CHAPTER IX.

HORATIO NELSON'S EARLIER DAYS.

"The child's the father of the man."

The broad or lake on the banks of which Dan Brundell's property stood in days of old has diminished considerably in size since then; but even at that time it was not very big, while the worm of a stream, that led therefrom into the larger and more beautiful lake, presented here and there difficulties that militated against the easy navigation of the barge. But Dan was not a man to do anything by halves, so he hired hands to widen the stream wherever necessary, and they did so in less than a week. Tom, with Ruth's assistance, was then able to guide the barge right away into the large Decoy, and a new life seemed to open out before Uncle Bob from the day of his first visit thereto. He even began to move his fingers more, and there were great hopes that in time his cure would be complete. Mr. Curtiss's duties were very light, and he used often to take Ruth's place in the barge. Then the party would embark, and on the broad itself and in the barge Tom's lessons would be conducted; Bob listening intently, and appearing to be quite as much edified as the boy himself.

And so the summer wore away, and autumn came with its tints of yellows and browns, and its darker and more sombre foliage for the trees. But the fine weather continued, although there were, of course, dark, rainy days now and then, which are to be expected even in sunny Norfolk.

And one fine morning, when Tom was away aloft in the crow's nest, telling Bob, who lay below, everything that was going on at sea, he suddenly gave vent to a wild whoop, that would have made a Sioux Indian bite his lips with envy.

"The _Porcupine_ is in sight, Uncle Bob. Hooray-ay!"

Bob was quite as much pleased as Tom, for nothing delighted him more than a talk about old times with his quondam shipmate.

"Are they bearing up in this direction?" he asked.

"Yes, Uncle Bob. On the larboard tack, with the wind on the quarter, standing in shore-ways."

"Well, Tom, I don't think you can do better than run and meet him. Take Meg with you; she wants a run too."

Within an hour Merryweather was standing by his old shipmate's side, and the very sight of his happy face seemed to make Uncle Bob the happiest invalid that ever existed.

Dan came out of the shed in his paper cap to welcome Merryweather; Meg ran off to the house to say that somebody had come; and Ruth herself was very quickly on the spot; so everybody was as jolly as jolly could be.

After an early dinner, Bob's cot was wheeled on to the barge, and the young folks, including Meg and Ruth, went off to spend the afternoon on the beautiful broad.

The sun was shining very brightly to-day, and an awning was stretched across the middle part of the barge. She was anchored in a cosy corner, close to the tall whispering reeds. Merryweather lit his pipe. Tom sat down beside Uncle Bob and lit his for him, while Meg and Ruth curled up in the bows. Then there was silence for the interminably long space of fifteen seconds.

"What are you all waiting for?" asked Merryweather, "and all looking at me for?"

"Why," answered Tom, "you said you would tell us all you know about Nelson, you know, who is going to thrash the French, with--with my assistance."

"Bravo, Tom!" cried Bob, "you're made of the right stuff."

HORATIO NELSON'S EARLIER LIFE.

"Well," said Merryweather, "no one in the service has been more talked about than my friend Horatio. Nobody who knows him can help liking him, and yet, I believe, it is his friends who have caused him to be overlooked so far. All I know about him has not been gleaned from any one source, but from dozens, but being interested in my friend, I have tried to winnow the chaff of untruth from the solid grains of fact, and it is these I'm going to serve out to you."

"Well done!" cried Uncle Bob. "You were always a regular reefer at spinning a yarn, mate. So heave round. Cheerily does it, Mr. Merryweather!"

"Well," said Merryweather, "be that as it may, I first knew Horatio Nelson when my grandmother took me to that same old-fashioned village of Wells, Tom, where you and I went the other day, though there weren't quite so many houses there then. We went from Cromer in a fishing-boat, and a rough sail I mind we had. But this was nothing to me. I was a regular sailor even then, and I wasn't five years of age. I'm not sure that the rector of Burnham Thorpe wasn't a distant relation of grandma's; anyhow, I know the family were very good to us, and I know something else, namely, that Horatio's father turned out of his own room that we might have it. There was but little ceremony in the Rectory; but plenty to eat, without a superfluity of dainties. That didn't trouble me in those days; why, I could have eaten a seagull.

"Horatio would be about ten at the time of my visit, for he is a good five years older than I am. But he wasn't much of a chap, and I couldn't help thinking, young as I was, that his grandmother--for he had a grandma as well as myself--spoiled him. My grandmother didn't spoil me; but she often spanked me.

"Well, poor lad, he had only recently lost his mother--about a year before, or thereabout--and this loss, I think, was the hardest blow to the rector ever he had. His family was a big one; eleven, if I remember rightly, and the majority sons. Rough and right boys they were, and though Horatio was delicate, there wasn't a bit of the girl about him. He was as fond of a joke as any lad in creation; but always tender towards the inferior animals. How he would have adored a dog like Meg there, for instance!

"I went to school at North Walsham two years after this, and found young Nelson there. He hadn't grown much; but he was tough--tough as regards enduring pain. He had many a thrashing; but he would purse up his mouth, lower his brow, and never cry a bit. Our flogger was called Jones, and I need hardly say he was a Welshman. The only revenge we could take upon Jones--or rather the bigger boys, for being but a nipper I shouldn't include myself--was pretending he couldn't hurt us. That used to make the Welshman wild.

"Geography, maps, and stories from history, were young Horace's chief delight in those days. In the house I mean; out of doors or away on the marsh and moor, hunting for birds' nests, it was quite another thing. He seemed born to live in the fresh air, and I'm sure that it was doing him an injustice and stunting his growth to keep him poring over old musty books so constantly.

