CHAPTER VIII.

LIFE IN NELSON'S SHIP.

"The flag of Britannia, the flag of the brave, Triumphant it floateth o'er land and o'er wave, All proudly it braveth the battle and blast, And when tattered with shot it is nailed to the mast."

It goes without saying that Nelson returned thanks, humble but fervent, to heaven, for his merciful preservation on the day of battle.

For his services on this Valentine's-day he was knighted, and also received the Order of the Bath. He was moreover made rear-admiral of the blue.

Probably after all it was the private congratulations that flowed in upon him which affected him the most, and chief of these, perhaps, were the love and respect of his ship's crew. Well they knew that Nelson was not only a true sailor, but in heart and soul almost a man before the mast. No one ever heard the hero abuse a man verbally in bullying language with oaths and fulsome gesture, as many and many a captain did in those days. Moreover they knew he hated the lash, and that he even saw the justice of the complaints of the mutineers of the Nore.

It was when on board the _Theseus_--the _Captain_ was almost a wreck--that the men's regard for their commodore--now admiral--was shown in a manner essentially sailor-like, and therefore in a measure innocently childish, for a round-robin was picked up on the quarter-deck which read as follows:

"Success attend Admiral Nelson! God bless Captain Miller. We thank them for the officers they have placed over us. We are happy and comfortable, and willing to shed every drop of blood in our veins to support them, and the name of the _Theseus_ shall be immortalised as high as that of the _Captain_.--Signed, THE SHIP'S COMPANY."

This poor little but heart-felt speech upon paper must have cost much care and thought to concoct. Meetings on the sly would have been held down below, as secret and confidential as those of conspirators or mutineers, and I can almost see the shy and somewhat ungainly actions of the seaman, who was finally told off to drop the precious document on the quarter-deck after it had been read a dozen times and finally approved.

"See you does it properly now, Jack."

"Don't let the officers see you, you know, Jack."

"Don't make a bullocks of it, Jack."

"Keep your weather eye lifting, Jack."

These and a score of other warnings were doubtless given to Jack before he departed on his mission, and I'll warrant that, when he performed it successfully, he was welcome to all the grog in the mess that day if he chose to have it.

Nelson and Miller too appreciated that simple note for all it was worth, you may be perfectly sure.

But possibly the letters from home affected him quite as much as anything. His wife's was quite a woman's letter. Nelson must have smiled to be told that she was very much against the dangerous practice of boarding, and that he must really promise not to venture on any such thing again.

But his father's, the dear, kindly, and now proud old man--proud of his son--affected him most. "I thank my God," he says, "with all the power of a grateful soul, for the mercies he has most graciously bestowed on me in preserving you.

"Not only my few acquaintances here, but the people in general met me at every corner with such handsome words, that I was obliged to retire from the public eye. The height of glory to which your professional judgement, united with a proper degree of bravery, and guarded by Providence, has raised you, few sons, my dear child, attain to and fewer fathers live to see. Tears of joy have involuntarily trickled down my furrowed cheeks. Who could stand the force of such general congratulations? The name and services of Nelson have sounded throughout this city of Bath--from the common ballad singer to the public theatre."

* * * * * *

So much for honour and glory, reader. Do you like it? Honour and glory are but empty baubles, and yet somehow they commend themselves most heartily to the empty soul.

Honour and glory, however, are, in my opinion, not such empty baubles as those who never receive them would have you believe. On the contrary, they are the most satisfactory proofs a hero could receive, that he has nobly done his duty. They are the payments made to him by a grateful public and people for services done for which no amount of money or jewels could ever form adequate reward. Whenever, therefore, you hear a person railing against honour and glory, you may be perfectly sure he has never had any such "baubles" offered him, and never done anything to deserve them. Think of the fable of the fox and the grapes.

Well, no star can shine by itself without imparting its lustre to other and lesser stars around it. This is another way of saying that even Nelson's junior officers shared in his honour and glory. Ah! well, they deserved to, for right nobly that day had every man done his duty fore and aft.

But in a great many cases that honour and glory look the form of a sailor's grave. And alas! poor Jack, many a man before the mast was buried in the deep sea who had fought as well as ever man fought a veritable lion with heart of oak, but whose name would not even be mentioned in his country's story.

As for the doctors? Well, the day had not yet come when doctors were to have even the least little morsel of honour and glory, and, to tell the truth, in our own day very little glory falls to a surgeon's share. Down in the gloomiest depths of a ship he must work--nay, slave, even on the day of battle. If engines burst he is among the first scalded; if the vessel is blown up or is sunk, he has not even the shadow of a chance of saving his life, as have the honour and glory men on deck whose bravery may after all be but the outcome of excitement or terror itself. The surgeon, on the other hand, has to do his duty with a cool head, and even long after the rage and roar of battle have ceased his duties keep him to his post.

