Edward Howard, edited by Captain Marryat (continued 8)

I verily believe that, as I approached my native shores, I should have fallen into a settled depression of spirits, which would have terminated in melancholy madness, had I not been roused to exert my moral energies, and awaken my half-entombed pride, by a stinging and a very wholesome insult.

So soon as we were ordered home, Captain Reud’s mental aberrations became less frequent; but, when they supervened, they were more extravagant in their nature. He grew roguish, fretful, and cruel. Though he never spoke to me harshly, he addressed me more rarely. I had not dined with him for a long while: he had taken the mysterious destruction of my wardrobe as a valid excuse; and had gone so far, on one occasion, in a very delicate manner, as to present me with a complete change of linen, which perished like the rest, under the provident care of Joshua. But, after the claim of relationship by that very timid personage, there was no consideration in Reud’s look; and, whenever he did speak to me, there was a contemptuous harshness in his tone that would have very much wounded my feelings at any other time. But, just then, I took but little notice of and interest in anything.

When I say that we were reduced to rags in our habiliments, the reader is not to take the words au pied de lettre. By taking up slops from the purser, and by aid of the ship’s tailor, we had been enabled to walk the quarter-deck without actual holes in our dress; but the dresses themselves were grotesque, for the imitation of our spruce uniform was villainous, and our hats were deplorable; they were greased with oil, and broken, and sewed, and formless, or rather multiform: bad as were our fittings-out, we had not enough of them.

Through the rude and the cold flying mists of winter, after we had struck soundings, we again saw England. It was in the inclement month of January: I was starved and half clad. A beggar of any decent pretension, had he met me in the streets of London, would have taken the wall of me, though I had, at the time, more than three hundred dollars in cash, Spanish doubloons and silver, a power for drawing bills for a hundred a year, more than three years’ pay due, and prize-money to a very considerable amount.

Under these circumstances, my eyes once more greeted my native land.

I got into disgrace. I record it frankly, as my boast is, throughout this biography, to have spoken the truth of all the different variations of my life. Since the captain’s incipient insanity, the Eos had gradually become an ill-regulated ship. The gallant first-lieutenant, formerly so smart and so active, had not escaped the general demoralisation. He was a disappointed man. He had not distinguished himself. God knows, it was neither for want of daring nor expense of life. He had cut out everything that could be carried, and had attempted almost everything that could not. I am compelled to say that these bloody onslaughts were as often failures as successes. He was no nearer his next step on the ladder of promotion than before. His temper became soured, and he was now often lax, sometimes unjust, and always irritable. The other officers shared in the general falling off, and too often made the quarter-deck a display for temper.

The third-lieutenant—yes, I think it was the third—had mast-headed me, about the middle of the first dog-watch; most likely deservedly, for I had lately affected to give the proud and sullen answer. Before I went aloft to my miserable station, I represented to him that I had the first watch; that there was now but three of the young gentlemen doing their duty, the others having very wisely fallen ill, and taken the protection of the sick-list. I told him, respectfully enough, “that if he kept me up in that disagreeable station from half-past five till eight, I could not possibly do my duty, for very weariness, from eight till midnight. It was a physical impossibility.” But he was inexorable. Up I went, the demon of all evil passions gnawing at my heart.

It was almost dark when I went aloft. It was a gusty, dreary night, bitterly, very bitterly cold. I was ill-clad. At intervals, the fierce and frozen drifts, like the stings of so many wasps, drove fiercely into my face; and I believe that I must confess that I cried over my crooked and aching fingers as the circulation went on with agony, or stopped with numbness. It is true, I was called down within the hour; but that hour of suffering had done me much constitutional mischief. I was stupified as much as if I had committed a debauch upon fat ale. However, I was too angry to complain, or to seek relief from the surgeon. I went on deck at half-past eight, with obtuse faculties and a reckless heart.

The frigate was, with a deeply-laden convoy, attempting to hold her course in the chops of the Channel. It blew very hard. The waves were bounding about us with that short and angry leap peculiar, in tempestuous weather, to the narrow seas between England and France. It was excessively dark; and, not carrying sufficient sail to tack, we were wearing the ship every half-hour, showing, of course, the proper signal lights to the convoy. We carried also the customary poop-light of the commodore.

Such was the state of affairs at a little after nine. The captain, the first-lieutenant, the master, the officer of the watch, and the channel pilot that we had taken on board off the Scilly Islands, with myself; were all on deck. Both the signal midshipmen were enjoying the comforts of sickness in their warm hammocks below. Now, I will endeavour to give a faithful account of what happened; and let the unprejudiced determine, in the horrible calamity that ensued, how much blame was fairly attributable to me. I must premise that, owing to shortness of number, even when all were well, there was no forecastle midshipman.

A dreadful gust of icy wind, accompanied by the arrowy sleet, rushes aft rather heading us.

“The wind is getting more round to the east. We’d better wear at once,” said the pilot to the master.

“The pilot advises us to wear,” said the master to the captain.

“Mr Farmer,” said the captain to the first-lieutenant, “watch and idlers, wear ship.”

“Mr Pond,” said Mr Farmer to the lieutenant of the watch (a diminutive and peppery little man, with a squeaking voice, and remarkable for nothing else excepting having a large wife and a large family, whom he was impatient to see), “wear.”

“Mr Rattlin,” squeaked Mr Pond through his trumpet, “order the boatswain’s mate to turn the watch and idlers up—wear ship.”

“Boatswain’s mate,” bawled out the sleepy and sulky Mr Rattlin, “watch and idlers, wear ship.”

“Ay, ay, sir—whew, whew, whittle whew—watch and idlers, wear ship! Tumble up there, tumble up. Master-at-arms, brush up the bone-polishers.”

“What an infarnal nonsensical ceremony!” growled the pilot, sotto voce; “all bawl and no hawl—lucky we have plenty of sea-room.”

“Jump aft, Mr Rattlin,” said the captain, “and see that the convoy-signal to wear is all right.”

Mr Rattlin makes one step aft.

“Are the fore-topmast staysail halliards well manned, Mr Rattlin?—Jump forward and see,” said the officer of the watch.

Mr Rattlin makes one step forward.

“Is the deep sea-lead ready?” said the master. “Mr Rattlin, jump into the chains and see.”

Mr Rattlin makes one step to the right—“starboard, the wise it call.”

“Mr Rattlin, what the devil are you about?—where’s the hand stationed to the foresheet?” said the first-lieutenant. “Jump there and see.”

Mr Rattlin makes one step to the left hand,—“port, the wise it call.”

“Where’s the midshipman o’ th’ watch—where’s the midshipman o’ th’ watch?” roars out the captain. “By heavens, there’s no light to show over the bows! Mr Rattlin, be smart, sir,—jump forward, and see to it.”

The chilled, the torpid, and half-stupified Mr Rattlin finally went forward to the forecastle, where he ought to have been from the first, and more especially as the boatswain was also on the sick-list.

The consequence of all these multitudinous and almost simultaneous orders—to jump and see, when, by-the-by, it was too dark to see anything a yard off properly—was, that one of the signal lanterns was blown out, and the signal consequently imperfect—that the fore-topmast staysail halliards were so badly manned, that those upon them could scarcely start that then necessary sail from its netting—that the people were not ready with the deep sea-lead—that little Mr Pond was obliged to put down his trumpet, and ease off the foresheet himself till relieved by the quarter-master; but, still, there actually was a lantern over the bows, and that in good time.