"I used to visit at the Rectory pretty often after this, and Horatio's grandmother had always something to tell about him, that redounded to his credit. But she never told the same story twice the same.

"'Horace is such a brave lad,' she would say, 'I don't believe he knows what fear is!'"

"And she would go on to exemplify this in a dozen different ways. 'And he is a God-fearing boy too,' she would add.

"This last I could well believe. His father is one of the most simple-minded Christians I ever met. His faith is like that of a little child.

"But about his not knowing what fear was I always had my doubts. However, there was one boy whom Horace had invited to the Rectory for a few days, and who used to spin wonderful yarns to the old lady about her grandson's pluck and courage. But he rather overdid the thing, and he didn't always blend piety with the bravery he imputed to Horace. For instance, he told his grandma that at Downham Market, where he and Horace were at school, there was a nasty snarly old woman who used to paddle through the muddy streets on high pattens, knitting stockings and mumbling to herself. The boys used to imitate her, when off would come one of the pattens, which she threw like a boomerang, and always hit some of them. But one day Horace, who happened to be in the crowd, coolly picked up the patten, and marching home with it put it in the fire. The old creature had to limp to her house in one patten, and she never threw another. A very limp yarn, I thought, and one that was so little appreciated that Horace was told not to bring that lying boy back again to the Rectory.

"Of course, all brave, good boys rob an orchard, because the others are afraid; and, of course, they never eat any of the apples themselves. Oh, no! Whenever, Tom, you hear a story of this kind, you are safe enough to put it down as a grandmother's yarn.

"Independent, however, of my friend Horatio's love of freedom and stories of the sea, he was a thinking lad, and he couldn't but notice that his father had more than enough to do in supporting so large a family in a semi-genteel way. He thought of this, and made up his mind to go to sea. If he couldn't go as a young officer he would go as a cabin boy, in the old-fashioned style. But he had an uncle in the navy--a rough and right true blue sailor, Captain Suckling--and Horace induced his father to write to him in his behalf.

"The reply came pat enough, and I have seen it. 'What on earth has poor little Horatio done,' the letter ran, 'so weak a boy that he, above all the rest, should be sent to rough it out at sea? Well, let him come, and the very first time we go into action a cannon-ball may knock his head off, and so at once provide for him.'"

"There was a rough kind of jocularity in this; but for all that Captain Suckling was a kindly-hearted man.

"And now, young Nelson was destined for the sea. He had only to wait. He returned to the Walsham school, and in the spring of 1771, one miserable, drizzly morning--such a morning as gives one the shivers to think of getting up--a man came from the Rectory to take poor Horace away.

"Were those tears, I wonder, in his eyes, as he said 'good-bye' to us all? I think they were, and I know that as he got together his small belongings he did not speak much, and was so nervous that some of us helped him; but I'm sure we didn't envy him.

"His ship was the _Raisonnable_, 64 guns, his captain Maurice Suckling, and Horace was rated as middie. To add to his small outfit, and see him on the way, his father went with him as far as London, then the poor boy had to bundle and go all by himself to Chatham, off which his ship was lying.

"Horace has told me that the misery of arriving in that strange, busy port, all friendless and alone, was about the most acute ever he suffered in his life. There were scores, ay hundreds, of ships there, hundreds, ay thousands, of bluejackets and marines in the slushy streets, revelling, drinking, brawling, and fighting. He was hustled by dockyard-men, he was mocked and laughed at by women of the bare-headed class; cold, damp, and hungry, yet no one knew or cared where the _Raisonnable_ lay. When he asked some sailors if they knew Captain Suckling, they suggested his standing a flowing can and they'd soon find out.

"Young Horace was hesitating what to do, when a stern voice shouted, 'Gangway, lads.' The men saluted and made room at once, and here, with his sword under his arm, stood a tall naval officer.

"'Captain Suckling, my boy? I know him well. Come along with me.'

"He led poor hungry Horace, not to his ship, but to his own quarters in the dockyard, and gave him a good dinner, asking him many questions about his life in the country, his father and brothers and sisters. He finished off by saying--

"'Well, whatever brings some boys to sea I can't tell, though I was a boy myself once upon a time. Never mind, lad, I'll see you off, else the rascally boatmen will cheat you.'

"The _Raisonnable_ lay well off in the middle of the tideway, and braced up by the good dinner he had eaten, he began to think a sailor's life was just the thing for him after all. Besides, with her frowning red-muzzled guns, her tall and tapering spars, and spider-web of rigging, the frigate was a noble sight. Then there were the neatly-arranged hammocks over the bulwarks, a flash of crimson here and there, and here and there the glitter of a bayonet.

"Horace got in over the port or larboard side, up a rope ladder, and his box was hauled up after him.

"Then he stood there, alone in a crowd, for many an interminably long minute. No one took any more notice of him than if he'd been a bag of biscuit. Nor did Horace know what to do, or what to say, or whom to address.

"He spoke to a man in a dark blue jacket at last, and called him 'sir.' It was only the doctor's servant, but he answered him kindly, and in due time he found his way to the cock-pit, and was afterwards bundled into his own mess--the gunroom.

"Captain Suckling did not join for days after this, so Horace had to fight his first battles single-handed. Bloodless battles no doubt they were, for Horace was but a weakly lad at this time, and but ill able to play that game of fisticuffs which, Tom, I think you will admit I played with some skill that day when the Welsh giant, David Jones, challenged me to mortal combat on the sands of Yare.

"No, poor Horace at this time, you must remember, was only newly cut loose from his grandma's apron-strings. But, Bob, your pipe is out. Tom, my hearty, light Uncle Bob's pipe before I put another spoke in the wheel."