Look here," he went on with a change of tone, slipping his arm amicably within the Major"s, "I"ve an idea. Comrades in adversity, you know, and all that sort of thing. I"ve taken a liking to you, and can do you a good turn. Drop that yarn of yours--"yarn,"
seafaring expression; odd how one catches the _colour_, so to speak.
Drop that yarn of yours. You"re one of _us_, understand? The Captain"ll believe that; indeed, he believes it already--called you a d.a.m.ned low-comedy man in my hearing. Very well; soon as we anchor off Spithead, he outs with a boat and lands us ash.o.r.e. I have his solemn promise. Leave me to square that bos"n fellow--Jope, or whatever he calls himself--and the job"s as good as done."
"And do you seriously propose," interrupted the Major, folding his arms, "that I should pa.s.s myself off for a play-actor? Never, sir; never!"
"Why not?" asked Mr. Sturge easily.
"I forbear, sir, to wound your feelings by explaining why your suggestion is repugnant to me. Let it suffice that I detest deceit, subterfuge, equivocation; or, if that suffice not, let me ask if you do not propose, on reaching sh.o.r.e, to inst.i.tute legal proceedings against this petty tyrant?"
"Probably."
"Why, then, and how much more reparation does he not owe _me_, a Justice of the Peace? Nay, sir, he shall pay me damages for this kidnapping; but he has not stopped short there. He has used language to me which can only be wiped out in blood. My first business on stepping ash.o.r.e will be to seek someone through whom I can convey my demand for satisfaction. With what face, think you, could I present this cartel if my own behaviour had been other than correct?"
"You"re not telling me you mean to fight him?" asked Mr. Sturge, convinced by this time that he had to deal with a lunatic.
"Pardon me." The Major bowed with grave irony. "This conversation, sir, was of your seeking. I have paid you, it appears, too high a compliment in a.s.suming that you would understand what follows when a gentleman is called the son of a--!"
Mr. Sturge shrugged his shoulders and walked forward to seek Ben Jope, whom he found by the forecastle hatchway engaged in slicing a quid of black tobacco.
"You"ll excuse me," he asked, "but that rum little man who calls himself Hymen--where did he escape from?"
"Escape!" Ben Jope sprang to his feet, but catching sight of the Major, who had resumed his pensive att.i.tude by the bulwarks, sat down again heavily. "Lord, but you frightened me! That Hymen don"t escape; not if I know it. He"s the apple of my eye, or becoming so.
Now I tell you," said Mr. Jope, beginning to slice again at his tobacco, then pausing to look up with engaging frankness; "you took my fancy terrible for a few minutes; but, come to see you by daylight, you"re too pink."
Mr. Sturge might have pressed for an explanation; but at this juncture the first lieutenant of H.M.S. _Poseidon_ came forward, still with his painted scowl, and demanded to know, since the _Vesuvius_ could not reach Portsmouth for many hours, when supper would be served, and what bedroom accommodation she provided.
CHAPTER XVI.
FAREWELL TO ALBION!
Shortly after noon next day, the wind still holding from the N.N.W., though gradually falling light, the _Vesuvius_ dropped anchor off Spithead, and Captain Crang at once ordered a boat"s crew to convey the captives ash.o.r.e.
The Major waved farewell to them from the deck. Though once again approached by Mr. Sturge, he had repelled all persuasions. In his breast there welled up an increasing bitterness against his fate, but on the point of dignity he could not be shaken. He would, on the first fit occasion, have Captain Crang"s blood; but he was obdurate, though it cost him liberty for a while and compelled him to disgusting hardship, to stand on the strictest terms of quarrel.
He turned to find the boatswain at his elbow, eyeing him with sympathy and even a touch of respect.
"You done well," said Mr. Jope. "You don"t look it, but you done well, and I"ll see you don"t get put upon."
The _Vesuvius"s_ destination, as the Major learnt, was to join a squadron watching the Gallo-Batavian flotilla off the ports of Boulogne, Ambleteuse and Calais; and the occasion of her dropping anchor off Portsmouth on the way was a special and somewhat singular one; yet no more singular than the crisis with which Great Britain had then to cope.
Behind the sandhills from Ostend around to Etaples lay a French army of 130,000 men, ready to invade us if for a few hours it could catch our fleets napping. To transport them Napoleon had collected in the ports of Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, Ambleteuse, Vimereux, Boulogne and Etaples, 954 transports and 1339 armed vessels--gun-brigs, schooners, luggers, schuyts and prames; and all these light vessels lay snug in their harbours, protected by shoals and sandbanks which our heavier ships of war, by reason of their draught, could not approach.
In particular, a double tier of vessels--one hundred and fifty in all--which were moored outside the pier of Boulogne, and protected by heavy sh.o.r.e batteries, excited while it baulked the rage of our gallant seamen manoeuvring in the deep waters of the Channel.
Strange diseases suggest strange remedies. Our Admiralty, in the spring of the year, had been approached by an ingenious gentleman with the model of an invention by which he professed himself able to reach these hundred and fifty ships in Boulogne and blow them in air without loss or even danger to our fleet. This machine consisted of a box, about twenty feet long by three feet wide, lined with lead, caulked, tarred, ballasted and laden almost to the water"s edge with barrels of powder and other combustibles. In the midst of the inflammable matter was placed a clockwork mechanism which, on the withdrawal of a peg, would in a fixed time (within some ten minutes or thereabouts) ignite and explode the vessel.
