It was obvious, whatever might be the reason, that terror possessed the cattle. At the creaking of the gate the nearest brutes retreated, pressing back against their fellows, lowering their heads; and yet not viciously, but as though to meet an unknown danger.

"Soh!" called the Vicar. "Soh, then! . . . upon my word," he went on whimsically, answering the appeal in their frightened, liquid eyes, "it's no use your asking me. You can't possibly be worse puzzled than I am!"

He thrust a passage between them and hurried down Pease Alley. Twice he paused, each time beneath the windows of a sleeping cottage, and hailed its occupants by name. No one answered. Only, on the other side of the alley, a few of the beasts ceased their lowing for a while, and, thrusting their faces over the wall, gazed at him with patient wonder.

At the lower end of the alley, where it makes an abrupt bend around the hinder premises of the "Ship" Inn before giving egress upon the street, the Vicar lifted his head and sniffed the morning air. Surely his nose detected a trace of smoke in it—not the reek of chimneys, but a smoke at once more fragrant and more pungent. . . .

Yes, smoke was drifting high among the elms above the church. The rooks, too, up there, were cawing loudly and wheeling in circles.

He dropped his gaze to his feet, and once more started back in alarm. A gutter crossed the alley here, and along it rushed and foamed a dark copper-coloured flood which, in an instant, his eye had traced up to the back doorstep of the "Ship," over which it poured in a cascade.

Beer? Yes; patently, to sight and smell alike, it was beer. With a cry, the Vicar ran towards the doorway, wading ankle-deep in beer as he crossed the threshold and broke in to the kitchen. The whole house swam with beer, but not with beer only; for when, no inmate answering his call, he followed the torrent up through yet another doorway and found himself in the inn cellar, in the dim light of its iron-barred window he halted to gaze before one, two, three, a dozen casks of ale, port, sherry, brandy, all pouring their contents in a general flood upon the brick-paved floor.

Here, as he afterwards confessed, his presence of mind failed him; and small blame to him, I say! Without a thought of turning off the taps, he waded back to the doorway and leaned there awhile to recover his wits with his breath.

While he leaned, gasping, with a hand against the door-jamb, the clock in the church tower above him chimed and struck the hour of five. He gazed up at it stupidly, saw the smoke drifting through the elm-tops beyond, heard the rooks cawing over them, and then suddenly bethought himself of the bell which had clanged amid his dreams.

Yes, it had been the clang of a real bell, and from his own belfry. But how could anyone have gained entrance into the church, of which he alone kept the keys? How? Why, by the little door at the east end of the south aisle, which stood ajar. Across the alley he could see it, and that it stood ajar; and more by token a heifer had planted her forefoot on the step and was nosing it wider. Someone had forced the lock. Someone was at this moment within the church!

The Vicar collected his wits and ran for it; thrust his way once more through the crowd of cattle, and through the doorway into the aisle, shouting a challenge. A groan from the belfry answered him, and there, in the dim light, he almost stumbled over a man seated on the cold flags of the pavement and feebly rubbing the lower part of his spine.

It is notoriously dangerous to ring a church bell without knowing the trick of it. Gunner Sobey, having broken into the belfry and laid hands on the first bell-rope (which happened to be that of the tenor), had pulled it vigorously, let go too late, and dropped a good ten feet plumb in a sitting posture.

"Good Lord!" The Vicar peered at him, stooping. "Is that Sobey?"

"It was," groaned Sobey. "I'll never be the same man again."

"But what has happened?"

"Happened? Why, I tumbled off the bell-rope. You might ha' guessed that."

"Yes, yes; but why?"

"Because I didn' know how it worked." Gunner Sobey turned his face away wearily and continued to rub his hurt. "I didn't know till now, either, that a man could be stunned at this end," he added.

"Man, I see you're suffering, but answer me for goodness' sake! What's the meaning of all these cattle outside, and the taps running, and the smoke up yonder on the hill? And why—?"

"I done my best," murmured Gunner Sobey drowsily. "Single-handed I done it, but I done my best."

"Are you telling me that all this has been your doing?"

"A man can't very well be ten detachments at once, can he?" demanded the Gunner, sitting erect of a sudden and speaking with an air of great lucidity. "At least not in the Artillery. The liquor, now— I've run it out of every public-house in the town; that was Detachment D's work. And the hayricks; properly speakin', they belonged to Detachment E, and I hadn' time to fire more than Farmer Coad's on my way down wi' the cattle. And the alarm bell, you may argue, wasn' any business of mine; an' I wish with all my heart I'd never touched the dam thing! But with the French at your doors, so to speak—"

"The French?"

"Didn' I tell you? Then I must have overlooked it. Iss, iss, the French be landed at Talland Cove, and murderin' as they come! And the Troy lads be cut down like a swathe o' grass; and I, only I, escaped to carry the news. And you call this a Millenyum, I suppose?" he wound up with sudden inconsequent bitterness.

But the Vicar apparently did not hear. "The French? The French?" he kept repeating. "Oh, Heaven, what's to be done?"

"If you was something more than a pulpit Christian," suggested Gunner Sobey, "you'd hoist me pickaback an' carry me over to hospital; for I can't walk with any degree of comfort, an' that's a fact. And next you'd turn to an' drive off the cattle inland, an' give warning as you go. 'Tis a question if I live out this night, an' 'tis another question if I want to; but, dead or alive, it sha'n't be said of me that I hadn' presence of mind."



CHAPTER XI.

THE MAJOR LEAVES US.

Two minutes later the Vicar, staggering up to the hospital door with Gunner Sobey on his back, came to a terrified halt as his ears caught the tramp, tramp of a body of men approaching from the direction of Passage Slip, which is the landing-place of the Little Ferry. He had scarce time to lower his burden upon the doorstep before the head of the company swung into view around the street corner. With a gasp he recognised them.

They were the Troy Gallants, and Major Hymen marched beside them. But they came with no banners waving, without tuck of drum—a sadly depleted corps, and by their countenances a sadly dejected one.

For the moment, however, in the revulsion of his feelings, the Vicar failed to observe this. He ran forward with both arms extended to greet the Major.

"My friend!" he cried tremulously. "You are alive!"

"Certainly," the Major answered. "Why not?" He was dishevelled, unshaven, travel-stained, haggard, and at the same time flushed of face. Also he appeared a trifle sulky.

"What has happened?"

"Well"—the Major turned on him almost viciously—"you may call it the Millennium!"

"But the French—?"

"Eh? Excuse me—I don't take your meaning. What French?"

"I was given to understand—we have been taking certain precautions," stammered the Vicar, and gazed around, seeking Gunner Sobey (but Gunner Sobey had dived into the hospital and was putting himself to bed). "You don't tell me the alarm was false!"

"My good Vicar, I haven't a notion at what you're driving; and excuse me again if in this hour of disgrace I find myself in no humour to halt here and bandy explanations."

"Disgrace?"

"Disgrace," repeated the Major, gazing sternly back on his abashed ranks. His breast swelled; he seemed on the point to say more; but, indignation mastering him, mutely with a wave of the hand he bade the Gallants resume their march. Mutely, contritely, with bowed heads, they obeyed and followed him down the street, leaving the Vicar at gaze.

What had happened? Why, this.—

After the fiasco in Talland Cove Captain Arbuthnot had formed up his Dragoons and given the word to ride back to Bodmin Barracks, their temporary quarters, whence Mr. Smellie had summoned them.

He was in the devil of a rage. From the Barracks to Talland Cove is a good fourteen miles as the crow flies, and you may allow another two miles for the windings of the road (which, by the way, was a pestilently bad one). To ride sixteen miles by night, chafing all the while under the orders of a civilian, and to return another sixteen, smarting, from a fool's errand, is (one must admit) excusably trying to the military temper. Smellie, to be sure, and Smellie alone, had been discomfited. Smellie's discomfiture had been so signally personal as to divert all ridicule from the Dragoons. Smellie, moreover, had made himself confoundedly obnoxious.

Smellie had given himself airs during the ride from Bodmin; and Captain Arbuthnot had with an ill grace submitted to them, because the fellow knew the country. They were quit of him now; but how to find the way home Captain Arbuthnot did not very well know. He rode forward boldly, however, keeping his eyes upon the stars, and steering, so far as the circuitous lanes would allow him, north by west.

Bearing away too far to the right, as men are apt to do in the darkness, he missed the cross-ways by Ashen-cross, whence his true line ran straight through Pelynt; and after an hour or so of blind-man's-buff in a maze of cornfields, the gates of which seemed to hide in the unlikeliest corners, emerged upon a fairly good high road, which at first deceived him by running west-by-north and then appeared to change its mind and, receding through west, took a determined southerly curve back towards the coast. In short, Captain Arbuthnot had entirely lost his bearings.

Deciding once more to trust the stars, he left the high road, struck due north across country again and by and by found himself entangled in a valley bottom beside the upper waters of the same stream which Gunner Sobey had forded two hours before and some miles below. The ground hereabouts was marshy, and above the swamp an almost impenetrable furze-brake clothed both sides of the valley. The Dragoons fought their way through, however, and were rewarded, a little before dawn, by reaching a good turf slope and, at the head of it, a lane which led them to the small village of Lanreath.

The inhabitants of Lanreath, aroused from their beds by the tramp of hoofs and with difficulty persuaded that their visitors were not the French, at length directed Captain Arbuthnot to the village inn, the "Punchbowl," where he wisely determined to bait and rest his horses, which by this time were nearly foundered. Being heavy brutes, they had fared ill in the morass, and the most of them were plastered with mud to their girths.

The troopers, having refreshed themselves with beer, flung themselves down to rest, some on the settles of the inn-kitchen, others on the benches about the door, and others again in the churchyard across the road, where they snored until high day under the curious gaze of the villagers.

So they slept for two hours and more; and then, being summoned by trumpet, mounted and took the road again, the most of them yet heavy with slumber and not a few yawning in their saddles and only kept from nodding off by the discomfort of their tall leathern stocks.

