SIR SAMUEL HOOD.
As soon as the Volage was refitted, and her crew refreshed, after our
voyage from England of four months and a half, we sailed from Bombay
to the southward along the western coast of India; and having rounded
Ceylon, at Point de Galle, on the extreme south-western corner, where
we merely touched to land the governor's dispatches, before we hauled
up to the northward, and, after twelve days' passage, sailed into the
beautiful harbour of Trincomalee. There, to my great joy, we found the
commander-in-chief, Sir Samuel Hood; who, to my still greater joy,
informed me that a vacancy had been kept open for me in his flag ship,
the Illustrious. In a few minutes my traps were packed up, my
commission made out, and I had the honour of hailing myself a
professional follower of one of the first officers in his Majesty's
service. It is true, I was only fifth lieutenant, and not even fifth
on the Admiral's list for promotion; for I came after a number of old
officers who had served under Sir Samuel for many long years of
patient, or rather impatient, expectation: but my first and grand
purpose was attained, although my chance of advancement was very
small, and very remote.
In capstans, and other machines, there is a mechanical device, with
which every person is acquainted, termed a pall or catch, by which the
work gained in the effort last made shall be secured, and the machine
prevented from turning back again. Something of this kind takes place
in life, particularly in naval life; and happy is the officer who
hears the pall of his fortunes play "click! click!" as he spins
upwards in his profession. Proportionately deep is the despair of the
poor wretch who, after struggling and tugging with all his might at
the weary windlass of his hopes, can never bring it quite far enough
round to hear the joyous sound of the pall dropping into its berth! I
well remember most of these important moments of my own life; and I
could readily describe the different sensations to which their
successive occurrence gave rise, from the startling hour when my
father first told me that my own request was now to be granted, for on
the very next day I was to go to sea--up to that instant when the
still more important announcement met my ear, "Those whom God hath
joined together let no man put asunder!"
"It is easy to be cheerful when one is successful," says a high
authority; and there are "few people who are not good-natured when
they have nothing to cross them," says another equally profound
recorder of common-places; but the secret of good fortune seems to lie
far less in making the most of favourable incidents, or in submitting
manfully to disastrous ones, than in studying how to fill up to
advantage the long intervals between these great epochs in our lives.
So that there is, perhaps, no point of duty which affords more scope
for the talents of a superior than the useful and cheerful employment
of the heads and hands of his officers and people during those trying
periods of inaction which occur in every service. Sir Samuel Hood
possessed this faculty in a wonderful degree, as he not only kept us
all busy when there was nothing to be done, but contrived to make us
happy and contented, though some of our prospects were poor enough in
all conscience. My own, for example, since I was placed at the tip of
the tail of his long string of private followers; and when the
Admiralty List came out, on which I had built so many beautiful
castles in the air, my poor name was not upon it at all. I had not
expected to be first or second, or even third; fourth I had reckoned
upon as possible; fifth as probable; sixth as certain; so that my
horror and disappointment were excessive when this kindest of
commanders-in-chief broke to me the fatal news, in the following
characteristic manner.
A telegraphic signal had been made from the flagstaff at the
Admiral's house to the ship, in these words:--
"Send Mr. Hall on shore, with a crow-bar, two pick-axes, and two
spades."
All the way to the landing-place I puzzled myself with thinking what
on earth could be the object of these tools; little dreaming, good
easy lieutenant! that I was so soon to dig the grave of my own hopes.
The Admiral received me at the door with his coat off; and holding out
his remaining hand (his right arm was shot away in action), he
squeezed mine with even more than his wonted kindness.
"I have been waiting for you with some impatience;" he said, "to be
present at the hunt after a white ant's nest, a sort of thing I know
you like. These rogues, the _Termites bellicosi_, as I find the
naturalists call them, have made their way into the house! and having
carried their galleries up the walls and along the roof, have come
down in great force upon a trunk of clothes, which they would have
destroyed entirely before night, had I not caught sight of them. Now
let us to work; for I propose to rip up the floor of the verandah, in
order to follow their passages and galleries till I reach their nest,
if it be a mile off; won't this he a glorious piece of service?"
exclaimed the Admiral, as he warmed himself by anticipating the chase.
