of her below the wash streak, and which terminated on the stern
in a flourish of gilt scroll amid which the windows gleamed darkly
like those of Old Harbour House duskily shining amidst the foliage of
creepers.
The regular enquiry was made from the frigate's quarterdeck by an
officer, and the regular information was supplied by Captain Weaver.
"I will send a boat aboard of you!" was the shout which immediately
followed Weaver's response. "Shorten sail, or shake the way out of her
as you please!"
"Just what could have been wished!" exclaimed Captain Acton to the
Admiral. "She suspects us. 'Twill save a world of bawling."
Sail was at once shortened aboard the schooner and the helm put down,
which held the canvas shuddering in smart ripplings of shadow, whilst
on board the frigate the lower stun-sail was taken in, the other
stun-sails boom-ended, the main topsail yard backed to the wind and the
ship's way arrested, all with the alacrity and quietude which are to be
found only in a British man-of-war in perfection.
Down sank a boat from the davits with a lieutenant in the stern sheets,
and six sailors to pull her, and in a dozen strokes of the blades
feathering in fire to the sunlight and dropping jewels of brilliant
dyes ere they were buried for the next foaming impulse, the boat was
alongside the schooner. The lieutenant mounted the short length of
steps which had been flung over through the open gangway and saluted
the little ship as all sea-gentlemen do, or should, when they step
aboard a vessel, even though she should be as mean as an Irish hooker.
The Admiral, Captain Acton, and Captain Weaver stood in the gangway
to receive the officer, a man whose portrait should be painted by the
caricaturing brush of a Michael Scott. He was this side of forty, and a
great Roman nose stood out like a flying jib between two gaunt cheeks
whose hollows when he was silent made you think he was sucking in his
breath. He wore a pigtail under a very old, tarnished cocked hat. His
uniform coat was scarcely held together by the tailor's thread, and
appeared to have travelled a score of times round the world in an age
when a voyage round the world was regarded as something more prodigious
than we should now consider a voyage to the moon, if such a journey
were practicable. His shoes were rusty; his hose had gone into mourning
over an absence of soap that was all the same as the death of his
laundress. Yet despite a garb that made a travesty of the human figure
there was something distinguished and even noble in the man's bearing.
It was to be seen at once (and no masterful capacity of penetration was
needed) that in this officer was the gentleman of old blood, poor and
proud, a loyal subject whose heart's life was at the service of his
King and country.
It might be thought that the first person in the group this
gentleman's eyes fastened upon was Lucy. She would be held to appeal in
her sweetness, colour, freshness, and youth to a sailor as a nosegay of
lovely flowers to a lover of flowers who for months has lived forlorn
in a desert of sand. But instead of looking at Lucy, the lieutenant
stared at the Admiral with a very great deal of visible speculation in
the screwed-up cock of his eye, till his face relaxed with these words:
"Pray, sir, did you ever hear of Billy Lawrence?"
"Who commanded His Britannic Majesty's sloop _Merlin_?" cried Sir
William. "My dear Fellowes, this is indeed an unexpected meeting. And
you knew me before I should have known you!"
They grasped hands.
"Acton, let me introduce an old shipmate--Lieutenant Fellowes. Captain
Acton--Miss Lucy Acton."
"Of the Norfolk Fellowes?" enquired Captain Acton, after bows and
smiles had been exchanged.
"Ay, sir," exclaimed the Admiral; "and as a man of Norfolk myself I am
proud of the family whose records do honour to the dear old county."
"Pray, what is your ship, sir?" asked Captain Acton.
"The _Phoebe_."
"Who's her captain?"
"Lord Garlies."
"Ha!" said Captain Acton. "He was at St Vincent."
"As a spectator only, I think, sir," answered Mr Fellowes.
"His lordship evidently suspects us," said Captain Acton, laughing.
"Why, to be sure," said the lieutenant, laughing also, "you have a very
slaving, piratical look. Who would expect to find a British Admiral
aboard so rakish a craft?"
"But unarmed, Fellowes, unarmed!" exclaimed the Admiral. "You won't
want to see our papers, will ye?"
And the worthy old sailor chuckled heartily from his throat to the
bottom of his waistcoat.
"Will you step into the deck-house, sir," said Captain Acton, "and
learn our strange story, which shall not detain you long."
Mr Fellowes bowed with a smile which charmed Lucy by its good-nature,
and by the light it kindled in the man's face, where she witnessed that
sort of breeding which her heart, as the hearts of most women who are
ladies at heart, delight in. The party of four entered the structure,
and the cabin servant was ordered to put refreshments on the table.
"This is the yarn, Fellowes," said the Admiral, who, it had been
pre-arranged, was to tell the story. "My friend Acton is the owner
of this schooner; he is also the owner of another ship, called the
_Minorca_. Now, this ship, of which my friend was good enough to give
the command to my son----"
"A fine fellow," interrupted Mr Fellowes. "How is he?"