In this condition they had proceeded for maybe two miles, when from a by-lane on their left a horseman dashed out upon the road ahead, reined up, and, wheeling his horse in face of them, stood high in his stirrups and waved an arm towards the lane by which he had come.

It took Captain Arbuthnot some seconds to recognise this apparition for Mr. Smellie. But it was indeed that unfortunate man.

He had lost both hat and wig; his coat he had discarded, no doubt to be rid of its noisome odour: and altogether he cut the strangest figure as he gesticulated there in the early sunshine. But the man was in earnest—so much in earnest that he either failed to note, or noting, disregarded, the wrathful frown with which Captain Arbuthnot, having halted his troop, rode forward at a walk to meet him.

"Back, Captain, back!" shouted Mr. Smellie, pointing down the lane.

"I beg your pardon, sir"—the Captain reined up and addressed him with cold, incisive politeness—"but may I suggest that you have played the fool with us sufficiently for one night, and that my men's tempers are short?"

"Havers!" exclaimed the indomitable Smellie, rising yet higher in his stirrups and lifting a hand for silence. "I ask ye to listen to the racket down yonder. The drum, now!" (Sure enough Captain Arbuthnot, pricking his ears, heard the tunding of a drum far away in the woods to the southward.) "Man, they've diddled us! While they put that trick on us at Talland Cove, their haill womankind was rafting the true cargo up the river. I've ridden down, I tell you, and the clue of their game I hold in my two hands here from start to finish. The brandy's yonder in Sir Felix's woods, and the men are lying around it fou-drunk as the Israelites among the pots. Man, if ye would turn to-night's laugh, turn your troop and follow, and ye shall cull them like gowans!"

"It is throwing the haft after the hatchet," hesitated Captain Arbuthnot, impressed against his will by the earnestness of the appeal. "You have misled us once to-night, I must remind you; and I give you fair warning that my troopers will not bear fooling twice."

With all his faults the Riding Officer did not lack courage. Disdaining the threat, he waved his hand to the Dragoons to follow and put his horse at a canter down the leafy lane.

It is recorded in the High History of the Grail, of Sir Lohot, son of King Arthur, that he had a marvellous weakness; which was, that no sooner had he slain a man than he fell across his body. So it happened this night to the valiant men of Troy.

The Dragoons, emerging from the woods of Pentethy into close view of the house and its terrace and slope that falls from the terrace to the river, found themselves intruders upon the queerest of domestic dramas.

On the terrace among the leaden gods danced a little man, wigless, in an orange-coloured dressing-gown and a fury of choler. At the head of the green slope immediately under the balustrade Major Hymen, surrounded by a moderately sober staff, faced the storm in an attitude at once dignified and patient.

"An idea has occurred to me," he put in at length with stately deliberation as Sir Felix paused panting for fresh words of opprobrium. "It is, sir, that overlooking the few minutes by which our salvoes were—er—antedated, you allow us to acclaim your latest-born as Honorary-Colonel of our corps."

"But," almost shrieked Sir Felix, "damn your eyes, it's twins—and both girls!"

The Major winced. A rosy flush of indignation mantled his cheeks, and only his habitual respect for the landed gentry (whom he was accustomed to call the backbone of England) checked him on the verge of a severe retort. As it was, he answered with fine suavity.

"There is no true patriot, Sir Felix, but desires an accelerated increase in our population just now, whether male or female. I trust your good lady's zeal may be rewarded by a speedy recovery."

Sir Felix fairly capered. "Accelerated! Acc—" he began, and, choking over the word, turned and caught sight of the Dragoons as they emerged from the woods, the sunlight flashing on their cuirasses.

He fell back against the pedestal of a leaden effigy of Julius Caesar and plucked his dressing-gown about him with fumbling bewildered hands. Was the whole British Army pouring into his peaceful park? What had he done to bring down on his head the sportive mockery of heaven, and at such a moment?

But in the act of collapsing he looked across the balustrade and saw the Major's face suddenly lose its colour. Then in an instant he understood and pulled himself together.

"Hey? A hunt breakfast, is it?" he inquired sardonically, and turned to welcome the approaching troop. "Good morning, gentlemen! You have come to draw my covers? Then let me suggest your beginning with the plantation yonder to the right, where I can promise you good sport."

It was unneighbourly; an action remembered against Sir Felix to the close of his life, as it deserved to be. He himself admitted later that he had given way to momentary choler, and made what amends he could by largess to the victims and their families. But it was long before he recovered his place in our esteem. Indeed, he never wholly recovered it: since of many dire consequences there was one, unforeseen at the time, which proved to be irreparable. Over the immediate consequences let me drop the curtain. Male, male feriati Troes! . . . As a man at daybreak takes a bag and, going into the woods, gathers mushrooms, so the Dragoons gathered the men of Troy. . . . Mercifully the most of them were unconscious.

Even less heart have I to dwell on the return of the merrymakers:

"But now, ye shepherd lasses, who shall lead Your wandering troops, or sing your virelays?"

Sure no forlorner procession ever passed down Troy river than this, awhile so jocund, mute now, irresponsive to the morning's smile, the cuckoo's blithe challenge from the cliff. To the Major, seated in the stern sheets of the leading boat, no one dared to speak. They supposed his pecuniary loss to be heavier than it actually was— since the Dragoons had after all surprised but a portion of the cargo, and the leafy woods of Pentethy yet concealed many scores of tubs of eau-de-vie; but they knew that he brooded over no pecuniary loss. He had been outraged, betrayed as a neighbour, as a military commander, and again as a father of his people; wounded in the house of his friends; scourged with ridicule in the very seat of his dignity. Maidens, inconsolable for lovers snatched from them and now bound for Bodmin Gaol, hushed their sorrow and wiped their tears by stealth, abashed before those tragic eyes which, fixed on the river reach ahead, travelled beyond all petty private woe to meet the end of all things with a tearless stare.

So they returned, drew to the quays, and disembarked, unwitting yet of worse discoveries awaiting them.

In the hospital Gunner Sobey, having dived into bed, with great presence of mind fell asleep. The Vicar had fled the town by the North, or Passage, Gate, and was by this time devouring a country walk in long strides, heedless whither they led him, vainly endeavouring to compose his thoughts and readjust his prophecies in the light of the morning's events—a process which from time to time compelled him to halt and hold his head between both hands.

The Major had slammed his front door, locked himself in his room, and would give audience to no one.

It was in vain that the inhabitants besieged his porch, demanding to know if the town were bewitched. Who had gutted their shops? Why the causeways swam with strong liquor? How the churchyard came to be full of cattle? What hand had fired Farmer Elford's ricks? In short, what in the world had happened, and what was to be done? They came contritely, conscious of their undeserving; but to each and all Scipio, from the head of the steps, returned the same answer. His master was indisposed.

Troy, ordinarily a busy town, did no business at all that day. Tradesmen and workmen in small groups at every street-corner discussed a mystery—or rather a series of mysteries—with which, as they well knew, one man alone was competent to grapple. To his good offices they had forfeited all right. Nevertheless, a crowd hung about all day in front of the Mayor's house, nor dispersed until long after nightfall. At eight o'clock next morning they reassembled, word having flown through the town that Dr. Hansombody and Lawyer Chinn had been summoned soon after daybreak to a private conference. At eight-thirty the Vicar arrived and entered the house, Scipio admitting him with ceremony and at once shutting the door behind him with an elaborate show of caution.

But at a quarter to ten precisely the door opened again and the great man himself stood on the threshold. He wore civilian dress, and carried a three-caped travelling cloak on his left arm. His right hand grasped a valise. The sight of the crowd for a moment seemed to discompose him. He drew back a pace and then, advancing, cleared his throat.

"My friends," said he, "I am bound on a journey. Your consciences will tell you if I deserved yesterday's indignity, and how far you might have obviated it. But I have communed with myself and decided to overlook all personal offence. It is enough that certain of our fellow-townsmen are in durance, and I go to release them. In short, I travel to-day to Plymouth to seek the best legal advice for their defence. In my absence I commit the good behaviour of Troy to your keeping, one and all."

You, who have read how, when Nelson left Portsmouth for death and victory, the throng pressed after him down the beach in tears, and ran into the water for a last grasp of his hand, conceive with what emotion we lined up and escorted our hero to the ferry; through what tears we watched him from the Passage Slip as he waved back from the boat tiding him over to the farther shore, where at length Boutigo's Van—"The Eclipse," Troy to Torpoint, No Smoking Inside—received and bore him from our straining eyes.



CHAPTER XII.

A COLD DOUCHE ON A HOT FIT.

There lived at Plymouth, in a neat house at the back of the Hoe, and not far from the Citadel, a certain Mr. Basket, a retired haberdasher of Cheapside, upon whom the Major could count for a hospitable welcome. The two had been friends—cronies almost—in their London days; dining together daily at the same cook-shop, and as regularly sharing after dinner a bottle of port to the health of King George and Mr. Pitt. Nor, since their almost simultaneous retreat from the capital, had they allowed distance to diminish their mutual regard. They frequently corresponded, and their letters included many a playful challenge to test one another's West Country hospitality.

Now while the Major had (to put it mildly) but exchanged one sphere of activity for another, Mr. Basket, a married man, embraced the repose of a contemplative life; cultivating a small garden and taking his wife twice a week to the theatre, of which he was a devotee. These punctual jaunts, very sensibly practised as a purge against dullness, together with the stir and hubbub of a garrison town in which his walled garden stood isolated, as it were, all day long, amid marchings, countermarchings, bugle-calls, and the rumble of wagons filled with material of war, gave him a sense of being in the swim—of close participation in the world's affairs; failing which a great many folk seem to miss half the enjoyment of doing nothing in particular.

Mr. Basket welcomed the Major cordially, with a dozen rallying comments on his healthy rural complexion, and carried him off to admire the garden while Mrs. Basket enlarged her preparations for dinner at five o'clock.

The garden was indeed calculated to excite admiration, less for its flowers—for Mr. Basket confessed ruefully that very few flowers would grow with him—than for a hundred ingenuities by which this defect was concealed.

