The Battle and the Breeze

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER THREE.

  BILL IS INITIATED INTO THE DUTIES OF HIS NEW STATION.

  At the time of which we write, England's battles and troubles werecrowding pretty thick upon one another. About this period, RepublicanFrance, besides subduing and robbing Switzerland, Italy, Sardinia, andother States, was busily engaged in making preparation for the invasionof England,--Napoleon Bonaparte being in readiness to take command ofwhat was styled the "army of England." Of course great preparations hadto be made in this country to meet the invading foe. The British Lionwas awakened, and although not easily alarmed or stirred up, he uttereda few deep-toned growls, which showed pretty clearly what the Frenchmenmight expect if they should venture to cross the Channel. From John o'Groats to the Land's End the people rose in arms, and in the course of afew weeks 150,000 volunteers were embodied and their training begun.

  Not satisfied with threatening invasion, the Directory of France soughtby every means to corrupt the Irish. They sent emissaries into theland, and succeeded so well that in May 1798 the rebellion broke out.Troops, supplies, and munitions of war were poured into Ireland byFrance; but the troops were conquered and the rebellion crushed.

  Finding at length that the invasion of England could not be carried out,this pet projection was abandoned, and Napoleon advised the Directory toendeavour to cripple her resources in the East. For the accomplishmentof this purpose, he recommended the establishment on the banks of theNile of a French colony, which, besides opening a channel for Frenchcommerce with Africa, Arabia, and Syria, might form a grand militarydepot, whence an army of 60,000 men could be pushed forward to theIndus, rouse the Mahrattas to a revolt, and excite against the Britishthe whole population of those vast countries.

  To an expedition on so grand a scale the Directory objected at first,but the master-spirit who advised them was beginning to feel and exertthat power which ultimately carried him to the throne of the Empire. Heovercame their objections, and the expedition to Egypt was agreed to.

  With characteristic energy and promptitude Napoleon began to carry outhis plans, and Great Britain, seeing the storm that was brewing,commenced with equal energy to thwart him. Accordingly, the great SirHoratio Nelson, at that time rear-admiral, was employed with a squadronto watch the movements and preparations of the French in theMediterranean.

  Such was the state of matters when our hero, Bill Bowls, was conveyed onboard the _Waterwitch_, a seventy-four gun frigate, and set to work atonce to learn his duty.

  Bill was a sensible fellow. He knew that escape from the service,except in a dishonourable manner, was impossible, so he made up his mindto do his duty like a man, and return home at the end of the war (whichhe hoped would be a short one), and marry Nelly Blyth. Poor fellow, helittle imagined what he had to go through before--but hold, we must notanticipate the story.

  Well, it so happened that Bill was placed in the same mess with the manwhose nose he had treated so unceremoniously on the day of his capture.He was annoyed at this, but the first time he chanced to be alone withhim, he changed his mind, and the two became fast friends. It happenedthus:--

  They were standing on the weather-side of the forecastle in the evening,looking over the side at the setting sun.

  "You don't appear to be easy in your mind," observed Ben Bolter, after aprolonged silence.

  "_You_ wouldn't be if you had left a bride behind you," answered Billshortly.

  "How d'ye know that?" said Ben; "p'r'aps I _have_ left one behind me.Anyhow, I've left an old mother."

  "That's nothin' uncommon," replied Bill; "a bride may change her mindand become another man's wife, but your mother can't become your aunt oryour sister by any mental operation that I knows of."

  "I'm not so sure o' that, now," replied Ben, knitting his brows, andgazing earnestly at the forebrace, which happened to be conveniently infront of his eyes; "see here, s'pose, for the sake of argiment, thatyou've got a mothers an' she marries a second time--which some mothersis apt to do, you know,--and her noo husband has got a pretty niece.Nothin' more nat'ral than that you should fall in love with her and getspliced. Well, wot then? why, your mother is her aunt by vartue of hermarriage with her uncle, and so your mother is _your_ aunt in consikenceof your marriage with the niece--d'ye see?"

  Bill laughed, and said he didn't quite see it, but he was willing totake it on credit, as he was not in a humour for discussion just then.

