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Maid Of Sker

<h2>CHAPTER LXI. A SAVAGE DEED.</h2> Nevertheless our Britons were forced to renew the battle afterwards; because those Frenchmen had not the manners to surrender as they should have done. And they even compelled us to batter their ships so seriously and sadly, that when we took possession some were scarcely worth the trouble. To make [Pg 416] us blow up their poor Admiral was a distressing thing to begin with; but when that was done, to go on with the battle was as bad as the dog in the manger. What good could it do them to rob a poor British sailor of half his prize-money? And such conduct becomes at least twice as ungenerous when they actually have wounded him! My wound was sore, and so was I, on the following day, I can tell you; for not being now such a very young man, I found it a precious hard thing to renew the power of blood that was gone from me. And after the terrible scene that awoke me from the first trance of carnage, I was thrown by the mercy of Providence into pure insensibility. This I am bound to declare; because the public might otherwise think itself wronged, and perhaps even vote me down as of no value, for failing to give them the end of this battle so brilliantly as the beginning. I defy my old rival, the Newton tailor (although a much younger man perhaps than myself, and with my help a pretty good seaman), to take up the tucks of this battle as well as I have done,—though not well done. Even if a tailor can come up and fight (which he did, for the honour of Cambria), none of his customers can expect any more than French-chalk flourishes when a piece of description is down in his books. However, let him cut his cloth. He is still at sea, or else under it; and if he ever does come home, and sit down to his shop-board—as his wife says he is sure to do—his very first order shall be for a church-going coat, with a doubled-up sleeve to it. For the Frenchmen took my left arm away in a thoroughly lubberly manner. If they had done it with a good cross-cut, like my old wound of forty years' standing, I would at once have set it down to the credit of their nation. But when I came to dwell over the subject (as for weeks my duty was), more and more clear to me it became, that instead of honour they had now incurred a lasting national disgrace. The fellows who charged that gun had been afraid of the recoil of it. Half a charge of powder makes the vilest fracture to deal with—however, there I was by the heels, and now for nobler people. Only while my wound is green you must not be too hard on me. The Goliath was ordered to chase down the bay, on the morning after the battle, together with the Theseus and a frigate called the Leader. This frigate was commanded by the Honourable Rodney Bluett, now a post-captain, and who had done wonders in the height of last night's combat. He had [Pg 417] brought up in the most brazen-faced manner, without any sense of his metal, close below the starboard bow of the great three-decker Orient and the quarter of the Franklin, and thence he fired away at both, while all their shot flew over him. And this was afterwards said to have been the cleverest thing done by all of us, except the fine helm and calm handling of H.M. ship Goliath. The two ships, in chase of which we were despatched, ran ashore and surrendered, as I was told afterwards (for of course I was down in my berth at the time, with the surgeon looking after me); and thus out of thirteen French sail of the line, we took or destroyed eleven. And as we bore up after taking possession, the Leader ran under our counter and hailed us, "Have you a Justice of the Peace on board?" Our Captain replied that he was himself a member of the quorum, but could not attend to such business now as making of wills and so on. Hereupon Captain Bluett came forward, and with a polite wave of his hat called out that Captain Foley would lay him under a special obligation, as well as clear the honour of a gallant naval officer, by coming on board of the Leader, to receive the deposition of a dying man. In ten minutes' time our good skipper stood in the cockpit of the Leader, while Captain Bluett wrote down the confession of a desperately-wounded seaman, who was clearing his conscience of perilous wrong before he should face his Creator. The poor fellow sate on a pallet propped up by the bulkhead and a pillow; that is to say, if a man can sit who has no legs left him. A round shot had caught him in the tuck of both thighs, and the surgeon could now do no more for him. Indeed he was only enabled to speak, or to gasp out his last syllables, by gulps of raw brandy which he was taking, with great draughts of water between them. On the other side of his dying bed stood Cannibals Dick and Joe, howling, and nodding their heads from time to time, whenever he lifted his glazing eyes to them for confirmation. For it was my honest and highly-respected friend, the poor Jack Wildman, who now lay in this sad condition, upon the very brink of another world. And I cannot do better than give his own words, as put into shape by two clear-witted men, Captains Foley and Rodney Bluett. Only for the reader's sake I omit a great deal of groaning. "This is the solemn and dying delivery of me, known as 'Jack Wildman,' A.B. seaman of H.M. frigate Leader, now off the coast of Egypt, and dying through a hurt in battle with the Frenchmen. I cannot tell my name, or age, or where I was [Pg 418] born, or anything about myself; and it does not matter, as I have nothing to leave behind me. Dick and Joe are to have my clothes, and my pay if there is any; and the woman that used to be my wife is to have my medals for good behaviour in the three battles I have partaken of. My money would be no good to her, because they never use it; but the women are fond of ornaments. "I was one of a race of naked people, living in holes of the earth at a place we did not know the name of. I now know that it was Nympton in Devonshire, which is in England, they tell me. No one had any right to come near us, except the great man who had given us land, and defended us from all enemies. "His name was Parson Chouane, I believe, but I do not know how to spell it. He never told us of a thing like God; but I heard of it every day in the navy whenever my betters were angry. Also I learned to read wonderful writings; but I can speak the truth all the same. "Ever since I began to be put into clothes, and taught to kill other people, I have longed to tell of an evil thing which happened once among us. How long ago I cannot tell, for we never count time as you do, but it must have been many years back, for I had no hair on my body except my head. We had a man then who took lead among us, so far as there was any lead; and I think that he thought himself my father, because he gave me the most victuals. At any rate we had no other man to come near him in any cunningness. Our master Chouane came down sometimes, and took a pride in watching him, and liked him so much that