"And the beauty of it is," announced Mr. Basket, with a wave of his hand towards a black-and-white edging compound of marrow bones and the inverted bases of wine bottles, disposed alternately, "it harbours no slugs. It saves labour, too; you would be surprised at the sum it used to cost me weekly in labour alone. But," he went on, "I pin my faith to oyster shells. They are, if in a nautical town one may be permitted to speak breezily, my sheet anchor." He indicated a grotto at the end of the walk. "Maria and me did the whole of that."

"Mrs. Basket is fond of gardening?" hazarded the Major.

"She's extraordinary partial to oysters," Mr. Basket corrected him. "We made it a principle from the first to use nothing but what we consumed in the house. That don't apply to the statuary, of course, which I have purchased at one time and another from an Italian dealer who frequents the Hoe. The material is less durable than one might wish; but I could not afford marble. The originals of these objects, so the dealer informs me, are sold for very considerable sums of money; in addition to which," went on Mr. Basket, lucidly, "he carries them in a tray on his head, which, in the case of marble, would be out of the question; and, as it is, how he contrives to keep 'em balanced passes my understanding. But he is an intelligent fellow, and becomes very communicative as soon as he finds out you have leanings for Art. Here's a group, for instance—Cupid and Fisky—in the nude."

"But, excuse me—" The Major stepped back and rubbed his chin dubiously, for some careful hand had adorned the lovers with kilts of pink wool in crochet work, and Psyche, in addition, wore a neat pink turnover.

"The artist designed 'em in the nude, but Maria worked the petticoats, having very decided views, for which I don't blame her. It keeps off the birds, too: not that the birds could do the same damage here as in an ordinary garden."

"I can well believe that."

"But we were talking of oyster shells. They are, as I say, our stand-by. To be sure, you can't procure 'em all the year round, like marrow bones for instance; but, as I tell Maria, from a gardening point of view that's almost a convenience. You can work at your beds whenever there's an 'r' in the month, and then, during the summer, take a spell, look about, and enjoy the results. Besides, it leaves you free to plan out new improvements. Now, here"—Mr. Basket caught his friend's arm, and leading him past a bust of Socrates ("an Athenian," he explained in passing; "considered one of the wisest men of antiquity, though not good-looking in our sense of the word "), paused on the brink of a small basin, cunningly sunk in centre of a round, pebble-paved area guarded by statuary—"I consider this my masterpiece."

"A fish-pond!"

"Yes, and containing real fish; goldfish, you perceive. I keep it supplied from a rain-water cistern at the top of the house, and feed 'em on bread-crumbs. Never tell me," said Mr. Basket, "that animals don't reason!"

"You certainly have made yourself a charming retreat," the Major admitted, gazing about him.

Mr. Basket beamed. "You remember the lines I was wont to declaim to you, my friend, over our bottle in Cheapside?—

"'May I govern my passion with an absolute sway, And grow wiser and better as my strength wears away, Without gout or stone, by a gentle decay. . . .'"

"For the last, it must be as Heaven pleases; but to some extent, you see, I have come to enjoy my modest aspirations. Only until to-day one thing was lacking. As poor Bannister used to quote it in the play—you remember him?—

"'I've often wished that I had clear For life six hundred pounds a year A something-or-other house to lodge a friend. . . .'

"Ay, my dear Hymen," Mr. Basket wrung the Major's hand with genuine feeling, "you have been a long time putting off this visit; but, now we have you, I promise we don't let you go in a hurry. We will toast old days; we will go visit the play together as of old—yes, this very night. For, as luck will have it, the stock company at the Theatre Royal makes way to-night—for whom think you? No less a man than Orlando B. Sturge, and in his great part of Tom Taffrail in Love Between Decks; or, The Triumph of Constancy; a week's special engagement with his own London company in honour of the Duke of Clarence, who is paying us a visit just now at Admiralty House."

"Sturge?" echoed the Major, doubtfully.

"Good heavens, my dear fellow, don't tell me you haven't heard of him! Really, now, really, you bury yourself—believe me, you do. Why, for nautical parts, the stage hasn't his equal; and a voice, they tell me, like Incledon's in his prime! Mrs. Basket and I have reserved seats, and, now I come to think of it, we had best step down to the theatre before dining, book yours, and arrange it so that we sit in a row. The house will be crowded, if 'tis only for a view of his Royal Highness, who will certainly attend if—hem!—equal to the effort."

"I had not heard of his being indisposed."

"Nor is he, at this hour. But now and then . . . after his fourth bottle . . . However, as I say, the house will certainly be crowded."

"You'll excuse me, my friend, if I beg that you and your good wife will trot off to the theatre to-night without troubling about me. The—er—fact is, I have come up to Plymouth primarily to consult a lawyer on a somewhat delicate business, and shall be glad of a few hours' solitude this evening to prepare my case. Do you happen, by the way, to know of a good lawyer? I wish for the very best advice procurable."

"Eh—eh? Delicate business, you say? My dear fellow, no entanglement, I hope? You always were, you know. . . . But I've said it a thousand times—you ought to get married; and Maria agrees with me . . . a man of your presence, carrying his years as you do. Eh? You're blushing, man. Then maybe 'tis the real thing, and you've come up to talk over settlements?"

"Tut-tut!" interposed the Major, who indeed had coloured up, and apparently not with annoyance. "There's no woman at all in the case I'm referring to." But here he checked himself. "Nay, I forgot; I'm wrong there," he admitted; "and if she hadn't had twins, I don't believe 'twould have happened."

"Curious circumstance to forget," murmured Mr. Basket; but, perceiving that the Major was indisposed to be communicative, pressed him no further.

At dinner Mrs. Basket, whose welcome had at first been qualified by the prospect of having to give to the unexpected guest her seat at Love Between Decks (on which, good soul, she had set her heart), showed herself in her most amiable light. She was full of apologies for deserting him. "If he had only given them warning. Not but that she was delighted; and even now, if the Major would make use of her ticket . . . And to leave him alone in the house—for the 'maid' lived two streets away, and slept at home—it sounded so inhospitable, did it not? But she hoped the Major would find his room comfortable; there was a table for writing; and supper would be laid in the parlour, if he should feel tired after his journey and wish to retire to bed before their return. Would he be good enough to forbear standing upon ceremony, and remember the case-bottles in the cellaret on the right-hand of the sideboard? Also, by the way, he must take temporary possession of the duplicate latchkey; and then," added Mrs. Basket, "we shall feel you are quite one of us."

The Major, on his part, could only trust that his unexpected visit would not be allowed to mar for one moment Mrs. Basket's enjoyment of Love Between Decks. On that condition only could he feel that he had not unwarrantably intruded; on those terms only that he was being treated in sincerity as an old friend. "I am an old campaigner, madam. Permit me, using an old friend's liberty, to congratulate you on the flavour of this boiled mutton."

In short, the Major showed himself the most complaisant of guests. At dessert, observing that Mr. Basket's eye began to wander towards the clock on the mantelpiece, he leapt up, protesting that he should never forgive himself if, through him, his friends missed a single line of Love Between Decks.

Mr. Basket rose to his feet, with a half-regretful glance at the undepleted decanter.

"To-morrow night," said he, "we will treat old friendship more piously. Believe me, Hymen, if it weren't for the seats being reserved—"

"My dear fellow," the Major assured him, with a challenging smile for Mrs. Basket, "if you don't come back and tell me you've forgotten for three hours my very existence, I shall pack my valise and tramp off to an inn."

Having dismissed the worthy couple to the theatre—but a couple of streets distant—the Major retired with glass and decanter to his room, drank his quantum, smoked two pipes of tobacco very leisurably, and then, with a long sigh, drew up his chair to the table (which Mrs. Basket had set out with writing materials) and penned, with many pauses for consideration, the following letter; which, when the reader has perused it, will sufficiently explain why our hero had blushed a while ago under Mr. Basket's interrogatory.

"My dear Martha,—'Sweet,' says our premier poet, 'are the uses of adversity.' The indignity (I will call it no less) to which my fellow-townsmen by their folly, and Sir Felix by his perfidy, have recently subjected me, is not without its compensations. On the one hand it has disillusioned me; on the other it has removed the scales from my eyes. It has, indeed, inspired me with a disgust of public life; it has taught me to think more meanly of mankind as a whole. But while weaning my ambitions— perhaps too abruptly—from a wider sphere, it has directed me upon a happiness which has—dare I say it?—awaited me all the while beside the hearth.

"Let me avow, dear cousin, that when first this happy inspiration seized me, I had much ado—you know my promptitude of old—to refrain from seeking you at once and pressing my suit with that ardour which the warmth of my purpose dictated. On second thoughts, however, I decided to spare your emotions that sudden assault, and to make my demand in writing—in military phrase, to summon the garrison in form.

"Your tender consideration of my comfort over a period of years induces me to believe that a stronger claim on that consideration for the future may not be a matter of indifference to you. In short, I have the honour to offer you my hand, with every assurance of a lifelong fidelity and esteem. The station I ask you to adorn will be a private one. I am here to consult a lawyer how best I may release from the consequences of their folly the unfortunate men who betrayed me. This done, I lay down my chain of office and resign my commission. I will not deny that there are wounds; I look to domestic felicity to provide a balm for them. Hansombody, no doubt, will succeed me; and on the whole I am satisfied that he will passably fill an office which, between ourselves, he has for some time expected. I hope to return the day after to-morrow, and to receive the blushing answer on which I have set my heart.—Believe me, dear Coz, your affectionate

"Sol. Hymen."

Cynics tell us that one-half of the proposals of marriage made by men are the direct result of pique. How closely this proposal of the Major's coincided with the recoil of his public humiliation I do not pretend to determine. Certain it is that he had no sooner written and sealed his letter than the shadow of a doubt began to creep over his hot fit.

