There are moments in the life of the most self-contained and
sober of us all, when we fairly bubble over, like a full bottle
of champagne with the cork out; and this was one of them for our
hero who however, be it remarked, was neither self-contained nor
sober by nature. When they got back to his rooms, he really
hardly knew what to do to give vent to his lightness of heart;
and Hardy, though self-contained and sober enough in general, was
on this occasion almost as bad as his friend. They rattled on,
talked out the thing which came uppermost, whatever the subject
might chance to be; but whether grave or gay, it always ended
after a minute or two in jokes not always good, and chaff, and
laughter. The poor captain was a little puzzled at first, and
made one or two endeavours to turn the talk into improving
channels. But very soon he saw that Jack was thoroughly happy,
and that was always enough for him. So he listened to one and the
other, joining cheerily in the laugh whenever he could; and when
he couldn't catch the joke, looking like a benevolent old lion,
and making as much belief that he had understood it all as the
simplicity and truthfulness of his character would allow.
The spirits of the two friends seemed inexhaustible. They lasted
out the bottle of sherry which Tom had uncorked, and the remains
of a bottle of his famous port. He had tried hard to be allowed
to open a fresh bottle, but the Captain had made such a point of
his not doing so, that he had given in for hospitality's sake.
They lasted out the coffee and anchovy toast; after which the
Captain made a little effort at moving, which was supplicatingly
stopped by Tom.
"Oh, pray don't go, Captain Hardy. I haven't been so happy for
months. Besides, I must brew you a glass of grog. I pride myself
on my brew. Your son there will tell you that I am a dead hand at
it. Here, Wiggins, a lemon!" shouted Tom.
"Well, for once in a way, I suppose, eh, Jack?" said the Captain,
looking at his son.
"Oh yes, father. You mayn't know it, Brown, but, if there is one
thing harder to do than another, it is to get an old sailor like
my father to take a glass of grog at night."
The Captain laughed a little laugh, and shook his thick stick at
his son, who went on.
"And as for asking him to take a pipe with it--"
"Dear me," said Tom, "I quite forgot. I really beg your pardon,
Captain Hardy; and he put down the lemon he was squeezing, and
produced a box of cigars.
"It's all Jack's nonsense, sir," said the Captain, holding out
his hand, nevertheless, for the box.
"Now, father, don't be absurd," interrupted Hardy, snatching the
box away from him. "You might as well give him a glass of
absinthe. He is church-warden at home and can't smoke anything
but a long clay."
"I'm very sorry I haven't one here, but I can send out in a
minute." And Tom was making for the door to shout for Wiggins.
"No, don't call. I'll fetch some from my rooms."
When Hardy left the room, Tom squeezed away at his lemon, and was
preparing himself for a speech to Captain Hardy full of
confession and gratitude. But the Captain was before him, and led
the conversation into a most unexpected channel.
"I suppose, now, Mr. Brown," he began, "you don't find any
difficulty in construing your Thucydides?"
"Indeed, I do, sir," said Tom, laughing. "I find him a very tough
old customer, except in the simplest narrative."
"For my part," said the Captain, "I can't get on at all, I find,
without a translation. But you see, sir, I had none of the
advantages which you young men have up here. In fact, Mr. Brown,
I didn't begin Greek till Jack was nearly ten years old." The
Captain in his secret heart was prouder of his partial victory
over the Greek tongue in his old age, than of his undisputed
triumphs over the French in his youth, and was not averse to
talking of it.
"I wonder that you ever began it at all, sir," said Tom.
"You wouldn't wonder if you knew how an uneducated man like me
feels, when he comes to a place like Oxford."
"Uneducated, sir!" said Tom. "Why your education has been worth
twice as much, I'm sure, as any we get here."
"No, sir; we never learnt anything in the navy when I was a
youngster, except a little rule-of-thumb mathematics. One picked
up a sort of smattering of a language or two knocking about the
world, but no grammatical knowledge, nothing scientific. If a boy
doesn't get a method, he is beating to windward in a crank craft
all his life. He hasn't got any regular place to stow away what
he gets into his brains, and so it lies tumbling about in the
hold, and he loses it, or it gets damaged and is never ready for
use. You see what I mean, Mr. Brown?"
"Yes, sir. But I'm afraid we don't all of us get much method up
here. Do you really enjoy reading Thucydides now, Captain Hardy?"
"Indeed I do, sir, very much," said the captain. "There's a great
deal in his history to interest an old sailor, you know. I dare
say, now, that I enjoy those parts about the sea-fights more than
you do." The Captain looked at Tom as if he had made an audacious
remark.
