CHAPTER LXXIV

NATURE, THE COMFORTER

I

The crash of the waves on the shingle grew faint behind.

The lugger began to prattle, as she took the water bobbingly. Overhead the sky was blue, with wisps of snow. Kit hugged the tiller, shivering in spasms.

On his right Beachy Head, rusty of hide, waded white-footed into the deep. Before him opened the sea, a plain of palest blue, blurred with wind and patched here and there with silver. Eastward a road of twinkling light ran across the water. Pevensey Levels lay behind him, brown beyond the shingle. At back of them a range of dim hills rose and launched into the sea; and Northward a vague gloom in the sky told of man's great camping-place by the Thames.

The great sea lolled about the boy, breathing in sleep.

How soothing was the slow large life of the waters after the hubbub and horror of those last few minutes, already so remote!

Above him a kittiwake dreamed. The boy let himself drift, his mind rocking to the rock of the sea.

The waters swung by, singing to themselves. They poured peace upon his troubled spirit. Their strong life entered into his, a resistless tide. Feebly he tried to stay it. He wanted to go back to his distress, to dwell upon it, to worry it, as a young dog frets to go back to the kill.

Nature, the Comforter, would have none of it. She loved her ailing little one over well to let him have his way. She had him in her arms, and would not let him go. She sang in his ear; she rocked his spirit to sleep. The floodgates were open; and that tide of healing stole in upon his being. In his mind it made religious music. He could not resist it. Half reluctant he let himself drift on those sweet waters.

The sea roamed blindly by. He watched her as a sick child watches his mother. Sense was alive; self was dead. His body was the eye of his soul, the avenue of spirit. It had no life of its own to cloud his clear vision.

The tide of healing swept forward, smoothing the rough surfaces, washing away the jagged edges of pain. As it flowed on, that squabble on the beach a few minutes back receded, ultimately to be lost to view. It had been drowned by the incoming waters.

He was walking backwards on himself towards the centre that some call Christ; withdrawing from the Circumference, where the winds of the World moan always. And in that Centre, always for all men the same, there was Peace and Love and Life Eternal, as on that Circumference there had been War and Darkness and Discord.

Lying on the bosom of the mother-deep, watching her breathe, the boy smiled.

II

The Parson at his side was stroking his calves.

The boy watched him with dreamy eyes.

"Are you hurt, sir?" he asked in a far-away voice.

It came from the depths of no-where. It seemed no longer his. He listened to it with awe.

"Nothing that matters," replied the Parson. "Thank God for His great mercies, and my dear lady here."

Lifting his sword, he kissed the hilt.

"She was inspired," he said in reverent whisper. "I never saw the like and never shall again." He wiped the blade upon his knee-breeches. "Their beastly hairs stick yet--see!"

The boy heard no word. He sat quite still, his eyes on that twinkling waste beneath the boom. The sun, which had been shining through mist, now blazed hot upon his face. He eased the boat away, and the shadow of the great brown lug fell upon him comfortably.

"It's all very wonderful," he said, his eyes on the musing waters.

"It's a miracle--nothing less," replied the Parson, unslinging the despatch-bag. "This bag did me yeoman service. Look!" It was slashed to ribands, the rolled coat within gashed through and through; and as he shook it a bullet fell out of the folds. "I owe my life to it and Piper's shooting. The old man dropped a chap dead at two hundred yards as he was braining me."

The boy woke at last.

"What of him--old Piper?"

"Ah, what?" said the Parson, grey and grave beneath the sweat.

Neither spoke again.

III

Beyond the Boulder Bank the wind freshened. The lugger began to breast the water merrily, plumping into the swells with a delicious shock, shooting the water aside in spurts of foam, and ploughing a furrow white behind her.

The Parson stared about him with startled eyes.

"Good Lord!" he said, breathing deep, as one just awaking to a new and terrible danger.

Kit looked at him, and was shocked at the change that had come over him. He could scarcely recognise in this grey-green spectre the roaring swordsman of the shingle-bank.

"I'm tired," said the Parson suddenly, "very tired."

He flopped forward on his knees.

"My sins have found me out," he moaned. "May mother forgive me!"

His courage had faded with his colour.

Collapsing, he lay like a dead thing in a slop of sand and water at the bottom of the boat.

Kit heard his voice as in a dream.

The boy was sitting quite still, the smell of the sea in his nostrils, the wind in his hair, the hiss and flop of the waters in his ears.