"Pretty well--pretty middling, I thank ye," answered the Admiral. "But
just now in a bit of a fix. It has come to our knowledge that there has
been a mutiny on board the _Minorca_, and that the crew are navigating
the vessel to Rio de Janeiro----"
"The _Phoebe_ is bound to that port," again interrupted Mr Fellowes.
"Good!" cried the Admiral, with an expressive look at Captain
Acton--"instead," continued Sir William, "of Kingston, Jamaica, to
which place her cargo is consigned. We are following her in this
clipper, which outsails her by two to one, and we have reason to know
that she is now about two days in advance of us. The _Minorca_ is
armed: we are not. And your captain will be conferring a very great
favour upon us if, seeing that the _Phoebe_ is almost as swift as this
schooner, he will allow us to keep him company, so that if we jointly
fall in with the _Minorca_, her crew may be overawed by the guns of the
frigate."
"Lord Garlies, I am sure, will be happy to oblige you, Sir William,
and your friend, in any way he can," said the lieutenant. "Pray, how
did you happen to hear of the seizure of the ship and her shift of
course to Rio?"
"The news was communicated to us," said the Admiral, "in a letter which
had been written before the ship sailed by a conspicuous member of the
crew. A copy of this letter fell into Captain Acton's hands on the very
day the _Minorca_ left Old Harbour Town, and my friend immediately
arranged to pursue his ship in this smart schooner when she could be
got ready."
The Admiral spoke with a steady face and with a steady voice. He was
giving a version of the story which to all intents and purposes was
true, and there was nothing in the relation, as previously devised, to
alarm his conscience as a gentleman and a man of honour by inaccuracy.
"I see," exclaimed Mr Fellowes. "But are you sure of the situation of
the chase?"
"Why, sir, yes, as sure as we can be of anything at sea," said Captain
Acton, who thought it judicious and proper to join in. "Yesterday
we spoke the brig _Louisa Ann_ of Whitby, who reported that three
days before, she had asked for some provisions from a ship named the
_Minorca_ whose rig was that of my barque. There is no doubt that my
ship is just ahead of us, and that our superior sailing will enable
us to overhaul her within a week. The effect of the frigate's presence
will be to rescue the capture from the trouble of bloodshed. When your
guns are seen, sir, and the character of your ship distinguished, the
mutineers will back their topsail yard and leave us to quietly take
possession."
The lieutenant politely nodded his agreement with this view, and
finished his glass of brandy and soda-water. At long intervals, to
compare the lapses with the short time he spent on board, he directed
a look at Lucy; but the glance was that of a man who knows that women
do not admire him, and do not want him, a poor, plain, and elderly man:
and whose policy, resolved long ago, was to give the marriageable part
of the sex a very wide berth.
The conversation at the Admiral's instance, and to his own and the
relief of Captain Acton and his daughter, was now changed into a few
questions and answers which have nothing whatever to do with this
narrative; and after a visit that had lasted about twenty minutes, Mr
Fellowes took his leave, cordially and with a hearty handshake bidding
his old captain God-speed and farewell, and bowing with dignity and
much respect and a pleasant kindness of expression of face to Captain
Acton, and the sweet girl whose story, had the Admiral or Captain
Acton thought fit to relate it, would no doubt have exchanged his
light, superficial, uncritical regard into a gaze of admiration and
astonishment.
"I suppose that is Lord Garlies whom he is addressing," exclaimed
Captain Acton, on the arrival of the lieutenant at his ship.
The question was answered by the person thus referred to coming to
the ship's side after receiving Mr Fellowes' report. The preliminary
hail having been bawled--the two vessels lay close together, and those
aboard one might hear the wash of the waters alongside the other, in
the falls of silence--the person referred to by Captain Acton shouted:
"I shall have much pleasure in complying with your request."
"We beg to thank you most cordially," replied the Admiral, who, in
response to Captain Acton's desire, was acting as spokesman in this
passage. "May I venture to ask if I have the honour of addressing my
Lord Garlies?"
His lordship bowed: upon which the Admiral and Captain Acton paid him
the homage of their hats in a well-accentuated flourish of courtesy,
for not only was Lord Garlies a brave man and a fine seaman: he was the
son of an earl and heir to a title which made a claim that in its way
was not less irresistible in 1805 than it may be found a hundred years
later.
"The best course we can adopt," cried Lord Garlies, "is to keep the
width of the horizons between us. I will take the western and you the
eastern seaboard. This from aloft will enable us to command a large
surface of sea. The rig of the vessel you are chasing will determine
her for us. If I sight such a vessel on the starboard bow, I will hoist
a large red flag at the mizzen-royal-masthead; if on the larboard bow,
a white flag at the same place. You will hoist your answering signal
and manoeuvre to close us; but that shall be as the wind may prove. If
you sight your ship, it will suffice if you hoist your ensign at your
mizzen topmast head, and an answering signal will tell you that we
intend to close with you in chase."
This was deliberately delivered and clearly heard, and, with a flourish
of his hand, Lord Garlies stepped back.
In a few minutes sail had been trimmed on both vessels, and when each
had measured a distance that gave the other no more than a sight of her
bulwarks upon the sea line, the helm was put amidships and the frigate
and the schooner were steered along that course in which they hoped in
a few days to overhaul the _Minorca_.
