Now dash'd upon the billow,
Our opening timbers creak,
Each fears a watery pillow.
...
To cling to slippery shrouds
Each breathless seaman crowds,
As she lay
Till the day
In the Bay of Biscay O!
SEA SONG.
As it will only detain the narrative, without being at all necessary for
its development, I shall not dwell upon the results of the engagement,
which was soon after decided, with very indifferent success on our side.
The soldiers were re-embarked, the ships hauled out of reach of the
enemy's guns, and a council of war summoned--on which it was agreed,
_nem con_, that no more was to be done. The despatches were sent home--
they certainly differed a little, but that was of no consequence. The
sum total of killed and wounded was excessively gratifying to the
nation, as it proved that there had been hard fighting. By-the-bye,
John Bull is rather annoying in this respect: he imagines that no action
can be well fought unless there is a considerable loss. Having no other
method of judging of the merits of an action, he appreciates it
according to the list of killed and wounded. A merchant _in toto_, he
computes the value of an object by what it has cost him, and imagines
that what is easily and cheaply obtained cannot be of much value. The
knowledge of this peculiar mode of reasoning on his part, has very often
induced officers to put down very trifling _contusions_, such as a
prize-fighter would despise, to swell up the sum total of the loss to
the aggregate of the honest man's expectations.
To proceed. As usual in cases of defeat, a small degree of accusation
and recrimination took place. The army thought that the navy might have
beaten down stone ramparts, ten feet thick; and the navy wondered why
the army had not walked up the same ramparts, which were thirty feet
perpendicular. Some of the ships accused others of not having had a
sufficient number of men killed and wounded; and the boats' crews,
whenever they met on shore, fought each other desperately, as if it were
absolutely necessary, for the honour of the country, that more blood
should be spilt. But this only lasted three weeks, when a more
successful attempt made them all shake hands, and wonder what they had
been squabbling about.
There was, however, one circumstance, which occurred during the action,
that had not been forgotten. It had been witnessed by the acting
captain of the ship, and had been the theme of much comment and
admiration among the officers and men. This was the daring feat of our
little hero, in rolling the shell over the side. Captain M--- (the new
commander), as soon as his more important avocations would permit, made
inquiries among the officers (being himself a stranger in the ship),
relative to Willy. His short but melancholy history was soon told; and
the disconsolate boy was summoned from under the half-deck, where he sat
by the body of Adams, which, with many more, lay sewed up in his
hammock, and covered over with the union-jack, waiting for the evening,
to receive the rites of Christian burial, before being committed to the
deep.
Knowing that Adams had been his only protector, a feeling of compassion
for the bereaved and orphan boy, and admiration of his early tokens of
bravery, induced Captain M---, who never formed a resolution in haste,
or abandoned it if once formed, to take the boy under his own
protection, and to place him as an officer on that quarter-deck upon
which he had so distinguished himself. Willy, in obedience to orders
received, stood by the captain, with his hat in his hand.
"What is your name, my boy?" said the captain, passing a scrutinising
glance over his upright and well-proportioned figure.
"Willy, sir."
"And what's your other name?"
"King's Own, sir."
This part of the boy's history was now explained by the
second-lieutenant, who was in command, in consequence of the
first-lieutenant being wounded.
"He must have a name," replied the captain. "William King's Own will
not do. Is he on the books?"
"No, sir, he is not; shall I put him down as William Jones, or William
Smith?"
"No, no, those are too common. The boy has neither father, mother, nor
name, that we know of: as we may, therefore, have a choice of the latter
for him, let it be a good one. I have known a good name make a man's
fortune with a novel reading girl. There is a romance in the boy's
history; let him have a name somewhat romantic also."
"Ay, ay, sir," replied the lieutenant--"here, marine, tell my boy to
bring up one of the volumes of the novel in my cabin."
The book made its appearance on the quarter-deck. "Perhaps, sir, we may
find one here," said the lieutenant, presenting the book to the captain.
