CHAPTER VIII.

"STAY AT HOME, MY LAD, AND PLANT CABBAGES."

"The Yarmouth Roads are right ahead, The crew with ardour burning; Jack sings out, as he heaves the lead, On tack and half-tack turning, 'By the d'p eleven!'"--DIBDIN.

It is just one hundred years to-day--June 25th, 1892--since Tom started off with his friend Merryweather in the saucy sloop he commanded, on a visit to the home of the man who in future was destined to be Britain's greatest naval hero. The weather was fine, and the short voyage quite uneventful.

After they landed they had some distance to walk; but it was early morning, and Tom Bure felt quite equal to a journey of fifty miles--he told his friend--so on they marched right cheerily, till they came to the little village of Burnham Thorpe, and enquired for the parsonage. It wasn't very far from the old-fashioned, square-towered church, with its rather dilapidated looking graveyard. Not a beautiful house by any means, nor a large one either; little more, in fact, than an old-fashioned, high-roofed Norfolk cottage, with an additional wing to it, which latter, seeing the large family that the clergyman, Horatio's father, had, was very much needed indeed.

There were plenty of trees of a sort about the place, however, with flowers and bushes, and a rough attempt at a lawn, and on the whole the house looked homely, if not neat. The first to welcome Mr. Merryweather, in the small and curiously-furnished parlour into which he was shown, was the old parson himself. That they had met before was evident even to Tom.

"But, dear me, I'd hardly have known you," said Mr. Nelson. "Time works such wonders, and, you see, it has turned me pretty grey. Ah! well, we've got to work in this world; we'll rest in the next. You'll stay to dinner, of course. Horatio? Yes; and you'll find him in the garden doing a bit of work. No, poor lad, he is far from well, and he frets and fumes and worries so, I wonder he is alive or so healthy as he is. You'll find him if you go round. And this bold little man?"

"A boy whom Horatio will be glad to see for the sake of old times. He is determined to go to sea."

"Go to sea, eh! Well, I pity him. Better a millstone were placed about his neck, and he were cast into it. But there, I shan't say a word to discourage the youth."

Merryweather laughed, and went away to look for Horatio. They had not to walk far to find him. In an old coat he was; old shoes, old everything, and looking very serious over his work of digging and raking some ground from which potatoes had been dug in order to stick a few cabbages in.

"Shall I run down and ask that old gardener fellow," said Tom, "where the lad is?"

"What lad?" said Merryweather.

"The sailor. The lad his father spoke about."

"Why, that's our hero. That's the boy himself. What ho, there, Horatio! What cheer, my hearty?"

Nelson turned towards them, pitched away his spade, and ran up to shake hands with Merryweather.

A bright smile lighted up his whole face as he did so. Not a smile from the lips alone, for it went curling up round his large and expressive eyes, and seemed to change the contour of his whole countenance.

"Come and sit down, Jack, and sniff the roses. I heard you had been cruising round here, and doing all sorts of nasty things to our bold boys of Norfolk, who can neither get a drop of good rum nor a pinch of snuff for you. There you are; bring yourself to anchor. I'll sit on the tub."

"So you expected me?"

"Half-expected you. You always were such an erratic customer, you know, Jack, that I couldn't be sure of you. Seen my wife? No. Father's failing, isn't he? Ah! it hurts me to see it. His companionship, even more than that of my dear wife, is what partially reconciles me to this life of inactivity. Mind, I say more than my wife's society only for one reason--the young you may meet again, you know; but the old, ah! never."

Nelson kept rattling on, as Merryweather afterwards called it, without giving him much chance of putting an oar in. He would ask questions, and then answer them himself supposititiously, and go from one subject to another as quickly as he sometimes put his ship about in action.

"Egad, Merryweather!" he continued. "After all, you must consider yourself a very lucky fellow. While you are bounding o'er the ocean blue, chasing herring-boats, I'm doomed to--to plant kale. It is hard--hard--hard, after all I've done."

Here his brows were lowered, and his face became set and stern.

"But I have enemies at head-quarters, Jack."

"I think, Nelson," said Merryweather, getting in a sentence edgeways, "your greatest enemy is influence, or the want of it."

"Yes, yes, that's it, I do believe. I'm but a humble parson's son. I possess few if any great friends. Merit alone isn't worth a cabbage-stump. Your lordling, your duke or duckling, your moneyed scoundrel, your toady, your pimp, can walk into good positions, while honest men like myself are left to shiver in the cold. Come, we must change the subject, or I'll get angry and kick over the tub. I even wrote to the Admiralty to appoint me to the command of a cockle-boat, but--no.