He started up, lit his long pipe, and fell to pacing the room with agitated strides. Was he doing wisely? Matrimony, he had sometimes told his friends, is like a dip in the sea; the wise man takes it at a plunge, head first. Yes, yes; but had he given it quite sufficient reflection? Could he promise himself he would never regret? He was not doubting that Miss Marty would make him an excellent wife. Admirable creature, she bore every test he could apply. She was gentle, companionable, intelligent in converse, yet never forward in giving an opinion; too studious, rather, to efface herself; in household management economical without being penurious; a notable cook and needlewoman; in person by no means uncomely, and in mind as well as person so scrupulously neat that her unobtrusive presence, her noiseless circumspect flittings from room to room, exhaled an atmosphere of daintiness in which it was good to dwell. No, he had no anxiety about Miss Marty. But could he be sure of himself? Had he really and truly and for ever put the ambitions of public life behind him? Might they not some day re-awaken as this present wound healed and ceased to smart?

If he sent this letter, he had burnt his boats. He halted before the table and stood for a while considering; stood there so long that his pipe went out unheeded. Ought he not to re-write his proposal and word it so as to leave himself a loophole? As he conned the name on the address, by some trick of memory he found himself repeating Miss Marty's own protest against the Millennium: "Why couldn't we be let alone, to go on comfortably?"

Confound the Millennium! Was it at the bottom of this too? The plaguy thing had a knack of intruding itself, just now, into all he undertook, and always mischievously. It was unsettling—Miss Marty's word again—infernally unsettling. He had begun to lose confidence in himself.

The room was hot. He stepped to the window, flung it open, and drank in the cool air of the summer night. Below him lay the garden, wherein Mr. Basket's statuary showed here and there a glimmer in the velvet darkness. The Major turned back to the room and began to undress slowly; removing his wig, his coat, his waistcoat, and laying them on a chair. Next he turned out his breeches pockets and tossed his purse, with a handful of loose silver, upon the bed. With it there jingled the spare latchkey with which Mrs. Basket had entrusted him.

He picked it up. . . . Yes, why should he not take a turn in the garden to compose his mind? In his present agitation he was not likely to woo slumber with success. . . . He slipped on his coat again and descended the stairs, latchkey in hand. A lamp burned in the hall, and by the light of it he read the hour on the dial of a grandfather's clock that stood sentry beside the dining-room door— five-and-twenty minutes past ten. The Baskets would not be returning for another hour at least. He unlatched the front door, stepped out, and closed it softly behind him.

Now mark how simply—how, with a short laugh—by the crook of a little finger, as it were—the envious gods topple down the tallest human pride.

The Major descended the front steps, halted for a moment to peer at a statuette of Hercules resting on his club, and passed on down the central path of the garden with a smile for his worthy friend's foible. A dozen paces, and his toe encountered the rim of Mr. Basket's fish-pond. . . .

The Major went into Mr. Basket's fish-pond souse!—on all fours, precipitately, with hands wildly clawing the water amid the astonished goldfish.

The echo of the splash had hardly lost itself in the dark garden-alleys before he scrambled up, coughing and sputtering, and struggling to shore rubbed the water from his eyes. Now the basin had not been cleaned out for some months, and beneath the water, which did not exceed a foot and a half in depth, there lay a good two inches of slime and weed, some portion of which his knuckles were effectively transferring to his face. He had lost a shoe. Worse than this, as he stood up, shook the water out of his breeches and turned to escape back to the house, it dawned on him that he had lost the latchkey!

He had been carrying it in his hand at the moment of the catastrophe. . . . He sat down on the pebbled path beside the basin, flung himself upon his stomach and, leaning over the brink as far as he dared, began to grope in the mud. After some minutes he recovered his shoe, but by and by was forced to abandon the search for the key as hopeless. He had no lantern. . . .

He cast an appealing glance up at the light in his bedroom window. His gaze travelled down to the fanlight over the front door. And with that the dreadful truth broke on him. Without the latchkey he could not possibly re-enter the house.

He unlaced and drew on his sodden shoe, and sat for a while considering. Should he wait here in this dreadful plight until his hosts returned? Or might he not run down to the theatre (which lay but two short streets away), explain the accident to a doorkeeper, and get a message conveyed to Mr. Basket? Yes, this was clearly the wiser course. The streets—thank Heaven!—were dark.

He crept to the front gate and peered forth. The roadway was deserted. Taking his courage in both hands, he stepped out upon the pavement and walked briskly downhill to the theatre. The distance was a matter of five or six hundred yards only, and he met nobody. Coming in sight of the brightly-lit portico, he made a dash for it and up the steps, where he blundered full tilt into the arms of a tall doorkeeper at the gallery entrance.

"Hallo!" exclaimed the man, falling back. "Get out of this!"

"One moment, my friend—"

"Damme!" The doorkeeper, blocking the entrance, surveyed him and whistled. "Hi, Charley!" he called; "come and take a look at this!"

A scrag-necked youth thrust his face forward from the aperture of the ticket-office.

"Well, I'm jiggered," was his comment. "Drunk, eh? Throw him out!"

"If you'll listen for a moment," pleaded the Major, with dignity, and began to search in the pockets of his sodden breeches. "I wish a message taken . . . but dear me, now I remember, I left my money upstairs!"

"On the gilded dressing-table beside the diamond tiyara," suggested the doorkeeper. "Or maybe you cast it down, careless, on the moonlit shore afore taking your dip!"

"My good man, I assure you that I am the victim of an accident. It so happens that, by a singular chain of mischance, I have not at this moment a penny about me. But if you will go to the reserved row of the pit and fetch out my friend Mr. Basket—"

At this point the Major felt a hand clapped on his shoulder, and turning, was aware of two sailors, belted and wearing cutlasses, who, having lurched up the steps arm-in-arm, stood to gaze, surveying him with a frank interest.

"What's wrong, eh?" demanded the one who had saluted him, and turned to his comrade, a sallow-faced man with a Newgate fringe of a beard. "Good Lord, Bill, what is it like?"

"It looks like a wreck ashore," answered the sallow-faced sailor after a slow inspection.

"Talk about bein' fond of the theayter! He must have swum for it," said the other, and stared at the Major round-eyed. "You'll excuse me; Ben Jope, my name is, bos'n of the Vesuvius bomb; and this here's my friend Bill Adams, bos'n's mate. As I was sayin', you'll excuse me, but you must be fond of it—a man of your age—by the little you make of appearances."

"I was just explaining," stammered the Major, "that although, most unfortunately, I have left my purse at home—"

But here he paused as Mr. Jope looked at Mr. Adams, and Mr. Adams answered with a slow and thoughtful wink.

"Go where you will," said Mr. Jope cheerfully, stepping to the ticket-office; "go where you will, and sail the high seas over, 'tis wonderful how you run across that excuse. Three tickets for the gallery, please; and you, Bill, fall alongside!" He linked an arm in the Major's, who feebly resisted.

"Lord love ye!" said Mr. Jope, "the lie's an old one; but a man that played up to it better in appearances I never see'd nor smelt!"



CHAPTER XIII.

A VERY HOT PRESS.

The performance of Love Between Decks had reached its famous fourth act, in which Tom Taffrail, to protect his sweetheart (who has followed him to sea in man's attire), strikes the infamous First Lieutenant and is marched off between two marines for punishment. This scene, as everyone knows, is laid on the upper deck of his Majesty's ship Poseidon (of seventy-four guns), and the management, as a condition of engaging Mr. Orlando B. Sturge (who was exacting in details), had mounted it, at great expense, with a couple of lifelike guns, R. and L., and for background the overhang of the quarter-deck, with rails and a mizzen-mast of real timber against a painted cloth representing the rise of the poop.

At the moment when our Major entered the gallery, the heated atmosphere of which well nigh robbed him of breath, Tom Taffrail had taken up his position on the prompt side, close down by the footlights, and thrown himself into attitude to deliver the speech of manly defiance which provokes the Wicked Lieutenant to descend into the waist of the ship and receive the well-merited weight of the hero's fist. The hero, with one foot planted on a coil of real rope and one arm supporting the half-inanimate form of his Susan, in deference to stage convention faced the audience, while with his other arm uplifted he invoked vengeance upon the oppressor, who scowled down from the quarterdeck rail.

"Hear me, kyind Heaven!" declaimed Tom Taffrail, "for Heaven at least is my witness, that beneath the tar-stained shirt of a British sailor there may beat the heart of a Man!"—

As a matter of fact, Mr. Sturge was clothed in a clean blue and white striped shirt, with socks to match, white duck trousers no less immaculate, with a huge glittering brass buckle on the front of his belt, two buckles of smaller size but similar pattern on his polished dancing shoes, and wore his hair in a natty pigtail tied with cherry-coloured ribbon.

—"Hear and judge betwixt me and yonder tyrant! Let the storm off Pernambuco declare who first sprang to the foretop and thence aloft to strike t'gallant yards while the good ship Poseidon careened before its hurricane rage! Ay, and when the main topm'st went smack-smooth by the board, who was it slid like lightning to the deck and, with hands yet glowing from the halliards, plucked forth axe and hewed the wreckage clear? But a truce to these reminders! 'Twas my duty, and, as a seaman, I did it!"

Here, having laid his tender burden so that her back rested against the coil of real rope, Mr. Sturge executed the opening steps of a hornpipe, and advancing to the footlights, stood swaying with crossed arms while the orchestra performed the prelude to his most celebrated song.

At this point Mr. Jope, who for some seconds had been breathing hard at the back of the Major's neck, clutched his comrade by the arm.

"You 'eard that, Bill?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

"Ay," answered Bill Adams. "He slipped down from the t'gallant yards by the halliards."

"Would ye mind pinchin' me?"

"Where?"

"Anywhere; in the fleshy part of the ham for choice; not too vigorous, but just to make sure. He come down by the halliards. Which halliards?"

"Signal halliards, belike. Damme, why not? Aboard a vessel with the decks laid ath'artships—"

"An' the maintopm'st went smack-smooth—you 'eard him? What sort o' spar—"

"Dunno"—Bill paused and audibly shifted his quid—"unless 'twas a parsnip. The mizz'n-m'st seems to have stood it, though her stays do lead to a brass-headed nail in the scuppers."

"In a gale off Pernambuco . . . 'twas his duty, and as a seaman he did it," quoted Mr. Jope in a low voice thrilled with awe. "Bill, we must 'ave him. If he did but 'alf of it, we must 'ave him. In them togs, aboard the Vesuvius now . . . Lord love me, he's dancin'!"