But Nelson was a man who really loved his doctors, both senior and junior, quite as much as he loved the parson, and had every respect for their feelings. Even when coming quietly round to see the sick or wounded, he invariably took a surgeon with him, to ask him questions about the poor fellows who lay uncomplainingly in their hammocks.

Young Raventree's letters from home rejoiced him very much indeed, and he showed several of them to his friend Tom Bure.

Poor Tom had letters also; three--yes, only three, but how he valued them only those who have been long away on the ocean wave could say.

One was from Dan--Daddy Dan. This he showed to Raventree. "It is from my dear old foster-father," he explained.

Raventree read it by the light of the moon, as the two lads stood together under the lee bulwarks.

"It is so good of you, Bure," he said, "to show me this. Bad spelling, worse writing, stilted and somewhat hackneyed expressions, but, Tom, a spirit of such kindliness and love, and so noble a nature breathing through every page of it! Tom Bure, you are lucky in having a foster-father like this man. Dan Brundell is a hero in humble life!"

"I'm so glad you like him," said Tom, and the tears came rushing to his eyes as he spoke.

"Some day I should like to go and see Dan's cottage," continued Raventree. "My home is away in the midlands. It is one of the ancestral halls of England, and my people are proud and wealthy; but, Tom, they would make you right welcome. I think," he added, "I have some reason to be proud of my family, because, like the Stuarts, of whom we saw so noble a specimen in that brave Don Jacobo, we gained all our honours by the sword."

Tom had a letter from Ruth--such a dear, sisterly, old-fashioned epistle. This he gave to Merryweather to read, knowing it would not interest Raventree much.

Jack Merryweather, who was in excellent spirits after the recent battle, because he, for a wonder, had not been wounded, read Ruth's letter with delight--not once, but twice.

"What a sweet, good girl," he said, as he handed it back to Tom.

But there was one other letter that Tom, singularly enough, showed to nobody.

It came from Bertha. It was enclosed in Daddy Dan's. Quite a charming specimen of love letter it was, but so innocent and childish. She sent it through Dan, she said, because she did not wish it supervised by her mother and her maid.

I hope the reader will not jump to the conclusion all at once that this conduct on the part of Bertha was naughty or clandestine. Her mother, she said, wanted her to write to Tom Bure "all in fine english and all well speld," and also to address him as "der Mr. Bure," instead of "der old Tom" all through the letter. So she had ran off to Daddy Dan's, where sweet freedom awaited her, a huge sheet of age-stained paper, and an enormous sputtering old quill pen.

However, Bertha's letter, although not "well speld," was very delightful, and for some reason or another, best known to himself only, Tom Bure put it under his pillow on the night of the day he received it.

History is mute as to what his dreams were. O'Grady's letters were so pleasing to him that he handed them all round the gunroom mess--at least he handed round the one he had received from his mother, who lived "in a swate little cottage in the kingdom of Connemara, and owned the foinest pigs in the county, faith."

O'Grady's mother was "a lady in a small way and in her own roight," he explained to his messmates, though what on earth he meant by that nobody could tell, and as it was getting on for three bells, with a drop of rosy rum on the table, no one thought of asking him for an explanation. But Mrs. O'Grady could write a good old-fashioned letter, there was no mistake about that. No long sentences; all short and crisp. No tall English; but every line containing an item of news. There wasn't a person in the parish from the priest downwards who missed mention in the lady's letter, together with everyone who had been put in the mould and every baby born, and it finished up with what honest O'Grady called a red-hot shot, thus: "And may the Lord's arms be ever around you, son, and sure your old sweetheart Peggy O'Houghleehan was married yesterday to Rory McKoy, and may heaven have mercy on his sowl, for the jade was never good enough for my dear boy, at all, at all. No more from your affectionate old mother Molly O'Grady. Postage paid, free."

The red-hot shot, however, didn't affect this good old middy much; for, it being Saturday night, the dead all buried more than a fortnight ago, and the wounded getting rapidly well, the boys were enjoying themselves in an innocent, good-tempered way. So presently O'Grady volunteered a song.

Then somebody else sang, so that really, as Burns puts it--

"The nicht drave on wi' songs and clatter,*

* Clatter=talk.

Away forward in the men's messes, Dibdin's verses very well depict the scene, bar the lashing of the helm a-lee. Nelson was hardly the man to have his helm lashed a-lee. With all due respect for the clever Dibdin, he did occasionally give his imagination a very free run.

"'Twas Saturday night: the twinkling stars Shone on the rippling sea, No duty called the jovial tars, The helm was lashed a-lee."

But even Saturday night at sea has an end at last, and the bo's'n's pipe has a disagreeable knack of bringing it to a close at times, far more suddenly than honest sailors like.