PART IX.

“More than once that night,” resumed Captain Collins, “I woke up with a

start, at thought of our late adventures in the river Nouries—fancying I

was still waiting for the turn of tide to bring down the boats or the

schooner, and had gone to sleep, when that horrible sound through the

cabin skylight seemed full in my ears again. However, the weltering wash

of the water under the ship’s timbers below one’s head was proof enough

we were well to sea; and, being dog-tired, I turned over each time with

a new gusto:—not to speak of the happy sort of feeling that ran all

through me, I scarce knew why; though no doubt one might have dreamt

plenty of delightful dreams without remembering them, more especially

after such a perfect seventh heaven as I had found myself in for a

moment or two, when Violet Hyde’s hand first touched mine, and when I

carried her in after she had actually saved my life. The broad daylight

through our quarter-gallery window roused me at last altogether; and on

starting up I saw Tom Westwood half dressed, shaving himself by an inch

or two of broken looking-glass in regular nautical style—that’s to say,

watching for the rise of the ship—as she had the wind evidently on her

opposite beam, and there appeared to be pretty much of a long swell

afloat, with a breeze brisk enough to make her heel to it; while the

clear horizon, seen shining through the port to north-westward, over the

dark blue heave of water, showed it was far on in the morning. “Well,

Ned,” said Westwood, turning round, “you seemed to be enjoying it, in

spite of the warm work you must have had last night on board here! Why,

I thought you had been with us in the boats, after all, till I found, by

the good joke the cadets made of it, that that puppy of a mate had left

you still locked up, on account of some fancy he had got into his head

of your being in partnership with the schooner! For heaven’s sake,

though, my dear fellow, wash your face and shave—you look fearfully

suspicious just now!” “No wonder!” said I: and I gave him an account of

the matter, leaving out most of what regarded the young lady; Westwood

telling me, in his turn, so much about their boat expedition as I didn’t

know before from the planter. Everything went to certify what I believed

all along, ’till this sudden affair in the river. The schooner’s people

had plainly some cue in keeping hold of our passengers, but hadn’t

expected to see us so soon again, or perhaps at all—as was shown by

their hailing the boats at once in a pretended friendly way, whenever

they came in sight up the creek; while Ford and the rest shouted with

delight, off her bulwarks, at sound of the mate’s voice.

“I tell you what, Collins,” continued Westwood, “this may be all very

well for _you_, who are continually getting into scrapes and out of

them, and don’t seem to care much whether you ship on board an Indiaman

or a corn-brig—you can always find something to do—but to me the service

is _everything_!” “Well, well,” said I hastily, “I’m much mistaken if we

don’t find something to do in India, Tom,—only wait, and that uncle of

yours will make all right; for all we know, there may be news from

Europe to meet us, and I must say I don’t like the notion of being born

too late for turning out an admiral! I’m sure, for my part, I wish old

Nap well out of that stone cage of his!” “No, no, Ned,” said Westwood,

“I ought to clear myself at home first, and sorry I am that I gave in to

you by leaving England, when I should have faced the consequences

whatever they were. Running only made matters worse, Collins!” “No

doubt,” I said; “and as it was my fault, why, deuce take me, Tom, if I

don’t manage to carry you out scot-free! Depend on it, Captain

Duncombe’s friends would have you strung up like a dog, with the

interest he had, and sharp as discipline is just now.” Westwood

shuddered at the thought. “I fear it would go hard with me, Ned,” said

he, “and I shan’t deny that these few weeks have brought me back a taste

for life. But, in spite of all, I’d deliver myself up to the first

king’s ship we speak, or go home in some Indiaman from the Cape—but for

one thing, Collins!” “Ah!” said I, “what’s that?” Westwood gave me a

curious half look, and said—“One _person_, I mean, Ned—and I shouldn’t

like _her_ to hear of me being—” “Yes, yes,” said I stiffly, “I know.”

“It must have been by guess, then!” answered he. “Often as we’ve talked

of her during the voyage, I thought you didn’t know we had met

frequently in London before you came home, and—and—the fact is, I wasn’t

sure you would like _me_ to—” “Westwood,” said I quickly, “Tom

Westwood—what I have to ask is—do you love her?” “If ever a man loved a

woman, Ned,” was his answer, “I do _her_; but if _you_—” “Have you any

chance, then?” I broke out. “Ay, true—true enough, you have the best of

chances—your way is as clear as could be, Westwood, if you knew it! Only

I _must_ know if she is willing—does she—” “I got leave to write to her

in London,” answered Westwood, “and I did so pretty often, you may be

sure; but I only had one short little note in answer to the last, I

think it was—which I had in my breast that morning on Southsea beach,

when I expected the bullet would come through it!” Here Westwood stooped

down to his trunk, and took out a rose-coloured note wrapped in a bit of

paper; I standing the while fixed to the deck, not able to speak, till

he was handing it to me. “No, no!” said I, turning from him angrily, and

like to choke, “that’s too much, Mr Westwood—pray keep your own

love-letters for your own reading!” “There’s nothing particular in it,

Ned,” answered he, flushing a little, “only there’s a few words in it

I’d like you to see—don’t look at it just now, but tell me afterwards

what you think—you ought to see it, as the matter seems to depend on

you, Ned; and if _you_ object, you may be sure, so far as I’m concerned,

’tis all over!” Somehow or other, the look of the little folded piece of

paper, with the touch and the scent of it, as Westwood slipped it into

my hand, made it stick to me. I caught one glance of the address on the

back, written as if fairy fingers had done it, and I suppose I slipped

it into my coat as I went out of the berth, meaning to go aloft in the

foretop and sicken over the thought at my leisure, of Violet Hyde’s

having ever favoured another man so far, and that man Tom Westwood. The

strangeness of the whole affair, as I took it, never once struck me; all

that I minded was the wretched feeling I had in me, as I wished I could

put the Atlantic betwixt me and them all; in fact a hundred things

before we sailed, and during the passage, seemed all at once to agree

with what I’d just heard; and I’d have given thousands that moment it

had been some one else than Westwood, just that I might wait the voyage

out coolly, for the satisfaction of meeting him at twelve paces the

first morning ashore.

On the larboard side of the berth-gangway, opposite our door, I saw the

old planter’s standing half open, and Mr Rollock himself with his shirt

and trousers on, taking in his boots. “Hallo, Collins, my boy,” he sang

out eagerly, “come here a moment, I’ve got something to show you!”

“Look,” said he, standing on tiptoe to see better through the half-port,

“there’s something new been put in my picture-frame here overnight, I

think—ha! ha!” The first thing that caught my eye, accordingly, was the

gleam of a sail rising from over the swell to windward, far away off our

larboard quarter; seemingly rolling before the south-easter; while the

Indiaman hove her big side steadily out of water, with her head across

the other’s course, and gave us a sight of the strange sail swinging to

the fair wind, every time we rose on the surge. “What is it, eh?” said

the planter turning to me, “back or face, Collins? for, bless me, if I

can distinguish tub from bucket, with all this bobbing about—great deal

of capital indigo wasted hereabouts, my dear fellow!” “Why, you may make

out the two breasts of her royals,” said I—“a brig, I think, sir.” “Not

that abominable schooner in her first shape again, I hope!” exclaimed

he, “perhaps bringing back the Yankee.” “Too square-shouldered for that,

Mr Rollock,” I said; “in fact she seems to be signalling us; yes, by

Jove! there’s the long pennant at her fore-royal mast-head—she’s a brig

of war. They’re surely asleep, on deck, and we shall have a shot

directly, if they don’t look sharp!” “You’d better say nothing about the

Yankee’s absence, Collins,” put in the planter, “till we’re fairly away.

For my part, I really have no notion of waiting for any one—particularly

a fellow who _must_ have some go-ahead scheme in his noddle, which we

Indians don’t want. Quietly speaking, my dear fellow, I shall be glad if

we’re rid of him!” On my mentioning what sort of “notions” were found in

Mr Snout’s berth, and the drowning of his heathen images, the worthy

planter went into perfect convulsions, till I thought I should have to

slap him on the back to give him breath. “What the deuce!” said he at

last; “Daniel must really have something worth his while to expect,

before he’d fail to look after such a treasure!” “Ah,” said I, not

attending to him, as I heard a stir on deck, “there we go at last,

cluing up the topsails, I suppose.” “Seriously, now,” continued Mr

Rollock, “I can _not_ fathom that vessel and her designs; but I bless my

stars at getting clear off from the company of that tall Frenchman with

his mustache—can’t bear a mustache, Collins—always reminds me of those

cursed Mahrattas that burnt my factory once. Couldn’t the man shave like

a Christian, I wonder? I defy you to enjoy Mulligatawny soup and not

make a beast of yourself, with ever so much hair over your mouth. By the

way, Collins,” added he, eyeing me, “since I saw you last, you’ve let

your whiskers grow, and look more like one of your nauticals than Ford

himself!—should scarce have known you! Any of it owing to the fair one

up yonder, eh?” And the jolly old chap, whose own huge white whiskers

gave him the cut of a royal Bengal tiger, pointed with his thumb over

his shoulder towards the roundhouse above, with a wink of his funny

round eye, that looked at you like a bird’s. “What do you suppose the

Frenchman to be then, sir?” asked I, gloomily. “Oh, either a madman, a

spy, or something worse! Just guess what he asked me suddenly one

morning,—why, if I weren’t a distinguished _savant_, and wouldn’t like

to study the botany of some island! ‘No, Monsieur, not at all,’ replied

I, in fearfully bad French. ‘The geology, then?’ persisted he, with a

curious gleam in his fierce black eyes—‘does the research of Monsieur

lie in that direction?’ ‘Why no,’ I answered carelessly, ‘I don’t care a

_sacre_ about stones, or anything of the kind, indeed; indigo is _my_

particular line, which may be called botany, in a way—I’m perhaps

prejudiced in favour of it, Monsieur!’ The Frenchman leant his tufted

chin on his hand,” continued Mr Rollock, “meditated a bit, then glanced

at me again, as if he didn’t care though I were studying sea-weed in the

depths of the ocean rolling round us, and stalked down stairs. Then he

took to Mrs Brady again, and lastly to the Yankee, whose conversations

with him, I fancy, had a twang of both commerce and politics.” “What do

you think of it all, Mr Rollock?” inquired I, rather listlessly. “It

didn’t strike me at the time,” said the planter, “but now, I just ask

you, Collins, if there ain’t a certain great personage studying geology

at present in a certain island, not very far away, I suppose, where

there’s plenty of it, and deuced little botany, too, I imagine?” To this

question of the old gentleman’s I gave nothing but a half stupid sort of

stare, thinking as I was at the same time of something else I cared more

about.

“By Jupiter! though,” cried I on a sudden, “instead of heaving the ship

to, I do believe we’ve set topmast-stu’nsails, judging from the way she

pitches into the water; there’s the brig nearing the wind a point or two

in chase, too;—why, the fellow that has charge of the deck must be mad,

sir!” Next minute the fire out of one of her bow-chasers flashed out

behind the blue back of a swell, and the sudden _thud_ of it came

rolling down to leeward over the space betwixt us, angrily, so to speak;

as the brig’s fore-course mounted with a wave, the sun shining clear on

the seams and reef-points, till you caught sight of the anchor hanging

from one bow, and the men running in her lee stu’nsail-booms upon the

yardarms. The planter and I went on deck at once, where we found a fine

breeze blowing, far out of sight of land, the Indiaman rushing ahead

stately enough; while our young fourth officer appeared to have just

woke up, and the watch were still rubbing their eyes, as if every man

had been “caulking it,” after last night’s work. Even Mr Finch, when he

came hastily up, seemed rather doubtful what to do, till the salt old

third-mate assured him the brig was a British sloop-of-war, as any one

accustomed to reckoning sticks and canvass at sea could tell by this

time; upon which our topsails were clued up, stu’nsails boom-ended, and

the ship hove into the wind to wait for the brig.