"Ay, and he's going to sing."

"Sing!"

"Mark my word, he's going to sing," repeated Bill Adams with confidence; and, sure enough, Mr. Sturge stepped forward and with a reproachful glance at the empty Royal box uplifted his voice:

"When honest Jack across the foam Puts forth to meet the Gallic foe, His tributary tear for home He wipes away with a Yow-heave-ho! Man the braces, Take your places, Fill the tot and push the can; He's a lubber That would blubber When Britannia needs a Man!"

"S'help us, Bill, what are they doing now?" gasped Ben Jope, as two groups of seamen, one at either wing, took up the chorus; tailing on to a cable and heaving while they sang.

"Fishin' the anchor," said Bill pensively; "that's what they're doin'. She carries her catheads amidships. The ship's all right, once you get the hang of her."

"Bill, we must 'ave him!"

"Hush it, you swab! He's beginning again."

"But when among the heaving clouds, Aloft, alone, with folded arms, He hangs her portrait in the shrouds And feeds on Susan's glowing charms, To th' horizon Soft his sighs on Angel wings the zephyrs fan, While his feelings, Deep revealings, Prove that Jack remains a Man!"

"'Ear that, Bill?"

"O' course I 'ears it. Why not? I knew there was something funny wi' them shrouds. They carries the family portraits on 'em—it's all right, I tell you."

"But 'feeds,' he said."

"Meanin' the picter; though maybe they sling the meat-safe there as well. They ought to."

"They couldn't!"

"Why not? Well, then, p'raps they strikes it now and then in a gale—off Pernambuco—along wi' the t'gallant yards. Stow yer talk, Ben Jope, and let a man listen."

The audience encored Mr. Sturge's song vociferously; and twice he had to repeat it before they would suffer him to turn again and defy the still scowling Lieutenant.

"Ay, sir; the British seaman, before whose collective valour the crowned tyrants of Yurope shrink with diminished heads, dares to proclaim himself a Man, and in despite of any petty tyrant of the quarter-deck. Humble his lot, his station, may be. Callous he himself may be to the thund'ring of the elements or the guns of his country's foemen; but never will he be found irresponsive to female distress in any shape or form. Leftenant Vandeloor, you have upraised your hand against A Woman; you have struck her a Blow. In your teeth I defy you!" (Frantic applause.)

"My word, Bill, the Duke ought to been here to 'ear that!"

"But why isn't he here?" asked the Major.

"Well," answered Ben Jope slowly, with a glance along the crowded gallery and a wink at Bill Adams (but the Major saw neither the glance nor the wink), "to-night, d'ye see, 'twouldn't ha' been altogether the thing. He's not like you and me, the Duke isn't. He has to study appearances."

"I should have thought that, if his Royal Highness studied popularity, he could scarcely have found a better occasion."

"Look here," put in Mr. Jope sharply, "if the Duke chooses to be drunk to-night, you may lay to it he knows his business. And look here again; I took you for a victim o' misfortun', but if so be as you're startin' to teach the R'yal family tact, w'y, I changes my opinion."

"If I could only find my friend Basket, or get a message taken to him," ingeminated the Major, whose teeth were chattering despite the tropical atmosphere of the gallery.

"Eh? What's that you're sayin'?" the seaman demanded in a sudden sharp tone of suspicion. "If there's a friend o' your'n in the gallery, you keep by me and point him out when the time comes. I ain't a-makin' no promise, mind; no more than to say it may be the better for him; but contrariwise I don't allow no messages, and you may belay to that!"

"But my friend is not in the gallery. He has a reserved seat somewhere."

"Then you may take it he don't require no message, bein' toler'bly safe. As for yourself, you stick to me. Understand? Whatever happens, you stick to me."

The Major did not understand in the least; but their conversation at this moment was interrupted by a roar of applause from all quarters of the house as Tom Taffrail, with a realistic blow from the shoulder, laid his persecutor prostrate on the deck.

"Brayvo!" grunted Bill Adams. "The lad's nimble enough with his fives, I will say, for all his sea-lawyerin'."

"We must 'ave him, Bill; if I take him myself we must 'ave him!" cried Ben Jope, dancing with admiration. '"Tis no more than a mercy, neither, after the trouble he's been and laid up for hisself."

Into what precise degree of mental confusion Mr. Jope had worked himself the Major could never afterwards determine; though he soon had every opportunity to think it out at leisure.

For the moment, as a boatswain's whistle shrilled close behind his ear, he was merely bewildered. He did not even know that the mouth sounding it was Mr. Jope's. It ought to have sounded on board H.M.S. Poseidon.

As the crowd to right and left of him surged to its feet, he saw at intervals along the gallery, sailor after sailor leap up with drawn cutlass. He saw some forcing their way to the exits; and as the packed throng, swaying backwards, bore him to the giddy edge of the gallery rails, he saw the whole audience rise from their seats with white upturned faces.

"The Press!" called someone. Half a dozen, then twenty, then a hundred voices took up the cry:

"The Press! The Press!"

He turned. What had become of Mr. Jope?

What, indeed? Cutlass between teeth, Mr. Jope had heaved himself over the gallery rail, caught a pillar between his dangling feet, and slid down it to the Upper Circle; from the Upper Circle to the Dress Circle; from the Dress Circle to the Pit. A dozen seamen hurrahed and followed him. To the audience screaming, scattering before them, they paid no heed at all. Their eyes were on their leader, and in silence, breathing hard, each man's teeth clenched upon his cutlass, they hounded after him and across the Pit at his heels.

It may be that this vivid reproduction of his alleged exploit off Pernambuco for the moment held Mr. Orlando B. Sturge paralysed. At any rate, he stood by the footlights staring, with a face on which resentment faded into amaze, amaze into stupefaction.

It is improbable that he dreamed of any personal danger until the moment when Mr. Jope, leaping the orchestra and crashing, on his way, through an abandoned violoncello, landed across the footlights and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Never you mind, lad!" cried Mr. Jope cheerfully, taking the cutlass from between his teeth and waving it. "You'll get better treatment along o' we."

"What mean you? Unhand me—Off, I say, minion!"

"It'll blow over, lad; it'll blow over. You take my advice and come quiet—Oh, but we want you!—an' if you hear another word about this evening's work I'll forfeit my mess."

"Hands off, ruffian! Help, I say, there—Help!"

"Shame! Shame!" cried a dozen voices. But nine-tenths of the audience were already pressing around the doors to escape.

At a nod from Mr. Jope, two seamen ran and cut the cords supporting the drop-scene.

"Heads, there! Heads!"

The great roller fell upon the stage with a resounding bang.

With the thud of it, a hand descended and smote upon the Major's shoulder.

"Come along o' me. You'll give no trouble, anyway."

"Eh?" said the Major. "My good man, I assure you that I have not the slightest disposition to interfere. These scenes are regrettable, of course. I have heard of them, but never actually assisted at one before; still, I quite see the necessity of the realm demands it, and the realm's necessity is—or should be—the supreme law with all of us."

"And you can swim. You'd be surprised, now, how few of 'em could take a stroke to save their lives. Leastways," Mr. Adams confessed, "that's my experience."

"I beg your pardon."

"Ben's impulsive. I over'eard him tellin' you to stick fast to him; but, all things considered, that's pretty difficult, ain't it? Never you mind; I'll see you aboard the tender."

"Aboard the tender?"

The Major stepped back a pace as the fellow's absurd mistake dawned on him. "Why, you impudent scoundrel, I'm a Justice of the Peace!"

But here a rush of the driven crowd lifted and bore him against the gallery rail. A hand close by shattered the nearest lamp into darkness, and the flat of a cutlass (not Bill Adams's) descending upon our hero's head, put an end for the while to speech and consciousness.



CHAPTER XIV.

THE "VESUVIUS" BOMB.

He awoke with a racking headache in pitchy darkness; and with the twilight of returning consciousness there grew in him an awful fear that he had been coffined and buried alive. For he lay at full length in a bed which yet was unlike any bed of his acquaintance, being so narrow that he could neither turn his body nor put out an arm to lift himself into a sitting posture; and again, when he tried to move his legs, to his horror they were compressed as if between bandages. In his ear there sounded, not six inches away, a low lugubrious moaning. It could not come from a bed-fellow, for he had no bed-fellow. . . . No, it could be no earthly sound.

With a strangled cry he flung a hand upwards, fending off the horrible darkness. It struck against a board, and at the same instant his cry was echoed by a sharp scream close beside him.

"Angels and ministers of Gerrace defend us!" The scream sank to a hoarse whisper and was accompanied by a clank of chains. "Not dead? You—you are not dead?"

The Major lay back in a cold sweat. "I—I thought I was," he quavered at length. But at this point his mysterious bed seemed to sway for a moment beneath him, and he caught his breath. "Where am I?" he gasped.

"At sea," answered the voice in a hollow tone.

"At sea!" In a sudden spasmodic attempt to sit upright, the Major almost rolled himself out of his hammock.

"Ay, poor comrade—if you are indeed he whom I saw lifted aboard unconscious from the tender—'tis the dismal truth."

"Beneath the Orlop's darksome shade Unknown to Sol's bright ray, Where no kind chink's assistant aid Admits the cheerful day.

"I am not, in the practical sense, seaman enough to determine if this noisome den be the precise part of the ship alluded to by the poet under the name of Orlop. But the circumstances correspond; and my stomach informs me that the vessel is in motion."

"The vessel?" echoed the Major, incredulous yet. "What vessel?"

"As if to omit no detail of horror, she is called, I believe, the Vesuvius bomb. Phoebus, what a name!"

It drummed for some seconds in the Major's ear like an echo.

"Yes, yes . . . the theatre," he murmured.

"The theatre? You were in the theatre? Then you saw me?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Me—Orlando B. Sturge. Yes, sir, if it be any consolation to you, know that I, Orlando B. Sturge, of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, am your temporary partner in adversity, your co-mate and brother in exile, with the added indignity of handcuffs; and all by an error which would be absurd if it weren't so infernally serious."