The life of the body was coming back to him. The good salt breeze flushed his veins. The tiller began to pull at his hand. The lugger swung and curtseyed, graceful as a dancing girl. She was alive. She was careering over the swells, snatching for her head. She knew her mission, and revelled in it.

Nelson, Nelson, Nelson! she whispered, hissed, and sang the word.

The boy began to hand her over the seas, as a man hands his lady down a ball-room. She was so swift so strong: throbbing-full of life. He loved her, and began to live again.

Blob was sitting cocked up in the bows, pink as ever and as impassive.

At the sight of the boy Kit felt a certain resentment, and, with the swift self-knowledge peculiar to him, was glad to feel it, for it told him he was coming round. He wished the boy to collapse alongside the Parson. Why didn't he, the silly little land-lubber? Kit, the one sailor aboard, here on his own element, wished to lord it out alone.

"How d'you feel, Blob?" he called, hoping for the best.

"Whoy," said Blob, the breeze in his teeth, "Oi'm that empty Oi can hear me innuds rollin. Oi could just fancy a loomp o porruk--fatty-loike."

The Parson raised himself.

"Swine," he moaned, "have you no soul?"

He turned on his elbow.

"Can't you take her where it's flatter?" he snarled.

"I like a bit of a bobble myself, sir," answered Kit.

"Calls himself a sailor!" sneered the other, and collapsed again.

IV

The frigate was drawing near, the lily flag of a Vice-Admiral of the White at her foretop-gallant mast-head.

A tide of delicious tears surged up in the lad's heart as he beheld her. She was England; she was his own. He possessed her, and was she not beautiful?

Stately lady, she walked the waters, swaying them, her breasts splendid in the sunshine. Her head was in the heavens, a stir of snow at her feet. She was mistress of the seas, and mother of them. And with what noble mirth she lorded it in this her nursery! The turbulent little folks swarmed to clutch her skirts as she swept by. She moved among them, their play-fellow and yet their sovereign lady: here a mocking bow, there a laughing curtsey; anon a stoop, a swift kiss, and she rose, an armful of blossom-babies smothering her.

The boy's heart went out to her in a passion of worship.

She was a tall Princess, stone-blind and beautiful, walking to her doom; and he a boy-knight bucketing across the moor on his pony to save her and the burthen she bore so preciously in her arms--her little son.

And he _would_ save her. Nay, he _had_ saved her.

He was so proud he could have shouted; he was so moved he could almost have wept.

The lugger thumped through the seas, tugging at her tiller, eager as himself. She reminded him of the scuttling haste with which old Trumps, his pony, bustled along, head set for home; and he laughed merrily. The fuss and fury of the little thing contrasted so ludicrously with the majestic calm of the swan-lady sweeping towards him.

The frigate was close on him now.

As the lugger topped the ridges, Kit, peering beneath the boom, could see the black and yellow of the Nelson chequer on her sides.

Clouds of canvas, tier on tier, towered above him.

He could see the shine of her bows as she lifted, dripping. The water spurted from her foot in foaming cataracts as she plunged.

He steered as though to cross her bows. When he heard the swish of the green waters cleaving before her keel, he put his helm hard down.

"Hail them, Blob!" he screamed, and scrambling forward brought the lug-sail down with a rattle.

"Boat ahoy_" a voice from the frigate "_who are you_?"

Blob stood in the bows, one hand on the flapping jib. "Oi'm Blob Oad what killed Nabowlin Bownabaardie," he yelled.

The frigate, standing stately on, swung up alongside. Kit, rushing to the side, fended her off, as she slid past, huge above him.

"Heave to!" he screamed, bumping against the sliding side. "Heave to!"

A deep voice above him spoke.

Kit looked up. A man, leaning over the side, was watching him bump stern-wards with a sardonic grin.

"Bye-bye," he murmured deeply. "My love to the little gurls."

Was he mad? was he mocking?

Kit thought he had never seen so striking a face. The man was a giant with moon-splendid eyes. There was a power about the face, the power of darkness. The sun never shone upon it--only the moon, the moon. But for her wan glimmer it was without light. Kit thought of a wild night at sea, the moon gleaming fitfully on savage waters. The moon, always the moon!

"Despatches for Nelson!" screamed the boy--"for Nelson, Nelson, Nelson!"

The moon went out. There was one flash of lightning, then horror of darkness. The man's life had shocked to a halt. He did not stir, he did not wink, he did not breathe.

Then the blackness lifted, and the moon shone out once more between dark scuds.

"Nelson ain't a-board," he said.

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