When the brig’s mainyard swung aback within fifty fathoms of our

weather-quarter, hailing us as she brought to, I had plenty to think of,

for my part. There she was, as square-countered and flat-breasted a

ten-gun model as ever ran her nose under salt water, or turned the

turtle in a Bahama squall; though pleasant enough she looked, dipping as

we rose, and prancing up opposite us again with a curtsey, the brine

dripping from her bright copper sheathing, the epaulets and gold bands

glancing above her black bulwark, topped by the white hammock-cloth;

marines in her waist, the men clustering forward to see us, and

squinting sharp up at our top-hamper. It made one ashamed, to take in

the taunt, lightsome set her spars had, tall and white, with a rake in

them, and every rope running clean to its place; not a spot about her,

hull or rig, but all English and ship-shape, to the very gather of her

courses and top-gallant sails in the lines, and the snowy hollow her two

broad topsails made for the wind, as they brought it in betwixt them to

keep her steady on the spot. “His Britannic Majesty’s sloop Podargus!”

came back in exchange for our mate’s answer; and though ’twas curious to

me to think of meeting the uniform again in five minutes, I saw plainly

this was one of the nice points that Westwood and I might have to

weather. Your brig-cruisers are the very sharpest fellows alive, so far

as regards boarding a merchant craft; if they find the least smell of a

rat, they’ll overhaul your hold to the very dunnage about the keelson;

and I knew that, if they made out Westwood, they’d be sure to have me

too; so you may fancy that, during the short time her boat took to drop

and pull under our quarter, I was making up my mind as to the course. In

fact, I was almost resolved to leave the ship at any rate, feeling as I

did after what I’d heard; but while most of the passengers were running

about and calling below for their shoes, and what not, the Judge and his

daughter came out of the roundhouse, and I caught a single glance from

her for a moment, as she turned to look at the brig, that held me at the

instant like an anchor in a strong tideway. I kept my breath as the

lieutenant’s hand laid hold of the manrope at the head of the

side-ladder, expecting his first question; while he swung himself

actively on deck, looking round for a second, and followed by another;

the wide-awake-looking young middy in the boat folding his arms, and

squinting up sideways at the ladies with an air as knowing as if he’d

lived fifty years in the world, instead of perhaps thirteen.

The younger of the lieutenants took off his cap most politely, eyeing

the fair passengers with as much respect as he gave cool indifference to

the cadets; the other, who was a careful-like, working first luff, said

directly to Mr Finch—“Well, sir, you seemed inclined to lead us a bit of

a chase—but I don’t think,” added he, smiling from the Indiaman to the

brig, “you’d have cost us much trouble after all!” Here Finch hurried

out his explanation, in a half-sulky way, when the naval man cut him

short by saying that “Captain Wallis desired to know” if we had touched

at St Helena. “May I ask, sir,” went on the officer, finding we had

preferred the Cape, “if _you_ command this vessel—or is the master not

on deck—Captain—Captain Wilson, I think you said?” The mate said

something in a lower voice, and the lieutenant bared his head more

respectfully than before, seeing the Company’s ensign, which had been

lowered half-apeak while the boat was under our side; after which Finch

drew him to the capstan, telling him, as I guessed, the whole affair of

the schooner, by way of a great exploit, with hints of her being a

pirate or suchlike. The brig’s officer, however, was evidently too busy

a man, and seemingly in too great a hurry to get back, for listening

much to such a rigmarole, as he no doubt thought it; they had been at

the Cape, and were bound for St Helena again, where she was one of the

cruisers on guard; so that what with Finch’s story, and what with the

crowd round the second lieutenant, all anxious to get the news, I saw it

wouldn’t cost Westwood and me great pains to keep clear of notice. There

were some riots in London, and three men hanged for a horrid murder, the

Duke of Northumberland’s death, not to speak of a child born with two

heads, or something—all since we left England. Then there was Lord

Exmouth come home from Algiers, and Fort Hattrass, I think it was, taken

in India, which made every cadet prick up his ears; Admiral Plampin was

arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, too, in the Conqueror, seventy-four,

and on his way steering for St Helena, to take Sir Pulteney Malcolm’s

place. All of a sudden, I heard the young luff begin to mention a

captain of a frigate’s having been shot two months ago, by his own first

lieutenant, on Southsea Beach, and the lieutenant being supposed to have

gone off in some outward-bound ship. “By the bye,” said the officer to

Mr Rollock, “you must have left about that time—did you touch at

Portsmouth?” “Why, yes,” answered the planter, “we did. What were the

parties’ names?” I edged over to Westwood near the head of the

companion, and whispered to him to go below to our berth, in case of

their happening to attend to us more particularly; and the farther apart

we two kept, the better, I thought. The officer at once gave Captain

Duncombe’s name, but didn’t remember the other, on which he turned to

his first lieutenant with, “I say, Mr Aldridge, d’you recollect the

man’s name that shot the captain of the N’Oreste, as they called her?”

“What, that bad business?” said the other; “no, Mr Moore, I really

don’t—I hope he’s far enough off by this time!” My breath came again at

this, for it had just come into my mind that Finch, who was close by,

had got hold of the name, although he fancied it mine. I was sauntering

down the stair, thinking how much may hang at times on a man’s good

memory, when I heard the first lieutenant say, “By the bye, though, now

I recollect, wasn’t it Westwood?” “Yes, yes, Westwood it was!” said the

other; then came an exclamation from Finch, and shortly after he and the

first lieutenant stepped down together, talking privately of the matter,

I suppose; to the cuddy, where I had gone myself. The lieutenant looked

up at me seriously once or twice, then went on deck, and a few minutes

afterwards the brig’s boat was pulling towards her again, while the

passengers flocked below to breakfast. I saw the thing was settled; the

mate could scarce keep in his triumph, as he eyed me betwixt surprise

and dislike, though rather more respectfully than before. As for

Westwood, he sat down with the rest, quite ignorant of what had turned

up; notwithstanding he threw an uneasy look or two through the cuddy

port at the brig, still curveting to windward of us, with her mainyard

aback: for my part, I made up my mind, in the meanwhile, to bear the

brunt of it.

’Twas no matter to me _now_ where I went; whereas, with Westwood, it was

but a toss-up betwixt a rope and a prison, if they sent him back to

England. No fear of _my_ being tried in his place, of course; but if

there had been, why, to get away both from him and _her_, I’d have run

the chance! There was a bitter sort of a pleasure, even, in the thought

of taking one’s-self out of the way—to some purpose, too, if I saved a

fellow like my old schoolmate from a court-martial sentence, and a man

far worthier to win the heart of such a creature than myself; while the

worst of it was, I was afraid I’d have come to hate Tom Westwood, if we

had staid near each other much longer. Accordingly, I no sooner heard

the dip of the gig’s oars coming alongside again, than one of the

stewards brought me a quiet message from Mr Finch, that he wanted to see

me on deck; upon which I rose off my chair just as quietly, and walked

up the companion. The fact was—as the fellow could scarce have ventured

to look his passengers in the face again after a low piece of work like

this—’twas his cue to keep all underhand, and probably lay it to the

score of my actions aboard, or something; however, he couldn’t throw any

dust of the kind in the second lieutenant’s eyes, who gave him a cold

glance as he stepped on deck, and, picking me out at once where I stood,

inquired if I were the person. The first mate nodded, whereupon the

brig’s officer walked towards me, with a gentlemanly enough bow, and, “I

regret to have to state, sir,” said he, “that Captain Wallis desires to

see you, _particularly_, aboard the brig.” “Indeed, sir,” answered I,

showing very little surprise, I daresay, gloomy as I felt; “then the

sooner the better, I suppose.” “Why, yes,” said the lieutenant,

seemingly confused lest he should meet my eye, “we’re anxious to make

use of this breeze, you—you know, sir.” “Hadn’t Mr Collins—this

gentleman—better take his traps with him, Lieutenant Moore?” said Finch,

free and easy wise. “No, sir,” said the young officer, sternly, “we can

spare time to send for them, if necessary; of course you will keep the

Indiaman in the wind, sir, till the brig squares her mainyard.” I gave

Finch a single look of sheer contempt, and swung myself down by the

manropes from the gangway into the boat; the lieutenant followed me, and

next minute we were pulling for the brig’s quarter. The moment I found

myself out of the Seringapatam, however, my heart nigh-hand failed me,

more especially at sight of the quarter-gallery window I had seen the

light from, on the smooth of the swell, that first night we got to sea.

I even began to think if there weren’t some way of passing myself clear

off, without hauling in Westwood; but it wouldn’t do. Before I well

knew, we were on board, and the lieutenant showing me down the after

hatchway to the captain’s cabin.

The captain was sitting with one foot upon the carronade in his outer

cabin, looking through the port at the heavy Indiaman, as she slued

about and plunged in the blue surge, with all sorts of ugly ropes

hanging from her bows, dirty pairs of trousers towing clear of the water

when she lifted, and rusty stains at her hawse-holes. A stout-built,

hard-featured man he was, with bushy black eyebrows, and grizzled black

hair and whiskers, not to speak of a queer, anxious, uneasy look in the

keen of his eyes when he turned to me. However, he got half up on my

coming in, and I saw he was lame a little of one foot, while he

overhauled me all over with his eye. “I’m sorry to have to send for you

in this way, sir,” said he, rather surprised at my rig,

apparently—“curst sorry, sir, and no more about it; but I can’t help it,

confound me—_must_ do my duty.” “Certainly, sir,” I said. “In fact,”

said Captain Wallis, “the Admiral ordered us to see after you—_him_,

that’s to say—at the Cape, you know.” “Ay, ay, sir,” said I, watching

the Indiaman’s poop-nettings through the port over his head, as he sat

down. “Pooh, pooh,” continued he, “you can’t be the man—just say you

don’t belong to the service—confound it, I’ll pass you!” “Why, sir,”

said I, “I can’t exactly say _that_.” “I hear you’re Westwood of the

Orestes, though,” said he; “now I don’t ask you to say _no_, sir—but

everybody knew the Orestes, and I don’t like the thing, I must say—so

perhaps you’re able to swear _he_ is not aboard the Indiaman—just now,

you know, sir, _just now_, eh?” This tack of his rather dumfoundered me,

seeing the captain of the brig meant it well; but deuced unlucky

kindness it was, since I couldn’t swear to the very thing he fancied so

safe, and his glance was as quick as lightning, so he caught the sense

of my blank look in a moment; as I fancied, at least. “The fact is,

sir,” added he, “the surgeon told me just now he knows Lieutenant

Westwood well enough by sight, so they locked him up! You see we could

have made you out at any rate, sir—however, we’ll let the doctor stay

till we’re clear of the Indiaman, I think!” “Then you take me for the

gentleman you speak of, Captain Wallis?” asked I faintly; for at the

same moment I could see a light-coloured dress and a white ribbon

fluttering on the Seringapatam’s poop, the look of which sent the blood

about my heart. ’Twas hard to settle betwixt a feeling of the kind, and

fear for Westwood; it struck me Captain Wallis wasn’t very eager in the

affair, and ’twas on my lips to assure him I wasn’t the man. “Harkee,”

broke in he, with almost a wink, and a smile ready to break out on his

mouth, “the short and the long of it is, I’ll take _you_! We must have

somebody to show in the case; though now I remember, there was some one

else said to’ve gone off with you—but we won’t trouble _him_! If we’ve

brought away the wrong man, why, hang it, so much the better! If you’re

Westwood, I can tell you, they’ll run ye up to a yardarm, sir! Much more

comfortable than ten years or so in a jail, too, as—as no one knows

better than _I_ do myself.” Here the captain’s face darkened, his eye

gleamed, and he rose with a limp to ring a hand-bell on the table.