The captain smiled as he took the book. "Let us see," said he, turning
over the leaves--"`Delamere!' that's too puppyish. `Fortescue!' don't
like that. `Seymour!' Yes, that will do. It's not too fine, yet
aristocratic and pretty. Desire Mr Hinchen, the clerk, to enter him on
the books as Mr William Seymour, midshipman. And now, youngster, I
will pay for your outfit, and first year's mess: after which I hope your
pay and prize-money will be sufficient to enable you to support
yourself. Be that as it may, as long as you do credit to my patronage,
I shall not forget you."
Willy, with his straw hat in one hand, and a supererogatory touch of his
curly hair with the other, made a scrape with his left leg, after the
manner and custom of seafaring people--in short, he made the best bow
that he could, observing the receipt that had been given him by his
departed friend Adams. D'Egville might have turned up his nose at it;
but Captain M--- was perfectly satisfied; for, if not an elegant, it
certainly was a grateful bow.
Our young officer was not sent down to mess in the berth of the
midshipmen. His kind and considerate captain was aware, that a lad who
creeps in at the hawse-holes--i.e., is promoted from before the mast,
was not likely to be favourably received in the midshipmen's mess,
especially by that part of the community who, from their obscure
parentage, would have had least reason to complain. He was therefore
consigned to the charge of the gunner.
Sincere as were the congratulations of the officers and men, Willy was
so much affected with the loss of his fond guardian, that he received
them with apathy, and listened to the applause bestowed upon his courage
with tears that flowed from the remembrance of the cause which had
stimulated him to the deed. At the close of the day, he saw the body of
his old friend committed to the deep, with quivering lips and aching
brow,--and, as it plunged into the clear wave, felt as if he was left
alone in the world, and had no one to love and to cling to.
We do not give children credit for the feelings which they possess,
because they have not, at their early age, acquired the power of
language to express them correctly. Treat a child as you would an
equal, and, in a few months, you will find that the reason of his having
until then remained childish, was because he had heretofore been treated
as a being of inferior capacity and feelings. True it is, that at an
early age, the feelings of children are called forth by what we consider
as trifles; but we must recollect, in humility, that our own pursuits
are as vain, as trifling, and as selfish--"We are but children of a
larger growth."
The squadron continued to hover on the French coast, with a view of
alarming the enemy, and of making a more fortunate attempt, if
opportunity occurred. Early in the morning of the fourth day after
Willy had been promoted to the quarter-deck, a large convoy of
_chasse-marees_ (small coasting vessels, lugger-rigged) were discovered
rounding a low point, not three miles from the squadron. A general
signal to chase was immediately thrown out, and in half an hour the
English men-of-war were in the midst of them, pouring broadside after
broadside upon the devoted vessels, whose sails were lowered in every
direction, in token of submission. The English men-of-war reminded you
of so many hawks, pouncing upon a flight of small birds; and the
vessels, with their lowered sails just flapping with the breeze, seemed
like so many victims of their rapacity, who lay fluttering on the
ground, disabled, or paralysed with terror. Many escaped into shoal
water, others ran ashore, some were sunk, and about twenty taken
possession of by the ships of the squadron. They proved to be part of a
convoy, laden with wine, and bound to the Garonne.
One of the _chasse-marees_, being a larger vessel than the rest, and
laden with wine of a better quality, was directed by the commodore to be
sent to England; the casks of wine on board of the others were hoisted
into the different ships, and distributed occasionally to the crews.
Captain M--- thought that the departure of the prize to England would be
a favourable opportunity to send our hero to receive his outfit, as he
could not well appear on the quarter-deck as an officer without his
uniform. He therefore directed the master's mate, to whose charge the
prize was about to be confided, to take William with him, and wrote to
his friends at Portsmouth, whither the vessel was directed to proceed,
to fit him out with the requisite articles, and send him back by the
first ship that was directed to join the squadron. The prize was
victualled, the officer received his written orders, was put on board
with our hero and three men, and parted company with the squadron.
