Yarn of Old Harbour Town — The Capture

CHAPTER XVI THE CAPTURE

At breakfast, which was necessarily delayed on board the _Aurora_, the conversation, as may be supposed, was almost entirely concerned with undoubtedly the most memorable incident--the meeting with Nelson--in the lives of Captain Acton and Sir William.

The _Aurora_ had hauled out of the Fleet with a dipping flag, and with wings eagerly straining to the breath of the strengthening blue breeze that gushed with a tropic warmth over the little seas which creamed and purred in heads that would easily grow spiteful and change their fountain-like music into a harsh hissing as of serpents, was heading as true a course as Captain Weaver could imagine for the barque that Captain Acton wanted.

Nelson's reference to Mr Lawrence's brilliant action was going to prove an overwhelming memory to the Admiral.

"When I think, sir," he exclaimed, as they breakfasted, "what a few syllables of applause signify in the mouth of such a man as the hero of the Nile, I feel as if I could spring overboard and drown myself when I reflect that my unhappy son quitted the glorious Service under ignoble circumstances, and that by remaining he might have come under the command of Nelson, and gained the splendid renown which scarce a sea officer who has served under that great man but has won."

"I for one should not need to meet Lord Nelson and hear him speak of your son to fully agree in what you say, Sir William," said Lucy.

Her father looked at her with a questioning gaze, but made no remark.

Nearly all the talk at that breakfast table was about Nelson and his ships and his pursuit of Villeneuve, but shortly before the three arose the conversation had been deflected by a remark of Lucy, on which the Admiral said: "If this breeze holds we shall be heaving the _Minorca_ into sight the day after to-morrow, or at latest the following day.

There can be no doubt that the schooner is fair in her wake.

The _Whitby_ brig seems to have steered a straight course from her to us; and now, sir, Lord Nelson's remark comes home: we are unarmed.

The barque carries four guns with which she can pelt us without our being able to make a reply.

If she wings us she will escape, and since she will very well know who we are that are in pursuit of her, is my son likely to proceed to Rio?

Will he not take advantage of our being crippled to shift his course, and go away to some place, unconjecturable by us, where he will be able to communicate with his scoundrel friend at Rio and the Don with the long name who is to have the management of the nefarious business?"

"You will know, sir," replied Captain Acton, "one of Nelson's favourite sayings: at sea something must be left to chance.

I count upon the crew of the _Minorca_, when they sight the _Aurora_ and understand her mission, which they will guess without explanation, backing her main-topsail in defiance of your son's firearms and calling upon us to take possession.

If this does not happen, I shall not be at a loss, and meanwhile, Sir William, let us get a view of the barque."

After breakfast Captain Acton and Lucy walked the deck, whilst the Admiral, with his big pipe, seated himself right aft all alone, for this little ship was steered by a wheel in front of the deck-house;

he sat puffing out clouds of tobacco with his eyes fixed upon the glimmering phantoms of the British Fleet, which hovered in the north-east quarter in a few dim, waning gleams; and the moods of his mind were faithfully reproduced in his jolly, honest, well-bred, kindly face.

The breeze blew bright and warm, and sang sweetly aloft.

The brilliant horizon ahead slided up and down past the prismatic edges of the clear and shapely sails which yearned in steady breasts from mast-head to jibboom and bowsprit ends; the parted water rolled past in wool-white lines of yeast; the heavens were alive with the clouds of the air.

Nothing was in sight but Nelson's Fleet, fading.

Lucy had related much, but she had much more to tell, and she narrated to her father fresh stories of her madness, and drew several graphic pictures of Mr Lawrence whilst he laboured under the various sensations her genius as an untutored artist excited.

She spoke with contempt of Mr Eagle, whilst she had little or nothing to say about Mr Pledge.

Her narratives were marked by a strong leaning in favour of Mr Lawrence.

Her father could not mistake.

Her prejudice, indeed her fondness, was expressed not so much in her admirable recitals and her references to the dignified and gentlemanly manner with which Mr Lawrence had treated her, with which he had received her aggravating, indeed her venomous, references to his past and present conduct, as in the pause, the soft, thoughtful smile, the brief exclamation, the sigh, and now and again the little but significant remark.