  "Very well," said Ben, "but, to return to the p'int--which is, if I mayso say, a p'int of distinkshun between topers an' argifiers, for topersare always returnin' to the pint, an' argifiers are for ever departin'from it--to return to it, I say: you've no notion of the pecooliersirkumstances in which I left my poor old mother. It weighs heavy on myheart, I assure ye, for it's only three months since I was pressedmyself, an' the feelin's ain't had time to heal yet. Come, I'll tell 'ehow it was. You owe me some compensation for that crack on the nose yougave me, so stand still and listen."

  Bill, who was becoming interested in his messmate in spite of himself,smiled and nodded his head as though to say, "Go on."

  "Well, you must know my old mother is just turned eighty, an' I'mthirty-six, so, as them that knows the rule o' three would tell ye, shewas just forty-four when I began to trouble her life. I was a mostawful wicked child, it seems. So they say at least; but I've noremembrance of it myself. Hows'ever, when I growed up and ran away tosea and got back again an' repented--mainly because I didn't like thesea--I tuk to mendin' my ways a bit, an' tried to make up to the old'ooman for my prewious wickedness. I do believe I succeeded, too, for Igot to like her in a way I never did before; and when I used to comehome from a cruise--for, of course, I soon went to sea again--I alwayshad somethin' for her from furrin' parts. An' she was greatly pleasedat my attentions an' presents--all except once, when I brought her thehead of a mummy from Egypt. She couldn't stand that at all--to my greatdisappointment; an' what made it wuss was, that after a few days theyhad put it too near the fire, an' the skin it busted an' the stuffin'began to come out, so I took it out to the back-garden an' gave itdecent burial behind the pump.

  "Hows'ever, as I wos goin' to say, just at the time I was nabbed by thepress-gang was my mother's birthday, an' as I happened to be flush o'cash, I thought I'd give her a treat an' a surprise, so off I goes tobuy her some things, when, before I got well into the town--a sea-portit was--down comed the press-gang an' nabbed me. I showed fight, ofcourse, just as you did, an floored four of 'em, but they was too manyfor me an' before I knowed where I was they had me into a boat andaboord this here ship, where I've bin ever since. I'm used to it now,an' rather like it, as no doubt you will come for to like it too; but it_was_ hard on my old mother. I begged an' prayed them to let me go backan' bid her good-bye, an' swore I would return, but they only laughed atme, so I was obliged to write her a letter to keep her mind easy. Ofall the jobs I ever did have, the writin' of that letter was the wust.Nothin' but dooty would iver indooce me to try it again; for, you see, Ididn't get much in the way of edication, an' writin' never came handy tome.

  "Hows'ever," continued Ben, "I took so kindly to His Majesty's servicethat they almost look upon me as an old hand, an' actooally gave meleave to be the leader o' the gang that was sent to Fairway to take you,so that I might have a chance o' sayin' adoo to my old mother."

  "What!" exclaimed Bowls, "is your mother the old woman who stops at theend o' Cow Lane, where Mrs Blyth lives, who talks so much about herbig-whiskered Ben?"

  "That same," replied Ben, with a smile: "she was always proud o' me,specially after my whiskers comed. I thought that p'r'aps ye might haveknowed her."

  "I knows her by hearsay from Nelly Blyth, but not bein' a native ofFairway, of course I don't know much about the people.--Hallo! Riggles,what's wrong with 'e to-day?" said Bill, as his friend Tom came towardshim with a very perplexed expression on his honest face, "not repentingof havin' joined the sarvice already, I hope?"

  "No, I ain't troubled about that," answered Riggle
s, scratching his chinand knitting his brows; "but I've got a brother, d'ye see--"

  "Nothin' uncommon in that," said Bolter, as the other paused.

  "P'r'aps not," continued Tom Riggles; "but then, you see, my brother'ssuch a preeplexin' sort o' feller, I don't know wot to make of him."

  "Let him alone, then," suggested Ben Bolter.

  "That won't do neither, for he's got into trouble; but it's a longstory, an' I dessay you won't care to hear about it."

  "You're out there, Tom," said Bowls; "come, sit down here and let's haveit all."

  The three men sat down on the combings of the fore-hatch, and TomRiggles began by telling them that it was of no use bothering them withan account of his brother Sam's early life.

  "Not unless there's somethin' partikler about it," said Bolter.