The master's-mate, who was directed to take the vessel to Portsmouth,
was the spurious progeny of the first-lieutenant of a line-of-battle
ship, and a young woman who attended the bum-boat, which supplied the
ship's company with necessaries and luxuries, if they could afford to
pay for them. The class of people who obtain their livelihood by these
means, and who are entirely dependent upon the navy for their
subsistence, are naturally anxious to secure the good-will of the
commanding officers of the ships, and usually contrive to have on their
establishment a pretty-looking girl, who, although very reserved to the
junior officers of the ship, is all smiles to the first-lieutenant, and
will not stand upon trifles for the benefit of her employer. Beauty for
men--gold for women! Such are the glittering baits employed, in this
world, to entice either sex from the paths of duty or discretion.
The service was indebted to this species of bribery for the officer in
question. The interest of his supposed father was sufficient to put him
on the quarter-deck; and the profits of his mother, who, having duly
served her apprenticeship, had arrived to the dignity of bumboat woman
herself, and was a fat, comely matron of about forty years of age, were
more than sufficient to support him in his inferior rank. His education
and natural abilities were not, however, of that class to procure him
either friends or advancement; and he remained in the capacity of
master's-mate, and was likely long to continue so, unless some such
event as a general action should include him in a promotion which would
be regulated by seniority. He was a mean-looking, vulgar little man,
with a sharp face and nose--the latter very red, from the constant
potations of not only his own allowance, but of that of every youngster
in the ship whom he could bully or cajole.
His greatest pride and his constant study was "slang," in which he was
no mean proficient. He always carried in his pocket a colt (i.e. a foot
and a half of rope, knotted at one end, and whipped at the other), for
the benefit of the youngsters, to whom he was a most inordinate tyrant.
He could judge a day's work, which he sent in with the rest of the
midshipmen, and which proofs of theoretical knowledge of their
profession were in those days little attended to; but he was very
ignorant, and quite unfit to take charge of any vessel. Captain M---,
who, as we before stated, had joined the ship as acting captain, and had
not had time to ascertain the merits or demerits of the officers, had
given the prize to his charge because he was the senior mate of the
ship.
The prize had scarcely trimmed her sails and shaped her course, when Mr
Bullock, the master's-mate, called our hero to him, and addressed him in
the following elegant phraseology:--
"Now, you rebellious spawn--touch your hat, you young whelp,"--(knocking
off poor Willy's only hat, which flew to leeward, and went
overboard)--"mind what I say, for I mean to be as good as a father to
you. You're not an officer yet--and if you were, it would be all the
same--so no capers, no airs. You see I've only three men in the vessel
besides myself; they are in three watches; so your duty will be to
attend to me in the cabin. You'll mull my claret--I always drinks a
noggin every half-hour to keep the wind out, and if it an't ready and
an't good--do you see this?"--(taking the colt out of his pocket.)
"Stop, you'd better feel it at once, and then, when you knows what the
taste of it is, you'll take care how you're slack in stays." So saying,
he administered three or four hearty cuts on the back and shoulders of
our hero, who had been sufficiently drilled into the manners and customs
of a man-of-war, to know the value of the proverb, "The least said, the
soonest mended."
A spigot had been already inserted into one of the casks of claret which
were lashed on deck; and, as the small vessel was very uneasy in the
heavy swell of the Bay of Biscay, our hero had sufficient employment in
watching the pot of claret, and preventing it from being upset by the
motion of the vessel, as it was constantly heating on the stove in the
cabin. This potation was regularly presented by Willy every half-hour,
as directed, to his commanding officer, who, if it was too sweet, or not
sweet enough, or if he could not drink the whole, invariably, and much
to the annoyance of our hero, threw the remainder into his face, telling
him that was his share of it.
This arrangement continued in full force for three days and three
nights--for Willy was roused up five or six times every night to
administer the doses of mulled claret which Mr Bullock had prescribed
for himself, who seemed, thin and meagre as he was, to be somewhat like
a bamboo in his structure (i.e. hollow from top to bottom), as if to
enable him to carry the quantity of fluid that he poured down his throat
during the twenty-four hours. As for intoxicating him, that appeared to
be impossible: from long habit, he seemed to be like a stiff ship that
careened to her bearings, and would sooner part company with her masts
than heel any further.