"I am sure you do, sir," said Tom, smiling.
"Because you see, Mr. Brown," said the Captain, "when one has
been in that sort of thing oneself, one likes to read how people
in other times managed, and to think what one would have done in
their place. I don't believe that the Greeks just at that time
were very resolute fighters, though. Nelson or Collingwood would
have finished that war in a year or two."
"Not with triremes, do you think, sir?" said Tom.
[Illustration: 0251]
"Yes, sir, with any vessels which were to be had," said the
Captain. "But you are right about triremes. It has always been a
great puzzle to me how those triremes could have been worked. How
do you understand the three banks of oars, Mr. Brown?"
"Well, sir, I suppose they must have been one above the other
somehow."
"But the upper bank must have had oars twenty feet long, and
more, in that case," said the Captain. "You must allow for
leverage, you see."
"Of course, sir. When one comes to think of it, it isn't easy to
see how they were manned and worked," said Tom.
"Now my notion about triremes--" began the Captain, holding the
head of his stick with both hands, and looking across at Tom.
"Why, father!" cried Hardy, returning at the moment with the
pipes, and catching the Captain's last word, "on one of your
hobby horses already! You're not safe!--I can't leave you for two
minutes. Here's a long pipe for you. How in the world did he get
on triremes?"
"I hardly know," said Tom; "but I want to hear what Captain Hardy
thinks about them. You were saying, sir, that the upper oars must
have been twenty feet long at least."
"My notion is--" said the Captain, taking the pipe and
tobacco-pouch from his son's hand.
"Stop one moment," said Hardy; "I found Blake at my rooms, and
asked him to come over here. You don't object?"
"Object, my dear fellow! I'm much obliged to you. Now, Hardy,
would you like to have anyone else? I can send in a minute."
"No one, thank you."
"You won't stand on ceremony now, will you, with me?" said Tom.
"You see I haven't."
"And you never will again?"
"No, never. Now, father, you can heave ahead about those oars."
The Captain went on charging his pipe, and proceeded: "You see,
Mr. Brown, they must have been at least twenty feet long,
because, if you allow the lowest bank of oars to have been three
feet above the water-line, which even Jack thinks they must have
been--"
"Certainly. That height at least to do any good," said Hardy.
"Not that I think Jack's opinion worth much on the point," went
on his father.
"It's very ungrateful of you, then, to say so, father," said
Hardy, "after all the time I've wasted trying to make it all
clear to you."
"I don't say that Jack's is not a good opinion on most things,
Mr. Brown," said the Captain; "but he is all at sea about
triremes. He believes that the men of the uppermost bank rowed
somehow like lightermen on the Thames, walking up and down."
"I object to your statement of my faith, father," said Hardy.
"Now you know, Jack, you have said so, often."
"I have said they must have stood up to row, and so--"
"You would have had awful confusion, Jack. You must have order
between decks when you're going into action. Besides, the rowers
had cushions."
"That old heresy of yours again."
"Well, but Jack, they _had_ cushions. Didn't the rowers who were
marched across the Isthmus to man the ships which were to
surprise the Piraeus, carry their oars, thongs and cushions?"
"If they did, your conclusion doesn't follow, father, that they
sat on them to row."
"You hear, Mr. Brown," said the Captain; "he admits my point
about the cushions."
"Oh, father, I hope you used to fight the French more fairly,"
said Hardy.
"But didn't he? Didn't Jack admit my point?"
"Implicitly, sir, I think," said Tom, catching Hardy's eye, which
was dancing with fun.
"Of course he did. You hear that, Jack. Now my notion about
triremes--"
A knock at the door interrupted the Captain again, and Blake came
in and was introduced.
"Mr. Blake is almost our best scholar, father; you should appeal
to him about the cushions."
"I am very proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said the
Captain; "I have heard my son speak of you often."
"We were talking about triremes," said Tom; "Captain Hardy thinks
the oars must have been twenty feet long."
"Not easy to come forward well with that sort of oar," said
Blake; "they must have pulled a slow stroke."
"Our torpid would have bumped the best of them," said Hardy.
"I don't think they could have made more than six knots," said
the Captain; "but yet they used to sink one another, and a light
boat going only six knots couldn't break another in two
amid-ships. It's a puzzling subject, Mr. Blake."
"It is, sir," said Mr. Blake; "if we only had some of their
fo'castle songs we should know more about it. I'm afraid they had
no Dibdin."
"I wish you would turn one of my father's favorite songs into
anapaests for him," said Hardy.
"What are they?" said Blake.