"But it is impossible, Lucy," said Captain Acton, "to make a hero out of such a fellow as this: a man who forges sealed orders supposed to be written by me!

A rogue who not only steals my property, but kidnaps my daughter by a lie!"

"He must have done well, sir, for Nelson to have remembered him," said Lucy.

"And, oh, papa, will not you make some allowance for the misconduct of a man who is tempted by--by----" "By what, my dear?"

"By love," said Lucy, hanging her head, whilst the blush that came into her cheeks was like the revelation of the glory of the red rose to the first delicate light of sunrise.

Then with a sudden impulse of confidence she added fluently: "He was wasting his time at Old Harbour Town.

He fell into vicious habits and modes of getting money which he detested, but the opportunities offered, and strong as he is as a sailor, he proved himself weak as a man."

"As a gentleman!"

said Captain Acton, who followed his daughter's words with mingled impatience and wonder.

"I feel that I am greatly to blame in this dreadful trouble," said Lucy.

"I am sure that it was his love for me, his desire to gain me as his wife, his horror at the prospect of being an outcast through debt, his resolution to lead an honest life and perhaps a noble life, should I become his wife and should he obtain your forgiveness; these things I am convinced drove him into a sort of madness in which he invented this desperate plot which could never be forgiven in any man who was not as brave and well-bred as Mr Lawrence, nor as--as----" "D'ye mean handsome, Lucy?"

said Captain Acton.

"For the dog is that."

"But what is to happen to him," said Lucy, "if you carry him back to England?

I would rather hear," she cried, with an emphasis which may have borrowed note and complexion from the impulse of her late impersonations of madness, "of the _Minorca_ having sunk and carried him down to the bottom of the sea with her, than live to witness his degradation and perhaps his death and the misery and the broken-heartedness that must come to his dear old father, if you do not prove his friend, and help to reclaim a nature that in its essence is beautiful, and a fulfilment of the purest woman's ideal."

Captain Acton walked half the length of the extent of deck they were pacing, before he spoke.

"Your dear mother," said he calmly, "whose genius as an actress I cannot help thinking has descended to you, though never once in all your life have you given me reason for suspecting the existence of a gift, not wonderful by mere power of mimicry, but astonishing by its art of persuading and convincing the beholder that what he sees is the living thing itself: your sweet and blessed mother, though a staunch upholder of her sex, was fond of a saying which she had found in Pope: 'Nothing so true as what you once let fall, Most women have no character at all.'

She meant by this, as Pope, or rather Horace, held, that a woman may have a very great genius, and yet be so weak in the significant and quint-essential actions of her life as to prove herself characterless.

You have behaved with amazing heroism.

You found yourself in the hands of one of the most unscrupulous of men----" "No, sir," she said.

"You are placed in the most helpless situation a woman could find herself in: at sea, locked up in a cabin, and all the crew, who might otherwise have helped you, believing that you were running away with Mr Lawrence, and that your imprisonment and your representations and your madness were part of a programme preconcerted between you and your lover.

You realise the horrors and peril of your position, and by virtue of the mother's genius that came to your help, you decided upon a behaviour which you magnificently conducted.

So much for the better part of you: but what remains?

To be wooed--shall I say won?

--it is necessary for your sweetheart to act the part of a scoundrel.

He must steal my ship and kidnap my only child, and heap lie upon lie, and then, to be sure, he is a very pretty gentleman, a noble, gallant rogue, at root a man of a lordly soul, of a most chivalrous and fighting spirit to be made much of--in short, to fall desperately in love with."

Lucy bit her under-lip, but certainly the general expression of her face was not one of displeasure.

"So, my dear, you see that your mother was right in putting faith in her quotation, 'Most women have no characters at all.'

" Whether Lucy would have replied to this cannot be known, for just then the hand stationed aloft sung out: "Sail ho!"

"Where away?"

"Right ahead, sir."

But the stranger remained so long invisible from the deck whilst she could be easily distinguished from the height of the fore-topgallant and then from the fore-topsail yard, and then from midway the altitude of the fore-shrouds, that it was not before the afternoon had passed into a golden brightness of westering sunlight that the ship right ahead revealed her canvas to the quarterdeck of the _Aurora_.

From the moment the ship in sight was reported expectation aboard the _Aurora_ sprang and grew.

Was she the _Minorca_?