On the fourth day, a strong gale sprang up from the north-west, and the
sea ran very high. The _chasse-maree_, never intended to encounter the
huge waves of the Bay of Biscay, but to crawl along the coast and seek
protection from them on the first indication of their fury,--labouring
with a heavy cargo, not only stowed below, but on the decks,--was not
sufficiently buoyant to rise on the summits of the waves, which made a
clean breach over her, and the men became exhausted with the wet and the
inclemency of the season. On the third day of the gale, and seventh
since they had parted company with the fleet, a squall brought the
mainmast by the board; the foresail was lowered to close-reef, when a
heavy sea struck the vessel, and pouring a torrent over her decks, swept
overboard the three men who were forward reefing the sail. Mr Bullock,
the master's mate, was at the helm--Willy, as usual, down below,
attending the mulled claret, which had been more than ever in request
since the bad weather had come on.
The mate quitted the helm, and ran forward to throw a rope to the seamen
who were struggling in the water with the wreck to leeward. He threw
one, which was seized by two of them (the other had sunk); and as soon
as they had hold of it and it became _taut_ from their holding on, he
perceived to his dismay that he had stood in the remaining part of the
coil, and that it had encircled itself several times round his body, so
that the men were hauling him overboard. "Let go, let go, or I'm
overboard!" was a useless exclamation to drowning men; they held on, and
the mate too held on by the rigging for his life,--the efforts of the
drowning men dragging him at last from off his legs, and keeping his
body in a horizontal position, as they hauled at his feet, and he clung
in desperation to the lee-shrouds. "Willy, Willy, a knife--quick,
quick!" roared the mate in his agony. Willy, who, hearing his name
called, and followed up by the "quick, quick," had no idea that anything
but the mulled claret could demand such unusual haste, stopped a few
seconds to throw in the sugar and stir it round before he answered the
summons. He then started up the hatchway with the pot in his hand.
But these few seconds had decided the fate of Mr Bullock, and as
Willy's head appeared up the hatchway, so did that of Mr Bullock
disappear as he sank into a grave so dissonant to his habits. He had
been unable to resist any longer the united force of the drowning men,
and Willy was just in time to witness his submersion, and find himself
more destitute than ever. Holding on by the shroud with one hand, with
the pot of mulled claret in the other, Willy long fixed his eyes on the
spot where his tyrannical shipmate had disappeared from his sight, and,
forgetting his persecution, felt nothing but sorrow for his loss.
Another sea, which poured over the decks of the unguided vessel, roused
him from his melancholy reverie, and he let go the pot, to cling with
both hands to the rigging as the water washed over his knees,--then,
seizing a favourable opportunity, he succeeded in regaining the cabin of
the vessel, where he sat down and wept bitterly--bitterly for the loss
of the master's mate and men, for he had an affectionate and kind
heart--bitterly for his own forlorn and destitute situation. Old Adams
had not forgotten to teach him to say his prayers, and Willy had been
accustomed to read the Bible, which the old man explained to the best of
his ability. The vessel laboured and groaned as she was buffeted by the
waves--the wind howled, and the sea struck her trembling sides and
poured over her deck. In the midst of this wild discord of the
elements, the small voice of the kneeling child, isolated from the rest
of the world, and threatened soon to be removed from it, was not unheard
or unheeded by an omniscient and omnipotent God, who has said that not a
sparrow should fall to the ground without his knowledge, and has pointed
out of how much more value are we than many sparrows.
Willy ended his devotions and his tears; and, feeling wet and cold,
recollected that what would warm his departed friend the mate, would
probably have the same effect upon him. He crawled up the
companion-hatch with another tin pot, and having succeeded in obtaining
some wine from the cask, returned to the cabin. Having warmed it over
the fire, and sugared it according to the well-practised receipt of Mr
Bullock, he drank more of it than, perhaps, in any other situation, he
would have done, and, lying down in the standing bed-place at the side
of the cabin, soon fell into a sound sleep.