  "Well, there ain't nothin' very partikler about it, 'xcept that Sam waspartiklerly noisy as a baby, and wild as a boy, besides bein' uncommonpartikler about his wittles, 'specially in the matter o' havin' plentyof 'em. Moreover, he ran away to sea when he was twelve years old, an'was partiklerly quiet after that for a long time, for nobody know'dwhere he'd gone to, till one fine mornin' my mother she gets a letterfrom him sayin' he was in China, drivin' a great trade in the opiumline. We niver felt quite sure about that, for Sam wornt over partiklerabout truth. He was a kindly sort o' feller, hows'ever, an' continuedto write once or twice a year for a long time. In these letters he saidthat his life was pretty wariable, as no doubt it was, for he wrote fromall parts o' the world. First, he was clerk, he said, to the Britishcounsel in Penang, or some sich name, though where that is I don't know;then he told us he'd joined a man-o'-war, an' took to clearin' thepirates out o' the China seas. He found it a tough job appariently, an'got wounded in the head with a grape-shot, and half choked by astink-pot, after which we heard no more of him for a long time, when aletter turns up from Californy, sayin' he was there shippin' hides onthe coast; and after that he went through Texas an' the States, where hegot married, though he hadn't nothin' wotever, as I knows of, to keep awife upon--"

  "But he may have had somethin' for all you didn't know it," suggestedBill Bowls.

  "Well, p'r'aps he had. Hows'ever, the next we heard was that he'd goneto Canada, an' tuk a small farm there, which was all well enough, butnow we've got a letter from him sayin' that he's in trouble, an' don'tsee his way out of it very clear. He's got the farm, a wife, an' asarvant to support, an' nothin' to do it with. Moreover, the sarvant isa boy what a gentleman took from a Reformation-house, or somethin' o'that sort, where they put little thieves, as has only bin in quod forthe fust time. They say that many of 'em is saved, and turns out well,but this feller don't seem to have bin a crack specimen, for Sam'sremarks about him ain't complimentary. Here's the letter, mates,"continued Riggles, drawing a soiled epistle from his pocket; "it'll give'e a better notion than I can wot sort of a fix he's in, Will you readit, Bill Bowls?"

  "No, thankee," said Bill; "read it yerself, an' for any sake don't spellthe words if ye can help it."

  Thus admonished, Tom began to read the following letter from his wildbrother, interrupting himself occasionally to explain and commentthereon, and sometimes, despite the adjuration of Bill Bowls, to spell.We give the letter in the writer's own words:--

  "`My dear mother [it's to mother, d'ye see; he always writes to her, an'she sends the letters to me],--My dear mother, here we are all alive andkicking. My sweet wife is worth her weight in gold, though she does notpossess more of that precious metal than the wedding-ring on herfinger--more's the pity for we are sadly in want of it just now. Thebaby, too, is splendid. Fat as a prize pig, capable of roaring like amad bull, and, it is said, uncommonly like his father. We all send ourkind love to you, and father, and Tom. By the way, where _is_ Tom? Youdid not mention him in your last. I fear he is one of these rovingfellows whom the Scotch very appropriately style ne'er-do-weels. A badlot they are. Humph! you're one of 'em, Mister Sam, if ever there was,an' my only hope of ye is that you've got some soft places in yourheart.'"

  "Go on, Tom," said Ben Bolter; "don't cut in like that on the thread ofany man's story."

  "Well," continued Riggles, reading with great difficulty, "Sam goes onfor to say--"

  "`We thank you for your good wishes, and trust to be able to send you agood account of our proceedings ere long. [You see Sam was always of acheery, hopeful natur, he was.] We have now been on the place fifteendays, but have not yet begun the house, as we can get no money. Twobuilders have, however, got the plans, and we are waiting for theirsp-s-p-i-f- oh! spiflication; why, wot can that be?'"

  "It ain't spiflication, anyhow," said Bolter. "Spell it right through."

  "Oh! I've got him, it's _specification_," cried Riggles; "well--"

  "`Specification. Many things will cost more than we anticipated. Wehad to turn the family out who had squatted here, at two days' notice,as we could not afford to live at Kinmonday--that's the nearest town, Is'pose. How they managed to live in the log cabin I do not know, as,when it rained--and it has done so twice since we came, furiously--thewhole place was deluged, and we had to put an umbrella up in bed. Wehave had the roof raised and newly shingled, and are as comfortable ascan be expected. Indeed, the hut is admirably adapted for summerweather, as we can shake hands between the logs.

