She hugged Peggy, and was moving towards the door, which Wyke had opened for her, when a sound caught their ears and drew their eyes to one another. It was not an uncommon sound in that place, for it was only the tread of someone descending the steep path, and it was even possible to say who it was — the clump of the Captain’s wooden leg weighted every other step. But the pace was hurried, it was the pace of one who brings news, and it arrested not only the ear but the heart. Charlotte paused, Wyke stepped out to the wicket. Aware of the open door and the listening ears behind him, he grasped the need of caution, and he passed through the gate. He was in time to meet the Captain, who, out of breath, was pegging his way down the track. Wyke raised his hand. “Steady!” he said in a low voice. “We must not alarm Mrs. Bligh, sir!”
“No, no,” the old man stuttered, but in his eagerness he still tried to go by the other. “No! It’s — it’s not that!”
“Steady!” Wyke repeated the word more sharply. He barred the way. “Have a care! For God’s sake, sir, don’t frighten her!”
But the Captain was already at the wicket, and it was too late. Peggy had broken from Charlotte’s grasp; she had come out to them, and the others followed perforce. They stood grouped on one side of the fence, Wyke and the Captain on the other. The old man, panting and struggling for breath, rested his trembling hand ON the gate. His face worked. For a moment, a moment of suspense for all, he could not speak.
Then “There’s news!” he gasped, and at the word Charlotte slipped her arm round Peggy. “Not — not bad news!” he got out jerkily. “No, no! Not bad news, thank God! But — but strange — strange news if it’s true!” His voice whistled in his throat. “If it’s true!”
CHAPTER XXVI
CAPTAIN COPESTAKE, retired Master Mariner of Portsea, had much to be thankful for. At home and abroad he had the comforts that the hearts of sailor men desire. Within-doors he had a clean hearth, a well-ordered house, as much rum as was good for him, and leave to smoke his pipe — for Mrs. Ozias was a reasonable as well as a notable woman — everywhere except in bed; to say nothing of plum-duff frequently and tripe on Fridays. On Sundays he enjoyed all the solace that a long-winded minister and an approving conscience could give him, lived his sins over again, and luxuriated in the remembrance — he called it the repentance — of them. Abroad he had his house of call, his own special chair, in winter by the fire, in summer beside the snug red-curtained window, and he was never without a shilling in his pocket.
Then he had the Hard to walk on and Gosport to visit when he needed a sea-change; to say nothing of a number of old cronies with whom to pass the time while he shared with them the labour of propping up the posts on the quays, or levelling a glass from the Platform. There was not a craft in harbour between Porchester Castle and the Blockhouse that he did not know from coamings to masthead, that he had nut surveyed and measured until he knew her lines with his eyes shut; nor, as long as daylight lasted, did a vessel pass the Point, inward or outward, laden or in ballast, from His Majesty’s three-deckers riding high in their pride to the humblest long-shore tub, that he and his fellows did not mark her handling, criticize her Master, commend or deride. The port, gay with bunting and movement and the show of war, and noisy with the ringing of hammers and the “Heave-ho!” of chanting maties, was Ozias’s picture-book, ever open, its pages ever turning and of interest; and he knew it as a College Don knows his “Odes” or his often-studied “AEneid.”
It was an ideal life; such a life as the seaman, aloft in rocking gales, or battling on deck with icy seas, dreams of, as of a haven far off and hardly attainable. And Ozias admitted his good fortune. Yet, so weak is human nature and so strong is habit, that there were days when he was not as well content as was reasonable; when his wife’s apron-string irked him, and he resented the watchfulness of the black eyes that owned him. At such times the plum-duff seemed too rich, the yarns of his fellows palled, and even the excitement of the Point and the sad seamanship of the younger school lost their power to engross him.
“I be an unregenerate toad, Jonah,” he would say, when driven to open himself to a congenial spirit. “The old Adam’s in me to that extent there’s times when I think the ways of pleasantness are not for me, so dyed I be in the dip of wickedness. So dyed I be,” he continued gloomily, his eyes bent on the water beneath him, “that no fuller on earth can bleach me.”