They were sailing in bright latitudes where the weather is warm,
where often the sea rolls in a languid silken swell like the gentle
heavings of a carpet of the sheen of satin under-blown, where the stars
shine with brilliance and the moon at her full has an almost sun-like
power. And very fortunately the two ships were favoured with fine and
sparkling days vital with favourable winds. Throughout the daylight
hours the two ships held each other steadily in view, the schooner
under slightly reduced canvas, and the frigate under a press, and at
night each signalled her place by rockets discharged at intervals, so
that always when day broke the brace of pursuing structures were found
to be either abreast, or almost so, each sunk from the sight of the
other to the line of her bulwarks.
Came a fine, glittering morning towards the middle of June. It was
about half an hour after daybreak: the sun had risen, and the flood
of brilliance lay broad upon the sea in the east. Captain Acton was
dressing in his cabin, when his door was rapped upon, and Captain
Weaver, whose manner was full of excitement, reported a sail in sight,
right in the centre of the horizon betwixt the two ships.
"The frigate has hoisted her signal, sir," he said, "and we have made
ours."
"I'll be with you in a minute. She is too far off, I suppose, for the
glass to resolve her."
"I guess she is the barque, sir, if the frigate's signal is right. They
command a greater height aboard of her than we can, and I fancy they
have twigged something fore-and-aft on the mizzen-mast."
It was two bells in the afternoon watch--one o'clock--at which hour the
frigate and the schooner had closed each other. By this time the ship
ahead had been raised to a full sight of her hull. But long before this
she had been made out as the _Minorca_, by that unmistakable signal of
her character--the fore-and-aft canvas on her mizzen- and top-masts.
The breeze was steady. All three ships heeled to it. The frigate foamed
bending under studding sails, the schooner under all the canvas she
could set, and the barque leaned under the heavy strain of every cloth
she carried.
It would be impossible to describe the feelings, sensations, passions
of three of the principal actors in this story. Who can analyse human
emotion when its state is one of almost chaotic conflict? Sir William
Lawrence being satisfied that the sail ahead was Captain Acton's
barque, fixed his face in a mask iron-hard with resolution to endure,
come what would. His answers were short, and to the point. He had
little to say. His tendency to the garrulity of old age had temporarily
withered; he was as grim and reserved as though he commanded a
line-of-battle ship, whose stern-walk was exclusively his promenade. He
was an old sailor and a gentleman: he prided himself upon his descent;
he greatly loved honour and loyalty, which is the spirit of honour,
and above all, he loved truth. Yonder was his son in charge of a ship
he was endeavouring to steal from his benefactor; he had by a base
stratagem kidnapped the sweet and beautiful daughter of his friend; he
had proved himself a liar, a thief, a scoundrel in the most voluminous
sense of the word. The people of the frigate commanded by Lord Garlies
might, doubtless must, come to hear all about his wrongdoing, and
through them the story would leak with plenty of colour and plenty of
exaggeration, into every ward-room and gun-room and cockpit in His
Majesty's Service. These were thoughts and considerations to hold the
Admiral austerely silent, and keep him to himself whilst the chase
continued.
Captain Acton and Lucy often walked the deck deep in talk. The
Captain had decided in his own mind to place Eagle in charge of the
_Minorca_, with orders to proceed to Kingston, providing there was no
disaffection amongst the crew, and Mr Lawrence would be transferred
to the _Aurora_ and conveyed to England. What excuses would he plead?
What apologies would he offer? What sort of a figure would he make
in the sight of his father? in the thoughts of the girl whom in the
sacred name of love he had used with such reckless cruelty, as to
deprive her of her reason, as he supposed? in the opinion of the kindly
gentleman whose confidence he had grossly abused? Would he, when landed
in England, consent to ship as a sailor before the mast, and conceal
himself for the remainder of his life in a distant land? If not, what
would he do? What must be his fate?
But though father and daughter talked these matters over whilst they
stepped the white planks and whilst the ship ahead slowly enlarged,
the topics which engaged them did not contain all, indeed they did not
contain even a very little, of the thoughts which crowded Lucy's mind
and gave a dozen varying expressions to her beauty in as many minutes.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon the frigate fired one of her
bow guns apparently at the _Minorca_, a stern, laconic message to her
to heave to; for hours ago it was perceived that the chase was the
vessel Captain Acton and the Admiral were hunting; and for hours it
must have been known aboard the barque that one of the pursuing ships
was a frigate heavily armed, and the other a fabric perfectly familiar
to every man in the _Minorca_, as the three-masted schooner _Aurora_,
the property of the owner of the barque.
Indeed the chase was now so near that with the unaided vision her
men might be seen moving upon her decks, and the Admiral's telescope
was levelled at a tall figure that stood solitary and apart upon the
barque's quarter, surveying with folded arms and erect carriage the
ships which were following him with foam to their hawse-pipes.