“White,” said he to the marine that put his head in at the door, with

his hand up to it, “Desire the first lieutenant, from me, to send a boat

aboard for this gentleman’s things.” “I’m afraid, sir,” continued he

gravely to me, “you’ll have to reckon yourself under arrest,—but you’ll

find the gentlemen in the gun-room good company, I hope, for a day or

two, till we make St Helena.” I saw the captain’s mind was made up, and

for the life of me I didn’t know what to say against it; but speak I

could not, so with a stiff bow and a sick sort of a smile I turned out

of the door, and walked along to the gun-room, which was empty. I could

see the boat soon after under the ship’s side, dipping and rising as

they handed down my couple of portmanteaus to the man-o’-war’s-men; the

young reefer came down again as nimble as a monkey, with some letters in

his hand, took off his cap to some ladies above, and sang out to give

way; five or six flashing feathers of the oars in the sunlight, and they

were coming round the brig’s stern. The brig was just squaring away her

mainyard at the whistle from the boatswain’s mates, when the whole run

of the Indiaman’s bulwarks was crowded with the passengers’ and men’s

faces, watching the brig gather way to pass ahead; I could hear the

officers on deck hail the India mates, wishing them a good voyage; the

ladies bowing and waving their handkerchiefs to the British union-jack.

Some sort of confusion seemed to get up, however, about the ship’s

taffrail, where Rollock, Ford, and some others were standing together;

the planter jumped up all at once on the quarter-mouldings nearest the

brig, then jumped down again, and his straw hat could be seen hurrying

toward the quarterdeck. Next I caught a bright glimpse of Violet Hyde’s

face, as the sun shot on it free of the awnings—her eyes wandering with

the brig’s motion, I fancied, along the deck above me; till suddenly she

seemed to start, and Westwood appeared behind her. The next thing I saw

was the black-faced figure-head of the Seringapatam rising below her

bowsprit, about sixty yards from the gun-room port where I was, and down

she went again with a heavy plash, as Tom Westwood himself leapt up

between the knight-heads at the bow, hailing the brig’s deck with a

voice like a trumpet, “Ahoy!—the Podargus ahoy!—for mercy’s sake heave

to again, sir!” he sung out; “I’m the man you want!” “The Indiaman

ahoy!” I heard Captain Wallis himself hail back, “what d’ye say?” The

creak of our yards, with the flap of the jib, and the men’s feet,

drowned Westwood’s second hail, as it came sharp up to windward; the

sailors in the Indiaman’s bows were grinning at him behind, while the

first lieutenant of the brig shouted gruffly that she had no time to

wait for more letters; and I heard the gun-room steward say to the

marine, on going out with the dirty breakfast cloth, he wondered if

“that parson cove thought the Pedarkis vanted a chapling!” or was only

“vun of these fellers that’s so troublesome to see the French Hemperor!”

“Well,” said the marine, “’twas pretty queer if he took the Pedarkis for

the ship to carry him there! I don’t think the captain would let a rat

into the island, if he could help it!” “Not he,” said the steward;

“plenty of ’em in already, Vite, my man—I do think they used to swim off

on board here, by the way the cheese vent!” All this time I never

stirred from the port, watching with my chin on the muzzle of the gun

till the Indiaman was half a mile to windward of us, her big hull still

rising and falling on the same swells, topped with clusters of heads;

her topsails lowered in honour of the flag, the ensign blowing out

half-mast high for the death of Captain Williamson: a long wash of the

water ran outside the brig’s timbers, surge after surge, and the plunge

at her bows showed how fast she began to run nor’-westward before the

wind. You may well fancy my state, after all I’d done for weeks; in

fact, one scarce knew the extent of what he’d felt, what he’d looked

forward to, till he found himself fairly adrift from it: ’twould even

have been nothing, after all, could I just have thought of Violet Hyde

as I’d done two hours ago, on waking, with last night in the river on my

mind. As it was, ’twould have taken little to make me jump out of the

port into the sweep of blue water swelling toward the brig’s counter;

the Seringapatam being by this time astern. I couldn’t even see her, or

aught save the horizon, to windward; but at this moment the young second

lieutenant came below, and, seeing me, he began in a polite enough way,

with a kindly manner about it, trying to raise my spirits. “I suppose,

sir,” said I, rather sulkily, I daresay, “I can have a berth just now?”

“Oh, certainly,” said he, “the steward has orders to see to it at once.

Will you come on deck a minute or two, in the meantime, sir?”

I looked back from the ship astern to the brig-of-war’s clean white

decks, flush fore and aft, with the men all forward at their stations,

neatly dressed in regular man-o’-war style, every one alike—a sight that

would have done me good at another time, small as she was by comparison;

but the very thought of the Indiaman’s lumbering poop and galleries was

too much for me—’twas as if you’d knocked out those two roundhouse doors

of hers, and let in a gush of bare sky instead. The ship-shape

man-o’-war cut of things was nothing, I fancied, to the snug spot under

those top-gallant bulwarks of hers, and the breezy poop all a-flutter

with muslin of an evening, where you found books and little basket

affairs stuck into the coils of rope: I thought the old Seringapatam

never looked so well, as she commenced trimming sail on a wind,

beginning to go drive ahead, with a white foam at her bows, and her

whole length broadside-on to us. All at once we saw her clue up courses

and to’-gallant sails, till she was standing slowly off under the three

topsails and jib; the two lieutenants couldn’t understand what she was

about, and the captain put the glass to his eye, after which he said

something to the second lieutenant, who went forward directly. The next

thing I saw was the Indiaman coming up in the wind again for about a

minute; she had her stern nearly to us, when the moment after, as she

rose upon a long sea, you saw something flash white off her lee-gangway

in the sunlight, that dropped against it into the hollow of a wave. The

next minute she fell off again with her topsails full, and the first

shower of spray was rising across her forefoot, when the flash of a gun

broke out of her side, and the sound came down to us; then a second and

a third. The brig gave her the same number in answer, and as soon as the

smoke betwixt us had cleared away, the ship could be seen under full

sail to the south-westward by west. “_That’s_ her poor skipper’s hammock

dropped alongside, gentlemen!” said Captain Wallis to his officers; “God

be with him!” “Amen!” said the first lieutenant, and we put our caps on

again. “Set stu’nsails, Mr Aldridge,” said the captain, limping down the

hatchway: as for me, I leant I don’t know how long over the brig’s

taffrail, watching the ship’s canvass grow in one, through the width of

air betwixt us; my heart full, as may be supposed, not to say what

notions came into my head of what might happen to her under Finch’s

charge, ere she reached Bombay. No one belonging to the brig spoke to

me, out of kindness, no doubt; and the ship was hull-down on the

horizon, to my fancy with somewhat of a figure like _hers_, when she

stood with the Cashmere shawl over her head in the dusk. Then I went

gloomily down to my berth, where I kept close by myself till I fell

asleep, though the gun-room steward was sent more than once to ask me to

join the officers.

It wasn’t till the next day, in fact, when I went on the quarterdeck at

noon, wearied for a fresher gulp of air, that I saw any of them; and the

breeze having fallen lighter that morning, they were too busy trimming

sail and humouring her to give me much notice. I must say I had seldom

seen a commander seem more impatient about the sailing of his craft, in

time of peace, than the captain of the Podargus appeared to be; walking

the starboard side as fast as the halt in his gait would let him, and

the anxious turn of his eyes plainer than before, while he looked from

the brig’s spread of stu’nsails to the horizon, through the glass,

which, I may say, he never once laid down. From where the brig spoke the

Indiamen, to St Helena, would be about two or three days’ sail with a

fair wind, at the ordinary strength of the south-east trade; though, at

this rate, it might cost us twice the time. I noticed the men on the

forecastle look to each other now and then knowingly, at some fresh sign

of the captain’s impatience; and the second lieutenant told me in a low

voice, with his head over the side near mine, Captain Wallis had been

out of sorts ever since they lost sight of the island. “You’d suppose,

sir,” said he, laughing, “that old Nap was his sweetheart, by the way he

watches over him; and now, I fancy, he’s afraid St Helena may be sunk in

blue water while we were away! In fact, Mr Westwood,” added he, “it

looks devilish like as if it had come up from Davy Jones, all standing;

so I don’t see why it shouldn’t go down to him again some day; I can

tell you it’s tiresome work cruising to windward there, though, and we

aren’t idle at all!” “Did you ever see the French Emperor yourself,

sir?” asked I—for I must say the thought of nearing the prison such a

man was in made me a little curious. “Never, sir, except at a mile’s

distance,” said the second lieutenant; “indeed, it’s hard to get a pass,

unless you know the governor. But I’ve a notion,” continued he, “the

governor’s carefulness is nothing to our skipper’s! Indeed, they tell a

queer story of how Sir Hudson Lowe was gulled for months together, when

he was governor of Capri island, in the Mediterranean. As for the

captain, again, you’d seek a long time ere you found a better

seaman—he’s as wide awake, too, as Nelson himself—while the curious

thing is, I believe, he never once clapped eyes on Bonaparte in his

life! But good cause he has to hate him, you know, Mr Westwood!”

“Indeed,” said I, taking a moment’s interest in the thing; and I was

just going to ask the reason, when the first lieutenant came over to

say. Captain Wallis would be glad if I would dine with him in the cabin.

At dinner-time, accordingly, I put on a coat, for the first time, less

like those the cadets in the Seringapatam wore, and went aft, where I

found the first lieutenant and a midshipman with the captain. He did his

best to soften my case, as I saw by his whole manner during dinner;

after which, no sooner had the reefer had his one glass of wine, than he

was sent on deck to look out to windward. “Well, sir,” said Captain

Wallis thereupon, turning from his first luff to me, “I’m sorry for this

disagreeable business! I believe you deny being the person at all,

though?” “Why, sir,” said I, “I am certainly no more the first

lieutenant of the Orestes than yourself, Captain Wallis! ’Twas all owing

to a mistake of that India mate, who owed me a grudge.” “Oh, oh, I see!”

replied he, beginning to smile, “the whole matter’s as plain as a

handspike, Mr Aldridge! But I couldn’t do less, on the information!”

“However, sir,” put in the first lieutenant, “there’s no doubt the real

man must have been in the ship, or the mistake could not have happened,

sir!” “Well—you look at things too square, Aldridge,” said the captain.

“All _you_’ve got to do, I hope, sir, is just to prove you’re not

Westwood; and if you want still to go out to the East Indies, why, I

daresay you won’t be long of finding some outward-bound ship or other

off James Town. Only, I’d advise you, sir, to have your case over with

Sir Pulteney, before Admiral Plampin comes in—as I fear he would send

you to England.” “It matters little to me, sir,” I answered; “seeing the

reason I had for going out happens to be done with.” Here I couldn’t

help the blood rising in my face; while Captain Wallis’s steady eye

turned off me, and I heard him say in a lower key to the lieutenant, he

didn’t think it was a matter for a court-martial at all. “Pooh,

Aldridge!” said he, “some pretty girl amongst the passengers in the

case, I wager!” “Why,” returned Aldridge, carelessly, “I heard Mr Moore

say some of the ladies were pretty enough, especially one—some India

judge or other’s young daughter—I believe he was in raptures about,

sir.” This sort of thing, as you may suppose, was like touching one on

the raw with a marlin-spike; when the captain asked me, partly to smooth

it over, maybe,—“By the bye, sir, Mr Aldridge tells me there was

something about a pirate schooner, or slaver, or some craft of the kind,

that frightened your mates—that’s all stuff, I daresay—but what I want

to know is, in what quarter you lost sight of her, if you recollect?”

