Soon a whiff of fresh air blew in his face. He knew what that meant; he loved that breath of the water; it nerved him to cover the last lap of his long journey at a quick step. Then to his delight, he found himself at last arrived at the water"s edge, and before him a sh.o.r.e covered with boats, and the wide river with the dim outlines of the men-o"-war.
He stood still, peering at the great ships, until an old sailor pa.s.sed near him. "Do those ships belong to the Channel Fleet?" asked the boy.
The mariner nodded his head. "That"s part of his Majesty"s Channel Squadron, my lad. Be you thinkin" of shippin" before the mast?"
"Perhaps. Could you tell me where to find an officer of the fleet? Are there any still ash.o.r.e?"
The sailor glanced at a landing-stage near by. "Aye, there"s an officer"s gig, and there"s the very man you"re lookin" for. The one in the c.o.c.ked hat with the gold trimmin" yonder."
"Thank you," said the boy, and started on the run for the landing-stage, completely forgetting how tired his legs had been.
The man in the c.o.c.ked hat found himself a moment later facing a small delicate-looking boy, who was asking which vessel was the _Raisonnable_.
He looked the boy over and then pointed out the frigate which bore that name. "What do you want with her?" he asked, amused at the eagerness with which the boy looked through the sea of masts at the ship he sought.
"My uncle"s her commander, and I"m to serve on her," came the answer.
"How can I get on board?"
"I"ll look after that," said the young lieutenant. "She"s my ship too."
Again his eyes ran over the small, slender figure before him. "What"s your name?" he asked.
"Horatio Nelson, sir."
"Well, Nelson, you look starved, and more like a drowned rat than a midshipman. How long since you had a square meal?"
"Since breakfast."
"And why didn"t you stop in the town and have a bite on your way here?"
"I promised my father to come straight on to the docks, sir, and report for duty. I said I wouldn"t stop until I got here."
"So nothing could have kept you back, eh? Well, you"ve reported for duty now, as I"m your superior officer. I don"t have to be on board ship for half an hour, so my first order to you is that you come with me to a cook-shop and have some of the roast beef of old England before you set out to sea."
Nothing loath, now that his promise was kept, Nelson went with the lieutenant into one of the small, winding Chatham streets, and entered an inn much frequented by sailors. Here the officer ordered a hot supper, and sat by the boy while the latter ate it. Nelson was nearly famished; it was a delight to the lieutenant to watch the satisfying of such an appet.i.te.
A little later the officer and the boy were rowed out to the frigate, and Nelson duly delivered by his new friend into the care of the ship"s commander. His uncle looked at the boy askance; he seemed very pale and delicate and undersized, even for a boy of thirteen, but the uncle had promised to take him on trial as midshipman, and so, though with much misgiving, he found him his berth.
He little knew what the sight of that Channel Fleet and the smell of the salt water meant to the new midshipman.
The boy"s uncle, Captain Suckling by name, who was in command of this sixty-four gun man-o"-war, had been trained in the principles of the old English navy, which were that hardship was good for a sailor, and that the more a man was battered about in time of peace the better he would fight in time of war.
Everything above decks was spick and span, and young Horatio gazed with wondering admiration at the neatness of the white decks continually sc.r.a.ped and holystoned until they fairly glistened in the sun, at the imposing size and length of the long lines of black cannon, the special pride of every officer, and at the symmetry and the wonderful height of spars and sails and rigging, forming a very network in the sky.
He had loved boats since the days when he had pumped water into the horse-trough before his father"s house in order that he might sail paper boats in it, and now it seemed almost impossible to believe that he stood on the deck of a ship of his Majesty"s service and was to have a hand in caring for all this cannon and rigging. He looked wonderingly at the sailors, a bronzed, hardy lot, in their white jackets and trousers that flared widely at the bottom, wearing their hair according to the custom of the day in long pig-tails down their backs.
But when he went below decks he found the picture very different.
Everything there was dirt and gloom, foul odors and general misery. The cat-o"-nine-tails was the favorite punishment for sailors. Many a back was deeply scored with the lash, and, worse yet, many a man had been forced into the service against his will, seized at night by the press-gang, cudgeled into insensibility and carried on board to wake up later and find himself destined to serve at sea. The food was chiefly salt beef, and in most respects the men were treated little better than so many cattle. As a result they might be hardy, but they were also as surly and vicious a lot as could be found anywhere.
The poor boy had a hard time growing accustomed to such companionship.
He had longed for the glory of the sailor"s life without knowing anything about its wretchedness, and now he saw all these horrors spread before his eyes. His uncle, believing that the best way to bring him up was to let him entirely alone to fight his own battles, paid little or no attention to him, and the boy, brought up in the country home of a clergyman in Norfolk, was very homesick, and often longed for the people and the comforts he had left; but he had a stout heart, and before a great while had conquered this homesickness and set about to see what work he could find to do.