When the _Phoebe's_ cannon suddenly thundered, the Admiral dropped his
telescope to look at the frigate, and when he again directed the glass
at the _Minorca_, the tall figure, that he well knew to be his son, had
vanished.
Scarcely had the ball of satin-white smoke, belched from the cannon's
mouth, been shredded by the wind and carried low over the heads of the
breaking seas in rags and lengths like pieces of a torn silk veil, when
the helm of the barque was put down, stun-sail halliards were let go,
all in such a hurry that the sails fouled the booms and yard-arms, and
painted a scene of confusion aloft, that might have stood as a perfect
picture of panic at sea; the yards on the main were laboriously
hauled around and the main topsail backed and the barque was at rest,
rolling and tumbling very uncomfortably with a great deal of flying and
flapping aloft, one man at the wheel, two men standing close beside him
in a posture of waiting, and the fore-part of the bulwarks from the
gangway to the fore-rigging lined with the heads of the crew.
The barque was swiftly neared by the pursuing ships, and when they were
within easy oars' range or hailing distance their way was arrested, and
immediately down sank a boat from the frigate's side with Mr Fellowes
steering her and six sailors, as before, rowing her. The boat made
directly for the schooner.
"Before we board the _Minorca_," said Captain Acton to the Admiral, "we
must hear what Fellowes proposes, or what instructions he comes with
from Lord Garlies."
But as he said these words one of the two figures on the _Minorca_ who
stood close to the wheel, bawled, with his hand protecting his mouth
from the sidelong sweep of the wind: "The ship's at your sarvice, your
honours; and right glad we are that you've overhauled us, as it is
about time we was under lawful government."
"That's Eagle!" said Captain Acton. "'Tis clear that the crew have not
mutinied against my interests."
He flourished his hand in token that Mr Eagle's words had been heard,
and that the rest was to come. The man-of-war's boat swept alongside,
and Mr Fellowes, received by Captain Acton and the Admiral, stepped
through the gangway.
"Can I put you on board your ship, gentlemen?" he said. "My crew are
armed, and their presence alongside may calm the passions of the
turbulent among that lot," he added, with a nod at the barque.
The invitation was accepted with many thanks.
Sir William Lawrence was very grave, his looks were stern, almost
fierce, as he entered the boat. Captain Acton was cool and thoughtful.
His brow was knitted; his lips were set. His demeanour was that of
a self-possessed man confronted by a condition of things rendered
complex by features extraneous to the main trouble or difficulty, yet
confounding it by their existence. Lucy watched the scene from the
after-part of the _Aurora's_ quarterdeck. She stood alone in that part
of the ship leaning upon the rail, and once or twice her gaze followed
the boat that was bearing her father and the Admiral to the _Minorca_;
but it was chiefly directed at the barque whose length she explored
for a sight of the tall figure whom she had immediately recognised
as Mr Lawrence, whilst Sir William was surveying his son through his
glass. She mused upon the amazing passage of her life that had filled
the interval between the time of her going on board yonder ship,
believing her father to be lying dangerously injured in her, down to
the hour of her transference to the Whitby brig. Never was her pensive
beauty more fascinating than now, whilst her soft dark eyes brooded
upon the ship that had been her floating prison. What would Mr Lawrence
say or think when he came to understand that her madness was feigned, a
dramatic stratagem to obtain liberty and restoration? How would he--but
how _could_ he--face his father whom he had degraded, and her father
whom he had robbed and wronged?
She sighed; the distress of her heart saddened her face with a meaning
as of tears.
Mr Eagle stood at the head of the side ladder when Captain Acton and
the others stepped on board. At his elbow was Mr Pledge. Some of the
crew were grinning, and all seemed to be hugely delighted by what was
happening.
"We have followed and found you, sir," were Captain Acton's first words
to Mr Eagle.
"S'elp me, your honour, it's no fault of any man aboard saving the
party you gave the command of this ship to," answered Mr Eagle in a
profoundly respectful, obsequious, yet sour and protesting manner and
voice as though he had been wounded in a very delicate part of his
honour.
"I'm here to witness to that, sir, and so's the men," said Mr Pledge.
"Reserve what you have to say for my private ear!" exclaimed Captain
Acton, with a severe look and in a stern voice. "Where is your Captain?"
"He left the deck when the frigate fired a gun," replied Mr Eagle, "and
I haven't seen him since."
"I believe he's done for himself," said Mr Pledge, addressing nobody in
particular; "I fancied I heer'd a shot fired in the cabin."
"You didn't run down to see?" cried Captain Acton. "Come, Sir William!
Will you kindly follow, Mr Fellowes?" And attended by the two he had
named, he hastened to the companion-hatch and all three ran below.
The cabin--the "great cabbin," as it would have been called by our
ancestors--was empty of everything but its furniture. Captain Acton
knew his ship. He walked straight to the door of the Captain's berth or
cabin--that compartment in which Mr Walter Lawrence had locked up Miss
Lucy Acton--and threw it open. The sight that met their eyes caused
an instant arrest in the movements of the three gentlemen from one of
whom, the Admiral, an exclamation in the note of a groan escaped.