“About nor’west by north from where we were at the time, sir,” said I.

“A fast-looking craft was she?” asked he. “A thorough-built smooth-going

clipper, if ever there was one,” I said. At this the captain mused for a

little, till at last he said to his lieutenant—“They daren’t risk it; I

don’t think there’s the Frenchman born, man enough to try such a thing

by water, Aldridge?” “Help _him_ out, you mean, sir?” said the luff;

“why, if he ever got as far as the water’s edge, I’d believe in

witchcraft, sir!” “Give a man time, Mr Aldridge,” answered the captain,

“and he’ll get out of anything where soldiers are concerned—every year

he’s boxed up, sharpens him till his very mind turns like a knife, man!

It makes one mad on every point beside, I tell you, sir—whereas after

he’s free, perhaps, it’s just on _that only_ his brain has a twist in

it!” “No doubt, Captain Wallis,” said Aldridge, glancing over to me, as

his commander got up and began walking about the cabin, spite of his

halt. “D’ye know,” continued he, “I’ve thought at times what I should

like best would be to have _him_ ahead of the brig, in some craft or

other, and we hard in chase—I’d go after that man to the North Pole,

sir, and bring him back! Without once going aboard to know he was there,

I’d send word it was Jack Wallis had him in tow!” “What is Bonaparte

like, then, after all, sir?” I asked, just to fill up the break. “I

never saw him, nor he me,” replied Captain Wallis, stopping in his walk,

“but every day he may have a sight of the brig cruising to windward; and

as for the island, we see plenty of _it_, I think, Aldridge?” “Ay, ay,

sir,” said Aldridge, “that we do! For my part, I can’t get the ugly

stone steeples of it out of my head!” “Well,” continued the captain, “at

times, when we’re beating round St Helena of a night, I’ll be hanged if

I haven’t thought it began to loom as if the French Emperor stood on the

top of it, like a shadow looking out to sea the other way,—and I’ve gone

below lest he’d turn round till I saw his face. I’ve a notion, Mr

Aldridge, if I once saw his face I’d lose what I feel against him,—just

as I used always to fancy, the first five years in the _Temple_, if he

were only to see _me_, he would let me out! But they say he’s got a

wonderful way of coming over every one, if he likes!” After this,

Captain Wallis sat down and passed the decanters, the first lieutenant

observing he supposed Bonaparte was a great man in his way, but nothing

to Nelson. “Don’t tack them together, Aldridge!” said his commander,

quickly; “Nelson was a man all over,—he’d got the feelings of a man, and

his faults—but I call _him_, yonder, a perfect demon let loose upon the

world! To my mind all the blood those republicans shed, with their

murdered king’s at bottom of it, got somehow into him, till he thought

no more of human beings, or aught concerning ’em, than I do of so many

cockroaches! But the terrible thing was, sir, his infernal schemes, and

his cunning—why, he’d twist you one country against another, and get

hold of both, like a man bending stun-sail halliards—there were men grew

up round him quick as mushrooms, fit to carry out everything he wanted;

so one could’nt wonder at him enough, Mr Aldridge, if it was only

natural! I can’t tell you anything like what I felt,” he went on, “when

I was in Sir Sidney Smith’s ship, cruising down Channel, and we used to

see the gunboats and flat-bottoms he got together for crossing the

straits—or one night, with poor Captain Wright, that we stood in near

enough to get a shot sent at us off the heights—the whole shore about

Boulogne was one twinkle of lights and camp-fires, and you heard the

sound of the hammers on planks and iron, with the carts and

gun-carriages creaking—not to speak of a hum from soldiers enough, you’d

have thought, to eat old England up! And where are they now?” “I don’t

know, sir, indeed,” said the first lieutenant gravely, supposing by the

captain’s look, no doubt, that it was a question. “What, Captain

Wallis!” exclaimed I, “were you with Captain Wright, then, sir?” Of

course, like every one in the service, I had heard Captain Wright’s

story often, with ever so many versions; there was a mystery about his

sad fate that made me curious to hear more, of what gave the whole navy,

I may say, a hatred to Bonaparte not at all the same you regard a fair

enemy with.

“_With_ him, say you, sir?” repeated the captain of the Podargus, “ay

was I! I was his first lieutenant, and good cause I had to feel for the

end he came to,—as I’ll let you hear. One night Captain Wright went

ashore, as he’d often done, into the town of Beville, dressed like a

smuggler; for the fact was the French winked at the smuggling, only I

must say _we_ used to land men instead of goods. I didn’t like the thing

that night, and advised him not to go, as they’d begun to suspect

something of late; however, the captain by that time was foolhardy,

owing to having run so many risks, and he was bent on going in before we

left the coast; though, after all, I believe it was only to get a letter

that any fisherman could have brought off. The boat was lying off and on

behind a rocky point, and we waited and waited, hearing nothing but the

sound of the tide making about the big weedy stones, in the shadow from

the lights of the town; when at last the French landlord of the little

tavern he put up at, came down upon the shingle and whistled to us. He

gave me a message from Captain Wright, with the private word we had

between us, saying he wanted me to come up to the town on a particular

business. Accordingly, I told the men to shove out again, and away I

went with the fellow. No sooner did I open the door of the room,

however, than three or four gens-d’-armes had hold of me, and I was a

prisoner: as for Captain Weight, I never saw him more. The morning broke

as they brought me up on horseback in the middle of them, along the road

to Paris, from whence I could make out the cutter heeling to the breeze

a mile or two off the land, with two or three gunboats hard in chase.”

“Well, sir, at Paris they clapped me into a long gloomy-like piece of

mason-work called the Temple, close alongside of the river, where plenty

of our countrymen were; Captain Wright and Sir Sidney Smith himself

among the rest, as I found out afterwards. The treatment wasn’t so bad

at first; but when you climbed up to the windows, there was nothing to

be seen but the top of a wall, and roofs of houses all round, save where

you’d a glimpse of the dirty river and some pig-trough of a boat. One

day I got a letter from Captain Wright—how they let me have it I don’t

well know—saying he was allowed a good deal of comfort in the mean time,

but he suspected some devilish scheme in it, to make him betray the

British government, or something of the kind; that he’d heard one of the

French royalist generals had choked himself in his prison, but never to

believe he’d do the same thing, though every night he woke up thinking

he heard the key turn in the door. The next thing I heard of was that

Captain Wright had made away with himself, sir!” Here Captain Wallis got

up again, walking across the cabin, seemingly much moved. “Well, after

that I slept with the dinner-knife in my breast, till the jailer took it

away; for I thought at the time that poor Wright had been murdered,

though I found cause to change my mind when I knew what loneliness does

with a man, not to speak of the notion being put before him to take his

own life. For a while, too, Captain Shaw was in the same cell; by which

time we had such bad food, and so little of it, that one day when a

pigeon lighted on the window, which used to come there for a crumb or

two every afternoon, right along with the gold gleam of the sun as it

shot over the dark houses to that window—I jumped up and caught it. Shaw

and I actually tore it in bits, and eat it raw on the spot; though ’twas

long ere I could get rid of the notion of the poor bird fluttering and

cooing against the bars, and looking at me with its round little soft

eye as it pecked off the slab. But what was that to the thought of my

old father that had hurt himself to keep me in the navy, and me able,

now, to make his last days comfortable—or the innocent young girl I had

married the moment I got my commission of first lieutenant, expecting to

be flush of prize-money! It even came into my head often, when I sat by

myself in the cell they afterwards put me into, alone,—how that little

blue pigeon might have carried a letter to England for me—at any rate it

was the only thing like a chance, or a friend, I ever saw the whole time

I was there,—and foolish as the notion may look, why the window was too

high in a smooth wall, for me once to reach it. I heard all Paris

humming round the thick of the stone, every day, and sometimes the sound

of thousands of soldiers tramping past below, over the next bridge, with

music and suchlike—no doubt when the First Consul, as they called him,

went off to some campaign or other: then I’d dream I felt the deck under

me in a fresh breeze at night, till the soul sickened in me to wake up

and find the stones as still as before, and now and then hear the

sentries challenging on their rounds.

“Well, one day a fellow in a cloak, with a slouch hat over his forehead,

was let in to try, as I thought, if there was anything to be got out of

me, as they tried two or three times at first; some spy he was,

belonging to that police devil, Fouché. What did he offer me, d’ye

think, after beating about the bush for half an hour, but the command of

a French seventy-four under the Emperor, as he was by that time, and, if

I would take it, I was free! On this I pretended to be thinking of it,

when the police-fellow sidled near me, to show a commission signed with

the Emperor’s name at the foot.

“In place of taking hold of it, however, I jumped up and seized the

villain’s nose and chin before he saw my purpose, stuffed the parchment

into his mouth by way of a gag, and made him dance round the cell, with

his cloak over his head and his sword dangling alongside of him, to keep

his stern clear of my foot; till the turnkey heard the noise, and he

made bolt out as soon as the door was opened. You’d wonder how long that

small matter served me to laugh over, for my spirit wasn’t broken yet,

you see; but even then, in the very midst of it, I would all of a sudden

turn sick at heart, and sit wondering when the exchange of prisoners

would be made, that I looked for. The worst of it was, at times a horrid

notion would come into my head of the French seventy-four being at sea

at the moment, and me almost wishing they’d give me the offer over

again—I fancied I felt the very creak of her, straining in the trough of

a sea, and saw the canvass of her topsails over me, standing on her poop

with a glass in my hand,—till she rose on a crest, and there were the

Agamemnon’s lighted ports bearing down to leeward upon us, till I heard

Nelson’s terrible voice sing out, “Give it to ’em, my lads!” when the

flash of her broadside showed me his white face under the cocked hat,

and it came whizzing over like a thirty-two pound shot right into my

breast, as I sunk to the bottom, and found myself awake in the prison.

“I don’t know how long it was after, but they moved me to another berth,

where a man had shot himself through the head, for we actually met his

body being carried along the passage; and more than that, sir, they

hadn’t taken the trouble to wash his brains off the wall they were

scattered on! There I sat one day after another, watching the spot

marked by them turn dry, guessing at everything that had gone through

them as long as he was alive in the place, till my own got perfectly

stupid; I was as helpless as a child, and used to cry at other times

when the jailer didn’t bring me my food in time. I fancied they’d forget

all about me in England; and as for time, I never counted it, except by

the notion I had been two or three years in. At last the turnkey got so

used to me, thinking me no doubt such a harmless sort of a poor man,

that he would sit by and talk to me, giving accounts of the Emperor’s

battles and victories, and such matters. I must say I began to feel as

if he was some sort of a God upon earth there was no use to strive

against, just as the turnkey seemed to do, more especially when I heard

of Nelson’s death; so when he told me, one time, it wouldn’t do for

Fouché or the Emperor to let me out yet, I said nothing more. “Will the

Emperor not let me out _now_?” asked I, a long time after. “Diable!”

said the man, “do you think his Majesty has time to think of such a poor

fellow as you, amongst such great matters? No, no, pauvr’ homme!”

continued he; “you’re comfortable here, and wouldn’t know what to do if

you were out! No fear of your doing as your Capitaine _Ourite_ did,

since you’ve lived here so long, monsieur!” “How long is it, now, good

Pierre?” asked I, with a sigh, as he was going out at the door; and the

turnkey counted on his fingers. “Ulm—Austerlitz—Jena,” said he slowly;

“oui, oui—I scarcely thought it so much—it wants only six or seven

months of ten years!” and he shut to the door. I sprang up off the bed I

was sitting on, wild at the thought—I may say, for a day or two I was

mad—ten years! ten years!—and all this time where was my poor innocent

Mary, and the child she expected to bear, when I left Exeter—where was

my old father? But I couldn’t bear to dwell on it. Yes, Aldridge, by the

God above, they had kept me actually _ten years_ there, in that cursed

Temple, while _he_ was going on all the time with his victories, and his

shows, and his high-flown bulletins! Yet he wasn’t too high, it seems,

to stoop to give out, through his tools, how Wright and I had both

killed ourselves for fear of bringing in the British government—nor to

offer me a seventy-four in a dungeon—_me_, a man used to wind and water,

that loved a breeze at sea like life! ’Twas the very devil’s temptation,

sir; but I’ll tell you what, both Captain Wright and myself had been

with Sir Sidney Smith at Acre, when _he_ was baffled for the first time

in his days—_that_ was the thing, I believe from my soul, that he hated

us for! _I_ had a right to be exchanged ten times over, though he might

have called Wright a spy; but what was my poor wife and her newborn

baby, or my old father’s grey hairs, to _him_, and his damnable ambition

to make everything his own—and when the very thought of me in my hole at

the Temple would strike him in the midst of his victories, where he

hadn’t time, forsooth, to trouble himself about a poor man like me! The

fact was, I could tell how he offered a British seaman, that had had a

finger in nettling him, the command of one of his seventy-fours, which

he had nobody fit to manage—and that in a prison where I’d be glad even

of fresh air!