“Your woman has done something that way,” the other replied slyly. “She ha’ tried anyway, Ozias.”
“Ay, she ha’ tried,” Ozias agreed despondently. “She be too good for me, Jonah.”
“A good woman as women go,” Jonah said cautiously. “Her puddings, I am told—”
“Ay, rare. Rare they be — and filling. But” — Ozias sighed as he scanned the offing—” there’s days when, God forgive me, I’d give ‘em all for a morsel of hard tack and a tot from the rum-tub, and to be running free with a clear sky and a spanking breeze abaft and a prize in chase! D’ye see the guns ready to run out, Jonah, and the lads stripped at their quarters and the beauty you’re aboard of lifting and lurching with a following sea and the long swivel ready to throw a shot across her?” Ozias groaned, and “God forgive me, Jonah!” he went on. “I know they be the flesh-pots of Egypt, but there be days when I smell the salt and I do hanker — I do hanker after them.”
“I tell ‘ee what it is, Ozias,” his friend said. “You be wanting a glass.” He looked hopefully at the Admiral Vernon, not a stone’s throw away. “A glass be what you be wanting and you’d tell your blessings.”
“I’d ought to, I’d ought to! And I’d not say it wouldn’t hearten me,” Ozias agreed, and he was about to turn in the desired direction when something caught his eye. “What be that silly brigantine a-doing?” he demanded in a brisker tone. “Does the d — d tailor think he can get in with this wind?”
The wind was due north and there were half a dozen sail standing off and on, waiting for it to shift that they might enter the harbour. Three of these had been there since dawn of the day before, and the skilled eyes turned on them knew them for victuallers inward bound from Gibraltar or the Channel Squadron. Two others had come up in the night, a timber ship from Norway, and a sloop of war — her number and name were known and the bum-boats had already raced out to her with soft tack and vegetables. But the sixth, a brigantine with a patched foresail, had only come up Channel at mid-day. H the wind held there might be presently a score standing off and on opposite Southsea beach waiting to slip in, for in those days to reach a harbour and to enter it were two different things.
It was the handling of the brigantine that had caught Copestake’s eye. She seemed to be doing her best to effect the impossible by beating into port in the wind’s eye. “Working his jacks for the sake o’ working!” he commented sourly. “She’d need be quick in stays or the fool will pile her up on Haslar!” He spat contemptuously into the water.
“She be signalling!” said the other. “That’s what she be come in for, Ozias.”
“Ay, so she be,” Ozias agreed. “Now what’s that for?” He scanned her with a knowing eye. “Levant trade, d’you think, Jonah?”
“There or thereabout.” A moment later: “She’s asking for a saw-bones, I wouldn’t wonder.”
“And putting out a boat! May be despatches! They’ll come to the postern.” On which the two men, glad of any distraction, straightened themselves and yawned, and after pausing, first to assure themselves that the boat was coming in, and secondly to take that glance round the offing without which no old salt turns from the sea, they made their way towards the stairs. Ozias forgot his discontent, and Jonah postponed his afternoon dram.
But a meeting with a friend at the end of the Platform detained them, and there were other idlers on the front. By the time they arrived, Ozias and his mate found themselves cut off from the stairs by a curious crowd, five or six deep. The brigantine’s boat slid in, and the seamen manning it tossed their oars inboard under a hail of questions, the answers
to which did not reach our couple in the rear. They had to make the best of the information that filtered through to them second-hand, and largely mingled with oaths.
Ozias caught a word here and there, and presently he gripped the man before him to ensure attention. “What? Six, d’ye say, mate?” he asked.
“Ay, six! And two put overboard day ‘fore yesterday. Cut about terrible they be, ‘cording to them. They’ve come in for a saw-bones to sort ‘em to rights, ‘fore they land ‘em.”
“The Frenchies was it?”
“D — n ‘em, who else should it be?”
“But she ain’t marked!” Ozias urged impatiently, pinching his victim. “She come off the port at eight-bells noon, you must ha’ seen her! She’ve not a scratch nor a splinter o’ white wood about her! Nor a gun aboard, you fool!”