Well, the noble ship was no longer buffeted on her bows by the furious wind: as the haughty Essex turned on his heel from the blow of his termagant mistress queen, so did the Eos turn her back to the insulting blast, and flew rapidly before it. Owing to the darkness of the night, assisted by the weak voice of Mr Pond, whose orders could not be very distinctly heard, perhaps a little to his lubberly manner of working the ship, the bounding frigate was much longer before the wind than necessary. I was straining my sight near the cathead on one side, and the captain of the forecastle on the other, but we could discover nothing in the nearly palpable obscure.

On she dashed, and our anxious eyes saw nothing, whilst our minds feared greatly;—she is at her utmost speed. In her reckless course she seems sufficiently powerful to break up the steadfast rock, or tear the shoal from its roots at the bottom of the ocean. On she rushes! I think I hear faintly the merchant cry of “Yeo-yo—yeo!” but the roar of the vexed waters beneath our bows, and the eternal singing of the winds through the frost-stiffened shrouds, prevent my being certain of the fact. But I tremble excessively—when, behold, a huge, long black mass is lying lazily before us, and so close that we can almost touch it!

“Hard a-port,” I roared out at the top of my voice.

“Hard a-starboard,” sang out the captain of the forecastle, equally loudly.

Vain, vain were the contradictory orders. The frigate seemed to leap at the object before her as at a prey; and dire was the crash that ensued. As we may suppose the wrathful lioness springs upon the buffalo, and, meeting more resistance from its horny bulk than she had suspected, recoils and makes another spring, so did the Eos strike, rebound, then strike again. I felt two distinct percussions.

The second stroke divided the obstacle. The Eos passed through it or over it, and the eye looked in vain for the vast West Indiaman, the bearer of wealth, and gay hopes, and youth, and infancy, manly strength, and female beauty. There was a smothered feminine shriek, hushed by the whirlpool of down-absorbing waves, almost as soon as made. It was not loud, but it was fearfully distinct, and painfully human. One poor wretch only was saved, to tell her name and speak of the perished.

As usual, they had kept but a bad look-out. Her officers and her passengers were making merry in the cabin—the wine-cup was at their lips, and the song was floating joyously from the mouths of the fair ones returning to the land of their nativity. The blooming daughters, the newly-married wife, and two matrons with their innocent ones beside them, were all in the happiness of their hopes when the Destroyer was upon them suddenly, truly like a strong man in the darkness of night; and they were all hurled, in the midst of their uncensurable revelry, to a deep grave over which no tombstone shall ever tell “of their whereabout.”

Our own jib-boom was snapped off short, and as quickly as is a twig in frosty weather. Supposing the ship had struck, every soul rushed on deck. They thanked God it was only the drowning of some forty fellow-creatures, and the destruction of a fine merchant-ship. We hauled the single poor fellow that was saved on board. The consternation among the officers was very great. It blew too hard to lower the boats: no effort was or could be made to rescue any chance struggler not carried down in the vortex of the parted and sunken ship—all was blank horror.

Besides the consternation and dismay natural to the appalling accident, there was the fear of the underwriters, and of the owners, and of damages, before the eyes of the captain. I was sent for aft.

“I had not the charge of the deck,” said Captain Reud, looking fiercely at the first-lieutenant. “I am not responsible for this lubberly calamity.”

“I had not the charge of the watch or the deck either,” said Mr Farmer, in his turn, looking at small Mr Pond, who was looking aghast; “surely, I cannot be held responsible.”

“But you gave orders, sir—I heard you myself give the word to raise the fore-tack—that looks very like taking charge of the deck—no, no, I am not responsible.”

“Not so fast, not so fast, Mr Pond. I only assisted you for the good of the service, and to save the foresail.”

Mr Pond looked very blank indeed until he thought of the master, and then he recovered a great portion of his usual vivacity. Small men are always vivacious.

“No, no, I am not responsible—I was only working the ship under the directions of the master. Read the night orders, Mr Farmer.”

“The night orders be damned!” said the gruff old master.

“I will not have my night order damned,” said Reud. “You and the officer of the watch must share the responsibility between you.”

“No offence at all, sir, to you or the night orders either. I am heartily sorry I damned them—heartily; but, in the matter of wearing this here ship precisely at that there time, I only acted under the pilot, who has charge until we are securely anchored. Surelye, I can’t be ’sponsible.”

“Well,” said the pilot, “here’s a knot of tangled rope-yarn—but that yarn won’t do for old Weatherbrace, for, d’ye see, I’m a Sea William (civilian), and not in no ways under martial law—and I’m only aboard this here craft as respects shoals and that like—I’m clearly not ’sponsible!—nothing to do in the ’varsal world with working her—’sponsible pooh!—why did ye not keep a better look-out for’ard?”

“Why, Mr Rattlin, why?” said the captain, the first-lieutenant, the lieutenant of the watch, and the master.

“I kept as good a one as I could—the lanterns were over the bows.”

“You may depend upon it,” said the captain, “that the matter will not be permitted to rest as it is. The owners and underwriters will demand a court of inquiry. Mr Rattlin had charge of the forecastle at the time. Mr Rattlin, come here, sir. You sang out, just before this calamity happened, to port the helm.”

“I did, sir.”

“Quarter-master,” continued Reud, “did you port the helm? Now, mind what you say; did you, sir? because if you did not; six dozen.”

“We did, sir—hard a-port.”

“And the ship immediately after struck?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pooh! the case is clear—we need not talk about it any longer. A clear case, Mr Farmer. Mr Rattlin has charge of the forecastle—he descries a vessel ahead—he takes upon himself to order the helm hard a-port, and we run over and sink her accordingly. He is responsible, clearly.”

“Clearly,” was the answering echo from all the rejectors of responsibility.

“Mr Rattlin, I am sorry for you. I once thought you a promising young man; but, since your desertion at Aniana—we must not mince matters now—you have become quite an altered character. You seem to have lost all zeal for the service. Zeal for the service is a thing that ought not to be lost; for a young gentleman without zeal for the service is a young gentleman, surely—you understand me—who is not zealous in the performance of his duty. I think I have made myself tolerably clear. Do you think, sir, I should hold now the responsible commission I do hold under his Majesty, if I had been without zeal for the service? I am sorry that I have a painful duty to perform. I must place you under an arrest, till I know what may be the port admiral’s pleasure concerning this unpleasant business; for—for the loss of the Mary Anne of London you are clearly responsible.”

“Clearly” (omnes rursus).

“Had you sung out hard a-starboard, instead of hard a-port, the case might have been different.”

“Clearly.”

“Go down below to your berth, and consider yourself a prisoner. The young gentlemen in his Majesty’s service are not permitted to run down West Indiamen with impunity.”

“Clearly.”

In these kind of capstan-head court-martials, at which captains will sometimes administer reefers’ law, “Woe to the weakest!” A defence was quite a work of superfluity; so, consoling myself with the vast responsibility with which, all at once, I found myself invested, I went and turned in, anathematising every created thing above an inch high and a foot below the same dimensions. However, in a very sound sleep I soon forgot everything—even the horrible scene I had just witnessed.

Chapter Fifty Eight.

Distressing disclosures, and some very pretty symptoms of brotherly love—With much excellent indignation utterly thrown away—Joshua Daunton either a very great man or a very great rogue—Perhaps both, as the terms are often synonymous.

I hope the reader has not forgotten Joshua Daunton, for I did not. Having a very especial regard to the health of his body, he took care to keep himself ill. The seventy-one lashes due to him he would most generously have remitted altogether. His eagerness to cancel the debt was only equal to Captain Reud’s eagerness to pay, and to that of his six midshipmen masters to see it paid. Old Pigtop was positively devout in this wish; for, after the gash had healed, it left a very singular scar, that traversed his lip obliquely, and gave a most ludicrous expression to a face that was before remarkably ill-favoured. One side of his visage seemed to have a continual ghastly smirk, like what you might suppose to decorate the countenance of a half-drunken Succubus; the other, a continual whimper, that reminded you of a lately-whipped baboon.