“’Twas then, in fact, the purpose rose firmer and firmer in me, out of

the fury that was like to drive me mad, how I’d get out of his clutches,

and spend my life against the very pitch of his power I knew so well

about. Till that time I used to look through the bars of the window at

the Seine, without ever fancying escape, low down as it was, compared

with my last cell. There was a mark in the stone floor with my walking

back and forward, since they put me in; and by this time I had the

cunning of a beast, let alone its strength, in regard of anything I took

into my head: often I used to think I saw the end of my finger, or the

corner of a stone, more like the way a fly sees them, than a man. The

turnkey, Pierre, would never let me have a knife to eat my food with,

lest I should do as he said all we English were apt to do—kill

myself—which, by the way, is a lie; and I think that fiend of an Emperor

yonder must have taught them to blame us with their own crime! However,

latterly he let me have a fork for half an hour at dinner; and for a

quarter of an hour every day, except those when he staid to talk to me

as I ate it, did I climb up and work with that fork at the top and

bottom of one of the window-bars, taking care not to break the fork, and

jumping down, always, in time to finish the meal. It took me four whole

months, sir, to loosen them! Such deadly fear as I was in, too, lest

he’d find it out, or lest they moved me to another cell—you’d have

thought I was fond of the walls round the place, where hundreds of men

before me had scrawled their last words; and the one that shot himself

had written, “_Liberté—anéantissement!_ Liberty—annihilation!” just over

where the spatter of his brains had stuck when he laid his head to the

spot! If Pierre had noticed what I’d been about, my mind was made up to

kill him, and then make the trial before they missed him; but _that_ I

had a horror of, after all, seeing the man had taken a sort of liking to

me, and I knew he had a wife.

“Well, at last, one day I had the thing finished; when midnight came I

trembled like a leaf, till I began to fear I couldn’t carry it through:

I tore my shirt and the blanket in strips, to twist into a line, got out

the bar by main force, squeezed through, and let myself down. The line

was just long enough to let me swing against the cold wall, over a

sentry’s head going round the parapet below; as soon as he was past I

dropped on the edge of the wall, and fell along it, my fingers scraping

the smooth stone to no purpose, till I was sliding off into the dark,

with the river I didn’t know how far below me, though I heard it lapping

against some boats at the other side. For a few moments I was quite

senseless, from the fall into the water; the splash roused the

sentinels, and three or four bullets whizzed into it about me, as I

struck out for the shore. Still the night was thick enough to help me

clear off among the dark lanes in the city;—and the upshot of it was,

that I found out some royalists, who supplied me with a pedlar’s dress;

till, in the end, after I can’t tell you how many ticklish chances,

where my luck hung upon a hair, I reached the coast, and was taken off

to a British frigate. At home, sir—at home, I found I’d been given up

long ago for a dead man in Bonaparte’s prisons, and—and—the old man had

been buried seven years, Aldridge—but not so long as my—wife. The news

of my taking my own life in the Temple saved her the rest—’twas too much

for her at the time, Aldridge—both she and her little one had lain in

the mould nine years, when I stood looking at the grass under Exeter

Cathedral! I was a young man almost, still; but my hair was as grizzled

when I got out of the Temple in 1813, as you see it now, and I’ll never

walk the deck fairly again. Aldridge,” added the captain of the

Podargus, turning round and standing still, with a low sort of a deep

whisper, “’tis a strange thing, the Almighty’s way of working—but I

never thought—in the Temple yonder, longing for a heave of the water

under me—I little thought John Wallis would ever come to keep guard over

his Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon!”

When Captain Wallis stopped, the long send of the sea lifting the brig

below us, with a wild, yearning kind of ripple from her bows back to her

counter, and weltering away astern,—one felt it, I may say, somewhat

like an answer to him, for the breeze had begun to freshen: it had got

all of a sudden nearly quite dark, too, as is the case inside the

tropics, without the moon. “Let’s go on deck, gentlemen,” said the

captain, coming to himself; “now clap on those other topmost stuns’ls,

Mr Aldridge, and make her walk, sir!” “No saying,” I heard him mutter,

as he let us go up before him—“no saying what the want of the Podargus

might do, off the island, these dark nights—with water alongside, one

can’t be sure—I warrant me if _that man’s_ dreams came true, as mine

did, he would be at the head of his thousands again, ruining the whole

world, with men rotting out of sight in dungeons while the wind blows!

Ay, dreams, young gentleman!” said he to me as we stood on deck; “I’ll

never get rid of that prison, in my head, nor the way that dead man’s

brain seemed to come into mine, off the wall! But for my part, off St

Helena, ’tis Napoleon Bonaparte’s dreams that enter into my head. If

you’ll believe it, sir, I’ve _heard_ them as it were creeping and

tingling round the black heights of the island at dead of night, like

men in millions ready to break out in war music, as I used to hear them

go over the bridge near the Temple—or in shrieks and groans; we all the

time forging slowly ahead, and the surf breaking in at the foot of the

rocks. I know then, _who’s_ asleep at the time up in Longwood!”

The brig-of-war was taking long sweeps and plunges before the wind; the

Southern Cross right away on her larboard quarter, and the very same

stars spread all out aloft, that I’d watched a couple of nights before,

close by Violet Hyde. The whole of what I’d just heard was nothing to me

in a single minute, matched with the notion of never seeing her more.

Everything I’d thought of since we left England was gone, even one’s

heart for the service; and what to do now, I didn’t know. I scarce

noticed it commence to rain, till a bit of a squall had come on, and

they were hauling down stu’nsails; the dark swells only to be seen

rising with the foam on them, and a heavier cover of dull cloud risen

off the brig’s beam, as well as ahead; so that you merely saw her

canvass lift before you against the thick of the sky, and dive into it

again. ’Twas just cleared pretty bright off the stars astern of us,

however, wind rather lighter than before the squall, when the captain

thought he made out a sail near about the starboard beam, where the

clouds came on the water-line; a minute or two after she was plain

enough in the clear, though looming nearly end-on, so that one couldn’t

well know her rig. Thinking at first sight it might be the schooner,

Captain Wallis was for bracing up, to stand in chase and overhaul her;

but shortly after she seemed either to yaw a little, or fall off again

before the wind like ourselves, at any rate showing three sticks on the

horizon with square canvass spread, and evidently a small _ship_. “Some

homeward-bound craft meaning to touch at the island!” said Captain

Wallis, telling the first lieutenant to keep all fast; by which time she

was lost in the dusk again, and I wasn’t long of going below. A fancy

had got hold of me for the moment, I can’t deny, of its being the

Seringapatam after us, on Westwood’s owning himself; whereupon I

persuaded myself Captain Wallis might perhaps take the risk on him of

letting us both go. For my part, I felt by this time as if I’d rather be

in the same ship with _her_, hopeless though it was, than steer this way

for the other side of the Line; and I went down with a chill at my heart

like the air about an iceberg.

Not being asleep, however, a sudden stir on deck, an hour or two after

that, brought me out of my cot, to look through the scuttle in the side.

The brig had hauled her wind from aft onto her starboard quarter, making

less way than _before_ it, of course; I heard the captain’s voice near

the after-hatchway, too; so accordingly I slipped on my clothes, and

went quietly up. The Podargus was running through the long broad swells

usual thereabouts, with her head somewhere toward north-east; the

officers all up, the whole of the crew in both watches clustered beyond

the brig’s fore-course, and the captain evidently roused, as well as

impatient; though I couldn’t at first make out the reason of her being

off her course. As soon as she fell off a little, however, to my great

horror I could see a light far ahead of us, right in the gloom of the

clouds, which for a moment you’d have supposed was the moon rising red

and bloody, till the heave of the sea betwixt us and it showed how both

of us were dipping: and now and then it gave a flaring glimmer fair out

from the breast of the fog-bank, while the breeze was sending a brown

puff of smoke from it now and then to leeward against the clouds;

through which you made a spar or two licking up the flame, and a rag of

canvass fluttering across on the yard. ’Twas neither more nor less than

a ship on fire—no doubt the vessel seen abeam of us that evening—a sight

at which Captain Wallis seemingly forgot his hurry to make St Helena, in

the eagerness shown by all aboard to save the poor fellows. Suddenly

there was another wild gleam from the burning craft, and we thought it

was over altogether, when up shot a wreath of fire and smoke again, then

a fierce flash with a blue burst of flame, full of sparks and all sorts

of black spots and broken things, as if she had blown up while she

heaved the last time on the swell. Everything was pitch dark next minute

in her place, as if a big blot of ink had come instead; the brig-of-war

herself rolling with a flap of her headsails up against the long heavy

bank of cloud that blocked the horizon. “Keep her away, sirrah!” shouted

Captain Wallis, and the Podargus surged ahead as before, all of us

standing too breathless to speak, but counting the heads of the waves as

they flickered past her weather beam. “God’s sake!” exclaimed the

captain at last, “this is terrible, Aldridge. If I had only overhauled

her, as I meant at first, we might have helped them in time; for no

doubt the fire must have been commenced when we noticed her yawing

yonder a couple of hours ago, sir.” “I think not, sir,” said his

lieutenant, “_we_ were against the clear; and if they’d been in danger

_then_, she’d have fired a distress-gun. There couldn’t have been much

powder aboard, sir—more likely rum, I think!”

“For heaven’s sake!” continued the captain, “let’s look about—she must

surely have had boats out, or something, Mr Aldridge? The best thing we

can do is to fire a few times as we bear down—see that bow-gun cleared

away, Mr Moore, and do it!”

We might have been about a mile, as was guessed, from where she was last

seen, when the brig fired a gun to windward, still standing on under

everything. At the second flash that lighted up the belly of the clouds,

with the black glitter of the swells below them, I fancied I caught a

moment’s glimpse of something two or three miles away. It was too short

to say, however; and soon after the twinkle of a light, seemingly

hoisted on a spar, was seen little more than half a mile upon the brig’s

lee-bow, dipping and going out of sight at times, but plain enough when

it rose. Down went the Podargus for the spot, sending the foam off her

cut-water; and it was no long time before a wild hail from several

voices could be made out almost close aboard. Ten minutes after she was

brought to the wind, heaving a rope to the men on a loose raft of casks

and spars, as it pitched alongside of her, with the sail hauled down on

a spar they had stuck up, and a lantern at the head of it; after which

the raft was cast off, and the poor fellows were safe on board.