At first both officers and men regarded Horatio as simply a sickly boy and totally unfit for life at sea, but it was not long before he managed, in a quiet way peculiarly his own, to make a name and place for himself on board the _Raisonnable_.
The story got around that when he was a small boy he had one day escaped from his nurse and run off into some dense woods near his father"s house. He had lost his way and finally, coming to a brook too wide for him to cross, had sat down on a stone on one bank and waited. It was some time after dark when his distracted family found him.
"I should think you"d have been frightened to death," his grandmother was reported to have said.
"What"s that?" asked the boy.
"Why, fear at being alone, and the dark coming on."
"Fear," said he, "I don"t know what you mean by that. I"ve never seen it."
His uncle told the story one day to another officer, and within a week young Nelson had been christened "Dreadnaught."
When he was still a very new midshipman he went for a cruise in the polar seas. One afternoon some of the men were allowed on the arctic sh.o.r.e, and Nelson started on a little expedition of his own. The first any one else knew of it was when another midshipman happened to glance across the field of ice, and caught sight of the huge white body of a polar bear within a few yards of Nelson.
He called to his mates and pointed to the boy. They were too far off to help. They saw Nelson level his musket and saw the wicked head of the bear raised in front of him. They held their breath waiting for the shot. In the still air they caught the click of the hammer, but heard no report. For some reason the gun had not gone off. With a shout they scrambled over the ice to help him, knowing he was now at the wild beast"s mercy.
The boy, however, had turned his musket and raised the b.u.t.t end in defense when a gun on the ship boomed out the signal for all hands to go aboard. The signal woke the echoes and thundered over the field of ice, and the bear, frightened, turned tail and ran off as fast as his short legs could carry him. Nelson, his musket still raised, ran after the animal, but by this time the rescue party had come up with him.
"What do you mean by hunting polar bears all alone, Dreadnaught?" asked the other midshipman. "Didn"t you see him coming?"
"Yes," said the boy, "but I wanted his skin to take back home to my father. I might have had him if that gun hadn"t sent him away. Now he"s lost forever."
"Well, I vow," said the other. "I don"t believe there"s another chap in the navy with half your pluck."
Such incidents as these showed the young sailor"s courage, and he had continual chances to show how rapidly he was learning seamanship.
By the time he was fifteen he was practically possessed of all the knowledge of an able seaman, and was sent on board the ship _Sea Horse_ to the East Indies. His position at first was little better than that of a foremast hand, but it was not long before the captain noticed the lad"s smartness and keen attention to his duties, and very soon he called him to the quarterdeck and made him fore-midshipman.
The captain advised the first lieutenant to keep an eye on the boy and occasionally to let him have charge of manoeuvering the vessel. This the lieutenant did, and to his great surprise found that Nelson was quite as well able to handle the ship as he was himself.
The sea life was doing him good, too. He was no longer the thin, sickly lad who had wandered through the streets of Chatham, but a fine, well-built, sun-tanned youth, well beloved on deck and popular with all his mates.
Fine as the sea life was for him, life in the East Indies was very trying. The climate brought fever with it, and Horatio had been in the East but a short time before he fell very ill and had to be taken from his ship and sent home on board the _Dolphin_. The ship doctors gave up hope of saving him, but the captain was so much interested in the boy that he spent hours nursing him, and finally he grew better.
The voyage from India to England was the most trying time in Nelson"s life. He felt that he was not built for the life of a sailor, although his whole mind and heart were set upon rising in that profession. He had no money, no influential friends; he had staked everything on winning his way in the navy. Now it seemed as though he must give up his career and settle down to some small place on sh.o.r.e.
But his talks with the captain gradually stirred new hopes. He was seized with patriotic zeal and determined at every risk to serve his country on the seas, no matter what suffering it might bring to him. He wanted to act, to do something, and this resolution became suddenly the motive power of his life. From the time of that voyage home on the _Dolphin_, Nelson used to say, dated his pa.s.sion to win fame in the defense of England.
When he reached home he was given a position on a new ship, and a little later took his examination for the rank of lieutenant. His uncle, Captain Suckling, who had commanded the _Raissonnable_, was at the head of the board of examiners before whom Horatio appeared. The boy was very nervous when he entered the room, but answered the questions almost as rapidly as they were put to him, and every answer was full and correct.
He pa.s.sed the examinations triumphantly, and then his uncle introduced him to the other members of the Board.
One of them said, "Why didn"t you tell us he was your own nephew?"
"Because," said the old sailor, "I didn"t want him to be favored in any way. I was sure he would pa.s.s a fine examination, and as you see I haven"t been disappointed."
Nelson was given the rank of lieutenant and a.s.signed to the _Lowestoffe_. The vessel cruised to the Barbadoes, in the West Indies, and there the young lieutenant had his first chance to make his mark.