I concluded that Daunton was really ill, for he kept to his hammock in the sick-bay; and Dr Thompson was much too clever, and too old a man-of-war’s man, to be deceived by a simulated sickness.

The day after, when I was enjoying my arrest in the dignified idleness of a snooze in a pea-jacket, on one of the lockers, the loblolly-boy came to me, saying that Daunton was much worse, and that he humbly and earnestly requested to see me. I went, though with much reluctance. He appeared to be dreadfully ill, yet an ambiguous smile lighted up his countenance when he saw me moodily standing near him.

He was seated on one corner of the bench in the bay, apparently under the influence of ague, for he trembled excessively, and he was well wrapped up in blankets. Altogether, notwithstanding the regularity of his features, he was a revolting spectacle. The following curious dialogue ensued:

“Daunton, I am ready to hear you.”

“Thank you, Ralph.”

“Fellow! you may have heard that I am a prisoner—in disgrace—but not in dishonour; but know, scoundrel, that if I were to swing the next minute at the yardarm, I would not tolerate or answer to such familiarity. Speak respectfully, or I leave you.”

“Mr Rattlin, pray do not speak so loudly, or the other invalids will hear us.”

“Hear us, sirrah! they may, and welcome. Scoundrel! can we have any secrets?”

The fiery hate that flashed from the eye of venomous impotence played upon me, at the very moment that the tone of his voice became more bland, and his deportment more submissive.

“Mr Rattlin, your honour, will you condescend to hear me? It is for your own good, sir. Pray be no longer angry. I think I am dying; will you forgive me?—will you shake hands with me?” And he extended to me his thin and delicate hand.

“Oh, no, no!” I exclaimed, accompanying my sneer with all the scorn that I could put in my countenance. “Such things as you don’t die—reptiles are tenacious of life. For the malicious and ape-like mischiefs that you have done to me and to my messmates—though in positive guilt I hold them to be worse than actual felony—I forgive you—but, interchange the token of friendship with such as you—never!”

“Ralph Rattlin, I know you!”

“Insolent rascal! know yourself; dare to send for me no more. I leave you.”

I turned upon my heel, and was about leaving this floating hospital, when again that familiar tone of the voice that had struck the inmost chord of my heart in his shrieking appeal at the gangway, arrested me, and the astounding words which he uttered quickly brought me to his side. In that strange tone, that seemed to have been born with my existence, he exclaimed, distinctly, yet not loudly, “Brother Ralph, listen to me!”

“Liar, cheat, swindler!” I hissed forth in an impassioned whisper, close to his inclined ear, “my heart disowns you—my soul abhors you—my gorge rises at you. I abominate—I loathe you—most contemptible, yet most ineffable liar!”

“Oh, brother!” and a hectic flush came over his chalky countenance, whilst a sardonic smile played over his features. “You can speak low enough now. ’Tis a pity that primogeniture is so little regarded in his Majesty’s vessels of war; but methinks that you are but little dutiful, seeing that I am some ten years your senior, and that I do not scorn to own you, though you are the son of my father’s paramour.”

The horrible words shot ice into my heart. I could no longer retain my stooping position over him, but, feeling faint and very sick, I sat down involuntarily beside him. But the agony of apprehension was but for a moment. A mirth, stern and wild, brought its relief to my paralysed bosom, and, laughing loudly, I jumped up and exclaimed, “Josh, you little vagabond, come, carry me a-pick-a-back—son of a respectable pawnbroker of Whitechapel—how many paramours was the worthy old gentleman in the habit of keeping? Respectable scion of such respectable parent, who finished his studies by a little tramping, a little thieving, a little swindling, a little forging—I heartily thank you for the amusement you have afforded me.”

“Oh, my good brother, deceive not yourself! I repeat that I have tramped, thieved, swindled, ay, and forged. And to whom do I owe all this ignominy? To you—to you—to you. Yet I do not hate you very, very much. You showed some fraternal feeling when they seared my back with the indelible scar of disgrace. I have lied to you, but it suited my purpose!”

“And I have given you the confidence due to a liar.”

“What! still incredulous, brother of mine! Do you know these—and these?”

The handwriting was singular, and very elegant. I knew the letters at once. They were the somewhat affected amatory effusions of that superb woman, Mrs Causand, whom I have described in the early part of this life. They spoke of Ralph,—of Ralph Rattlin—and described, with tolerable accuracy, my singular birth at the Crown Inn, at Reading.

There were three letters. The two first that I read contained merely passionate protestations of affection; the third, that had reference to myself, spoke darkly. After much that is usual in the ardent style of unhallowed love, it went on, as nearly as I can recollect, in these words—“I have suffered greatly—suffered with you, and for you. The child is, however, now safe, and well provided for. It is placed with a decent woman of the name of Brandon, Rose Brandon. A discovery now is impossible. We have managed the thing admirably. The child is fair,” etcetera, etcetera.

In the midst of my agitation I remarked that the writer did not speak of the infant as “my child,” nor with the affection of a mother—and yet, without a great stretch of credulity, the inference seemed plain that she was the parent of it, though not a fond one.

“Mysterious man! who are you, and who am I?”

“Your disgraced, your discarded, yet your legitimate brother. More it suits me not now that you should know. I am weak in frame, but I am steel in purpose. You, you have been the bane of my life. Since your clandestine birth, our father loved me no more. I will have my broad acres back—I will—they are mine—and you only stand between me and them.”

“Desperate and degraded man!—I believe, even after this pretended confession, that you are an impostor to me, as much as you are to the rest of the world. I now understand some things that were before dark to me. My life seems to stand in your way—and your cowardice only prevents you from taking it. You tell me you are a forger—these letters are forgeries. Mrs Causand is not my mother, nor are you my brother. Pray, where did you get them?”

“I stole them from our father’s escritoir.”

“Amiable son! But I weary myself no more with your tissue of falsehoods. To-morrow we shall cast anchor. I will leave the service, and devote the rest of my life to the discovery of origin. I will learn your real name, I will trace out your crimes—and the hands of justice shall at once terminate my doubts, and your life of infamy—we are enemies to the death!”

“A fair challenge, and fairly spoken. I accept it, from all my soul. You refused my hand in brotherly love; for, by the grey hairs of our common parent, in brotherly love it was offered to you—will you now take it as a pledge of a burning, a never-dying, enmity between us? It is at present emaciated and withered—it has been seized up at your detested gangway—it has been held up at the bar of justice; but it will gain strength, my brother—there, take it, sir—and despise it not.”

I shuddered as I received the pledge of hate; and his grasp, though I was in the plenitude of youthful vigour, was stronger than my own.

This dreadful conference had been carried on principally in whispers; but owing to several bursts of emotion on my part, enough had transpired among those present to give them to understand that I had been claimed as a brother, and that I had very hard-heartedly rejected the claim.

After we had passed our mutual defiance, there was silence between us for several minutes; he coiling himself up like an adder in his corner, and I pacing the deck, my bosom swelling with contending emotions. “If he should really be my brother,” thought I. The idea was horrible to me. I again paused in my walk, and looked upon him steadfastly; but I found no sympathy with him. His style of thin and pallid beauty was hateful to me—there was no expression in his countenance upon which I could bang the remotest feeling of love. He bore my scrutiny, in his weakness, proudly.