"Heaven save me from my friends," continued Nelson bitterly.

"Your friends, Horace?"

"Ay, my friends. Not men like your honest self, Jack, but those old-wife fellows, who, by a few careless words, after dinner, for instance, can do more harm to a man under the guise of friendship than volumes of abuse could do. Ah, Jack Merryweather, I've known a tiny spark light a bigger conflagration than a red-hot shot. Why, it was only a day after my marriage that a friend fired off the following remark: 'Poor Horatio Nelson! Married and done for. And this marriage loses to the navy one of the brightest and most promising ornaments. It is a national loss, for otherwise he might have become the greatest man in the service.'

"But, Jack, did my marriage prevent my activity? Did it not rather increase it, just as it did my happiness? Did I not save to my government and my country over a million sterling by exposing in the West Indies the devilments of contractors and prize-agents who were robbing right and left?

"Burn and sink 'em, Jack; but I'd----."

"Horatio!"

"What, you here, Fanny?"

It was his wife who stood smiling behind him. He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, and his whole demeanour altered in a moment.

"There!" he cried, "I'm glad you've come. Entertain my friend Jack Merryweather--Jack, my wife--till I dig away my wrath. These cabbages ought to go in."

Not only was Jack himself, but even little Tom, amused at the way Nelson now threw the earth about. He seemed burying old sores and paying off old scores. Finally he planted the cabbages, handling them meanwhile as tenderly as if they had been living, sentient human beings. Then he came back his smiling old self to his tub, beside Jack Merryweather.

"What a peevish old hulk you must think me, Jack!" he said; "but then, you see, I'm not over well; for really my activity of mind preys upon this poor, puny bit of a body of mine, because it is the only fuel within its reach. But who is this modest but wondering young lad?"

"A sailor born, Nelson."

"I hope not."

"And I hope not too," said Mrs. Nelson. "He is far too handsome a boy to be wasted on the service."

"Fanny! Fanny! look at me. Behold the Herculean proportions of this husband of yours, thrown like pearls before the pigs."

"Horatio," said his wife, "I won't have you kick over the tub again, so beware, sir."

"Come hither, youngster."

Tom went over and stood beside Britain's future hero, and Nelson kindly took his hand and held it as he looked him in the face. Tom never winced.

"I believe you're a brave boy, and I hope not a bold one; but who is he, Jack?"

"You've heard speak of Miss Raymond?"

"Yes. Old Tom Bure wrote me about her, and said he was going to marry the most beautiful woman in all creation."

"And so he did," said Jack. "I was all aflame in that quarter too; but Tom wed her. Poor Tom is dead. Died on this very coast."

"And this is young Tom?"

"That is young Tom. Now, as an old sailor, give him a word of good advice."

"Stay at home, my lad, and plant cabbages."

Merryweather laughed heartily, though Tom felt ready to cry. But his friend came to his rescue.

"He won't thank you for that advice, and between you and me, Horace, there are signs in the air that tell me your days of cabbage planting are nearly numbered."

"You think I'll be put under the ground myself then?"

"No, not planted that way, but planted on the quarter-deck of a jolly ship of war."

"Wouldn't I make it hot for the enemy if I were. But it's too good to come true."

"Well, if I turn out a correct prophet, will you remember this boy?"

"If he comes to a ship that I command I'll be his friend for your sake, Jack."

"Aha! Horace, perhaps Jack will be there himself, then you'll have two to look after."

"Well, Jack, I'll show you both some fun, if the Frenchmen will but give us a chance."

"Never fear about the chance, my friend. It is coming; there is something in the air."

"You smell powder, then?"

"I do, and shot as well."

"So glad you've come, Jack. Come along, Tom. Merryweather, just give Fanny a convoy. Tom and I want to have a talk. Go right away in and tell father to commence carving. I'm going to show Tom a flower."

Ten minutes after the boy came in with a beaming face, and behind him, looking contented and happy, walked Horatio Nelson.

Tom forgot to tell his friend Jack Merryweather what Nelson had said to him, but all the way back to the shore that evening he could speak of no one else except the coming hero.

"He is such a dear, nice, good man," he said more than once, "and I don't care a bit for Bertha now. That sailor gentleman is so brave and good! But, Captain Merryweather, you must tell me his story. I know he has a story, because he has been fighting, and been at the North Pole too. He said he ran away from a great bear; but I don't believe that. He was laughing when he said it."

"Well, Tom, when next we go on the barge with Uncle Robert, I promise you I'll tell you Nelson's story; all, at least, that there is of it as yet."