On his face stretched along the cabin floor, his arms extended, his
right hand grasping the butt-end of a pistol, was the body of Mr
Lawrence. That the pistol had quite recently been exploded might be
known by the smell of the gunpowder that lurked in the atmosphere. By
the side of this motionless figure lying prone, knelt the distorted
shape of Paul, the steward, who, on the door being flung open, and on
catching sight of Captain Acton and the Admiral, sprang to his feet and
recoiled into a corner of the cabin, with his face blanched by terror
which had immediately visited him on top of the wild, uncalculating
passion of grief which commonly besieges vulgar persons of this man's
mental calibre who are likewise freaks of nature.
After a moment or two of hesitation due to the consternation excited
by the unexpected spectacle upon the cabin deck, Captain Acton and
Mr Fellowes ran to the prostrate man, and Acton cried: "He has shot
himself!"
"Help me to turn him over, sir," said Mr Fellowes. "I don't think he is
dead."
They gently rolled the dead, or dying, man on to his back, and the
nature of his injury appeared. He was clothed in white trousers, a
light blue coat, and a shirt the front of which was ornamented by some
light tracing like flowers. He was without a cravat, and his head was
uncovered. The left side of his shirt was soaked in blood, and the
singed hole through which the bullet had passed from the weapon whose
muzzle he had pressed to his breast, was visible in the thick of the
dark crimson dye. His face was marble-white. It wore an expression of
torture. His lips were parted and grey. The eyelids were half-closed,
and the whites of the eye only were visible.
The Admiral stood looking as though petrified. All the wrath that was
in him, all the fierce and terrible thoughts which had raged in his
heart and prepared his tongue for a delivery desperate and fearful in
the mouth of a father, melted, vanished, faded as smoke in the air,
as a shred of mist torn from a cloud in the sky, and his face wore an
expression of unutterable grief, of horror beyond expression in words,
every passion and emotion it displayed being irradiated by the light
of a father's love which had seemed to be waning and expiring in its
socket, but which found life and power in that mute, irresistible
prayer addressed to him as a father by an only son whose valour he
had honoured, whose beauty he was proud of, whose life appealed to him
more deeply in that his career had been halted by an act of folly when
his reputation stood high for heroic daring. He went to the side of
the body; he looked down upon the face with tearless eyes, and with
that same dry sob in his throat which Captain Acton had heard when the
poor old gentleman spoke after Mr Greyquill's visit, then sank upon his
knees beside his son, muttering: "Walter, oh, Walter, that it should
have come to this! I loved you, my son--may God pity me, and have mercy
upon you!"
Captain Acton, deeply affected by his friend's distress, concealed his
face by turning his head. Mr Fellowes, who had grasped Mr Lawrence's
wrist, cried out: "I feel a thread of pulse. He is not dead. I'll away
for our medico, and shall be back with him in a jiffey."
He ran out of the cabin. The Admiral pillowed his son's head with his
arm, and gazed at the marble-still features. Never could any man appear
more stricken, though 'tis hard to tell by posture or by expression of
face the depth of human sorrow, the pang of the wound that death alone
can heal. His only son--whom he had cursed for his wickedness--whose
professional life, extinguished by an act of drunken madness, had
swelled the eyes of the father with the unshed tears of the spirit of
a man--lying dead or dying on his arm--self-slain!
"Were you here when Mr Lawrence shot himself?" exclaimed Captain Acton
to the hunchback Paul, who cowered in his corner with white cheeks and
terrified looks.
"No, your honour," howled the wretch; "I heard the shot and ran in.
I'd have asked him to shoot me instead--I loved him, your honour--I
worshipped him, kind gentlemen--he was good to me, he was the only
friend I ever had in the world. I'd have died over and over again for
him."
The hunchback broke down, and roared in tears.
"He lives, Acton," said the Admiral in a low voice. "Some brandy and
water might bring him to."
Captain Acton told Paul to fetch some, and the wild, deformed creature
of the forest, as Lucy had called him, sped from the cabin on the
errand.
It proved as the Admiral had said. After a little brandy and water
had been poured between the ashen lips, Mr Lawrence opened his eyes.
They opened full upon his father, whose face was stooped close to
him. Consciousness was tardy in her awakening, but on a sudden the
prostrate, bleeding man recognised his father, and with that look
of recognition there must have come to him some vision of memory
presenting scenes of his past. He frowned, sighed, turned his eyes upon
Captain Acton, and closed them, but not as though he had fainted, for
the lids were firm set.
Whilst they waited for the arrival of the frigate's surgeon, Captain
Acton asked Paul some questions which the hunchback answered as though
when the examination was over the Captain would send him to be hanged
forthwith at the yard-arm. In an agony of impatience the Admiral
awaited the arrival of the medical man, who, considering that there was
a space of blown and running sea for the boat to cross and re-cross,
returned with Mr Fellowes in a space of time that was the expression of
the habitual and disciplined promptitude of everything in which time
finds a place, that is carried on aboard a British man-of-war.