“Daunton,” said I, at length, “you have failed: in endeavouring to make a tool, you have created an enemy and an avenger of the outraged laws. I shall be in London in the course of eight-and-forty hours—you cannot escape me—if it cost me a hundred pounds, I will loose the bloodhounds of justice after you—you shall be made, in chains, to give up your hateful secret. I am no longer a boy; nor you, nor the lawyer that administers my affairs, shall longer make a plaything of me. I will know who I am. Thank God, I can always ask Mrs Cherfeuil.”

At that name, a smile, no longer bitter, but deeply melancholy, and almost sweet, came over his effeminate features. But it lasted not long. That smile, like a few tones of his voice, seemed so familiar to me. Was I one of two existences, the consciousness of the one nearly, but not quite, blotting out the other? I looked upon him again, and the smile was gone; but a look of grief, solemn and heartrending, had supplied its place—and then the big and involuntary tear stood in his eye. I know not whether it fell, for he held down his arm to the concealment of his face, and spoke not.

Had the wretch a heart, after all?

As I turned to depart he lifted up his face, and all that was amiable in its expression had fled. With a calm sneer he said, “May I trouble you, Mr Rattlin, for those letters which I handed over to you for your perusal?”

“I shall keep them.”

“Is your code of equity as low as mine? They are my property; I paid dearly enough for them. And what says your code of honour to such conduct?”

“There, take your detested forgeries! We shall meet in London.”

“Mr Rattlin forgets that he is a prisoner.”

“Absurd! The charge cannot be sustained for a moment.”

“Be it so. Peradventure, I shall be in London before you.”

Chapter Fifty Nine.

listeners seldom hear good things of themselves—Ralph at a dreadful discount with his messmates, but contrives to settle his accounts with his principal debtor.

I left him, with a strong foreboding that he would work me some direful mischief.

For the long day I sat, with my head buried in my hands on the sordid table of our berth. I ate not, I spoke not. The ribaldry of my coarse associates moved me not; their boisterous and vulgar mirth aroused me not. They thought me, owing to my arrest, and my anticipations of its consequences, torpid with fear. They were deceived. I was never more alive. My existence was—if I may so speak—glowing and fiery hot; my sense of being was intense with various misery.

Towards evening, another piece of intelligence reached me, that alarmed and astounded me. Since the laying on of the one lash on the back of Joshua Daunton, our old servant had descended from the mizzen-top, again to wait upon us. He was, in his way, an insatiate news-gatherer; but he was as liberal in dispensing it as he was eager in acquiring it.

The midshipmen were drinking, out of the still unbroken cups and two or three tin pannikins, their grog at eight o’clock in the evening, when our unshod and dirty attendant spoke thus:

“Oh, Mr Pigtop!—such news!—such strange news! You’ll be so very sorry to hear it, sir, and so will all the young gentlemen.”

“What, has the ship tumbled overboard, or the pig-ballast mutinied for arrears of pay?”

“Oh, sir, ten thousand times worse than that! That thief of the world, sir, Joshua Daunton, is not to have his six dozen, after all, though he did corrupt all the midshipmen’s clothes, sir. Dr Thompson has taken him into his own cabin, and nothing is now too good for him.”

“But hanging,” said the indignant and scarred master’s mate. “If he’s not flogged, I’ll have the life out of him yet, though he should turn out to be the only son of Lord Dunknow-Who.” Pigtop was a wit, in a small midshipman-like way. “He’s turned out to be some great man they say, however—in clog or so, I think they call it; though, for my part, I remembers him in irons well enough not more than a fortnight aback—and he’s had a taste of the girl with nine tails, however—that’s one comfort, to me, whatever he may turn out.”

The vulgar have strange sources from which to derive comfort.

“But are you sure of all this, Bill?” said Mr Staines. “Because, if he should turn out to be somebody, I’ll make him pay me for my traps; that’s as certain now as that he’ll be sent to Old Davy.”

“Certain sure. He showed the doctor papers enough to set up a lawyer’s shop. But that’s not the best of it—hum—ha! Do you think, Mr Pigtop, that Mr Rattlin’s caulking?” (i.e., asleep).

“He has not moved these three hours. I owe Rattlin one for bringing this blackguard on board. There may be something in this, after all. He claimed Rattlin as his brother at the gangway, or something of the sort. Now, that makes me comfortable. It will take our proud messmate down a peg or two, I’m calculating—with his smooth face, and his little bits of Latin and Greek, and his parleyvooing. Oh, oh! but it’s as good as a bottle of rum to me. With all his dollars, and his bills, and his airs, I never had a brother seized up at the gangway. And the captain and the officers once made such a fuss about him! Damn his smooth face!—I’ve a great mind to wake him, and hit him a wipe across the chaps. He knocked me down with the davit-block, for twitting him about that girl of his, that was drowned swimming after him. I’ll have satisfaction for that. The captain ordered me to leave the ship for being knocked down. Well—we shall see who’ll be ordered to leave the ship now. I never caused a girl’s death by desarting her. Upon my soul, I’ve a great mind to rouse him, and hit him a slap of the chaps. I hate smooth faces.”

“Well,” said Staines, “you may depend upon it Rattlin is asleep, or he would have wopped you, Pigtop, for your compliments.”

“He! I should very much like to see it—the spooney.”

“If Mr Rattlin is caulking,” said our valet-de-chambre, “there can’t be no harm done whatsomever. But they do say, in the sick-bay, as how Mr Rattlin isn’t himself, but that Joshua Daunton is he, and that he is nobody at all whatsomever; though Gibbons says, and he’s a cute one, that if Mr Rattlin is not Mr Rattlin, seeing as how Joshua Daunton is Mr Rattlin, Mr Rattlin must be somebody else—and as a secret, he told me, as like as not, he must be Joshua Daunton.”

“Well, here’s comfort again. If Mr Rattlin—Mr indeed!—turns out to be a swindler, as I’m sure he will, it wouldn’t be lawful, nor right, nor proper in me to pay him the money I owe him,” said the conscientious Mr Pigtop. “Damn his smooth face!—I should like to have the spoiling of it.”

Here was important information for me to ruminate upon. I was determined to remain still as long as I could gain any intelligence. But the conversation—if conversation we must term the gibberish of my associates—having taken another turn, I slowly lifted up my smooth face, and, confronting Mr Pigtop’s rough one, I said to him, very coolly, “Mr Pigtop, I am going to do what you would very much like to see—I am going to wop you.”

“Wop me!—no, no, it’s not come to that yet. I have heard something—I’ve a character to support—I must not demean myself.”

“There is my smooth face, right before you—I dare you to strike it—you dare not! Then, thus, base rascal, I beat you to the earth!” And Pigtop toppled down.

Now, all this was very wrong on my part, and very imprudent; for I must confess that he had before beaten me in a regular fistic encounter. But it was really a great relief to me. I longed for some vent to my angry and exasperated feelings. We were soon out in the steerage. Oh! the wolfishness of human nature! That low and brutal fight was a great luxury to me. Positively, at the time I did not feel his blows. At every murderous lunge that I made at him, I shouted, “Take that Daunton;” or, “Was that well planted, brother?”

Had we fought either with sword or pistol, the enjoyment would have been infinitely less to me. There was a stern rapture in pounding him beneath me—in dashing my hands in his blood—in disfiguring his face piecemeal. In our evil passions we are sad brutes. Pigtop had the pluck natural to Englishmen—he would rather not have fought just then; but, having once begun, he seemed resolved to see it out manfully. The consequence was—to use a common and expressive phrase—I beat him to within an inch of his life, and then cried with vexation, because he could no longer stand up to be beaten out of the little that my fury had left him.

When the fray was over, my sturdy opponent had no reason to be envious of my smooth face.