A dozen of these engines, claimed the inventor, if towed within range and released, to be swept down upon Boulogne pier by the tide, would within a few minutes shatter and dispel the nightmare of invasion.
The Admiralty sanctioned the experiment, news of which had awakened some interest not unmixed with derision throughout the British Fleet; and the business which called the _Vesuvius_ to Portsmouth was to take in tow the first of these catamarans (as our sailors called them) and convey it across to the squadron watching Boulogne.
On the morning after the _Vesuvius"s_ arrival, two dockyard boats arrived with the hull of the machine in tow--it resembled nothing so much as a mahogany coffin--and attached her to the _Vesuvius"s_ stern by a kind of sh.o.r.eline. This done, the officer in charge presented himself on board with the clockwork under his arm, and in his hand a letter for Captain Crang, the first result of which was an order to dress ship. Within half an hour the _Vesuvius"s_ crew had adorned her from bowsprit to trucks and from trucks to stern with bunting, as if for a Birthday; though, as Mr. Jope observed, with a glance at the catamaran astern, the preparations pointed rather to a funeral.
Mr. Jope, as third officer of the ship, betrayed some soreness that his two superiors had not taken him into their confidence.
At eleven o"clock Captain Crang and Mr. Wapshott appeared on the p.o.o.p in full uniform, and a further order was issued to load the guns blank for a salute.
Hitherto the Major had been but an idler about deck; but finding the crew of a gun short-handed, he volunteered his services, and was immersed in the business of loading when a hand clapped him on the shoulder. Turning, he confronted the boatswain.
"And you go for to pretend for to tell me," said Mr. Jope reproachfully, "that you"re a amachoor!"
The Major was about to explain that as an officer of artillery he understood the working of a gun, when a loud banging from the town drew all eyes sh.o.r.eward; and presently Captain Crang, who had been gazing in that direction through his gla.s.s, called to Mr. Wapshott, who in turn shouted an order to man the yards.
As this was an order which the Major neither understood nor, had he understood it, could comply with, he remained on deck while the sailors swarmed aloft and disposed themselves in att.i.tudes the mere sight of which turned him giddy, so wantonly precarious they seemed.
The strains of the National Anthem from a distant key-bugle drew his eyes sh.o.r.eward again, and between the moored ships he descried a white-painted gig approaching, manned by twenty oars and carrying an enormous flag on a staff astern--the Royal Standard of England.
Not until the gig, fetching a long sweep, had made a half-circuit of the _Vesuvius_ and fallen alongside her accommodation-ladder did the Major comprehend. Captain Crang, with Mr. Wapshott behind him, had stepped down the ladder and stood at the foot of it reverently lifting his c.o.c.ked hat.
That rotund, star-bedecked figure in the stern sheet, beside the Port Admiral--that cla.s.sic but full-blooded face crowned with a chestnut wig. . . . Who could it be if not his Royal Highness the Prince Regent?
Yes, it was he. Had not our Major scanned those features often enough--in his own mirror?
The Port Admiral was inviting Captain Crang to step into the gig.
The Prince nodded a careless, haughty a.s.sent, shrinking a little, however, as Mr. Wapshott pa.s.sed down the clockwork of the catamaran for his royal inspection. Recovering himself, he glanced at it perfunctorily and nodded to the sailors to give way and pull towards the hull of the infernal machine.
The curiosity which had brought him down to Portsmouth to inspect it seemed, however, to have evaporated. The gig fell alongside the coffin-like log, and the Port Admiral, having taken the clockwork out of Captain Crang"s hand, had launched into an explanation of its working when the Prince signified hurriedly that he had seen as much as he desired. Back to the ship the gig drifted on the tide, and Captain Crang, dismissed with a curt nod, stepped on to the ladder again, turned, and saluted profoundly.
As he did so, the Major, erect above the bulwarks, found speech.
"Your Royal Highness!" he cried. "Nay, but pardon me, your Royal Highness! If I may crave the favour--explanation--a prisoner, unjustly detained--"
The Prince Regent lifted his eyes lazily as the bowman thrust off.
"What a dam funny-looking little man!" commented he aloud, nudging the Port Admiral, who had risen and was calling out the order to give way for sh.o.r.e.
"But, your Royal Highness!--"
The Major raised himself on tiptoe with arms outstretched after the receding boat. On the instant the ship shook under him as with an earthquake, and drowned his voice in the thunders of a royal salute.
"The Emperor Jovinian, Mr. Jope--"
"Who was "e?" Mr. Jope interrupted.
Two days had pa.s.sed, and the better part of a third. They seemed as many years to our hero as, seated on the carriage of one of the _Vesuvius"s_ starboard guns in company with the boatswain and Bill Adams, he watched through its open port the many-twinkling smiles of the sea, and, scarce two leagues away, the coast of France golden against the sunset.
"I am not precisely aware when he flourished," said the Major, "but will make a point of inquiring when I return home. To tell you the truth, I heard the story in church, in a sermon of our worthy Vicar"s, little dreaming under what circ.u.mstances I should recall it as applicable to my own lot."