Two of them seemed to be half-drowned, the one wrapped up in a wet

pilot-coat, his face looking white and frightened enough by the glimmer

of the lanterns; the other darker a good deal, so far as I could make

him out for the crowd about him, and he didn’t seem able to speak;

accordingly, both of them were taken at once below to the surgeon. The

rest were four half-naked blacks, and a little chap with ear-rings and a

seaman’s dress, who was the spokesman on the quarterdeck to the

captain’s questions—plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl.

“Are there no more of you afloat?” was the first thing asked, to which

the Yankee sailor shook his head. She was an American bark, he said,

from a voyage of discovery round the two Capes; he was mate himself, and

the skipper, being addicted to his cups, had set a cask of rum on fire;

so, finding they couldn’t get it under, besides being wearied at the

pumps, on account of an old leak, the men broke into the spirit-room and

got dead drunk. He and the blacks had patched up a raft in a hurry for

bare life, barely saving the passenger and his servant who had jumped

overboard: the passenger was a learned sort of a man, he said, and his

servant was a Mexican. Most of this I found next day, from the gun-room

officers: however, I heard the mate of the burnt barque inquire of the

captain whereabouts they were, as the skipper was the only man who could

use a chronometer or quadrant, and the last gale had driven them out of

their reckonings a long way. “Somehow south of the Line, I guess?” said

he; but, on being told, the fellow gave a bewildered glance round him,

seemingly, and a cunning kind of squint after it, as I fancied. “Well,”

said he, “I guess we’re considerable unlucky—but I consider to turn in,

if agreeable!” The man had a way, in fact, half free-and-easy, half

awkward, that struck me; especially when he said, as he went below, he

supposed “this was a war-brig,” and hoped there “wasn’t war between the

States and the old country?” “No, my man,” said the captain, “you may

set your mind at ease on that point—but I’m afraid, nevertheless, we’ll

have to land you at St Helena!” “What, mister?” said the American,

starting, “that’s where you’ve got Boneyparty locked up? Well now, if

you give me a good berth for a few, mister, I guess I’ll rayther ship

aboard you, till I get a better! What’s your wage just now, if I may

ask, captain?” “Well, well,” said the captain, laughing, “we’ll see

to-morrow, my man!”—and the American went below. “Set stu’nsails again,

Mr Aldridge,” continued Captain Wallis, “and square yards. Why, rather

than have such a fellow in the ship’s company, Aldridge, I’d land him

without Sir Hudson’s leave!”

“For my own part, next day, I should have given more notice to our new

shipmates while the brig steered fair before the wind—the blacks and the

mate leaning about her forecastle, and the other two being expected by

the surgeon to come pretty well round before night, though the captain

had gone to see them below; but a thing turned up all at once that threw

me once more full into the thought of Violet Hyde, till I was perfectly

beside myself with the helpless case I was in. The note Tom Westwood had

shown me was still in the pocket of my griffin’s coat, though I hadn’t

observed it till now; and what did I feel at finding out, that, instead

of one from her to Westwood, it was a few words from my own sister,

little Jane, saying in a pretty, bashful sort of a way, that her brother

Ned must come home before she could engage to anything! You may fancy

how I cursed myself for being so blind; but a fellow never thinks his

own sister charming at all—and what else could I have done at any rate?

All I hoped for was to get aboard of some Indiaman at St Helena, and

there was nothing else I wearied to see the island again for. I may say

I walked the brig’s lee quarterdeck till daybreak; but anyhow the

look-out from the foreyard had scarce sung out “St Helena on the

weather-bow!” when I was up, making out the round blue cloud in the

midst of the horizon, with a white streak across it, like a bird afloat

in the hazy blue, with the clear gleam from eastward off our starboard

quarter running round to it.”

CANADIAN LOYALTY.

AN ODE.

[Written at Sunrise on New Year’s Morning of 1850, at the head of Lake

Ontario, in Western Canada.]

As gleams the sunrise on the deep,

And on yon cliffs where eagles sweep,

And on the circling forests deep,

This morn, which owns the New Year’s birth,—

Is there no gratulating strain

To hail the advent of thy reign,

Thou latest link of Time’s long chain

Let down from heaven to this our earth?

Of Britain be that strain;—for she,

Stretching her empire o’er the sea,

Exalts the lowly, and sets free

From thraldom’s bonds the fettered slave;

For ever may her children share

The smiles of her maternal care;

For ever may her vessels bear

St George’s standard o’er the wave!

Droop not! Although dark tempests may

Obscure awhile the potent ray

That to these o’er-sea realms brought day,

And Treason walk secure the scene;

A second morning o’er the deep

Shall call us jubilee to keep,

And to old strains each heart shall leap—

“God save Britannia’s noble Queen!”

“God save Britannia’s noble Queen!”—

Shout it aloud! that strain hath been

From east to west, in every scene,

Heard by the nations, like a hymn

Wafted along from clime to clime,

To succour truth, to startle crime,

And, with an influence all sublime,

To brighten what before was dim.

Hark! ’tis Britannia’s morning gun

Heralding thee, thou glorious sun;

And, if it peal when daylight’s done,

Doth she not well that honour claim?

For wheresoe’er thy beams light earth,

Thou seest her wisdom and her worth;

Glories that own to her their birth,

And Trophies of her deathless fame!

From Zembla’s snows to India’s sun,

To her the faint, the feeble run,

They who Oppression’s grasp would shun,

Or Superstition’s horrors blind:

There exiles find a country—there

Monarchs and serfs alike repair,

And, underneath her guardian care,

A sure and safe asylum find!

Then think not, demagogues! on whom

Strike these first rays which now illume

Our land, that, with this year, in gloom

Shall Britain’s power eclipsed be seen.

No! if she wills it, hearts are here

That glory in her high career,

That from her side will sunder ne’er,

But proudly own one common Queen!

Methinks there glows in Britain yet

A feeling, that would grieve to let

Thee, sun! upon her empire set,

While shouts of rival nations rose:—

Our fathers were her sons, and we

Are but her offspring o’er the sea;

Aye undivided let us be—

We scorn to link us with her foes!

Methinks her subjects, side by side,

Will long her burdens just divide,—

Will long maintain, in matchless pride,

Her flag, which aye hath honoured been:—

And many a great deed yet be done,

And many a glorious field be won,

Ere of her empire set the sun.

“God save Britannia’s noble Queen.”

AGRICULTURE, COMMERCE, AND MANUFACTURES:

OPENING OF THE SESSION.

It rarely happens that the proceedings which occur in parliament,

immediately after its reassembling, are so intrinsically important as to

sustain the interest invariably excited in the public mind by the

approach of the legislative season. Such at least is the case whenever

men can predict, almost with certainty, what topics will be alluded to

and what avoided in the royal address; what policy Ministers are

determined to pursue; and what amount of support they may confidently

count on receiving from political friends and auxiliaries. From the

opening of the session of 1850 little novelty was to be augured. The

Free-traders, having had everything their own way, could not be expected

to express any misgiving as to the working of a system which they had so

deliberately adopted. The cry of distress from without, loud and general

as it was, had not shaken the equanimity of the secret divan of Downing

Street; nor perhaps was the complaint deemed as yet articulate enough to

require more than a casual notice. The storm might be brewing, but it

was not at its height, and there would be time enough to meet it

hereafter. What her Majesty’s Ministers had to do was to make out a fair

case of prosperity for the present, and to hold out a still brighter

prospect for the future. They had plausible materials for doing so.

Bullion was plentiful in the vaults of the Bank of England; the exports

for the past year had increased largely in amount; the revenue was in no

bad condition. Abroad, there was a lull in those hostilities which for

the last two years have frightened Europe from its propriety; and,

though the victory had not declared itself on the side of those whom the

Whigs favoured with their approbation, still tranquillity was something.

It gave an augmented market to our manufacturers, and removed those

hindrances which threatened to become serious interruptions to commerce.

With such materials at command, no one but a most sorry artificer could

have failed in constructing a plausible prosperity address. The state of

the home market was evidently a subject for future discussion.

Notwithstanding various rumours as to meditated organic changes, it was

pretty evident that Ministers had no intention to undertake the conduct

of a new Reform bill. Of all the men who ever attempted to ape the

character of Peter the Hermit, Sir Joshua Walmsley is at once the

dullest and the most self-sufficient. Any crusade, under the auspices of

such a preacher, could not be otherwise than abortive: indeed, he failed

signally in the first and easiest quality of an agitator—that of

enlisting a considerable share of popular sympathy on his side. Nor was

finance reform likely to be seriously taken up by the Whigs, inasmuch as

one of the earliest effects of such a scheme would necessarily be the

reduction of their official salaries. That is a point, however, which

they cannot long hope to evade; and it will be forced upon them, sorely

against their will, as the inevitable consequence of low prices. They

must prepare themselves to submit to a reduction similar to that which

has been practised upon the officials of the Great Western Railway, who

are put upon a short allowance in consequence of “the reduced prices of

the necessaries of life.” The rule admits of general application, and

doubtless will be rigidly carried out in the highest as in the lowest

places. At present we shall not discuss that matter: we merely refer to

it as a sufficiently intelligible reason why financial reform formed no

part of the programme of her Majesty’s Ministers. No man expected that

it would do so.

Apart from such topics as these, there was little to be looked for in

the speech: and accordingly, when it appeared, the speech was as meagre

and unsuggestive as such documents usually are. Nor should we have

thought it necessary to make it the subject of comment, save for one

passage, which may be said to contain its kernel, in so far as the

prospects of the home population are concerned:—

“Her Majesty has great satisfaction in congratulating you on the

improved condition of commerce and manufactures. It is with regret

that her Majesty has observed the complaints which, in many parts of

the kingdom, have proceeded from the owners and occupiers of land. Her

Majesty greatly laments that any portion of her subjects should be

suffering distress; but it is a source of sincere gratification to her

Majesty to witness the increased enjoyment of the necessaries and

comforts of life which cheapness and plenty have bestowed upon the

great body of her people.”

Here there is no distinct admission of agricultural distress. Such

distress may or may not exist: all that is known on the subject is, that

complaints are made. But, supposing these complaints to be well founded,

the great body of the people is reaping the benefit of that cheapness

which is the cause of the distress of others. That is the language of

the speech.

We think it is much to be regretted that, on an occasion like this,

Ministers should have avoided the open and manly course. If they do not

believe in the actual existence of such distress, but are of opinion

that the great agitation which at present is spread over England, is

either an unfounded panic or a factious clamour, it would have been well

to have met the statements of their adversaries with a broad and

unequivocal denial. If, on the contrary, they are convinced that

distress actually does exist, and that it is likely to prove permanent,

they have placed themselves in a strange and unprecedented position with

regard to the class so complaining. For, in that view, the terms of the

speech will hardly admit of any other interpretation, than that it is

matter of congratulation to find, that one section of the British public

is prospering upon the ruin of another. We do not, of course, believe

that the Ministry intended to lay down any such principle; for, if once

adopted and carried out, it must lead to the entire disorganisation of

society. We think that their peculiar position affords us the true key

to their language. On the one hand, they cannot deny that distress

actually does exist: on the other, they cannot, in the face of the

commercial principles which they have adopted, and the precarious nature

of their majority, venture to suggest a remedy. Her Majesty is not even

allowed to express sympathy, because sympathy implies suffering—and that

admission Ministers are by no means, as yet, prepared to make.