Rather inflamed than satiated with the result of my encounter, whilst my opponent turned into his hammock, and there lay moaning, I, with both my eyes dreadfully blackened, and my countenance puffed up, threw myself upon the lockers, and there sleeplessly passed the whole night, devouring my own heart. If, for a moment, I happened to doze, I was tearing, in my imagination, Joshua Daunton piecemeal, hurling him down precipices, or crushing him beneath the jagged fragments of stupendous rocks. It was a night of agony.

Chapter Sixty.

Soft tack, one of the best tacks, after all—That legs of mutton sometimes produce friendships of long standing completely proved, as well as the value of good grain best ascertained after it has been well thrashed.

The next day we anchored in the Downs. Weak, stiff, and ill, I surveyed myself in my dressing-glass. My battered features presented a hideous spectacle. But I cared not. I was a prisoner—I should have no occasion to emerge from the gloom of the steerage. This was truly a happy return to my native shores.

But I was not altogether left without commiseration—not altogether without sympathy. Both Dr Thompson and the purser looked in to see me. The doctor, especially, seemed to feel deeply for my situation. He told me that he had heard a strange story; but that, as yet, he was not at liberty to mention any particulars. He assured me that he had entirely acquitted me of any participation in a series of base deceptions that had been practised upon an ancient, a distinguished, and wealthy family. He bade me hope for the best, and always consider him as my friend. The purser spoke to the same effect. I told them that my conviction was that it was they, and not I, who were the victims of deception. I stated that I had never pretended to rank or parentage of any sort; I acknowledged that everything connected with my family was a perfect mystery; but I asked them how they could place any faith in the assertions of a man who was in a mean capacity when I met with him—who had confessed to me a multiplicity of villainies—and who had corroborated the truth of his own confessions by his uniformly wicked conduct whilst on board.

To all this they both smiled very sapiently, and told me they had their reasons.

“Well,” said I, “you are wise, and, compared to me, old men. You cannot think this Daunton a moral character—you cannot think him honest. Still, telling me you are my friends, you champion him against me. And yet I know not how or in what manner. If he should prove my brother, the world is wide enough for us both; let him keep out of my way, if he can. Depend upon it, doctor, he is acting upon an afterthought. He has been forced into a desperate course. You marked his abject cowardice at the gangway. During the many hours that he was in irons, before that punishment he so much dreaded was inflicted, why did he not then send for you, and, to save himself, make to you these important disclosures? Merely because he did not think of it. By heavens—a light rushes on me—he is a housebreaker!—he has committed some burglary, and stolen papers relating to me; and no doubt he has followed me, first, with the intention of selling to me the purloined secret at some unconscionable price, and he has since thought fit to change his plan for something more considerable, more wicked.”

“My poor boy,” said the doctor, kindly, “you are under a delusion. Let me change the subject, and puncture you with my lancet under the eyes—they are dreadfully contused. Well, Rattlin, we are to go to Sheerness directly, and be paid off. You may depend upon it, the captain will think better about this arrest of yours, particularly as the two men at the wheel positively contradict the quarter-master, and affirm that the helm was put hard a-starboard, and not hard a-port. It appears to us that it was of little consequence, when the ship was first discovered, how the helm was put. The fault was evidently on the part of those who so awfully suffered for it. By-the-by, there has been a change among the lords of the Admiralty—there are two new junior ones.”

“Begging your pardon, doctor, what the devil is a change among the junior lords of the Admiralty to a half-starved, imprisoned, blackened-eyed, ragged reefer?”

Much more than I was aware of.

“Now,” said I to the purser, “if you wish to do me a real kindness, change me some of my Spanish for English money, and let the first bumboat that comes alongside be ready to go ashore in ballast, for I shall certainly clear it.”

My request was immediately complied with; and my friends, for the present, took their leave.

Those blessed bearers of the good things of this life, the bum-boats, were not yet permitted alongside. Every five minutes, I sent master Bill up to see. Great are the miseries of a midshipman’s berth, when the crockery is all broken, and the grog all drunk, and the salt junk all eaten. But great, exceedingly great, are the pleasures of the same berth, when, after a long cruise, on coming into port, the first boat of soft tack is on the table, the first leg of mutton is in the boiler, and the first pound of fresh butter is before the watering mouths of the expectants. Aldermen of London, you feed much—epicures of the West-end, you feed delicately; but neither of you know what real luxuries are. Go to sea for six months upon midshipman allowance, eked out by midshipmen’s improvidence: and, on your return, the greasy bumboat, first beating against the ship’s sides, will afford you a practical lesson upon the art of papillary enjoyment.

It is, I must confess, very unromantic, and not at all like the hero of three volumes, to confess that, for a time, my impulses of anger had given way to the gnawings of hunger; and I thought, for a time, less of Joshua Daunton than of the first succulent cut into a leg of Southdown mutton.

The blessed avatar at length took place. The bumboat and the frigate lovingly rubbed sides, and, like an angel descending from heaven, I saw Bill coming down the after-hatchway, his face radiant with the glory of expectant repletion, a leg of mutton in each hand, two quartern-loaves under each arm, and between each pair of loaves was jammed a pound of fresh butter. I had the legs of mutton in the berth, and laid on the table, that I might contemplate them, whilst I sent my messenger up for as many bottles of porter as I could buy. But I was not permitted to enjoy the divine contemplation all to myself. My five messmates came to partake of this access of happiness. As the legs of mutton lay on the table, how devoutly we ogled their delicate fat, and speculated upon the rich and gravy-charged lean! We apostrophised them—we patted them endearingly with our hands—and, when Bill again made his appearance laden with sundry bottles of porter, our ecstasy was running at the rate of fourteen knots an hour.

My messmates settled themselves on the lockers, smiling amiably. How sorry they were that my eyes were so blackened, and my face so swollen! With what urbanity they smiled upon me! I was of the right sort—the good fellow,—damn him who would hurt a hair of my head. They were all ready to go a step further than purgatory for me.

“Gentlemen,” said I, making a semicircular barricade round me of my four quartern-loaves, my two pounds of fresh butter, and eleven of my bottles of porter, for I was just about to knock the head off the twelfth (who, under such circumstances, could have waited for corkscrews?)—“gentlemen,” said I, “get your knives ready, we will have lunch.” Shylock never flourished his more eagerly than did my companions theirs, each eyeing a loaf.

“Gentlemen, we will have lunch—but, as I don’t think that lately you have used me quite well (countenances all round serious), and as I have, as you all well know, laid out much money, with little thanks, upon this mess (faces quite dejected), permit me to remind you that there is still some biscuit in the bread-bag, and that this before me is private property.”

The lower jaws of my messmates dropped, as if conscious that there would be no occupation for them. I cut a fine slice off the new bread, spread it thickly with the butter, tossed over a foaming mug of porter, and, eating the first mouthful of the delicious preparation, with a superfluity of emphatic smacks, I burst into laughter at the woebegone looks around me.

“What,” said I, “could you think so meanly of me? You have treated me according to your natures, I treat you according to mine. Fall-to, dogs, and devour!—peck up the crumbs, scarecrows, as the Creole calls you, and be filled. But, pause and be just, even to your own appetites. Notwithstanding our lunch, let us dine. Let us divide the four loaves into eight equal portions. There are six of us here, and Bill must have his share. We will have more for our dinner, when the legs of mutton make their appearance.”

We drank each of us a bottle of porter, and finished our half-quartern loaves with wonderful alacrity, Bill keeping us gladsome company. My messmates then left the berth, pronouncing me a good fellow. The eighth portion of soft tommy and butter, with a bottle of porter, I made the servant leave on the table; and then sent him again to the bumboat, to procure other necessaries, to make the accompaniments to our mutton perfect.