He had been told what had happened, and presented himself equipped with
wool, lint, and bandages. He speedily discovered that the pistol had
been discharged at the place where Mr Lawrence supposed his heart to
beat. The unfortunate man imagined that the heart is on the left side
of the body, whereas it is nearly in the middle, and is well protected
by the breast-bone and ribs, so well indeed that only a small portion
is unprotected. The bullet had passed clean through the chest and left
lung, and come out just below the left blade-bone of the shoulder. The
surgeon, on removing Mr Lawrence's shirt and vest, found the bullet,
which had not pierced the vest. The wounds of entrance and of exit were
easily seen, and the former was bleeding freely.
When the wound had been dressed, during which Mr Lawrence kept his eyes
shut and his teeth set--he was in mortal pain--the Admiral asked him
gently if he suffered much. Mr Lawrence opened his eyes and looked at
his father, and smiled slightly. Faint as the smile was, mingled as it
was with the distortion of anguish, it had in it the charm of a manly
beauty which only the decay of the grave could destroy, and in it also
were remorse and gratitude. His lips parted in the words, "No, sir,"
and again his eyes closed.
Captain Acton, the surgeon, and Mr Fellowes went into the cabin,
leaving the Admiral and his son to themselves.
"Will he live?" asked Captain Acton.
"I don't see why he shouldn't, sir; the wound is not mortal. But he
will require to be very carefully nursed," answered the surgeon, with
the coolness and manner of indifference which are a characteristic
of the official medical man who is unburdened with stimulating
considerations of practice and fees.
"There'll not be much nursing to be got out of this shipful of rough
sailors," said Mr Fellowes. "What a fine, manly, gallant young officer
was lost to the Service in Walter Lawrence! What made him shoot
himself?"
"Do you think, sir, that he could with safety be transferred to the
_Aurora_?" asked Captain Acton, with an appearance of anxiety that
seemed to render his evasion of Mr Fellowes' question undesigned.
"We could nurse him there. We are a comfortable little ship, better
found--certainly in the way of the cabin--than this vessel."
The three on this hint fell into a brief and earnest conversation,
and in a few minutes Sir William was called to participate in the
discussion and deliver his views, whilst the surgeon re-entered the
berth to consider afresh the condition of the patient.
Meanwhile Lucy Acton watched and waited on the quarterdeck of the
_Aurora_. The hour was about half-past four. The breeze was sinking
with the sun; it still blew with weight enough to keep the sails of the
three ships steady. But the dance of the sea was growing languid, the
rolling foam of the breaking head was wanting in brilliance of flash
and friskiness of somersault; the blue of the deep was darkening, and
spread in violet shot with light blue and purple gleams to the margin
of the reflected glory of the sun where the lines of light steeped
into the richer colour.
Lucy had watched the sailors of the barque gather in the confusion of
studding-sails until the vessel looked as trim and fit aloft as need
be; she had also watched the passage of the _Phoebe's_ boat to the
frigate, and its return to the barque with one man more, whose position
on board she could not imagine, neither that nor the reason for his
being fetched. The man-of-war lay near, rolling languidly, lifting
her copper sheathing on fire with wet sunshine, pointing her guns at
the sea as the bright buttons of her trucks described arcs upon the
blue sky like the flight of meteors in the velvet deeps of night.
But now at half-past four the girl seemed to witness a commotion on
board the barque. A man went aloft to the main-yard arm, and another
to the fore-yard arm, and some one standing upon the quarterdeck of
the _Minorca_, in a voice by which she guessed him to be Mr Fellowes,
hailed the schooner, and requested Captain Weaver to send whips aloft
to hoist a sick man in a litter aboard.
Lucy, having sought in vain for any signs of Mr Lawrence or her father,
or the Admiral on board the _Minorca_, ran to Captain Acton's cabin
and tried to see the barque through his glass. Unfortunately she could
not use both hands; she needed one to keep her eye shut; therefore,
when she balanced the glass upon the rail, the rolling of the schooner
caused the object she tried to see to slide up and down in the lens
like a toy monkey on a stick in the hands of a child. However, with her
unhelped vision, she presently saw a something resembling the short
stage which is slung over a ship's side for men to stand upon to paint,
or do carpentry work, float from the deck of the barque to a certain
elevation between the fore and main-yard-arms, where tackles or whips
had been rigged; she then perceived this something slowly descend into
the man-of-war's boat alongside, into which, immediately afterwards,
some figures tumbled from the flight of steps at the gangway, and the
boat made for the schooner.
As the little craft rapidly approached, swept onwards by six powerful
oarsmen, Lucy quickly began to distinguish the inmates who, in the
stern sheets or aft, consisted of the Admiral, Mr Fellowes, and a
stranger. She could also see what resembled a stretcher lying with its
head upon the aftermost thwart and the heel upon an unoccupied space in
the stern sheets. The girl trembled, and wondered, and stared. Where
was her father? Who was the sick man? Where was Mr Lawrence?