"There has been some horrible mistake."

"A mistake, sir, for which these caitiffs shall pay dearly," Mr. Sturge promised in his deepest tragedy voice.

"A Justice of the Peace!"

"Eh?"

"With a Major's commission!"

"Pardon, I think you must be confusing me with some other person. Orlando B. Sturge is my name, sir, and familiar—as I may say without vanity—wherever the Thespian art is honoured. But yesterday the darling of the public; and now, in the words of our national bard:"

"'—Now lies he here, And none so poor to do him reverence.'

"You are familiar with the works of Shakespeare, sir? Your speech, if you will allow me to say so, suggests a respectable education."

"I have dipped into them," answered the Major inattentively, absorbed in his own woes.

"My consolation is, this will get into the newspapers; and then let these ignorant ruffians beware!"

"The newspapers! God forbid!" The Major shuddered.

"Ha?" Mr. Sturge drew back in dark surprise. "'Tis the language of delirium. He raves. What ho, without there!" he called aloud.

"What the devil's up?" responded a voice from the darkness behind the Major's head. It belonged to a marine standing sentry outside a spare sail which shut off the Vesuvius's sick bay from the rest of the lower deck.

"A surgeon, quick! Here's a man awake and delirious."

"All right. You needn't kick up such a row, need you?" growled the marine.

"Like Nero, I am an angler in a lake of darkness. You have handcuffed me, moreover, so that even if this accursed sty contains a bell-rope—which is improbable—I am debarred from using it. A light, there, and a surgeon, I say!"

The marine let fall the sail flap and withdrew, grumbling. But apparently Mr. Sturge's mode of giving an order, being unlike anything in his experience, had impressed him; for by and by a faint ray illumined the dirty whitewashed beams over the Major's hammock, and four persons squeezed themselves into the sick bay—the marine holding a lantern and guiding the ship's surgeon, who was followed in turn by our friends Mr. Jope and Mr. Bill Adams.

The Vesuvius bomb, measuring but a little more than ninety feet over all, with a beam of some twenty-seven feet, and carrying seventy odd men and boys, with six long six-pounder guns and a couple of heavy mortars, could spare but scanty room for hospital accommodation. At a pinch, a dozen hammocks could be slung in the den which the marine's lantern revealed; but how a dozen sick men could recover there, and how the surgeon could move between the hammocks to perform his ministrations, were mysteries happily left unsolved. As it was, the two invalids and their visitors crowded the place to suffocation.

"Delirious, you say?" hemmed the surgeon, a bald little man with a twinkling eye, an unshaven chin and a very greasy shirt frill. "Well, well, give me your pulse, my friend. Better a blister on the neck than a round shot at your feet, hey? I near upon gave you up when they brought you aboard—upon my word I did." The Major groaned. "You seemed a humane man, sir," he answered feebly. "Spare me your blisters and get me put ashore, for pity's sake!"

The doctor shook his head. "My good fellow, we weighed an hour ago with a fresh northerly breeze. I haven't been on deck, but by the cant of her we must be clear of the Sound already and hauling up for Portsmouth."

"On your peril you detain me, sir! I'll have your fool of a captain broken for this—cashiered, sir—kicked out of the service, by Heaven! I am a Justice of the Peace, I tell you!"

"And coram," put in Mr. Sturge, "and custalorum. He'll make a Star-Chamber matter of it. . . . The poor fellow's raving, I tell you. A curse on your inhumanity! But I can wait for my revenge at Portsmouth. Approach, fellows, and knock off those gyves."

"Justice of the Peace!" echoed Ben Jope, paying no attention whatever to Mr. Sturge, but turning on Bill Adams with round, wondering eyes. "I told you he was something out o' the common. And you ain't had no more sense than to knock him over the head with a cutlass!"

"I did not," protested Bill Adams. "He took it accidental, you being otherwise engaged; an' I stuck to the creatur', thinkin' as how you wanted him."

"But why should I want him?"

"Damned if I know. If it comes to that"—Bill Adams jerked a thumb towards the hammock containing Mr. Sturge—"what d'ye want him for?"

"Oh, him?" answered Mr. Jope with a grin. "In a gale off Pernambuco—"

"What on earth are you two talking about?" asked the surgeon, who had seated himself on the deck and, with the lantern between his feet, was busily preparing a blister.

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, but you haven't been on deck yet? You haven't seen the ducks we brought aboard last night?"

"My good man, can I be in two places at once? I have been up all night with Mr. Wapshott, and the devil of a time he's given me. When they brought me this poor fellow, I hadn't time to do more than order him into hammock—indeed I hadn't. Now, then"—he stood on his feet again and addressed the marine—"fetch me a basin of water and I'll bathe his head."

"Is Mr. Wapshott bad, sir?" asked Ben Jope.

"H'm," the surgeon hesitated. "Well, I don't mind admitting to you that he was very bad indeed; but about six bells I got a draught to take effect, and he has been sleeping ever since."

"And you didn't see the Captain brought aboard, sir?"

"I did not. 'Brought,' you say?"

Ben Jope nodded his head, and for a moment or two watched in silence the sponging of our Major's scalp. "I've known this here ship in the variousest kinds o' weathers," he announced at length, with quiet conviction, "but they was fool's-play one and all compared with what's ahead of us."

"If it comes to that again," put in Bill Adams, "I don't see but this here Justice o' the Peace is the plum o' the whole bunch. Maybe"—he turned to his friend—"you ain't never seen a Justice o' the Peace? I hev'."

"W'y," asked Ben Jope, "what's there peculiar about 'em?"

"I got committed by one some years ago," Mr. Adams answered, with a grave effort of memory. "At a place called Farnham, it was, a way inland up the Portsmouth Road. Me and the landlord of a public there came to words, by reason he called his house 'The Admiral Howe,' but on his signboard was the face of a different man altogether. Whereby I asked him why he done so. Whereby he said the painter didn't know How. Whereby I knocked him down, and he called in the constables and swore he'd meant it for a joke; and they took me afore a Justice; and the Justice said he wouldn't yield to nobody in his respect for our Navy, but here was a case he must put his foot down, and if necessary with an iron hand; and gave me seven days. Which I mention because I couldn't pay the fine, having no more than a few coppers besides what I stood up in, and was then on my way home from the wreck of the Duck Sammy brig, which went ashore on the back of the Wight. But if you ask me what was peculiar about the man, he was called Bart.—Sir Samuel Brooks Bart.—and lived in a fine house as big as Greenwich Hospital, with a gold watch-chain across his belly you could have moored a pinnace by, and gold in his pockets correspondin'. Whereby I larned ever since to know my betters when ashore, and behave myself lowly and give 'em a wide berth. But this isn't one, nor the beginnings of one, for I took the liberty to s'arch his pockets."

"Indeed, sir," our hero appealed to the surgeon, "my name is Hymen— Major Solomon Hymen—of Troy, in Cornwall. On inquiry you will find that I am actually Chief Magistrate of that borough. Nay, I implore you—"

The surgeon, having bathed the wound and bound it with three strips of plaster, took up the blister, and was on the point of applying it, using persuasions indeed, but with the air of one who would take no denial, when a terrible outcry at once arrested him and drowned the Major's protestations.

The cry—it sounded like the roar of a wounded bull—came from the deck overhead. Its echoes sounded the very bowels of the ship; but at the first note of it Ben Jope had clutched Bill Adams by the arm.

"He's seen 'em!" he gasped. "Run, doctor, run—there's a dear soul— or he'll be doin' murder!"

"Seen what?"

"Run, I tell you! Come!" Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Jope, still gripping his comrade's arm, rushed him out of the sick bay, the doctor and the marine at their heels. In the excitement, the Major tumbled out of his hammock, tore aside the sail-flap, and staggered after them along the dim and empty lower-deck to a ladder which led up to daylight.

How to describe the spectacle which met his dazzled eyes as he thrust his head above the hatchway? Aloft the Vesuvius spread her full sails in cloud upon cloud of dove-coloured grey (for, in fact, she carried very dingy canvas) against the blue of heaven, and reached along with the northerly breeze on her larboard quarter, heeling gently, yet just low enough for the Major to blink as his gaze, travelling beyond the lee bulwarks, caught the dazzle of foam knocked up and spreading off her blunt bows. But not long did he gaze on this; for in the scuppers under the bulwarks, in every attitude of complete woe, some prostrate, some supine, all depicted with the liveliest yellows and greens of seasickness beneath their theatrical paint, lay the crew of H.M.S. Poseidon. Yes, even the wicked Lieutenant reclined there with the rest, with one hand upraised and grasping a ring-bolt, while the soft sway of the ship now lifted his garish tinselled epaulettes into the sunlight, now sank and drew across them, as upon a dial, the edge of the bulwarks' shadow.

Right above this disconsolate group, and almost right above the Major's head as he thrust it through the hatchway—or, to be more precise, at the head of the ladder leading to the Vesuvius's poop— clung a little wry-necked, red-eyed, white-faced man in dishevelled uniform, and capered in impotent fury. But as when a child is chastised he yells once and there follows a pause of many seconds while he gathers up lung and larynx for the prolonged outcry, so after his first bull-roar Captain Crang, of the Vesuvius bomb, clung to the rail of the poop-ladder and wrestled for speech, while a little forward of the waist his crew huddled before the storm, yet (although the Major failed to perceive this) not without exchanging winks.

"Wha—what? In the name of ten thousand devils, what the '——' is that?" yelled the Captain, and choked again.

"In a gale—off Pernambuco," murmured Mr. Jope. "Steady, Bill; steady does it, mind!" Advancing to the foot of the ladder, he touched his forelock and stood at attention. "Pressed men, sir. Found in the theayter and brought aboard, as per special order."

The Captain's throat could be seen working within his disordered cravat. "Them! But—Oh, help me—look at 'em, Bos'n!"

"Sir!"

"Look at' em!"

"It's not for me to object, sir. As you was sayin', they don't look it; but bein' ear-marked, so to speak—"

"Where is Mr. Wapshott?"