In the meantime, Pigtop, who lay in his hammock, directly across the window of our berth, had been a tantalised observer of all that had passed. I crouched myself up in one corner of the hole, and was gradually falling into disagreeable ruminations, when Mr Pigtop crept out of his hammock and into the berth, and sat himself down as far from me as possible.

“Rattlin,” said he, at length, dolefully, “you have beaten me dreadfully.”

“It was your own seeking—I am sorry for your sufferings.”

“Well—I thank ye for that same—I don’t mean the beating—you know that I stood up to you like a man. Is there malice between us?”

“On my part, none. Why did you provoke me?”

“I was wrong—infarnally wrong—and, may be, I would have owned it before—but for your quick temper, and that hard punch in the chaps. I have had the worst of it. It goes to my heart, Rattlin, that I, an old sailor, and a man nearly forty, should be knocked about by a mere boy—it is not decent—it is not becoming—it is not natural—I shall never get over it. I wish I could undo the done things of yesterday.”

“And so do I, heartily—fervently.”

“Well—that is kindly said—and I old enough to be your father—and twenty-five years at sea—beaten to a standstill. Sorry I ever entered the cursed ship.”

How much of all this, thought I, is genuine feeling, how much genuine appetite? I was sorry for the poor fellow, however.

“Rattlin, owing to one crooked thing and another, we have lately fared miserably. The ship has been a hell upon the waters. I am faint for the want of something to support me. Is that prog and that bottle of porter private property?”

“They are my property. I do not offer them to you, because I would not that you thought that I was aping magnanimity. For the respect that I shall always owe to an old sailor, I say to you frankly, that, if your feelings are sufficiently amicable towards me to take it, take it, and with it a welcome and a wish that it may do you much good—but, if your blood is still evil towards me, for the sake of your own integrity you would reject it, though you starved.”

“Rattlin, I break bread with you as a friend. I am confoundedly sorry that I have been prejudiced against you—and there’s my hand upon it.”

I shook hands with him heartily, and said: “Pigtop, I cannot regret that I did my best to repel your insult, but I sincerely regret its consequences. Henceforward, you shall insult me twice, before I lift my hand against you once.”

“I will never insult you again. I will be your fast friend, and perhaps I may have the means of proving it.”

It now became my turn to be astonished. Instead of seeing the hungry oldster fall-to, like a ravenous dog, he broke off a small corner from the bread, ate it, and was in the act of retiring, when I hailed him.

“Halloa!—Pigtop—what’s in the wind now? My friend, you do but little honour to my cheer, and I am sure that you must want it.”

“No, no,” said Pigtop, with much feeling—“you shall never suppose that the old sailor sold the birthright of his honour for a mess of pottage.”

“Well felt and well said, by all that’s upright! But, nevertheless, you shall drink this bottle of porter, and eat this bread and butter—and so I’ll e’en cut it up into very excellent rounds. You sha’n’t accept my friendship without accepting my fare. I like your spirit so well, Pigtop, that for your sake I will never judge of a man again, until I have thrashed him soundly.”

To the surprise of my messmates, when they assembled punctually to the feast of mutton, they discovered me and old Pigtop, hand in hand across the table, discussing another bottle of porter.

Chapter Sixty One.

Ralph is placed in an awkward predicament being put upon his trial to prove his identity, and having no witnesses to call but himself—All voices against him but his own.

At this period, every day, nay, almost every hour, seemed to bring its startling event. Ere good digestion had followed our very good appetites, bustle and agitation pervaded the whole ship. It had been telegraphed from on shore that one of the junior lords of the Admiralty was coming on board immediately. There was blank dismay in our berth. How could my mess-mates possibly go on the quarter-deck, and assist to receive the dignified personage? Much did I enjoy the immunity that, I supposed, being a prisoner gave to me.

The portentous message came down that “the young gentlemen, in full uniform, are expected to be on the quarter-deck to receive the lord of the Admiralty.” All the consolation that I could give was quoting to them the speech of Lady Macbeth to her guests—“Go, nor stand upon the order of your going.” The firing of the salute from the main-deck guns announced the approach, and the clanking of the muskets of the marines on the deck, after they had presented arms, the arrival of the lord plainly to me, in my darksome habitation. Ten minutes had not elapsed, during which I was hugging myself with the thought that all this pomp and circumstance could not annoy me, when, breathless with haste, there rushed one, two, three, four messengers, each treading on the heels of the other, telling me the lord of the Admiralty wished to see me immediately in the captain’s cabin.

“Me! see me! What, in the name of all that is disastrous, can he want with me?” I would come when I had made a little alteration in my dress. Trusting that he was as impatient as all great men usually are when dealing with little ones, I hoped by dilatoriness to weary him out, and thus remain unseen. Vain speculation! A minute had scarcely elapsed, when one of the lieutenants came down, in a half-friendly, half-imperative manner, to acquaint me that I must come up immediately.

The scene that ensued—how can I sufficiently describe it? Had I not been sustained by the impudence of desperation, I should have jumped overboard directly I had got on deck. I found myself, not well knowing by what kind of locomotion I got there, in the fore-cabin, where was spread a very handsome collation, round which were assembled some fifteen officers, all in their full-dress uniforms, in the midst of which a feeble, delicate-looking, and excessively neatly dressed old gentleman stood, in plain clothes. His years must have been far beyond seventy. He was fidgety, indeed, to that degree that would induce you to think that he was a little palsied.

I cannot answer for the silent operations that take place in other men’s minds, but in my own, even under the greatest misfortunes a droll conceit will more rally my crushed spirits than all the moral consolations that Blair ever penned.

“If this be the junior lord of the Admiralty,” thought I, “how venerably patriarchal must be his four seniors!” I smiled at the idea as I bowed.

Let us describe the person that smiled and bowed to this august assembly.

Figure to yourself a tall youth, attired in a blue cotton jacket, with the uniform button, a once white kerseymere waistcoat, and duck trousers, on which were mapped, in cloudy colours—produced by stains of black-strap, peasoup, and the other etceteras that may be found in that receptacle of abominations, an ill-regulated midshipman’s berth—more oceans, seas, bays, and promontories, than nature ever gave to this unhappy globe. Beneath these were discovered a pair of dark blue worsted stockings, terminated by a pair of purser’s shoes—things of a hybrid breed, between a pair of cast-off slippers and the ploughman’s clodhoppers, fitting as well as the former, and nearly as heavy as the latter. Now, this costume, in the depth of winter, was sufficiently light and bizarre; but the manner in which I had contrived to decorate my countenance soon riveted all attention to that specimen of the “human face divine,” marred by the hand of man. Thanks to the expertness of Mr Pigtop, my eyes were singularly well blackened, and the swelling of my face, particularly about the upper lip, had not yet subsided. Owing to my remaining so much, since my arrest, in the obscurity of the between-decks, and perhaps to some inflammation in my eyes, from my recent beating, I blinked upon those before me like an owl.

“As-ton-ish-ing!” said my Lord Whiffledale. “Is that Mr Ralph Rattlin?”

“The same, my lord,” said Captain Reud. “Shall I introduce him to your lordship?”

“By no manner of means—yet—for his father’s sake—really—ridiculous!—Henry, the fifth baron of Whiffledale—ah! black eyes, filthy costume, very particularly filthy, upon my honour. How is this, Captain Reud? Of course, my present visit is not official, but merely to satisfy my curiosity as a gentleman; how is it that your first-lieutenant permits the young gentlemen to so far disgrace—I must use the word—the service—as you see—in—in my young friend, there, with the worsted stockings, and swelled lip, and—black eyes—”

When I first made my appearance, all the captains then and there collected, had looked upon me with anything but flattering regards; some turned up their noses, some grinned, all appeared astonished, and all disgusted. At the conclusion of this speech, I was surprised at the benignity which beamed upon me from under their variously shaped and coloured eyebrows. There was magic in the words “for his father’s sake,” and “my young friend.”