"'Tom Bowling,' or 'The wind that blows, and the ship that goes,
and the lass that loves a sailor.'"
"By the way, why shouldn't we have a song?" said Tom.
"What do you say, Captain Hardy?"
The Captain winced a little as he saw his chance of expounding
his notion as to triremes slipping away, but answered:
"By all means, sir; Jack must sing for me though. Did you ever
hear him sing 'Tom Bowling!'"
"No, never, sir. Why, Hardy, you never told me you could sing."
"You never asked me," said Hardy, laughing; "but if I sing for my
father, he must spin us a yarn."
"Oh yes; will you, sir!"
"I'll do my best, Mr. Brown; but I don't know that you'll care to
listen to my old yarns. Jack thinks everybody must like them as
well as he, who used to hear them when he was a child."
"Thank you, sir; that's famous. Now Hardy, strike up."
"After you. You must set the example in your own rooms."
So Tom sang his song. And the noise brought Drysdale and another
man up, who were loitering in quad on the lookout for something
to do. Drysdale and the Captain recognised one another, and were
friends at once. And then Hardy sang "Tom Bowling," in a style
which astonished the rest not a little, and as usual nearly made
his father cry; and Blake sang, and Drysdale and the other man.
And then the Captain was called on for his yarn; and, the general
voice being for "something that had happened to him,"
"the
strangest thing that had ever happened to him at sea," the old
gentleman laid down his pipe and sat up in his chair with his
hands on his stick and began.
THE CAPTAIN'S STORY
It will be forty years ago next month since the ship I was then
in came home from the West Indies station, and was paid off. I
had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so was very glad
to get a letter, the morning after I went ashore at Portsmouth,
asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week or so. It came from
an old sailor, a friend of my family, who had been Commodore of
the fleet. He lived at Plymouth; he was a thorough old
sailor--what you young men would call "an old salt"--and couldn't
live out of sight of the blue sea and the shipping. It is a
disease that a good many of us take who have spent our best years
on the sea. I have it myself--a sort of feeling that we want to
be under another kind of Providence, when we look out and see a
hill on this side and a hill on that. It's wonderful to see the
trees come out and the corn grow, but then it doesn't come so
home to an old sailor. I know that we're all just as much under
the Lord's hand on shore as at sea; but you can't read in a book
you haven't been used to, and they that go down to the sea in
ships, they see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the
deep. It isn't their fault if they don't see his wonders on the
land so easily as other people.
But, for all that, there's no man enjoys a cruise in the country
more than a sailor. It's forty years ago since I started for
Plymouth, but I haven't forgotten the road a bit or how beautiful
it was; all through the New Forest, and over Salisbury Plain, and
then by the mail to Exeter, and through Devonshire. It took me
three days to get to Plymouth, for we didn't get about so quick
in those days.
The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there, and I went
about with him to the ships in the bay, and through the
dock-yard, and picked up a good deal that was of use to me
afterwards. I was a lieutenant in those days, and had seen a good
deal of service, and I found the old Commodore had a great nephew
whom he had adopted, and had set his whole heart upon. He was an
old bachelor himself, but the boy had come to live with him, and
was to go to sea; so he wanted to put him under some one who
would give an eye to him for the first year or two. He was a
light slip of a boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue
eyes and long eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl's, but brave as a
lion and as merry as a lark. The old gentleman was very pleased
to see that we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat
together; and he was never tired of hearing my stories about the
great admirals, and the fleet, and the stations I had been on.
Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again
directly, and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty from
the Commodore, to help things on. After a month or two I was
appointed to a brig, lying at Spithead; and so I wrote off to the
Commodore and he got his boy a midshipman's berth on board, and
brought him to Portsmouth himself a day or two before we sailed
for the Mediterranean. The old gentleman came on board to see the
boy's hammock slung, and went below into the cockpit to make sure
that all was right. He only left us by the pilot boat when we
were well out in the Channel. He was very low at parting with his
boy, but bore up as well as he could; and we promised to write to
him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we had a chance.
I was soon as proud and fond of little Tom Holdsworth as if he
had been my own younger brother; and, for that matter, so were
all the crew, from our captain to the cook's boy. He was such a
gallant youngster, and yet so gentle. In one cutting-out business
we had, he climbed over the boatswain's shoulder, and was almost
first on deck; how he came out of it without a scratch I can't
think to this day. But he hadn't a bit of bluster in him, and was
as kind as a woman to anyone who was wounded or down with
sickness.