  "`The weather is very hot, although there has been much more rain thisseason than usual. There can be no doubt that this is a splendidcountry, both as regards soil and climate, and it seems a pity to seesuch land lying waste and unimproved for so many years. It farsurpasses my expectations, both in natural beauty and capabilities. Wehave a deal of work to do in the way of fencing, for at presenteverybody's livestock is running over a large part of our land; but wehaven't got money to buy fencing! Then we ought to have two horses, forthe boy that was sent to me from the Reformatory can plough; but again,we haven't a rap wherewith to buy them. One reason of this is that in anew place a fellow is not trusted at first, and the last two hundreddollars we had went in tools, household furniture, utensils, etcetera.We have been living on credit for an occasional chicken or duck from ourneighbours, which makes but a poor meal for three--not to mention baby,being very small--and George, that's the boy, having a tremendousappetite!

  "`I walked into town twice to try to get some meat, but although thereare ostensibly two butchers, I failed to get any. They actually wantedpayment for it! Heigho! how I wish that money grew on the trees--orbread. By the way, that reminds me that there are bread-fruit trees inthe South Sea Islands. I think I'll sell the farm and go there. Oneday I had the good luck to rescue a fine young chicken from the talonsof a big hawk, upon which we all made a good meal. I really don't knowwhat we should have done had it not been for the great abundance ofblackberries here. They are fine and large, and so plentiful that I cangather a bucketful in an hour. We have made them into jam and pies, andare now drying them for winter use. We have also hazel-nuts and plumsby the cart-load, and crab-apples in numbers almost beyond the power offigures to express. There is also a fruit about the size of a lime,which they call here the "May apple," but which I have named"omnifruct," as it combines the flavour of apples, pears, peaches,pine-apples, gooseberries, strawberries, rasps--in fact, it is hard totell what it does _not_ resemble. But after all, this is rather lightfood, and although very Eden-like living--_minus_ the felicity--it doesnot quite satisfy people who have been used most part of their lives tobeefsteak and stout.

  "`George came to me a week ago. The little rascal would have been heresooner, but first of all the stage-coach upset, and then he fell asleepand was carried ten miles beyond our clearing, and had to walk back asbest he could with a big bundle on his shoulder. He is an uncommonlysilent individual. We can hardly get him to utter a word. He does whathe is told, but I have first to show him how, and generally end by doingit myself. He appears to be a remarkably dead boy, but my excellentwife has taken him in hand, and will certainly strike some fire out ofhim if she
can't put it into him! She has just gone into town on aforaging expedition, and I fondly hope she may succeed in making a raiseof some edibles.

  "`I have distinguished myself lately by manufacturing a sideboard anddresser, as well as a table and bench for the female authority, andexpect to accomplish a henhouse and a gate next week. You see we workin hope. I fervently wish we could live on the same. However, I'mpretty jolly, despite a severe attack of rheumatism, which has not beenimproved by my getting up in the night and rushing out in my shirt tochase away trespassing cows and pigs, as we have not got a watch-dogyet.

  "`When my wife shuts her eyes at night her dreams are of one invariablesubject--blackberries! She cannot get rid of the impression, and I haveserious fears that we shall all break out in brambles. There are not somany mosquitoes here as I had expected; just enough to keep us lively.How I shall rejoice when we have got a cow! It will be a great savingin butter and milk to our neighbours, who at present supply us with suchthings on credit! We can raise here wheat, oats, Indian corn, etcetera.The only difficulties are the want of seed and money! But it is unkindin me writing to you, mother, in this strain, seeing that you can't helpme in my difficulties. However, don't take on about me. My motto is,"Never give in." Give our love to father, also to Tom. He's agood-hearted fellow is Tom, though I fear he'll never come to muchgood.--Believe me, your affectionate son, SAM. RIGGLES.'"

  "There," said Tom, folding up the letter; "what d'ye think o' that,mates?"

  Tom did not at that time get an answer to his question, for just as hespoke the order was given to beat to quarters for exercise, and in a fewminutes the decks were cleared, and every man at his post.

  But the order which had been given to engage in mimic warfare, for thesake of training the new hands, was suddenly changed into the command toclear for action in earnest, when the look-out reported a French vesselon the weather-bow. Sail was immediately crowded on the _Waterwitch_,and all was enthusiasm and expectation as they gave chase to the enemy.