Turning from the speech itself to the addresses, and the reported

subsequent debates, we find this view of the matter sufficiently borne

out. The Earl of Essex, the mover of the address in the House of Peers,

expressed himself in the following terms:—

“Her Majesty had also expressed her deep sympathy with the distress

_stated to exist_ in many of our agricultural districts. No man could

regret the existence of that distress more than he did; but, in

expressing that regret, he must also state his conviction—a conviction

which was shared by many wealthy merchants, and by many, he would not

say a majority, of landlords—that that distress was not of a

permanent, but of a temporary character.”

Lord Methuen, the seconder, took nearly the same view. The Earl of

Carlisle said:—

“The degree of his alarm would be somewhat proportioned to the

apprehended nature of the distress. If it were temporary, and produced

by special and exceptional causes, not liable continually to prevail

or constantly to recur, then it would be plain that agriculture was

only subject to that variation which every other pursuit, every other

profession and branch of industry, every source of emolument, seemed,

by a law of the universe, to undergo—that change from which

agriculture, in a marked degree, whether protected or unprotected, had

never been exempt.”

And again:—

“What he contended was, that, with so very circumscribed limits for

the experiment, and with such a marked interference of special and

exceptional causes, during the progress of the experiment, it would be

altogether preposterous to assume that the experiment had been tested,

that it was exhausted, and that a change in the policy of the country

ought to be considered, and forthwith entered upon. Neither could he

think they were in a situation to pronounce what were the permanent

fruits of the great experiment they had agreed to make. It would be

impossible to say at what cost corn could be permanently grown in this

country, or whether the same amount of foreign importations would

always prevail. His own feeling was not one of despondency or despair

on the subject. He had no right, on these points, to palm his own

opinion on their lordships. All he contended was, that they were not

in a condition to determine the questions he had indicated. He could

not honestly stop there, however; he could not confine himself to

these ambiguous and hypothetical limits: he was bound to tell their

lordships that, even if he were convinced that the average price of

corn could never ascend higher, still he was not prepared to reverse

the policy they had entered upon.”

Finally, the Marquis of Lansdowne said:—

“Adverting to the subject of the amendment, regret must be felt when

distress affected any large class of her Majesty’s subjects. When the

noble lord (Stanley) went on to say he was convinced the distress,

which to a certain degree affected the owners and occupiers of land,

was shared by the agricultural community at large, including the

labourers, he met the noble lord distinctly with the assertion that,

throughout England, the condition of the labourers was generally

better.”

Lord Lansdowne then went on to state facts regarding the importation of

foreign corn; from which, we presume, he wished his hearers to infer

that such importation was on the wane.

“With respect to the importation of foreign corn, it had diminished

almost to nothing at present. In the last three months of last year,

ending January 5th, the importation was reduced considerably below the

importation of the corresponding period in the previous year. He had a

return of the importation for the first four weeks of January. In the

first four weeks of last year, the importation of all sorts was

1,118,653; for the last four weeks of this year, ending January 28th,

only 336,895 quarters had been imported.”

A valuable addition to the above statistics would have been a note of

the range of the thermometer during the periods referred to, especially

at the Baltic ports. In conclusion, Lord Lansdowne, whilst maintaining

the impossibility of any recurrence to the protective system, remarked:—

“He considered the experiment as finally made; but, if he were to see

a quantity of acres thrown out of cultivation, and a number of

labourers without employment, he would not hesitate to confess himself

in the wrong, and he hoped others would not hesitate to do the same.

He was not now, however, prepared to go back to their past policy, and

to uphold what he believed to be a delusion, or to lay a foundation

for that ill feeling and acrimony which had distinguished the

discussion of the question out of doors.”

These extracts, from the debate in the House of Lords on the first night

of the session, deserve to be recorded for the sake of fixture

reference. Every one of the speakers on the Ministerial side proceeded

on the assumption that agricultural distress, if it existed, was only

temporary, and not permanent, in its character—and, such being the case,

that there was no room, or, at all events, no occasion for a remedy.

Turning to the debate in the House of Commons, we find a bolder tone

assumed. In their selection of the gentleman who had the honour of

moving the address to her Majesty, Ministers gave a very strong

indication of their deliberate views. Amongst those who annually renewed

the motion for the repeal of the corn laws in the House of Commons,

there was one who, with more candour or more discrimination than the

rest, had the courage to acknowledge that the result of such a measure

must be the “annihilation” of the small farmers. That gentleman, Mr

Villiers, was selected as the fittest person to reciprocate to the royal

message. We are far from reflecting upon the taste and feeling which

suggested such a choice—indeed, we are not sure whether a better one

could have been made; for, if the agriculturists are to understand that

under no possible circumstances can our recent policy be changed, that

assurance could hardly be conveyed more authoritatively than from the

lips of the honourable member for Wolverhampton; and accordingly Mr

Villiers does not mince the matter. He speaks out loud and bold, and

tells the farmers that no amount of distress will make him withdraw one

inch from his original position.

“He did not deny that distress existed among the occupiers of the

land, and he deeply regretted it; but they were not precluded from

retiring from that pursuit with which they were not satisfied. He

thought it was some consolation to know that land now fetched as high

a value in the market as it ever had brought in the history of this

country; that there never was a farm vacant but there were numerous

candidates for the tenancy; and that the agricultural labourers,

instead of being worse off, were much better off than usual. If ‘the

worst come to the worst,’ and the landed proprietor and the occupier

should be obliged to proceed in the same business-like way in

conducting their pursuits as persons in other businesses in this

country, they would have this consolation, that there was no advantage

possessed over them by other countries in the raising agricultural

produce. The only thing that he (Mr Villiers) could discover,

distinguishing the agriculturist here from those of other

countries—and that was one which he had under his own control—was the

price of land. It certainly was higher here than on the Continent. But

in many respects his advantages were great; and the inferiority, where

it existed, could be counteracted.”

Statements of this kind carry with them an antidote as well as a bane.

We are not sorry to find the foremost champion of the League, and the

mover of the address, thus openly setting at defiance physical fact,

common sense, and the results of practical experience. He tells the

British agriculturist that he is in every respect, except in the price

of land, on an equality with the foreign producer. So, then, his climate

is as constant, his soil is as rich, the labour he employs is as cheap,

his direct burdens are as low, his luxuries are as moderately taxed! He

is exposed to no restrictions; there is no malt-tax; he may have his

bricks at prime cost; he may grow his own tobacco; he may distil his own

spirits; he is not chargeable with income-tax, irrespective of his

drawing one shilling of profit from his farm! So says Mr Villiers: and,

if this be true, not one of us has a right to complain. But is it true?

We shall not insult the intelligence of our readers by entering on a

deliberate refutation.

Let us next hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer:—

“He admitted that in some respects, and in several parts of the

country, the agricultural interest had suffered; but it was all a

question of degree. He did not deny that the degree was considerable,

but he did not think it existed to anything approaching the extent

that had been represented; and he denied, therefore, that they ought

to retrace the steps of their policy; for, though distress existed, he

relied on the industry and the energy of the British farmer.”

Then come general opinions, almost amounting to assertions, that the

present low price of corn cannot be permanent; and these opinions are

fortified by a comparison of the importations in January 1849 with those

in January 1850, no notice being taken of any difference between the

seasons! Sir Charles Wood next put forth an authority, to which we crave

attention:—

“The _Mark-Lane Express_ stated that the price of corn in the Baltic

was so high that it would not pay to send it to this country; and the

only country from which corn was at present sent to us was France,

which, in ordinary years, was not an exporting country. There was good

reason to suppose, therefore, that the permanent price of wheat in

this country would not range so low as at the present time. Prices

were not at present remunerative to the importer, and importation had

received a most signal check. The farmer need not, therefore,

apprehend that ruin from the operation of free trade which he at

present anticipated from prices under 40s. a quarter. What the future

price of corn in this country would be, it would be wrong in him (the

Chancellor of the Exchequer) to attempt to state, after the mistakes

that the most practical and wisest men had fallen into with regard to

the importation of corn. But it was worth observing, that at present

no importation could take place from those countries from which

importation had been most feared, and that the greatest quantities of

corn recently received had come from those countries from which no one

had anticipated any importation whatever. An honourable member had

expressed an opinion that 44s. a quarter was the average price that

might be expected to prevail for wheat. Now, he could not agree with

those who held the opinion that the agriculturist would be ruined by

such a price.”

Here there are two distinct propositions, with regard to which we have a

word to say. 1st, Sir Charles Wood, on the authority of the _Mark-Lane

Express_, an authority which he afterwards admits will not be disputed,

says that the importations are checked, and will be checked, on account

of the high price of corn in the Baltic, and, therefore, that the price

of wheat in this country will rise. 2d, He thinks that the home

agriculturist can carry on production with wheat at 44s. per quarter.

Well, then, let us see what has since been told us on the authority of

the _Mark-Lane Express_, so lately as 11th February:—

“The value of wheat having receded, without a check, from week to week

since the commencement of the year, has fallen to a point at which

growers are very unwilling to sell; and within the last eight days the

deliveries have fallen off more or less, which circumstance, and the

probability of short supplies during the time farmers shall be engaged

preparing the land for the reception of the spring crops, appear to

have led to the belief that quotations will not for the present

undergo any farther reduction. That a temporary rally may take place

is not improbable; but we are by no means sanguine on the subject, and

regard any improvement of moment as wholly out of the question.

Whatever may be said to the contrary, we maintain that prices of wheat

are at present higher on the continent of Europe than is warranted by

the result of the last harvest. With average crops, such as those

secured in 1849 in most of the large grain-growing countries of

Europe, a very considerable surplus must have been produced for

export; and as there appears to be no chance of France, Holland, or

Belgium requiring supplies from the Baltic, and as our markets hold

out little encouragement for calculating on higher prices, the value

of the article must, we think, inevitably come down in Russia, Poland,

and Germany. Any argument founded on what has occurred in bygone times

is no longer applicable, the alteration in our corn laws placing the

matter in an entirely new position. For the past to be serviceable in

affording materials to form a judgment of the probable future, it is

necessary to have a parallel instance; and all calculations founded on

what prices have been in years when a different order of things

existed, are more likely to mislead than instruct. It is not probable

that prices will fall to so low a point as they have done on former

occasions, when England has required comparatively small supplies, the

removal of our import duties and the repeal of the Navigation Laws

being greatly in favour of the foreign grower; but, on the other hand,

it may be easily foreseen that with wheat at 35s. per quarter in many

of our home markets, British merchants will not purchase abroad on

such terms as have been hitherto asked for spring delivery.

Speculation may for a time support prices at Dantzic, Rostock, &c.,

but the value must ultimately be regulated by prices here; and we feel

perfectly satisfied that supplies on a much larger scale than we are

likely to want will reach us from the Baltic, Black Sea, &c., later in

the year.”

Nowhere can be discerned any symptom which might justify us in believing

that prices are likely, for any length of time, to take an upward

tendency. The importations of last year principally consisted of the

yield of an inferior Continental crop—that of 1848. The large crop of

1849 is preparing for us; and how is it possible to suppose that this

will be kept back unless an augmented price is given for it? Even the

frozen state of the Baltic ports has had no effect in raising prices at

home. On the contrary, they are still declining. The average of wheat in

the Haddington market of 8th February, was 34s. 1d. The Berks

correspondent of _Bell’s Weekly Messenger_ writes thus on the 4th:—“The

corn markets are gradually getting lower, and, taking all the sorts of

grain together, they are now lower than they have been since the

memorable year 1822; and there is, we are sure, less money in

circulation in the country than there has been for many years. The

occupiers of the soil seem to be the first class doomed to be ruined;

but it must be recollected that the farmers will not be the only class.”

