Dark flung aside the rope to which he had been holding.
There was silence in the cabin.
Through it came a despairing voice from the water.
"I can"t sink!--My G.o.d, my G.o.d!--I can"t sink!"
Nelson swept the pistol off the table and thrust through the port.
"Catch!" he gasped, and threw.
The man rose to it like a leaping fish, flung a high hand, and caught it.
Then he sank back.
"Thank you, my lord," he cried, terrible joy in his voice. "May G.o.d forgive me as you have done."
Kit had a vision of a black mouth open, a thrusting barrel ringed with teeth, two screwed eyes, and then--
"Don"t look, boy!" screamed Nelson, and plucked him away.
The slamming port drowned another sound.
CHAPTER LXXVII
THE _MEDUSA_ GOES ABOUT
I
Nelson rocked on the table. His hands were to his eyes, pressing, pressing, as though he would blind himself.
"And this is what comes of it!" he moaned.
Then he rose, and crossed the cabin, walking uncertainly as a little child.
Kit thought he would have fallen, and stepped forward. The great captain waved him back with his stump. Then he pa.s.sed out alone.
A minute later the boy heard a door open and shut, and peeped out.
Nelson was coming out of the powder-magazine.
Down the gangway he came pale and uplifted. He was quite calm, and about his face there was the rain-washed look the boy had seen on his mother"s as she came out of the room where Uncle Jacko lay dead.
"You were right, Mr. Carvell," he said quietly. "Forgive me."
"Caryll, my lord," ventured the lad--"Kit Caryll."
Nelson"s eye leapt.
"Kit Caryll!" he cried. "Kit Caryll! Kit Caryll!" He held the boy"s hand, and a beautiful smile broke all about his face. "Have I been blind?
You"re your father over again."
He dwelt on the boy"s face, flooding it with tenderness.
"D"you know," he continued quietly, "d"you know you come to me as a friend risen from the dead?--a friend of my best days, come back to remind me of the years--the happy years--before ... I won the Nile."
Kit heard him, amazed.
He was not happy, then, this man who had won all the world has to give!
He looked _back_ for his best days.
They were not now: they were the days before fame had come; fame, the Betrayer, that like a roaring breaker lifts a man heavenwards, and before he can clutch his star, has smashed him on the beach.
The boy recalled his first indelible impression--that the hero was a _disappointed_ man.
Disappointed of what?--he, young still, crowned with glory, queens at his feet, nations worshipping him.
Could it be of happiness?
"I have a message for you from another friend of those days, my lord."
"Who"s that?"
"Commander Harding."
A darkness chilled the other"s face.
"Well."
The boy gave old Ding-dong"s dying message.
"I thank you," said Nelson coldly. "Commander Harding always did what he believed to be his duty."
Then the tenderness returned, and he put his hand on the boy"s shoulder.
"Come on deck," he said.
II
The boy"s throat was surging as he followed Nelson on deck. Now he would have died for the man whom twenty minutes before he could have knifed with joy.