“She took ‘em off! Took ‘em off, I tell ye!” the man retorted irritably. He wanted to listen, not to talk. “Have ye no ears on ye? South of Ushant ’twas, off a—”
“Off what?”
“Off a brig she took ‘em — Letter o’ Marque, crippled and like to sink! Corvette — French sloop o’ war ye understand — in company, and leaking like hell! Don’t know,” the man continued with a sudden burst of enthusiasm, “as I ever heard the like, blast me if I did! Dismasted the Frenchman they did, and bore off and on, raking her fore and aft, till she struck! And not fifty of a crew! Corvette closed once but fell away ‘fore they could board, d — n ‘em!”
“‘Fore the sloop could board?”
“Ay, ay! Who else! The brig hammered her for hours, she did, and took her at last! By G — d, she did! She took her!”
“Took the corvette?” Ozias exclaimed incredulously. “Took the Frenchman?” And again he shook the man, who in his desire to pick up more was at his mercy. “D’ye mean it, mate? Took the corvette? The Letter o’ Marque did?”
“They did, I tell ye! So these chaps say.”
“Well I’m d — d!” Ozias said, disentangling the tale at last. “That’s a rum thing as ever I heard.”
“Rum?” the other swore, dancing up and down on his toes in his appreciation. “The rummest thing I ever heard talk of! Lord sink me, man, I could kiss the chaps that fought her, blast their eyes. But there, it’s no good pinching me, I don’t know no more than I’ve told you, and the boat’s hauling off to wait for the surgeon. She comes up, this here brigantine, and found ‘em refitting and pumping to save their lives — both leaking like sieves — and she took off the worst of the wounded. Left the two crippled in a sea, and doubtful seemin’ly if they’ll bring ‘em in.”
“Well, I’m a sinner!” Ozias exclaimed. “A sloop o’ war, mind ye! Why she’d ha’ ninety of a crew at the least! A hundred more like!”
“She was waiting for her, so they think!”
“And caught a Tartar!”
“By gum, she did — caught a Tartar and no mistake!” the man swore with gusto. And the crowd beginning to break up amid laughter and some cheering, he turned to his tormentor. “Hang me, if you ain’t pinched my arm black and blue!” he said reproachfully. “But it is worth it and all! Don’t know as I ever heard the like!”
“I’ll treat,” said Ozias briefly. “Come along of us, mate, and we’ll wet the news. Did ye hear where the Letter o’ Marque hailed from?”
The man hadn’t caught the name. But soothed by the prospect of a dram he called to a neighbour who was also turning away, and asked him. This man had heard the name — the name of the port and of the brig — and he told them. To his astonishment Ozias gripped the speaker by the arm. “Skipper hurt?” he cried. “Eh? Did ye hear, man?”
“Ay! Splinter, side of the head! Knocked silly, they say, but kept the deck like a good ‘un and saw it through! D’ye know him?”
Ozias did not answer, and to this day the man whose arm he had pinched black and blue thinks him the meanest of swabs. For, forgetful of his offer and of everything but the news that he had heard, Ozias turned his back on his new friends and the Admiral Vernon, deserted his mate, and at a clumsy seaman’s trot made away for Portsea. What he said to the buxom woman who owned him, or how he dealt with her is not recorded, but a lugger that went out at sunset, bound for Plymouth, carried Ozias as a passenger, and the morning light saw him landed at the Barbican.
CHAPTER XXVII
THAT was the news that Captain Copestake brought to Beremouth on that fine May day in 1801. Old Captain Bligh happened to be in town, his attention was drawn to the excited group that had gathered about Ozias, he approached, and Ozias, breaking away from the others, drew him aside and told his story — told it with such reservations as, being a man of slow but sure wits, he thought proper. He said nothing to the old man of the shattered state in which the Lively Peggy and her prize had been left, or of the doubts entertained of their safety. Bad news would travel fast enough, details such as these could wait; and for himself he judged that the man Who had captured a French sloop of war with a crew outnumbering his own as two to one was not the man to let a craft sink under his feet. Sufficient for the day was the deed, and for Beremouth the triumph. And loudly Ozias hymned it.