But it is of little use for us at present to discuss a point which the

experience of a few months must necessarily solve. Sir Charles Wood’s

statement, if intended to influence the division, has already served its

purpose. Inasmuch, therefore, as the prospects of importation are

concerned, we need not speculate farther.

But when Sir Charles assumes a price of 44s. as remunerative for the

grower of wheat, he takes his position on other ground. We shall not

reiterate our own opinions on this subject, or those of any writer who

may be supposed to be favourable to protection. The evidence of

adversaries may be more valuable; and the first whom we shall cite is

Sir Robert Peel. In 1842, the late Premier indicated his opinion that

the remunerative price ranged from 54s. to 58s., and he never wished to

see it lower than the former sum. Sir Charles Wood, however,

courageously fixes his estimate 10s. beneath that of Sir Robert Peel;

and we doubt not that, if the fall should still continue, we shall find

him averring hereafter that 34s. per quarter is a price amply

remunerative to the British grower.

Our next witness is a gentleman whose testimony must be valuable in the

eyes of political economists. We quote from a work originally published

in 1839, entitled, _Influences of the Corn Laws_, by JAMES WILSON, Esq.

now M.P. for Westbury, and Secretary of the Board of Control. It is a

treatise on which we set so much store, that we propose, in an early

number of Maga, to subject it to a deliberate review, for the purpose of

pointing out the singularly felicitous realisation of the leading

prophecies therein contained, and the intimate knowledge displayed by

the writer of the subject with which he was dealing. At present we shall

confine ourselves strictly to one point.

“This may therefore be called the rate which is fixed by our own

internal competition and resources; 52s. 2d. per quarter may be called

the prime cost of wheat to the consumer, and that sum, reduced by the

charges enumerated, may be called the remunerating price to the landed

interest to the exact extent to which they have been remunerated.”—p.

53.

Again:—

“As we shall afterwards show, we take 52s. 2d. to be the proper price

for wheat, at which an exactly sufficient amount of production would

be kept up, it having been the average price for the last seven years;

we therefore take it as the standard price at which wheat can be sold

to the consumer. It must be clear that whatever average annual price

the farmer receives in any year above that price, he obtains so much

profit beyond the average rate; _and that whatever average annual

price he receives in any year less than that standard price, he makes

so much distinct loss_; and therefore the difference between the

profit derived from the higher prices and the loss from the lower

prices must show the balance in favour or against the home grower.”—p.

41.

Mr Wilson’s argument we leave for the present untouched; we merely found

upon his statement that 52s. 2d. is the proper standard price for

British wheat, and that any lower rate of price must entail a loss on

the grower. So far, therefore, his views are utterly irreconcilable with

those of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Lord John Russell, who addressed the House last, on the Ministerial

side, was not very distinct in his admission as to the existence of

distress. If there was any, he seemed to think it was caused by corn

speculation, and he rang the changes on the old topic of periods of

transition and depression. The division was in entire accordance with

the debate, for it resulted in the rejection of the amendment on the

address, proposed in the following terms, “But humbly to represent to

her Majesty that, in many parts of the United Kingdom, and especially in

Ireland, the various classes of her Majesty’s subjects connected with

the cultivation of the soil are labouring under severe distress, mainly

attributable, in our opinion, to recent legislative enactments, the

operation of which is aggravated by the severe pressure of local

taxation.”

That such an amendment was called for on the part of those who are

opposed to the free-trade policy, we think will be generally admitted.

It was but right and reasonable that the case of the agriculturist

should be brought under the notice of parliament at the very earliest

opportunity; not with the view of forcing on an immediate reversal of

the national policy, but to obtain, if possible, a distinct

acknowledgment of the position in which the most important section of

the community is placed. That acknowledgment has not been given. It

would almost seem as if the Free-traders, in the intoxication of their

headlong career, already considered the great agricultural interest as

completely prostrated as the colonies, with regard to which no notice

whatever was vouchsafed in the royal speech. Mr Cobden is perfectly

furious that the point should be again mooted. He considered protection

as defunct, and the ghost of it laid in the Dead Sea; and now, when it

starts up before him, a living, thriving, and withal a formidable

reality, he has recourse to language unmeet for the mouth of any

respectable conjuror. Lord John Russell can do little more than utter a

feeble and wholly inapplicable descant upon the advantages of the

station of an English gentleman—forgetting all the while that such a

station implies the performance of certain duties, of which not the

meanest are the advocacy of the rights of the British labourer, and the

maintenance of the British constitution. The amendment, as every one

anticipated, was rejected; but, notwithstanding, it has served its

purpose. It has elicited opinions, a commentary on which will be

valuable before the present session is over; it has shown the

agricultural interest how little they have to expect from the present

Parliament; it has laid the foundation for distinct propositions

regarding the equalising and proper adjustment of taxation, which no

doubt will be brought forward _seriatim_, and submitted to the

consideration of the Commons. If these are rejected, as they probably

will be, and if every measure of relief is met by a direct or a virtual

negative, it will then be time for the defenders of British interests to

lay their complaint at the foot of the throne, and to ask for a

dissolution of the present Parliament, in order that the constituencies

of Great Britain may have an opportunity of recording their votes for or

against the continuance of the present policy.

We shall, of course, be told that the point has been already settled.

What is settled? Have not our fiscal regulations been altered year after

year; and was there not a settlement disturbed by the repeal of the Corn

Laws, at least as deliberate as that which is now assumed to be

inviolable? How long is it since “the experiment,” to which we were

entreated to give a fair trial, lost its experimental character, and

became a law, fenced against repeal as closely as a statute of Darius?

Is there a single free-trade prophet who can hold up his head and say

that his vaticinations have been fulfilled? Mr M’Gregor prophesied that

the nation would become richer, at the ratio of two millions a-week. Mr

Economist Wilson prophesied augmented prices to the agriculturist,

adding this ingenuous commentary,—“that there is no better evidence of a

prosperous community or country, _than the existence of a high average

price of provisions_, when the condition of the labourer, as is the case

in this country, is relatively better than in other countries; and that,

on the contrary, there is no stronger evidence of a miserable and

impoverished country, than the existence of low prices of provisions,

where the condition of the labourer is comparatively and infinitely

worse than in other countries where prices are higher.” Mr Cobden

prophesied thus in 1843 and 1844, not once but many times,—“The

landlords will (with free trade) have better rents.” “Give us a free

trade, and land will be as valuable as it is now.” “I believe that land

would be more valuable in this country if you had at once an entire

abolition of the Corn Laws.” We could cite similar testimony, uttered by

a host of prophets as numerous as those of Baal, but we think the above

instances may suffice; and it is on the faith of such vaticinations that

we are peremptorily desired to consider the late ruinous measures as

fixed and unalterable! The railway and the free-trade delusion reached

their highest point in one and the self-same year. We have seen the

quacks, impostors, and swindlers of the one system, scouted by the

unanimous voice of public reprobation already; the leading partisans of

the other cannot long hope to escape the infliction of a similar doom.

It has been said, in various quarters, that we have taken too gloomy a

view of the future agricultural prospects of Great Britain. It may be

so; but, at all events, we are borne out, and even exceeded, by Mr

Villiers. If any man has doubts as to the depression of the agricultural

interest, let him peruse carefully the following statement of the mover

of the address:—

“He (Mr Villiers) had made a calculation of the saving effected by the

people of this country, in consequence of the present reduced price of

food. He found that the average price of wheat in 1847 was 69s. 5d.;

on the 29th of December 1849, it was 39s. 4d.; the average price of

barley in 1847 was 43s., and, in 1849, 25s.; of oats, in 1847, 28s.,

and in 1849, 15s.; and there had been a corresponding reduction in

beans and peas. The usual calculation was, that our population of

30,000,000 consumed one quarter of corn to each person annually; but,

taking a low estimate of consumption, and calculating that the

population annually consumed 20,000,000 quarters of each of these

descriptions of grain, he found that the saving effected by the

difference of prices between 1847 and 1849, amounted to £61,000,000.

He had also estimated, on the same moderate scale, the saving effected

by the difference in the prices of meat, butter, cheese, potatoes, and

other articles, in 1847 and 1849, and he found that it amounted to

£30,000,000 more; so that there had been a total saving in the

expenditure of the people upon food of £91,000,000 between 1847 and

1849. This was the result of free trade _in the very first year of its

operation_. And when so large an amount was saved for expenditure on

other articles than food, he thought it was no matter of astonishment

that the general condition of the people had improved, and that the

country was in a flourishing condition.”

We shall not investigate the accuracy of this calculation, nor shall we

discuss the soundness of the conclusions. It is enough for us that Mr

Villiers holds it to be matter of congratulation that, in one year, “the

very first year of the operation of free trade,” agricultural produce

has been depreciated to the amount of £91,000,000. This is worth a

little consideration. Messrs Cobden, Bright, & Co., have taken much

pains of late to impress upon the farmers that the present struggle is

“a mere landlord’s question;” that the tenantry have nothing earthly to

do with it; and that their sole object ought to be a speedy lowering of

the rents. Our statistics, published in the Magazine, although certified

by a large body of the leading agriculturists in nearly every district

of Scotland, have been designated as “cooked,” by Cockneys who never saw

a blade of wheat grow except on a Sunday excursion to Thames Ditton, and

by pseudo-political economists, who, when detected in deliberate

falsification, have not even the grace to tender a lame apology. The

gravity of an insult depends upon the respectability of those who utter

it. Foul language from the mouth of a cabman does not excite any

rancorous feeling in the bosom of the man who is favoured with the abuse

of Jehu; and, therefore, our correspondents, in number more than

thirty—gentlemen of the highest respectability and character in

Scotland—need not be disturbed by any imputations emanating from the

quarters which we are reluctantly compelled to notice. But, since our

opponents affect to disbelieve the accuracy of our views and

calculations, let them deal with those of Mr Villiers. He puts down the

amount of saving in food at £91,000,000, for a single year. The net

rental of Great Britain and Ireland is £58,753,615:[9] and it therefore

follows, that _supposing no rent whatever to have been paid_, the

tenantry must have suffered loss or diminution of profits to the extent

of £22,246,385! These are the free-trade calculations—not ours. We do

not wonder that the _Times_ did not lose a day in casting discredit upon

a statement which, though cheered on the Ministerial side of the house,

was, in reality, a more damnatory exposition of free trade than the most

ingenious Protectionist could have devised. For our part, we shall not

venture to say whether Mr Villiers was right or wrong. A calculation, of

this extended nature, might tax the powers of the ablest actuary; but,

if it be correct, surely we stand acquitted of all exaggeration; and,

what is of far greater importance, no one can henceforth venture to

assert that this is a mere “landlord’s question;” since, if all rent

were abandoned, the loss to the tenantry, in a single year, would be

twenty-two and a quarter millions!

But let us pass in the meantime from the agricultural case, and see what

real ground exists for the self-gratulations of ministers on the general

prosperous state of the country at the opening of the present session.

We quote the paragraph from the royal speech:—“Her Majesty has great

satisfaction in congratulating you on the improved condition of commerce

and manufactures.” We shall consider the two interests separately.

First, as to commerce, and its main branch, the shipping and

shipbuilding interest. The repeal of the Navigation Laws having been

effected in the course of last year, it might be premature to form a

decided judgment on the working of the new system. Most certainly we

have not done so; and we think it would have been only decent had her

Majesty’s Ministers exercised a similar discretion. But in order to make

out a case of prosperity, the commerce of the country could not be

overlooked; and facts, (when they _are_ facts,) however slight, are too

valuable to be dispensed with on such an occasion as this. Accordingly,

we are told that the shipping interest never was in a state of greater

activity and prosperity than now. Mr Villiers opened thus:—