She was undoubtedly square-rigged, but the lenses of the comparatively feeble telescopes of those days could not determine before it fell dusk, whether she was rigged aft with square yards or merely with the mizzen and gaff topsail which made the _Minorca_ a barque.

The Admiral was restless; he paced the deck with unwearied legs, and when the sail ahead had hove her canvas into view, he sent endless searchings of her through his telescope, but never could arrive at an opinion.

Captain Acton was self-possessed, and his manner was marked by contemplation as though the possibilities the ship in sight suggested filled him with earnest and bewildering considerations.

Lucy was of opinion that the ship must prove the _Minorca_.

She well understood that the two vessels could not be far asunder, and quite rationally concluded that the sail ahead was the barque.

It would have needed, however, a keener gaze than either Captain Acton or the Admiral was capable of bringing to bear, to penetrate to the girl's thoughts.

Whilst the distant vessel leaned like a small orange flame gently blown sideways by the wind upon the early evening purple of the horizon, Lucy would overhang the rail with her brooding, beautiful eyes dwelling upon that far-off vision, and the expression of her face was in these intervals of motionless posture and steadfast regard, as though she was asleep and dreamt, and that her dream was partly sweet and partly vexing and bitter, so that her whole look was that of one who slumbers, through whose sealed lids a vision of sleep slides to the heart to trouble its pulse.

Captain Weaver believed that the vessel was the _Minorca_: because, first, she carried royals; next, because she happened to be where she was; third, the leisureliness with which the _Aurora_ rose her seemed to prove that her pace was that of the barque.

But the dusk drew round;

the gloom of night came along in that thickness of shadow which under such heights as the _Aurora_ was then sailing, seemed swift to persons accustomed to the northern twilights.

And at the hour in which the shades of the coming night had with their viewless fingers effaced the stranger from the sight of the _Aurora_, and shaken some stars into their places, the sail had been risen by the _Aurora_, till on the heave of the swell her hull to the height of her bulwarks from the edge of the sea was visible.

And then she was steeped in darkness.

The moon was without power until shortly after midnight; her light silvered the sails of the ship ahead, and she grew out of the gloom into a fairy-like fantasy that might have been some symmetrical form of moon-touched mist fleeting down the wind, or some snow-robed height whose base lay behind the horizon.

The Admiral was on deck, and so was Captain Acton, and Captain Weaver had also stepped out of the deck-house to take a look round.

The stranger was now sufficiently near to be determinable by the glass even in moonshine; and so soon as she sprang into being under the magical flourish of the wand of the moon, it was known for a surety that she was not the _Minorca_.

She was square-rigged aft, and made a big, broad cloud as she rolled along under topgallant, topmast, and lower stun-sails.

The breeze that had blown throughout the day still blew, and the circumstance of the stranger having kept ahead of the _Aurora_ for many hours was proof of her nimble keel.

"She sails faster than the _Minorca_, gentlemen," said Captain Weaver.

"She has the appearance of a frigate," said Captain Acton, working away at her with his glass.

"Is that _your_ opinion, sir?"

Captain Weaver asked the Admiral.

After a pause, during which he carefully scrutinised the vessel, "She has every appearance of being a frigate," the Admiral answered.

Of what nation, if an armed ship?

A wide berth was to be given to the Tricolour or the Spanish Flag.

After much debate the order was given for sail to be reduced that the _Aurora's_ pace might not outmeasure that of the stranger, until break of day should yield a better idea of her character.

Meanwhile she must be closely watched, and at the first shift of the stranger's helm the _Aurora_ must out with all wings and slide away from gun range with the despatch the wind could give her.

The dark moonlit hours thus passed, and the _Aurora_ followed the stranger, but at a distance that was out of cannon reach.

At daylight the vessel proved to be a frigate; she was painted black, with red gun-ports and red tompions.

But this was no evidence of her nationality, for it was only comparatively recently that Nelson had caused ships under his command to carry white bands which the portholes for the guns chequered with black squares.

And many ships of the State in 1805 were black in hull and some of them yellow.

"We must take our chance," said Captain Acton to Weaver, "and end our doubts in the only possible way.

See that our ensign blows clear for the eyes aboard of her."