Captain Reud replied, “It is not, my lord, so much the fault of Mr Rattlin as it would, at the first blush, appear to be. He himself pressed a wicked, mischievous young blackguard, who was appointed the young gentleman’s servant. Incredible as the fact may appear, my lord, he contrived, in a manner that Dr Thompson can best explain to you, to destroy all the clothes of his young master merely in the wantonness of his malice. I know that Mr Rattlin is well provided with money, and that he will take the first opportunity again to assume the garb of a gentleman; and I do assure your lordship that no man becomes it better.”

“Sir, if this youth be Mr Rattlin—I believe it—the very oldest blood in the country flows in his veins—but it does seem a kind of species of miracle how a scion of that noble house should stand before me, his father’s friend, with two black eyes and a ragged jacket—there may be some mistake, after all. I was going, Mr Rattlin, to take you with me to my hotel, having matters of the utmost importance to communicate to you; but, oh no!—I am not fastidious, so we had better first have a little private conference in the after—gentlemen, will you excuse us?”—bowing round—“Captain Reud will perhaps do me the favour to be of the party?”

So, into the after-cabin we three went, I burning with impatience, and speechless with agitation, supposing that the much-coveted secret of my parentage would be at length unfolded to me.

Lord Whiffledale and Captain Reud being seated with their backs to the cabin-windows, and I standing before them with the light full upon my disfigured face, I must have had a great deal more the look of a battered blackguard, being tried for petty larceny, than a young gentleman on the eve of being acknowledged the heir to greatness by a very noble lord.

There was a pause for some minutes, during which Lord Whiffledale was preparing to be imposing, and the light of mischief began to beam with incipient insanity in Reud’s eye. “Certainly,” I said to myself, “he will not dare to practise one of his mad pranks upon a lord of the Admiralty!” What will not madness dare?

His lordship, having taken snuff very solemnly, and looked round him with a calm circumspection, fixing his dull eye upon me, and wagging his head, with an equable motion, slowly up and down, spoke as follows:—

“There is a Providence above us all. It is seen, Mr Rattlin, in the fall of a sparrow—it has protected our glorious institutions—it has sanctified the pillars of the State. Providence is, Mr Rattlin—do you really know what Providence is? I ask you the question advisedly—I always speak advisedly—I ask you, do you know what Providence is? Do not speak; interruptions are unseemly—there are few who interrupt me. Providence, young man, has brought me on board this frigate to-day—the wind is north-easterly, what there is of it may increase my catarrh—there is the hand of Providence in everything. I promised my most honourable friend that I would see you as you are—how equipped, how lodged, how ‘cabined, cribbed, confined.’ Apt quotation!—you are cabined—you are cribbed—you are confined—cribbed—look at your countenance—as I said before, ’tis the hand of Providence—”

“Begging your lordship’s pardon,” said Reud, submissively, with the dubious twinkle in his eye for interrupting a nobleman who is so seldom interrupted—“I rather think that it was the fist of Pigtop.”

“Pigtop!—Providence—my quotation. Captain Reud, I have not really the pleasure of understanding you. This young gentleman who has been so lately under the chastening hand of Providence—”

“Pigtop.”

“Is now about to receive from that bountiful hand some of the choicest gifts it is in the happiness of man to receive—rank, wealth, a father’s blessing. Oh! ’tis too much—I am affected—what can I possibly do with him with those black eyes? Mr Ralph Rattlin, you have not yet spoken to me—indeed, how can you? What words would be sufficiently expressive of—of—what you ought to express! Captain Reud, don’t you find this scene rather affecting? Young gentleman, I am here to verify you—are you fully prepared, sir, to be, as it were, verified?”

“My lord, my lord, I am bursting with impatience!”

“Bursting with impatience! The scene is affecting, certainly—touching—complete, with the exception of the black eyes. What would not Miss Burney make of it in one of her admirable novels! But you might have made use of a better word than bursting—I am ready to dissolve with emotion at this tender scene—the discovery of his parentage to a tall, ingenuous youth—bursting—you might have used, first, burning—secondly, glowing—thirdly, consuming—fourthly, raging—fifthly, dying—sixthly, there is perishing; but I will not much insist upon the last, though it is certainly better than bursting. You mean to say that you are burning, not bursting, with impatience—it is a natural feeling, it is commendable, it is worthy of a son of your most honourable father—I will faithfully report to him this filial impatience, and how eager I was to remove it. I do not say satisfy it—a person less careful of the varieties of language would have said satisfy—an impatience satisfied is what? a contradiction of terms; but an impatience removed is—is—the removal of an impatience. This interview will grow very touching. Those blackened eyes—I would that there were a green shade over them. Are you prepared to be verified?”

I bowed, fearing that any other expression of my wishes would lead to further digression. His lordship then, putting on his spectacles, and reading from a paper, commenced thus, I, all the while, trembling with agitation:

“Are you the person who was nursed by one Rose Brandon, the wife of Joseph Brandon, by trade a sawyer?”

“I am.”

“What name did you go by when under the care of those persons?”

“Ralph Rattlin Brandon.”

“Right, very good. I shall embrace him shortly—my heart yearns towards him. Were you removed to a school, by a gentleman in a plain carriage, from those Brandons?”

“I was.”

“To where?”

“To Mr Roots’ academy.”

“Right—a good boy, an amiable boy, he was removed to Mr Roots’: and, having there imbibed the rudiments of a classical education, you were removed to where?”

“To a boarding-school kept by a French gentleman at Stickenham, where, in his wife, I thought I had found a mother—”

“Stop, we are not come to that yet, that is too affecting—of that anon, as somebody says in some play. Have you, Captain Reud, a glass of water ready, should this amiable youth or myself feel faint during this exciting investigation?”

“Perfectly ready,” said the Creole, decidedly in one of his insane fits; for he immediately skipped behind his lordship, and, jumping upon the locker, stood ready to invert a glass of water upon his nicely-powdered head, containing at least three gallons, this glass being a large globe, containing several curious fish, which swung, attached to a beam, directly over my interrogator.

Here was a critical situation for me! A mad captain about to blow the gampus (i.e. souse) a lord of the Admiralty, that same lord, I firmly believed, about to declare himself my father. I was, in a manner, spell-bound. Afraid to interrupt the conference, I bethought me that my Lord Whiffledale would be no less my father wet or dry, and so I determined to let things take their course. So I permitted his lordship to go on with his questions, at every one of which Captain Reud, looking more like a baboon than a human being, canted the globe more and more.

“All very satisfactory—all very satisfactory, indeed! And now, Ralph, on whom have you been in the habit of drawing for your allowance while you were in the West Indies?”

“Mr —, of King’s Bench Walk, in the Temple.”

“Perfectly correct—perfectly”—(still reading).

“Are you a well-grown youth for your age?”

“I am.”

“Of an interesting physiognomy?”

Here the malicious madman grinned at me in the most laughable manner, over the devoted head of the ancient lord.

“I hope you will think so, my lord, when I have recovered my usual looks.”

“Ugh—hum—ha—of dark brown hair, approaching to black?”

“With intensely black eyes.”

“No.”—“Yes.” Mine was the negative, Captain Reud’s the affirmative, spoken simultaneously.