He could hardly have been more delighted, I am persuaded, had he been
giving orders for a fleet under his command to bear down upon the
enemy's line. I could not venture to do more than bow, and say I was
much obliged to him for having so considerately thought of me at such
a moment.
"Oh!" cried he, apparently recollecting himself, "but I have something
else to show you; or rather to tell you, for I must not show it;
though I fear it will not please you quite so much as the prospect of
a white ant-hunt. Here, Gigna," called the Admiral to his steward, who
stood by with a tea-kettle of hot water, ready to pour over the ants,
"put away that affair, which we shall not require this half-hour yet;
and hold this crow-bar while I step into the office with Mr. Hall."
"It is of no use to mince the matter," said the veteran, shutting the
door, and turning to me with somewhat of the air which he might be
supposed to have put on, had he been instructed from home to tell me
that one or both my parents were dead; "it is no use to conceal the
fact from you; but here is the Admiralty List, just come to my hands,
and your name, in spite of all you tell me of promises, verbal and
written, is NOT ON IT!"
Had the Admiral fired one of the flag-ship's thirty-two pounders,
double-shotted, down my throat, he could not have demolished more
completely my bodily framework than this fatal announcement shattered
to pieces the gilded crockeryware of my fondest hopes. All the gay
visions of command, and power, and independence, in which I had
indulged my fancy during the voyage, vanished like the shadows of a
dream I fain would recall, but could not. I was at first quite
stupified, and can remember nothing that passed for some minutes. As I
recovered my scattered senses, however, I recollect gazing at the
anchorage from the open window of the Admiralty House, near which we
stood. The flag-ship then lay just off Osnaburg Point, with her
ensign, or, as it used to be called in old books, her Ancient, the
"meteor flag of England," dropped, in the calm, so perpendicularly
from the gaff-end, that it looked like a rope more than a flag; while
its reflection, as well as that of the ship herself, with every mast,
yard, and line of the rigging, seemed, as it were, engraved on the
surface of the tranquil pool, as distinctly as if another vessel had
actually been inverted and placed beneath. I have seldom witnessed so
complete a calm. The sea-breeze, with which the shore had been
refreshed for twenty minutes, had not as yet found its way into the
recesses of the inner harbour, which, take it all in all, is one of
the snuggest and most beautiful coves in the world. And such is the
commodious nature of this admirable port, that even the Illustrious,
though a large 74-gun ship, rode at anchor in perfect security, within
a very few yards of the beach, which at that spot is quite steep to,
and is wooded down to, the very edge of the water. I gazed for some
moments, almost unconsciously, at this quiet scene, so different from
that which was boiling and bubbling in my own distracted breast, and
swelling up with indignation against some of my friends at home, who I
had such good reason to believe had either betrayed or neglected me,
maugre all sorts of promises.
In the midst of my reverie, which the kind-hearted Admiral did not
interrupt, I observed the wind just touch the drooping flag; but the
air was so light and transient, that it merely produced on it a gentle
motion from side to side, like that of a pendulum, imitated in the
mirror beneath, which lay as yet totally unbroken by the sea-breeze.
Presently the whole mighty flag, after a faint struggle or two,
gradually unfolded itself, and, buoyed up by the new born gale, spread
far beyond the gallant line-of-battle ship's stern, and waved
gracefully over the harbour. It is well known to nice observers of the
human mind, that the strangest fancies often come into the thoughts at
a moment when we might least expect them; and though, assuredly, I was
not then in a very poetical or imaginative humour, I contrived to
shape out of the inspiring scene I was looking upon a figure to soothe
my disappointed spirit. As I saw the ensign uncurl itself to the wind
I said internally, "If I have but life, and health, and opportunity, I
trust, notwithstanding the bitterness of this disappointment, I shall
yet contrive to unfold, in like manner, the flag of my own fortunes
to the world."
Just as this magnanimous thought crossed my mind's eye, the Admiral
placed his hand so gently on my shoulder that the pressure would not
have hurt a fly, and said, in a cheerful tone, "Never mind this
mishap, master Hall; everything will come right in time; and if you
only resolve to take it in the proper and manly temper, it may even
prove all the better that this has happened. Nothing is without a
remedy in this world; and I'll do what I can to make good this maxim
in your case. In the mean time, however, come along, and help me to
rout out these rascally white ants. Off coat, however, if you please;
for we shall have a tough job of it."