The boat drew alongside, but not until the arrangement of plank and
mattress upon which lay Mr Lawrence had been swayed over the rail of
the schooner, and softly and tenderly lowered on to the deck, did she
know that the sick man in the ship's litter was the lover whose passion
for her had defied the gibbet in its unscrupulous, reckless, daring,
headlong determination to achieve.
She ran to the side of what may be called the litter, and looked down
upon the face that rested upon a bolster. She clasped her hands. She
compressed her lips. No exclamation escaped her, but one saw in her
beautiful face the expression of that deep pity which is ever the
attendant of love where sorrow is or suffering.
Mr Lawrence's eyes were open. They looked straight up at her; tormented
as he was, his pain had no influence over the composition of his
feelings. It was a stare rather than a gaze: and in that stare was
profound astonishment at the sight of her, likewise amazement at the
sanity of a face, which, when he had last seen it, was deformed, as
he had believed, by the madness his behaviour had wrought in her; but
before all, and stealing into and illuminating the complicated emotions
conveyed by his eyes, was the love which had ever beamed in them when
he turned them upon her, a light not to be lessened or obscured by any
conflict of passion.
The Admiral, Mr Fellowes, and the surgeon had come on board when the
litter was being lowered, and stood in momentary pause beside it,
whilst men were summoned to convey the wounded man to his father's
cabin. Lucy swept round to the Admiral, and with her hands still
clasped, cried to him softly: "Oh, Sir William, it is your son--I could
not imagine--is he dying--will he die?"
The surgeon who stood close, and who had been gazing at the young lady
with admiration of her face and charms of figure and wonder at finding
so beautiful a girl in a little schooner at sea, exclaimed: "I am
surgeon of yonder frigate, madam. This gentleman will not die, provided
he is carefully and judiciously nursed."
"I will nurse him," cried Lucy.
A faint smile lighted up the features of Mr Lawrence, who slightly
moved his head to cast his eyes upon her.
"Oh, madam, my dearest madam," exclaimed the Admiral in a voice broken
with feeling, "how am I to thank you? What words do your angelic
goodness leave me for the conveyance of my gratitude?"
"You will tell me, sir," said Lucy, addressing the surgeon, "what I am
to do, and I will do it. Where is he wounded?"
"Near the heart. He shot himself!" said the Admiral.
Some men were now arrived. They picked up the litter with careful
hands, and in a sort of procession Mr Lawrence was conveyed into the
deck-house, Lucy walking beside him, whilst behind stepped the Admiral,
Mr Fellowes, and the _Phoebe's_ surgeon. Once only did Lucy speak in
that solemn march from the quarterdeck into the little interior. She
looked back and asked: "Where is my father?"
"He is remaining on board the _Minorca_ to see after affairs there,
madam," answered the Admiral. "I believe Captain Weaver is to take
charge of the barque, and Captain Acton will himself sail the schooner
home."
The litter was carried into the Admiral's cabin, and Lucy and the
surgeon followed.
* * * * * * * *
Lucy Acton's ardently uttered exclamation, "I will nurse him," cannot
fail to an intelligent and imaginative reader to immediately reveal the
end of this plain yarn of Old Harbour Town. But many may desire that a
specific character should be given to the conclusion of this narrative,
and they shall have it.
It would exceed the bounds of possibility to suppose that any charming
girl of great sensibility whose heart was disengaged, whose feelings
were fresh and sweet, could nurse for the space of five weeks so fine,
manly, and handsome a gentleman as Mr Lawrence without falling in love
with him. This may be true of ninety young ladies in every hundred. But
what was Lucy Acton's case? She was secretly but deeply in love with
Mr Lawrence when his own overmastering passion for her impelled him
into the perpetration of an outrage upon her person, and a criminal
offence against her father. She had loved him with a passion deep and
concealed in her spirit long before her abduction, and Aunt Caroline
had guessed the truth. She had loved him with an increasing fervency,
even after she had been cruelly abstracted from her home, when she knew
that her kidnapper's intention was to rob her father of his ship, and
the freighters of their goods, and the crew of their wages. And never
had she loved him so well as when she was feigning madness with the aim
of being transhipped and sent home by him, and when at every interview
his eyes reposed upon her with adoration in their expression and his
bearing towards her was as gentle, appealing, respectful, and dignified
as though he was courting her in hours of health and content, with her
father's sanction, and under her father's roof.
But the contradictions of the female heart! What mental physiologist
shall attempt more, without certain failure, than to describe without
addling his brains by trying to explain? You might call Lucy an
impossible character whose presentment may find a fit frame in a novel,
but for the like of whom the ranks of women, warm, living, with clear
minds and perceptions, must be searched in vain. If this is what shall
be thought, let the objection stand: it shall not be reasoned in this
place. Enough, if actual facts are recorded.
The schooner occupied five weeks in reaching England from the hour
of her parting company with the frigate and shortly after with the
_Minorca_. All that time Mr Lawrence lay upon his back; but the wounds
slowly healed, and he gradually recovered his strength. And when the
schooner brought up off Falmouth Mr Lawrence was nearly well.