As the ship ahead was almost stern on, they ran the British ensign to the _Aurora's_ mizzen-mast head whence it streamed, a "meteor flag," in the silver-white glory of the sun.

In a few moments the English colours were hoisted aboard the stranger, on which the Admiral delivered a British cheer, which was caught up and re-echoed by a few of the crew forward.

Immediately every stitch of canvas that the schooner carried was set, and bending to the pressure of the fine breeze that was now flashing from right abeam, gracing the multitudinous run of the surge with the various splendours of the morning's light; the three-masted American-built clipper _Aurora_ thrashed through it in her pursuit of the black British frigate at a rate of sailing that within three hours brought her within speaking distance of the man-of-war.

Before this happened, however, Captain Acton had called a council of his daughter and the Admiral, and a resolution had been arrived at of which the nature will appear in a few moments.

The frigate seemed unquestionably of foreign build; but the name _Phoebe_, written in large characters upon her stern over which from the peak of the mizzen-gaff streamed the flag of our country, was a warranty that whatever nationality her builders had boasted, she was now a British ship.

She was somewhat old in years, as was manifested by her fore-mast that was stepped too far forward to please a critical eye, whilst her main-mast stood too far aft, its nearness to the mizzen-mast offending the gaze by an appearance of crowding.

But she was very spick and span: as fresh as though just launched; her glossy, black sides trembled with the lustre of the sea; her canvas was spacious and superb in cut and set.

The white line of hammock cloths delightfully contrasted with the gilt rope of beading which ran the length of her below the wash streak, and which terminated on the stern in a flourish of gilt scroll amid which the windows gleamed darkly like those of Old Harbour House duskily shining amidst the foliage of creepers.

The regular enquiry was made from the frigate's quarterdeck by an officer, and the regular information was supplied by Captain Weaver.

"I will send a boat aboard of you!"

was the shout which immediately followed Weaver's response.

"Shorten sail, or shake the way out of her as you please!"

"Just what could have been wished!"

exclaimed Captain Acton to the Admiral.

"She suspects us.

'Twill save a world of bawling."

Sail was at once shortened aboard the schooner and the helm put down, which held the canvas shuddering in smart ripplings of shadow, whilst on board the frigate the lower stun-sail was taken in, the other stun-sails boom-ended, the main topsail yard backed to the wind and the ship's way arrested, all with the alacrity and quietude which are to be found only in a British man-of-war in perfection.

Down sank a boat from the davits with a lieutenant in the stern sheets, and six sailors to pull her, and in a dozen strokes of the blades feathering in fire to the sunlight and dropping jewels of brilliant dyes ere they were buried for the next foaming impulse, the boat was alongside the schooner.

The lieutenant mounted the short length of steps which had been flung over through the open gangway and saluted the little ship as all sea-gentlemen do, or should, when they step aboard a vessel, even though she should be as mean as an Irish hooker.

The Admiral, Captain Acton, and Captain Weaver stood in the gangway to receive the officer, a man whose portrait should be painted by the caricaturing brush of a Michael Scott.

He was this side of forty, and a great Roman nose stood out like a flying jib between two gaunt cheeks whose hollows when he was silent made you think he was sucking in his breath.

He wore a pigtail under a very old, tarnished cocked hat.

His uniform coat was scarcely held together by the tailor's thread, and appeared to have travelled a score of times round the world in an age when a voyage round the world was regarded as something more prodigious than we should now consider a voyage to the moon, if such a journey were practicable.

His shoes were rusty; his hose had gone into mourning over an absence of soap that was all the same as the death of his laundress.

Yet despite a garb that made a travesty of the human figure there was something distinguished and even noble in the man's bearing.

It was to be seen at once (and no masterful capacity of penetration was needed) that in this officer was the gentleman of old blood, poor and proud, a loyal subject whose heart's life was at the service of his King and country.

It might be thought that the first person in the group this gentleman's eyes fastened upon was Lucy.

She would be held to appeal in her sweetness, colour, freshness, and youth to a sailor as a nosegay of lovely flowers to a lover of flowers who for months has lived forlorn in a desert of sand.

But instead of looking at Lucy, the lieutenant stared at the Admiral with a very great deal of visible speculation in the screwed-up cock of his eye, till his face relaxed with these words: "Pray, sir, did you ever hear of Billy Lawrence?"