It cost us an hour's hard work; for we had to rip up the planks along
the whole of the verandah, then to shape a course across two cellars,
or _godongs_, as they are called in the East, and finally the
traverses of these singular insects obliged us to cut a trench to the
huge hillock or nest, which rose to the height of five or six feet
from the ground, in numberless shoots, like pinnacles round the roof
of a Gothic church. We might have attacked them at headquarters in
the first instance, had we wished it; but the Admiral chose to go more
technically to work, and to sap up to his enemy by regular approaches.
In this way we had the means of seeing the principles upon which these
ants proceed in securing themselves, at every step of their progress,
by galleries or covered ways, which, though extremely feeble, are
sufficiently strong to keep off the attacks of every other kind of
ant. It is curious enough, that, although the white ant be the most
destructive of its species, it is said to be, individually, by far
the weakest, and cannot move a step without the artificial protection
of the galleries it constructs as it goes along; just as the besiegers
of a fortification secure themselves in their trenches and zigzags.
We now brought our spades into play; and having cut the hill across,
laid open the secrets of these most curious of all the ant tribe. At
last we reached the great queen ant, the mother of millions of her
race, a most enormous personage to be sure, nearly four inches long,
and as thick as a man's finger, with a head not larger than that of a
bee, but a body such as I have described, filled with eggs, which
continually rolled out like a fluid from a reservoir. Never shall I
forget the shout of rapture which the gallant Admiral sent over half
the harbour, as he succeeded in gaining the object of his labour.
There are some men who go about everything they undertake with all
their hearts and souls, and this great officer was one of those. He
did nothing by halves and quarters, like so many other people. The
greatest deeds of arms, or the most trivial objects of passing
amusement, engrossed his whole concentrated attention for the time. He
was equally in earnest when holding out examples of private
generosity, or lending the heartiest and kindest encouragement even to
the least distinguished of his followers, as when performing acts of
the highest public spirit, or making the greatest sacrifices to what
he considered his duty. Everything, in short, that he did, or thought,
or uttered, bore the stamp of the same peculiar impress of genuine
zeal. So eminently exciting, and even fascinating, was this truly
officer-like conduct, that even those who had served under him the
longest often wondered at the extent of their own exertions when
roused by his example, and were led almost to believe that his very
look had something stimulating in it which actually gave fresh vigour
to their arms as well as to their thoughts. With all this, he was the
gentlest of the gentle, and accomplished whatever he undertook without
apparent effort, or the least consciousness that what he was doing was
remarkable.
I remember an instance of his skill in the small way. One morning,
near the spot where he had headed the storming party against the white
ants, a working party of the crew of the Illustrious had commenced
constructing a wharf before the dockyard. The stones of which this
platform or landing-place was to be built were, by Sir Samuel Hood's
orders, selected of very large dimensions, so much so, that the
sailors came at last to deal with a mass of rock so heavy, that their
combined strength proved unequal to moving it beyond a few inches
towards its final position at the top of one corner. The Admiral sat
on his horse looking at the workmen for some time, occasionally
laughing, and occasionally calling out directions, which the baffled
engineers could by no means apply. At length, his Excellency the
Commander-in-chief became fidgety, and having dismounted, he tried to
direct them in detail; but never a bit would the stone budge. Finally,
losing all patience, he leaped from the top of the bank, and roared
out, in a voice of reproach and provocation, "Give me the crow-bar!"
Thus armed, he pushed the officers and men to the right and left,
while he insisted upon having the whole job to himself, literally,
single-handed. He first drove the claws of the instrument well under
the edge of the stone, then placed with his toe a small iron pin on
the ground under the bar, and across its length, to act as a fulcrum,
or shoulder. When all things were carefully adjusted to his mind, he
slipped his hand to the upper end of the lever, and weighing it down,
gave what he called "life" to the huge stone, which, just before,
half-a-dozen strong men had not been able to disturb. Sure enough,
however, it now moved, though only about half-an-inch, towards its
intended resting-place. At each prize or hitch of the bar, the rock
appeared to advance farther, till, after five or six similar shifts,
it was finally lodged in the station prepared for it, where, I doubt
not, it rests to this day, and may occupy for centuries to come.