CHAPTER LXXVI

IN THE CABIN OF THE _MEDUSA_

I

Admiral and midshipman were alone in the cabin.

Kit was taking in his hero's face.

It was the face--the boy saw it with amazement--of a _disappointed_ man!

The hero of St. Vincent, the victor of the Nile, the conqueror of Copenhagen, a disappointed man!

"Tell your story."

Standing by the door Kit told his tale.

By the port the great seaman listened in chill silence.

His face was turned away. Kit dwelt anxiously on the keen, pale profile, the ruined eye, the lopped arm. Was his listener incredulous? He could not say, and Nelson did not speak.

The boy stumbled on his way.

Alone in that quiet cabin, his own voice shrill and small the only sound, face to face with the man who had saved Europe once, and must again, a confused and silly story he made of it.

Out on the uncritical sea he had almost thought himself a hero: in here, eye to eye with Nelson, he knew himself just a pinch-beck boy.

The silence grew upon him. He found himself listening to his own voice, and half wondering whether he was not dreaming. This almighty little man, so careless, so terrible, chilled him to the core.

He stumbled, sought his mind like a schoolboy posed for a word, sought in vain, and stopped dead.

Nelson drummed upon the table.

"Is that all?"

"All, sir?"

The other strummed impatiently.

"I'm _Lord_ Nelson."

The boy was dumb, his heart flaring.

And this was the man the nation worshipped!

Nelson turned his eye upon the boy. There was a sardonic droop about his lips.

"Mr. Carvell," he said slowly, "I have been a midshipman myself. Is this a joke?"

Kit flamed. He had given himself freely for this man, had died a hundred deaths for him--for this!

"If it's a joke, my lord," white-hot and thrilling, "it's a joke for which a good many men have died."

He saw once more the lower deck of the _Tremendous_. He recalled the man in the powder-magazine, and old Ding-dong dying beneath the cliff. He thought of Piper outside that door.

Nelson turned on the boy in a white blast.

"I am Admiral Lord Nelson. You're Mr. Midshipman Carvell. And I'll trouble you not to forget it."

He held out his hand.

"Your papers."

"There are none, sir--my lord. All burnt."

"Pah!" cried Nelson, and turned with a stamp.

On the table was a chart, a pistol at the corner of it acting as paper-weight.

He bent over it.

Kit, with bleeding heart, gazed at his back, blue-coated and white-breeched.

A darn in the seat of the breeches held his gaze. It seemed so odd somehow that Nelson's breeches should be darned. It was the last thing he should have suspected of the hero of Aboukir Bay. He longed to put out his finger and feel it, that darn in Nelson's breeches. Was it real?--or was it a dream-darn? It was real; he could swear it. And it helped him. There was something comfortably human about it. After all, then, a hero was only flesh and blood: he wore darned breeches.

Sometimes the boy wore darned breeches himself, his mother compelling him. There was something in common, then, between him and his hero.

Nelson turned suddenly to find the boy's eyes brimming with laughter.

Across his face swept a great white anger.

"This is scarcely a matter for giggling, Mr. Carvell," he cried terribly. "It seems to me that you by no means realise the _astounding_ nature of the charge you bring. If it prove true, it means the hanging of a brother-officer before the Fleet. If not--His Majesty will have no further need of your services."

"The powder-magazine will tell its own story," replied Kit, curt as an insulted girl. "Ask it."

Nelson's eye flashed.

"I'm not in the habit of receiving suggestions from my midshipmen, Mr. Carvell."

"You doubt my word!" with a sob.

"I doubt your story, sir. And I've good reason to. My officers are not in the habit of selling me. But we can soon have the truth."

He opened the door.

"Desire Mr. Dark to be good enough to step this way," he called to the sentry outside, and shut the door again.

"Mr. Dark is my Gunner and the officer against whom you bring your charge--a charge of such a nature as _never_, never in all the years of my service, have I known one officer to bring against another."

He was pacing rapidly up and down the cabin, his stump flapping.

"I have tried to serve you, sir," said Kit in twilight voice, and said no more.

His face was a thought paler than before; his eyes a shade darker. He was bracing himself for a last fight.

Something about the boy, his twilight voice, his pallor, those dark and hunted eyes, struck Nelson.