After we had been out about a year we were sent to cruise off
Malta, on the look-out for the French fleet. It was a long
business, and the post wasn't so good then as it is now. We were
sometimes for months without getting a letter, and knew nothing
of what was happening at home, or anywhere else. We had a sick
time too on board, and at last he got a fever. He bore up against
it like a man, and wouldn't knock off duty for a long time. He
was midshipman of my watch; so I used to make him turn in early,
and tried to ease things to him as much as I could; but he didn't
pick up, and I began to get very anxious about him. I talked to
the doctor, and turned matters over in my own mind, and at last I
came to think he wouldn't get any better unless he could sleep
out of the cockpit. So one night, the 20th of October it was--I
remember it well enough, better than I remember any day since; it
was a dirty night, blowing half a gale of wind from the
southward, and we were under close-reefed top-sails--I had the
first watch, and at nine o'clock I sent him down to my cabin to
sleep there, where he would be fresher and quieter, and I was to
turn into his hammock when my watch was over.
I was on deck three hours or so after he went down, and the
weather got dirtier and dirtier, and the scud drove by, and the
wind sang and hummed through the rigging--it made me melancholy
to listen to it. I could think of nothing but the youngster down
below, and what I should say to his poor old uncle if anything
happened. Well, soon after midnight I went down and turned into
his hammock. I didn't go to sleep at once, for I remember very
well listening to the creaking of the ship's timbers as she rose
to the swell, and watching the lamp, which was slung from the
ceiling, and gave light enough to make out the other hammocks
swinging slowly altogether. At last, however, I dropped off, and
I reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke with
a start. For the first moment I didn't see anything but the
swinging hammocks and the lamp; but then suddenly I became aware
that some one was standing by my hammock, and I saw the figure as
plainly as I see any one of you now, for the foot of the hammock
was close to the lamp, and the light struck full across on the
head and shoulders, which was all that I could see of him. There
he was, the old Commodore; his grizzled hair coming out from
under a red woolen nightcap, and his shoulders wrapped in an old
thread-bare blue dressing-gown which I had often seen him in. His
face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful disappointed
look about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could not speak, but
lay watching him. He looked full at my face once or twice, but
didn't seem to recognise me; and, just as I was getting back my
tongue and going to speak, he said slowly: "Where's Tom? this is
his hammock. I can't see Tom;" and then he looked vaguely about
and passed away somehow, but how, I couldn't see. In a moment or
two I jumped out and hurried to my cabin, but young Holdsworth
was fast asleep. I sat down, and wrote down just what I had seen,
making a note of the exact time, twenty minutes to two. I didn't
turn in again, but sat watching the youngster. When he woke I
asked him if he had heard anything of his great uncle by the last
mail. Yes, he had heard; the old gentleman was rather feeble, but
nothing particular the matter. I kept my own counsel and never
told a soul in the ship; and, when the mail came to hand a few
days afterwards with a letter from the Commodore to his nephew,
dated late in September, saying that he was well, I thought the
figure by my hammock must have been all my own fancy.
However, by the next mail came the news of the old Commodore's
death. It had been a very sudden break up, his executor said. He
had left all his property, which was not much, to his great
nephew, who was to get leave to come home as soon as he could.
The first time we touched at Malta, Tom Holdsworth left us and
went home. We followed about two years afterwards, and the first
thing I did after landing was to find out the Commodore's
executor. He was a quiet, dry little Plymouth lawyer, and very
civilly answered all my questions about the last days of my old
friend. At last I asked him to tell me as near as he could the
time of his death; and he put on his spectacles, and got his
diary, and turned over the leaves. I was quite nervous till he
looked up and said,--"Twenty-five minutes to two, sir, A.M., on
the morning of October 21st; or it might be a few minutes later."
"How do you mean, sir?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "it is an odd story. The doctor was sitting with
me, watching the old man, and, as I tell you, at twenty-five
minutes to two, he got up and said it was all over. We stood
together, talking in whispers for, it might be, four or five
minutes, when the body seemed to move. He was an odd old man, you
know, the Commodore, and we never could get him properly to bed,
but he lay in his red nightcap and old dressing-gown, with a
blanket over him. It was not a pleasant sight, I can tell you,
sir. I don't think one of you gentlemen, who are bred to face all
manner of dangers, would have liked it. As I was saying, the body
first moved, and then sat up, propping itself behind with its
hands. The eyes were wide open, and he looked at us for a moment,
and said slowly, 'I've been to the Mediterranean, but I didn't
see Tom.' Then the body sank back again, and this time the old
Commodore was really dead. But it was not a pleasant thing to
happen to one, sir. I do not remember anything like it in my
forty years' practice."