he laughed at him, which he never did to the rest of us. "This man, my father as I may call him, took me all over the great brown moors one night in some very hot weather. In the morning we came to a great heap of houses, and hid in a copse till the evening. At dusk we set out again, and came to a great and rich house by the side of a river. The lower port-holes seemed full of lights, and on the flat place in front of them a band of music—such as now I love—was playing, and people were dancing. I had never heard such a thing before; and my father had all he could do to keep me in the black trees out of sight of them. And among the thick of the going about we saw our master Chouane in his hunting-dress. "This must have been what great people call a 'masked ball,' I am sure of it; since I saw one, when, in the Bellona, there were many women somewhere. But at the end of the [Pg 419] great light place, looking out over the water, there was a quiet shady place for tired people to rest a bit. When the whole of the music was crashing like a battle, and people going round like great flies in a web, my father led me down by the river-side, and sent me up some dark narrow steps, and pointed to two little babies. The whole of the business was all about these, and the festival was to make much of them. The nurse for a moment had set them upright, while she just spoke to a young sailor-man; and crawling, as all of us can, I brought down these two babies to my father; and one was heavy, and the other light. "My father had scarcely got hold of them, and the nurse had not yet missed them, when on the dark shore by the river-side, perhaps five fathoms under the gaiety, Parson Chouane came up to my father, and whispered, and gave orders. I know not what they said, for I had no sense of tongues then, nor desired it; for we knew what we wanted by signs, and sounds, and saved a world of trouble so. Only I thought that our master was angry at having the girl-child brought away. He wanted only the boy perhaps, who was sleepy and knew nothing. But the girl-child shook her hand at him, and said, 'E bad man, Bardie knows 'a.' "I—every one of us—was amazed—so very small—— Oh, sir, I can tell you no more, I think." "Indeed then, but you must, my friend," cried Captain Foley, with spirit enough to set a dead man talking; "finish this story, you thief of the world, before you cheat the hangman. Two lovely childer stolen away from a first-rate family to give a ball of that kind—and devil a bit you repent of it!" Poor dying Jack looked up at him, and then at the place where his legs should have been, and he seemed ashamed for the want of them. Then he played with the sheet for a twitch or two, as if proud of his arms still remaining; and checked back the agony tempting him now to bite it with his great white teeth. "Ask the rest of us, Captain," he said; "Joe, you know it; Dick, you know it; now that I am telling you. The boy was brought up with us, and you call him Harry Savage. I knew the great house when I saw it again. And I longed to tell the good old man there; but for the sake of our people. Chouane would have destroyed them all. I was tempted after they pelted me so, and the old man was so good to me; but something [Pg 420] always stopped me, and I wanted poor Harry to go to Heaven—— Oh, a little drink of water!" Captain Foley was partly inclined to take a great deal of poor Jack's confession for no more than the raving of a light-headed man; but Rodney Bluett conjured him to take down every word of it. And when this young officer spoke of his former chief and well-known friend, now Commodore Sir Drake Bampfylde (being knighted for service in India), and how all his life he had lain under a cloud by reason of this very matter, not another word did our Captain need from him, but took up his pen again. "I ought to have told," said the dying man slowly; "only I could not bring myself. But now you will know, you will all know now. My father is dead; but Dick and Joe can swear that the boy is the baby. He had beautiful clothes on, they shone in the boat; but the girl-child had on no more than a smock, that they might see her dancing. Our master did not stay with us a minute, but pushed us all into a boat on the tide, cut the rope, and was back with the dancers. My father had learned just enough of a boat to keep her straight in the tide-way, and I had to lie down over the babies, to keep their white clothes from notice. We went so fast that I was quite scared, having never been afloat before, so there must have been a strong ebb under us. And the boat, which was white, must have been a very light one, for she heeled with every motion. At last we came to a great broad water, which perhaps was the river's mouth, with the sea beyond it. My father got frightened perhaps; and I know that I had been frightened long ago. By a turn of the eddy, we scrambled ashore, and carried the boy-baby with us; but the boat broke away with a lurch as we jumped, for we had not the sense to bring out the rope. In half a minute she was off to sea, and the girl-baby lay fast asleep in her stern. And now after such a long voyage in the dark, we were scared so that we both ran for our lives, and were safe before daybreak at Nympton. "My father before we got home stripped off the little boy's clothes, and buried them in a black moor-hole full of slime, with a great white stone in the midst of it. And the child himself was turned over naked to herd with the other children (for none of our women look after them), and nobody knew or cared to know who he was, or whence he came, except my poor father, and our master—and I myself, many years afterwards. But now I know well, and I cannot have quiet to die, [Pg 421] without telling somebody. The boy-baby I was compelled to steal was Sir Philip Bampfylde's grandson, and the baby-girl his granddaughter. I never heard what became of her. She must have been drowned, or starved, most likely. But as for the boy, he kept up his life; and the man who took us most in hand, of the name of 'Father David,' gave the names to all of us, and the little one 'Harry Savage,' now serving on board of the Vanguard. I know nothing of the buried images found by Father David. My father had nothing to do with that. It may have been another of Chouane's plans. I know no more of anything. There, let me die; I have told all I know. I can write my nickname. I never had any other—Jack Wildman." At the end of this followed the proper things, and the forms the law is made of, with first of all the sign-manual of our noble Captain Foley, who must have been an Irishman, to lead us into the battle of the Nile, while in the commission of the Peace. And after him Captain Bluett signed, and two or three warrant-officers gifted with a writing elbow; and then a pair of bare-bone crosses, meaning Cannibals Dick and Joe, who could not speak, and much less write, in the depth of their emotions. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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