"Below, sir, as I understand," answered Mr. Jope demurely.

"You mean to tell me, you '—' '—', that Mr. Wapshott allowed—"

But just then, from a hatchway immediately behind Captain Crang, there slowly emerged—there uprose—a vision whereat our Major was not the only spectator to hold his breath. A shock of dishevelled red hair, a lean lantern-jawed face, desperately pallid; these were followed by a long crane-neck, and this again was continued by a pair of shoulders of such endless declivity as surely was never seen but in dreams. And still, as the genie from the fisherman's bottle, the apparition evolved itself and ascended, nor ceased growing until it overlooked the Captain's shoulder by a good three-fourths of a yard, when it put out two hands as if seeking support and stood swaying, with a vague, uneasy smile.

"D'ye hear me?" thundered the Captain, leaning forward over the ladder.

"Ay, ay, sir," Ben Jope answered cheerfully.

"Then what the '—' are ye staring at, you son of a '—'? Like a stuck pig, '—' you! Like a clock-face! Like a glass-eyed cat in a '—' thunderstorm! Like a—"

Here, as Captain Crang drew breath to reload, so to speak, a slight yawing of the ship (for which the helmsman might be forgiven) brought the tall shadow of the apparition athwart his shoulder, and fetched him about with an oath.

"Eh? So there you are!"

Mr. Wapshott, still with his vague smile, titubated a moment, advanced with a sort of circumspect dancing motion to the rail of the poop, laid two shaking hands upon it, heaved a long sigh, and nodded affably.

"Tha's all right. Where else?"

"Look there, sir!" Captain Crang wagged a forefinger at the crowd in the scuppers. "I want your explanation of that!"

Mr. Wapshott brought his gaze to bear on the point indicated; but not until he had scanned successively the deck gratings, the rise of the forecastle and the main shrouds.

"Re-markable," he answered slowly. "Mos' remarkable. One funniest things ever saw in my life. Wha's yours?"

"My what, sir?"

"Eggs. Eggs-planation. Mus' ask you, sir, be so good hear me out."

"Good Lord!" With a sudden look of horror Captain Crang let go his hold of the poop-ladder and staggered back against the bulwarks. "You don't mean—you're not telling me—that I brought that menagerie aboard last night!" His gaze wandered helplessly from the first officer to the crew forward.

"Now then, Bill, steady does it," whispered Mr. Jope, and saluted again. "You'll excuse me, sir, but Mr. Wapshott was below last night when we brought you aboard from dinin' with his R'yal Highness."

"I remember nothing," groaned Captain Crang. "I never do remember when—and before the Duke too!"

Mr. Jope coughed. "His R'yal Highness, sir—if you'll let me say so—was a bit like what you might call everyone else last night. He shook hands very affectionate, sir, at parting, an' hoped to have your company again before long."

"Did he so? Did he so?" said Captain Crang. "And—er—could you at the same time call to mind what I answered?"

Mr. Jope looked down modestly. "Well, sir, having my hands full at the time wi' this here little lot, I dunno as I can remember precisely. Was it something about the theayter, Bill?" he demanded, turning to Mr. Adams.

"It wor," answered Mr. Adams sturdily.

"And as how you'd never shipped a crew o' playactors afore, but you'd do your best?"

"Either them very words or to that effect," confirmed Mr. Adams, breathing hard and staring defiantly at the horizon.

"The theatre? . . . I was at the theatre?" Captain Crang passed a shaking hand over his brow. "No, damme! . . . and yet I remember now at dinner I heard the Duke say—"

Here it was Captain Crang's turn to stare dumbfounded at an apparition, as a pair of handcuffed wrists thrust themselves up through the main hatchway and were painfully followed by the rest of Mr. Orlando B. Sturge.

"Oh, good Lord! Look! Is the ship full of 'em?" shouted the Captain.

"They ain't real," murmured Mr. Wapshott soothingly. "You'll get accustomed. They began by being frogs," he explained, with the initiatory air of an elder brother, and waved a feeble hand. "Eggs— if you'll 'low me, sir, to conclude—egg-sisting in the 'magination only. Go 'way—shoo!"

But Mr. Sturge was not to be disembodied so easily. On the contrary, as the vessel lurched, he sat down suddenly with a material thud and clash of handcuffs upon the poultry-coop, nor was sooner haled to his feet by the strong arm of Mr. Adams than he struck an attitude and opened on the Captain in his finest baritone.

"'Look,' say'st thou? Ay, then, look! Nay, gloat if thou wilt, tyrant—miscreant shall I say?—in human form! Yielding, if I may quote my friend here"—Mr. Sturge laid both handcuffed hands on the shoulder of Bill Adams—"yielding to none, I say, in my admiration of Britain's Navy, I hold myself free to protest against the lawlessness of its minions. I say deliberately, sir, its minions. My name, sir, is Orlando B. Sturge. If that conveys aught to such an intelligence as yours, you will at once turn this vessel round and convey us back to Plymouth with even more expedition than you brought us hither."

Captain Crang fell back and caught at the mizzen shrouds.

"Was I so bad as all that?" he stammered, as Ben Jope, believing him attacked by apoplexy, rushed up the poop-ladder and bent over him.

"Lor' bless you, sir," said Mr. Jope, "the best of us may be mistaken at times. But as I've al'ays said, and will maintain, gentlemen will be gentlemen."

But Captain Crang, letting slip his grasp of the shrouds, plumped down on deck in a sitting posture and with a sound like the echo of his own name.



CHAPTER XV.

UP-CHANNEL.

"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,"

(Sings Allan Cunningham),

"A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail And bends the gallant mast; And bends the gallant mast, my boys, When, like an eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee."

I quote these famous lines for their spirit rather than their accuracy. It is not every ship that can so defy the laws of nature as to run off a lee shore with a shore wind; and the Vesuvius bomb, reaching up Channel with a rare nor'-nor'-westerly breeze, kept old England well to windward all the time. But as Mr. Sturge explained to the Major, later in the day, "Without being a practical seaman, an artist can yet catch the spirit of these things and impart it to his fellow-men."

Mr. Sturge was not criticising (by anticipation) Allan Cunningham's lines, but talking, as usual, about himself. Many circumstances combined to induce a cheerful mood in him. To begin with, his manacles had been removed. Also he had overcome the morning's nausea. The Vesuvius—a deep vessel for her size—was by no means speedy off the wind, and travelled indeed like a slug; but her frame, built for the heavy mortars, was extraordinarily stout in comparison with her masts, and this gave her stability. She was steering a course, too, which kept her fairly close inshore and in smooth water.

Indeed, so far as physical conditions went, Mr. Sturge was enjoying a pleasure trip. His bold expostulations, moreover (for he did not lack courage), had considerably impressed Captain Crang, who, though not easily cowed as a rule, met them at a double disadvantage, being at once unable to recall the events of overnight, and firmly convinced that the whole misadventure was a trick of his Royal Highness. In this state of mind the Captain, shaken by his debauch, had almost collapsed before Mr. Sturge's demand that the ship should be put about—or, as he expressed it, turned round—and navigated to the nearest point of shore.

"If," said Mr. Sturge, with a comprehensive wave of the hand, "if along yon coast, in cove or bay or any natural recess—call it how you will—there lurk a bench of magistrates insensate enough, as you believe, to uphold this violation of a British subject's liberty, steer for them, sir! I challenge you to steer for them! I can say no fairer than that. Select what tribunal you please, sir, and I will demonstrate before it that I and my companions, in spite of appearances, are no seamen. You are to understand that by this disclaimer I cast no reflection upon even the humblest toiler of the deep. Nay, while myself inept either to trim the sail or net the finny tribes, I respect those hardy callings—no man more so. Only I claim that my own profession exempts me from this respectable but un-congenial service; and that in short, sir, by forcibly trepanning me, you have rendered yourself liable to swingeing damages, besides inviting public attention to the fact that you were senselessly intoxicated last night."

This harangue, admirably delivered, took Captain Crang between wind and water. It was in vain he looked to his first officer for help. Mr. Wapshott, still swaying by the poop rail, lifted and wagged an admonitory forefinger.

"No use y'r asking me," said Mr. Wapshott. "I didn't dine with the Duke." He paused and asked with sudden inconsequent heartiness, "Well, and how did you get along, you two?"

"If only I could tell!" murmured Captain Crang, passing a hand over his brow.

"Not stuck-up, I hope? Affable? I'll bet any man sixpence he was affable. Mind you, I don't speak from 'xperience," went on Mr. Wapshott, more in sorrow than in anger. "I don't dine out with Admirals of the Fleet. The Blood Royal don't invite James Wapshott to take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne, for auld lang syne, my dear, for auld. . . . You'll excuse me, sir, some little emotion; Robert Burns—Robbie—affecting beggar, mor' specially in his homelier passages. A ploughman, sir; and from Ayrshire, damme!"

"'Wee sleekit crimson-tippit beastie—'"

"Are you addressing me, sir?" roared Captain Crang.

"Norratall. Field-mouse. That"—Mr. Wapshott drew himself up— "that's the 'stonishing thing about it."

"Go to your cabin, sir," the Captain commanded; "and you, Mr. What's-your-name, come below and explain yourself."

Thus, not without dignity, he withdrew from the field. But he was beaten; and in his cabin a few minutes later he capitulated. Mr. Sturge having been convinced that the ship could not be turned around and headed back for Plymouth without grave inconvenience, and perhaps detriment to his Majesty's service, it was agreed that he and his company should be packed ashore immediately on reaching Portsmouth. The question of compensation was waived by consent; though Captain Crang shrewdly expressed his hope that, whatever steps Mr. Sturge might take after consulting a solicitor, his Royal Highness would not be dragged into the affair.