To some he told more, but he cautioned them. “His wife’s in a delikit state,” he explained, with more consideration than might have been expected of him. “No need to scare her, mind ye! But, lord bless you, he’s not the man I think him if he don’t come through and bring his sheaves with him!” Like most sons of the open sea Ozias was a generous soul, and if he had captured the corvette himself he could not have been more triumphant, or bragged with stronger oaths of the glory accruing to Beremouth.
The story had flown abroad and was known half-way up the steep street before the old Captain, gathering his scattered wits together, limped away, the heart that beat so tumultuously in his lean breast overflowing with pride and thankfulness! With all his eagerness to tell the news he was more than once forced to stop and wipe the sweat from his brow; nor could he ever remember how he climbed the hill to the churchyard. But the determination to be the bearer of the tidings gave him strength, and he arrived at the Cottage as we have seen, his legs trembling under him and his tongue disabled by excitement.
“Strange — strange news if it’s true!” he gasped, his voice breaking. Poor man, his life had known few moments of triumph, and this was such a moment. It seemed too good to be real.
But Wyke, alarmed on Peggy’s account, was impatient of delay. He could have shaken the old man. “For God’s sake, say what it is, sir!” he urged. “Don’t you see that you are frightening Mrs. Bligh?”
“He’s — he’s taken a French corvette!” the Captain stammered. “She attacked him — he’s taken her! A sloop — sloop of war, d’you understand? He’s — he’s taken her!” He waved his arms in his excitement.
Peggy snatched herself from Charlotte’s arm. “Is he there?” she cried, prepared to fly to him. “Is he there?” She tried with a shaking hand to open the wicket. What did it matter what he had taken if he was there?
“No, my dear, no,” the Captain said, a little sobered. “He is not there, no! But news has come. A vessel that came into Portsmouth yesterday brought the — the news.”
“But he was safe?” she breathed. “You are sure?”
“Safe? Yes, my dear, safe — quite safe, I understand.”
“Thank God!” she cried. For her that was all. “Thank God!” She burst into tears and hid her face on Charlotte’s shoulder, while the other patted her like a mother.
“There, there, my dear,” Charlotte said. “Look up and think what great news it is! He’s safe! He will be with you soon.”
“But a sloop of war?” Wyke said, dwelling on the words. He dreaded a mistake. The old man was excited, was beside himself, and it was a strange, an improbable tale. Could it be that he had heard amiss?— “You are quite sure, Captain Bligh? Who brought the news from Portsmouth, pray?”
“Copestake! He saw the vessel that brought in the — the wounded. And he came away at once. South
of Ushant it was,” the Captain continued more glibly, his tongue loosened now that he had his breath. “Some think that she was waiting for them. The Peggy crippled her main-mast and bore off and on, raking her while the corvette could not bring her broadside to bear. But she brought down the Peggy’s main-top — that’s what I understand — and before Charles could clear away the raffle she fell alongside and they’d ha’ boarded, but by the mercy of God the Peggy slipped clear before she could fasten to her. And then they — they went on hammering her!” Peggy raised her head, and her eyes shone like stars through her tears. “He meant to do it!” she cried. “He meant to do it! And I knew that he would do it, if he lived! Let us thank God for it!”
“It’s wonderful news!” Sir Albery said warmly — but there was still a spice of doubt in his tone. “Wonderful news! And I congratulate you, Mrs. Bligh. I congratulate you with all my heart!”
“Dear Peggy!” Charlotte said. “Dear little heroine! And I know of more heroes than one,” she added, her eyes on Wyke.
“They are all heroes!” Peggy cried. “The poor brave men!” But that was not what the other meant. “Were there many hurt?” she continued timidly.
“Six were landed,” the Captain murmured, thinking that the less said about that matter the better.
“A great feat!” Wyke pronounced warmly. “A noble feat. I really hope that he may be reinstated, Mrs. Bligh. We must see that the facts are known. Such a thing has not been done since the Falmouth Packet beat off the Atalante! The country will ring with it, or I am mistaken!”
Peggy bloomed. “Oh, you think he may!” she cried, clasping her hands in a transport of gratitude. “You think he may!”
“I think it is possible,” Wyke said more cautiously. “We must do what we can to spread the facts.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 766