He stopped his pacing.

"You've nothing to fear, Mr. Carvell," he said less sternly--"if your story prove true."

"It is true, my lord," replied the boy steadfastly.

"God forbid," shuddered the great seaman, and resumed his walk.

II

There was a knock.

Dark entered, sombrely magnificent.

He stood by the door, splendid with that strange splendour of moonlight.

His head, massive as a mountain, was splashed with silver; and from under great and gloomy brows those vast eyes gleamed, unfathomable.

Over by the port stood Nelson, high and white.

"Mr. Dark," he began in chill and formal voice, "I've sent for you upon the most unpleasant business it's ever been my lot to be mixed up in. Had I only to consider myself, what I have to say would be left unsaid. But I have to think of other and larger issues. If a mischance England might be lost."

The other listened immovable. He was like a smouldering volcano. Every moment Kit expected to see flames leap from his eyes.

Nelson cleared his throat, and continued.

"This young gentleman, Mr. Carvell, has been telling me a strange and terrible tale that affects you."

He turned his eye full-blaze upon the other.

"It is this, Mr. Dark--that you have been paid to sell me to the French."

The giant was stone. Not a muscle twitched. Then the tip of his tongue journeyed round his lips. The lips moved. Kit read the words on them, though no sound came.

They were,

"_Not paid_."

Nelson waited, breathing deep. Receiving no answer, he went on,

"The story so far as I can make it out is this."

Calm and twanging, he stood by the port-hole, and outlined to his alleged murderer-to-be the story of his plot. That mighty man could have crumpled him in one hand, and tossed him through the port-hole. And the giant knew it--so much his eyes betrayed. And the boy, watching from his corner, knew it too. Only the little lopped man talking through his nose across the cabin seemed unaware of it.

The shrill voice ceased. There was silence in the cabin.

"That's the story, Mr. Dark. And I may say I don't believe _one_ word of it."

"Thank you, my lord," came the other's voice, deep and rumbling.

"And if you'll give me your word that it's all moonshine," continued Nelson, "why, I'll ask you to shake my hand and forgive me. And that's an end of the dirtiest bit of business I ever had to handle."

The other's voice stuck in his throat. Out it came at last like muffled drums.

"My lord, you're a gentleman."

Nelson came to him with outstretched hand and a wonderful smile.

"Forgive me," he said.

The darkness drifted from the saint's face, leaving behind it evening calm, the stars beginning to shine.

Folding his arms, he bowed deliberately.

Nelson's hand dropped. He stopped short, and his smile died. In a flash the man of action, brisk and curt, had taken the place of the comrade chivalrously admitting a mistake.

"Then I must trouble you to fetch the key of the powder-magazine, and to follow me." He clapped on his cocked hat.

The great man turned swiftly.

"One moment, my lord," and he was gone.

III

There was a rush up the companion-ladder, and the noise of running feet on the deck overhead.

"Great God!" groaned Nelson, ghastly, and flung open the port.

A dark mass with straggling legs shot past.

There was the plump of a body striking the sea, and crash of showering waters.

"_Man overboard!_" roared a voice from the deck. "_Back tops'ls. Here, sir!_"

A rope coiled out and splashed the water.

Nelson's head was through the port.

The man came up beneath him, and turned to face the ship and his Admiral.

"O, Dark! Dark! Dark!" cried Nelson, and there was agony in his voice.

Dark looked up, the hair plastered about his forehead.

"Nelson," he shouted. "I ask your pardon."

"It's yours, Dark," choked the other. "But O! I thought--I thought you loved me!--every man of you."

"Often and often I could have killed you," gasped the other, bobbing to the seas.

"Rather that than this!" sobbed the great seaman. "Murder's the braver deed."

"I was mad!" groaned the other. "She was in my blood. She was my soul. She _is_ my soul--the Christ be kind to her! O, if any man in the world can understand, that man should be Lord Nelson."

"No! no! no!" raved Nelson, tossing with his head, stamping with his feet, thumping the port with his fists. "Myself! my wife! my friend!--but _not_ my country! _Not_ that, Dark! _never_ that!"

"_Lively there!_" roared the voice from the deck. "_Lower away_."

There was the splash of a boat.

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 God, my God!--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 God 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.

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