In short, Mr. Sturge reappeared on deck in high spirits. He had bearded a British officer—and a formidable one—in his den and had come off victorious. He had secured his own liberty and his comrades', and (as reflection told him) a first-class advertisement to boot. Altogether, he had done very well indeed; and Mr. Jope, chastened by his own narrow escape from a situation which at one moment had promised to be serious, wisely left him all the credit of this lucky turn of affairs. Mr. Jope, who ranked next to the Captain and First Officer on the ship's executive, and actually ruled her during their indisposition, exacted no work from his prisoners; but was content to admire them from a distance—as, indeed, did the rest of the crew—retiring from time to time behind convenient shelters to hide their indecorous mirth. During the afternoon it may be said that Mr. Sturge's troupe had the deck aft of the forecastle to themselves. Being unacquainted with naval usage, they roamed the poop indifferently with the main deck, no man forbidding them, while Captain Crang and Mr. Wapshott slumbered below; the one of set purpose, in the hope of recapturing through the gates of horn, if not the complete data of last night's imbroglio, at least sufficient for a plausible defence; the other under the influence of sedatives administered by the Doctor.

"I should soon get used to this life, d'ye know?" announced Mr. Sturge, approaching the Major with a jaunty, almost extra-nautical step, and clapping him, seaman fashion, on the shoulder.

It was the hour of sunset. The Vesuvius, bowling along merrily, a bare three miles off Berry Head, had opened the warm red-sandstone cliffs of Torbay; and the Major, leaning over the larboard bulwark, gazed on the slowly moving shore in gloomy abstraction. He had been less fortunate than Mr. Sturge in his encounter with the Captain, whom he had interrupted in the act of retiring to slumber.

"One moment, sir," he had begun, confidently enough. "The accomplished artiste to whose representations you have been good enough to listen, has told you—so far as he is concerned—the simple truth. To a certain extent I can corroborate him. But I beg you to understand that he and I—if I may employ a nautical phrase—are not in the same boat."

"Who the devil may you be?" Captain Crang interposed.

"That, sir," answered the Major with dignity, "is precisely what I propose to explain. By an accident I find myself without a visiting-card; but my name, sir, is Hymen—Major Hymen, sir—of the Troy Volunteer Artillery (better known to you, perhaps, as the Gallants), and Chief Magistrate of that ancient and picturesque little borough."

Captain Crang stared at him for a moment with lowered brows and jaw working as if it chewed the cud of his wrath.

"Look here," he replied. "You're the funny man of the troupe, I suppose? Comic Irishman and that sort of thing, hey?"

"I assure you, sir—"

"And I assure you, sir, that if you come the funny dog over me, I'll have you up to the gratings in two shakes of a duck's tail, and tickle your funny ribs with three dozen of the best. Understand?" The Captain paused, trembling with rage. "Understand, hey, you '—' little barnstorming son of a '—'? Made a mistake, have I? Cut your capers at my expense, would you, you little baldheaded runt? By '—' if you pull another face at me, sir, you shall caper off the yardarm, sir; on a string, sir; high as Haman, sir! I hope, sir," wound up Captain Crang, recovering his calm, "that on this point, at any rate, I have left no room for misunderstanding."

It will excite no wonder that Mr. Sturge found the Major somewhat irresponsive to his own jubilant mood.

"I should soon get used to this life," he repeated. "There's a spirit in it—a breeziness, I may call it—which is positively infectious. You don't find it so?"

"I do not," the Major confessed.

Mr. Sturge pointed his toe and seemed about to execute the first steps of a hornpipe, but checked himself.

"Rough tongue, the Captain's?" he queried.

The Major swallowed a lump in his throat but did not answer.

"Hasty temper. Under the circumstances, we may make some little excuse, perhaps."

"I prefer not to discuss it. The man has insulted me."

"His bark is worse than his bite, I find," said Mr. Sturge complacently. "And, after all, the moment you chose was not precisely opportune—was it, now?"

"I am not used, sir, to have my word doubted by any man."

"Well, but—appearances considered—you pitched it pretty strong, eh? Local magnate, and that sort of thing . . . it did seem like taking advantage of his condition."

"Advantage? Appearances? What do you mean, sir?"

The Major turned resentfully, and at the same instant recollected that he wore no wig. He blushed, His hand went up to his scalp.

"Makes a difference," said Mr. Sturge. "Allow me." He drew from the breast of his shirt a small pocket mirror. "I carry it always. Useful—tittivate myself—in the wings."

"The wings?" echoed the Major dully, taking the glass. He gazed into it and started back with a cry.

What an image was there confronting him! Was this the face of Troy's Chief Magistrate? (forgive the blank verse). Were these the features—was this the aspect—from which virtue had so often derived its encouragement and wrongdoing its reproof? Was this the figure the ladies of Troy had been wont to follow with all but idolatrous gaze? Nay, who was this man—unshaven, unkempt, unbewigged, smeared with mud from head to foot, and from scalp to jaw with commingling bloodstains? The Major groaned incredulous, horrified; gazed, shuddered, and groaned again.

"Mind you," said Mr. Sturge reassuringly, "I'm not calling the truth of your story into question for a moment. But under the circumstances you'll allow it was a trifle stiff."

"It is true to the last particular," insisted the Major, recovering his dignity.

"But come, now! Without a penny in your pocket, or so much as a scrap of paper to identify you, you'll admit it was stiff? Look here," he went on with a change of tone, slipping his arm amicably within the Major's, "I've an idea. Comrades in adversity, you know, and all that sort of thing. I've taken a liking to you, and can do you a good turn. Drop that yarn of yours—'yarn,' seafaring expression; odd how one catches the colour, so to speak. Drop that yarn of yours. You're one of us, understand? The Captain'll believe that; indeed, he believes it already—called you a damned low-comedy man in my hearing. Very well; soon as we anchor off Spithead, he outs with a boat and lands us ashore. I have his solemn promise. Leave me to square that bos'n fellow—Jope, or whatever he calls himself—and the job's as good as done."

"And do you seriously propose," interrupted the Major, folding his arms, "that I should pass myself off for a play-actor? Never, sir; never!"

"Why not?" asked Mr. Sturge easily.

"I forbear, sir, to wound your feelings by explaining why your suggestion is repugnant to me. Let it suffice that I detest deceit, subterfuge, equivocation; or, if that suffice not, let me ask if you do not propose, on reaching shore, to institute legal proceedings against this petty tyrant?"

"Probably."

"Why, then, and how much more reparation does he not owe me, a Justice of the Peace? Nay, sir, he shall pay me damages for this kidnapping; but he has not stopped short there. He has used language to me which can only be wiped out in blood. My first business on stepping ashore will be to seek someone through whom I can convey my demand for satisfaction. With what face, think you, could I present this cartel if my own behaviour had been other than correct?"

"You're not telling me you mean to fight him?" asked Mr. Sturge, convinced by this time that he had to deal with a lunatic.

"Pardon me." The Major bowed with grave irony. "This conversation, sir, was of your seeking. I have paid you, it appears, too high a compliment in assuming that you would understand what follows when a gentleman is called the son of a—!"

Mr. Sturge shrugged his shoulders and walked forward to seek Ben Jope, whom he found by the forecastle hatchway engaged in slicing a quid of black tobacco.

"You'll excuse me," he asked, "but that rum little man who calls himself Hymen—where did he escape from?"

"Escape!" Ben Jope sprang to his feet, but catching sight of the Major, who had resumed his pensive attitude by the bulwarks, sat down again heavily. "Lord, but you frightened me! That Hymen don't escape; not if I know it. He's the apple of my eye, or becoming so. Now I tell you," said Mr. Jope, beginning to slice again at his tobacco, then pausing to look up with engaging frankness; "you took my fancy terrible for a few minutes; but, come to see you by daylight, you're too pink."

Mr. Sturge might have pressed for an explanation; but at this juncture the first lieutenant of H.M.S. Poseidon came forward, still with his painted scowl, and demanded to know, since the Vesuvius could not reach Portsmouth for many hours, when supper would be served, and what bedroom accommodation she provided.



CHAPTER XVI.

FAREWELL TO ALBION!

Shortly after noon next day, the wind still holding from the N.N.W., though gradually falling light, the Vesuvius dropped anchor off Spithead, and Captain Crang at once ordered a boat's crew to convey the captives ashore.

The Major waved farewell to them from the deck. Though once again approached by Mr. Sturge, he had repelled all persuasions. In his breast there welled up an increasing bitterness against his fate, but on the point of dignity he could not be shaken. He would, on the first fit occasion, have Captain Crang's blood; but he was obdurate, though it cost him liberty for a while and compelled him to disgusting hardship, to stand on the strictest terms of quarrel.

He turned to find the boatswain at his elbow, eyeing him with sympathy and even a touch of respect.

"You done well," said Mr. Jope. "You don't look it, but you done well, and I'll see you don't get put upon."

The Vesuvius's destination, as the Major learnt, was to join a squadron watching the Gallo-Batavian flotilla off the ports of Boulogne, Ambleteuse and Calais; and the occasion of her dropping anchor off Portsmouth on the way was a special and somewhat singular one; yet no more singular than the crisis with which Great Britain had then to cope.

Behind the sandhills from Ostend around to Etaples lay a French army of 130,000 men, ready to invade us if for a few hours it could catch our fleets napping. To transport them Napoleon had collected in the ports of Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, Ambleteuse, Vimereux, Boulogne and Etaples, 954 transports and 1339 armed vessels—gun-brigs, schooners, luggers, schuyts and prames; and all these light vessels lay snug in their harbours, protected by shoals and sandbanks which our heavier ships of war, by reason of their draught, could not approach.

In particular, a double tier of vessels—one hundred and fifty in all—which were moored outside the pier of Boulogne, and protected by heavy shore batteries, excited while it baulked the rage of our gallant seamen manoeuvring in the deep waters of the Channel.

Strange diseases suggest strange remedies. Our Admiralty, in the spring of the year, had been approached by an ingenious gentleman with the model of an invention by which he professed himself able to reach these hundred and fifty ships in Boulogne and blow them in air without loss or even danger to our fleet. This machine consisted of a box, about twenty feet long by three feet wide, lined with lead, caulked, tarred, ballasted and laden almost to the water's edge with barrels of powder and other combustibles. In the midst of the inflammable matter was placed a clockwork mechanism which, on the withdrawal of a peg, would in a fixed time (within some ten minutes or thereabouts) ignite and explode the vessel.