He had been nursed by Lucy from the time of his being slung over
the side. The wounds were dressed by her hands. Day after day, hour
after hour, she sat beside him in his cabin. She carried his tray
of food into his little sea-bedroom, and fed him, or helped him to
feed himself. And though at night he was watched by his father, the
instructions given were that if the patient expressed a wish for her
presence, Lucy was to be summoned, no matter the hour of the night in
which the call was made.
What could such an association as this end in, but in such a love
between the two as must prove irresistible sooner or later as an appeal?
Another element of admiration supplied increase of vitality to his
passion when he gathered, from her own confession, that she simulated
madness to rescue herself from a voyage whose issue threatened lifelong
misery to her, and death by the hangman to the other.
Captain Acton easily perceived what was happening, and might as easily
have guessed what was to come. The Admiral was as perceptive as his
friend, and as reserved.
Captain Weaver had been sent on board the _Minorca_ to take charge
of her; Mr Eagle remained as the barque's first mate, and Captain
Acton himself navigated the _Aurora_ to the English Channel. He had
overhauled Mr Lawrence's cabin in the _Minorca_ and found the "Secret
Instructions" he was supposed to have written, and this paper he would
have shown to Sir William Lawrence but for the circumstance of the
envelope being sealed with the Acton crest, which signified that Mr
Lawrence had taken an opportunity of borrowing a large silver seal
which stood upon the library table in Old Harbour House, and replacing
it, after using it for a nefarious purpose: Captain Acton had himself
used that seal the day before he followed in pursuit in the _Aurora_.
The schooner having touched at Falmouth, proceeded to Old Harbour,
where her unexpected arrival aroused great excitement, and provoked
much wonderment, and started every tongue into a passion of gossip and
conjecture. The crew gave the populace the news that the Admiral and
his son, Mr Lawrence, had gone ashore at Falmouth, but whether to stop
there or whether to make sail from that port to foreign parts, the
Jacks were unable to affirm.
Captain Acton and Lucy were strictly reserved--in some directions
rigidly silent. Even Aunt Caroline, who had looked carefully after the
home, and particularly Lucy's little terrier Mamie, and who swooned
away in a bundle of flowered gown and hoop at the sight of her niece,
was kept in ignorance of many essential features of this story--where
it begins when she steps off the stage--for fear that her tongue should
betray more truth to outside ears than it was expedient or desirable
they should be made acquainted with.
In the course of a few weeks the Admiral arrived at his little cottage.
He was without his son, of whom no news could be obtained. Gossip had
ceased to flow when the _Minorca_ returned, and the tongues of her
crew once again opened the flood-gate of talk. But what could they
declare that should convict Mr Lawrence of piracy? They said that the
_Minorca_ had sailed under secret instructions from Captain Acton
which, Mr Lawrence had gathered, imported the sale of the barque at a
place named. These instructions were never read to the crew, because
she was overhauled by the frigate and the _Aurora_ before the defined
parallels of latitude and longitude had been reached. Captain Acton
never denied that he had given secret instructions to Mr Lawrence.
There was therefore no case against the Admiral's son. And from the
statements made by the crew, confirmed by Mr Eagle and Mr Pledge, it
was generally held by the honest gossips of Old Harbour Town that
between you and them and the bedpost, Miss Lucy Acton had eloped with
Mr Lawrence, had so acted as to persuade the crew that she had been
abducted, and had been recaptured by her father, whose sole motive in
pursuing the barque was to regain his child.
Six weeks after the arrival of the _Aurora_, the worthy, the excellent,
the benevolent Caroline Acton, sister of the Captain, departed this
life. About a month later news filtered into Old Harbour Town that
Mr Lawrence, who had perfectly recovered his health, had obtained,
through influence, which was subsequently traced to Captain Acton,
the command of a small Indiaman. Some weeks later old Mr Greyquill
was considerably astonished and gratified by the receipt of a draft
for three hundred pounds from Rear-Admiral Sir William Lawrence, with
a request that he would credit Mr Walter Lawrence with the sum, and
rule his name off his ledgers. It was understood that much about this
time other troublesome, but not very formidable, debts incurred by Mr
Lawrence were discharged by the Admiral; but as it was generally known
that he was a poor man, it was confidently assumed, and not perhaps
without good reason, that Captain Acton, influenced by Lucy, had
supplied the money.
It is certain, anyway, that about nine months after the return of the
_Aurora_, Captain Acton, Sir William Lawrence, and Miss Lucy Acton,
left Old Harbour Town, for the neighbourhood of London, where after an
interval, the exact period of which being uncertain, is not of historic
value enough to demand research, Old Harbour Town received the news,
this time in print, in the _Annual Register_ or _La Belle Assemblée_,
or some such publication of the period, that Mr Walter Lawrence, late
of His Majesty's Royal Navy, only son of Rear-Admiral Sir William
Lawrence, K.C.B., was on such a day united in the bonds of Holy
Matrimony to Lucy, only daughter and co-heiress of Captain Acton, R.N.
(retired).
And thus ended the yarn of Old Harbour Town.
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