“My father,” said Hardy, “is an old commander in the royal navy. He
was a second cousin of Nelson’s Hardy, and that, I believe, was what
led him into the navy, for he had no interest whatever of his own. It
was a visit which Nelson’s Hardy, then a young lieutenant, paid to his
relative, my grandfather, which decided my father, he has told me;
but he always had a strong bent to sea, though he was a boy of very
studious habits.
“However, those were times when brave men who knew and loved their
profession couldn’t be overlooked, and my dear old father fought his
way up step by step—not very fast, certainly, but still fast enough to
keep him in heart about his chances in life.
“He was made commander towards the end of the war, and got a ship,
in which he sailed with a convoy of merchantmen from Bristol. It was
the last voyage he ever made in active service; but the Admiralty was
so well satisfied with his conduct in it that they kept his ship in
commission two years after peace was declared. And well they might be,
for in the Spanish main he fought an action which lasted, on and off,
for two days, with a French sloop-of-war, and a privateer, either of
which ought to have been a match for him. But he had been with Vincent
in the _Arrow_, and was not likely to think much of such small odds as
that. At any rate, he beat them off, and not a prize could either of
them make out of his convoy, though I believe his ship was never fit
for anything afterwards, and was broken up as soon as she was out of
commission. We have got her compasses, and the old flag which flew
at the peak through the whole voyage, at home now. It was my father’s
own flag, and his fancy to have it always flying. More than half the
men were killed or badly hit—the dear old father among the rest. A
ball took off part of his knee-cap, and he had to fight the last six
hours of the action sitting in a chair on the quarter-deck; but he says
it made the men fight better than when he was among them, seeing him
sitting there sucking oranges.
“Well, he came home with a stiff leg. The Bristol merchants gave him
the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a splendidly-mounted sword
with an inscription on the blade, which hangs over the mantel-piece
at home. When I first left home, I asked him to give me his old
service-sword, which used to hang by the other, and he gave it me at
once, though I was only a lad of seventeen, as he would give me his
right eye, dear old father, which is the only one he has now; the other
he lost from a cutlass-wound in a boarding party. There it hangs, and
those are his epaulettes in the tin case. They used to be under my
pillow before I had a room of my own, and many a cowardly down-hearted
fit have they helped me to pull through; and many a mean act have they
helped to keep me from doing. There they are always; and the sight of
them brings home the dear old man to me as nothing else does, hardly
even his letters. I must be a great scoundrel to go very wrong with
such a father.
“Let’s see—where was I? Oh, yes; I remember. Well, my father got his
box and sword, and some very handsome letters from several great men.
We have them all in a book at home, and I know them by heart. The ones
he values most are from Collinwood, and his old captain, Vincent, and
from his cousin, Nelson’s Hardy, who didn’t come off very well himself
after the war. But my poor old father never got another ship. For some
time he went up every year to London, and was always, he says, very
kindly received by the people in power, and often dined with one and
another Lord of the Admiralty who had been an old mess-mate. But he
was longing for employment, and it used to prey on him while he was in
his prime to feel year after year slipping away and he still without a
ship. But why should I abuse people and think it hard, when he doesn’t?
‘You see, Jack,’ he said to me the last time I spoke to him about it,
‘after all, I was a battered old hulk, lame and half-blind. So was
Nelson, you’ll say; but every man isn’t a Nelson, my boy. And though I
might think I could con or fight a ship as well as ever, I can’t say
other folk who didn’t know me were wrong for not agreeing with me.
Would you, now, Jack, appoint a lame and blind man to command your
ship, if you had one?’ But he left off applying for work soon after
he was fifty (I just remember the time), for he began to doubt then
whether he was quite so fit to command a small vessel as a younger man;
and though he had a much better chance after that of getting a ship
(for William IV. came to the throne, who knew all about him), he never
went near the Admiralty again. ‘God forbid,’ he said, ‘that his Majesty
should take me if there’s a better man to be had.’”