At this crisis his lordship had made a very proper and theatrical start. Captain Reud grasped the glass with both hands; and the severe, bright eye of Dr Thompson fell upon the prank-playing captain. The effect was instantaneous: he slunk away from his intended mischief; completely subdued. The fire left his eye, the grin his countenance; and he stood beside his lordship in a moment, the quiet and gentlemanly post-captain, deferentially polite in the presence of his superior. I understood the thing in a moment—it was the keeper and his patient.

“I am particularly sorry, my lord,” said the doctor—“I am very particularly sorry, Captain Reud, to break in upon you unannounced; the fact is, I did knock several times but I suppose I was not heard. This letter, my lord, I hope will be a sufficient apology.”

His lordship took the letter with a proud condescension. Captain Reud said, “Dr Thompson’s presence is always acceptable to me.”

Lord Whiffledale read this letter over three times distinctly; then, from his usual white he turned a palish purple, then again became white. In no other manner did he seem to lose his self-possession.

“Dr Thompson,” said he, at length, very calmly, “let me see some of these documents immediately.”

“Anticipating the request, my lord, I have them with me.” The doctor then placed in his hands several letters and papers. At length, his lordship exclaimed:

“I am confounded. It is wholly beyond my comprehension—I know not how to act. It is excessively distressing. I wish, on my soul, I had never meddled in the business. Can I see the young man?”

“Certainly, my lord; I will bring him to you immediately.”

During Dr Thompson’s short absence, his lordship walked up and down with a contracted brow, and much more than his usual fidgety movements. Not wholly to my surprise, but completely to my dismay, the doctor reappeared with my arch and only enemy by his side—Joshua Daunton.

The contrast between him and me was not at all in my favour. Not in uniform, certainly, but scrupulously clean, with a superfine blue cloth jacket and trousers, white neckerchief; and clean linen shirt; he looked not only respectable, but even gentlemanly. I have before described my appearance. I may be spared the hateful repetition.

“And so,” said his lordship, turning to Joshua, “you are the true and veritable Ralph Rattlin?”

“I am, my lord,” said the unblushing liar. “The young gentleman near you is my illegitimate brother; his mother is a beautiful lady, of the name of Causand, a most artful woman. She first contrived to poison Sir Reginald’s mind with insinuations to my disfavour; and, at last, so well carried on her machinations as to drive me first from the paternal roof, and, lastly, I confess it with horror and remorse, into a course so evil as to compel me to change my name, fly from my country, and subject me to the lash at the gangway. If these documents, that I confide to your hands, and to yours only, will not remove every doubt as to the truth of my assertions, afford me but a little time, till I can send to London, and every point shall be satisfactorily cleared up.”

He then placed in Lord Whiffledale’s hands the papers that had been so convincing to Dr Thompson. Captain Reud, now reduced by the presence of the good doctor to the most correct deportment, stepped forward, and assured his lordship that I, at least, was no impostor, and that, if imposition had been practised, I had been made an unconscious instrument.

“Perhaps,” said his lordship, after scrutinising the papers, and returning them to Joshua, “the young gentleman with the blackened eyes will do us the favour, in a few words, to give us his own version of the story; for, may I die consumptive, if I can tell which is the real Simon Pure!”

Placed thus in the embarrassing situation of pleading for my own identity, I found that I had very little to say for myself. I could only affirm that, although always unowned, I had been continuously cared for; and that the bills I had drawn upon Mr —, the lawyer in the King’s Bench Walk in the Temple, had always been honoured. My lord shook his head when I had finished, diplomatically. He took snuff. He then eyed me and my adversary carefully. He now waved his head upwards and downwards, and at length opened his mouth and spoke:

“Captain Reud, I wash my hands of this business. I cannot decide. I was going to take on shore with me the legitimate and too-long neglected son of my good old friend, Sir Reginald. Where is that son? I come on board the Eos, and I ask him at your hands, Captain Reud. Is that person with the discoloured countenance my friend’s son? Certainly not. Is that other person his son—a disgraced man? Knowing the noble race of my friend, I should say certainly not. Where is Sir Ralph’s (?Sir Reginalds’s) son? He is not here; or, if he be here, I cannot distinguish him. I wash my hands of it—I hate mysteries. I will take neither of them to London. I am under some slight obligations to Sir Reginald—and yet—I cannot decide. The weight of evidence certainly preponderates in favour of the new claimant. Captain Reud, perhaps, will permit him to land, and he may go up to town immediately, and have an interview with Mr —, the lawyer; and, if he can satisfy that person, he will receive from him further instructions as to his future proceedings.”

Chapter Sixty Two.

The confessions of a madman, which, nevertheless, embrace a very wise caution—Ralph gets his liberty-ticket—Very needless, as he is determined henceforward to preserve his liberty—And, being treated so uncivilly as a sailor, determines to turn civilian himself.

Here Captain Reud interrupted the speaker, and told him that Joshua was a prisoner under punishment, and waiting only for convalescence to receive the remainder of his six dozen lashes. At hearing this, his lordship appeared truly shocked; and, drawing Reud aside, they conversed for some minutes, in whispers.

At the conclusion of this conference, Captain Reud stepped forward, and, regarding Joshua with a look of much severity, he said: “Young man, for the sake of other parties, and of other interests, your errors are overlooked. Your discharge from this ship shall be made out immediately. If you are the person you claim to be, your three or four months’ pay can be of no consequence to you. Have you sufficient money to proceed to London immediately?”

“Much more than sufficient, sir.”

“I thought so. Proceed to London to the lawyer’s. If you are no impostor, I believe that a father’s forgiveness awaits you. Forget that you were ever in this ship. My clerk will make out your discharge immediately. Take care of yourself. You are watched. There is a wakeful eye upon you: if you swerve from the course laid down for you, and go not immediately to Mr —’s office, be assured that you will be again in irons under the half-deck. Have I, my lord, correctly expressed your intentions?”

“Correctly, Captain Reud.”

“Joshua Daunton, get your bag ready; and, in the meantime, I will give the necessary orders to the clerk. You may go.”

With an ill-concealed triumph on his countenance, Joshua Daunton bowed submissively to all but myself. To me he advanced with an insulting smile and an extended hand. I shrank back loathingly.

“Farewell, brother Ralph. I told you that I should be in London before you. Will you favour me with any commands? Well—your pride is not unbecoming—I will not resent it for your father’s sake; and, for his and for your sake, I will forgive the juggle that has hitherto placed the natural son—that is, I believe, the delicate paraphrase—in the station of the rightful heir. Farewell.”

I made no reply: he left the cabin, and, in an hour after, the ship. I shall not advantage myself of that expression, so fully naturalised in novels, that “my feelings might be conceived, but cannot be expressed:” for they can be expressed easily enough—in two words,—stupefied indignation. After Joshua had departed, the other persons remaining in the after-cabin followed shortly after, with the exception of myself; for Reud told me to stay where I then was, until he should see me again.

In the course of an hour, Lord Whiffledale went on shore with his cortège; and Captain Reud returned into the after-cabin, which I had been, during his absence, disconsolately pacing. He was a little flushed with the wine he had taken, but perfectly sane. He came up to me kindly, and, placing his hands upon my shoulders, looked me fully and sorrowfully in the face. There was no wild speculation in his eyes; they looked mild and motherly. The large tears gathered in each gradually, and, at length, overflowing the sockets, slowly trickled down his thin and sallow cheeks. He then pressed his right hand heavily on the top part of his forehead, exclaiming, in a voice so low, so mournful, and so touching, that my bosom swelled at its tones, “It is here;—it is here!”

“Ralph, my good Ralph,” said he, after he had seated himself; weeping all the while bitterly, “we will take leave of each other now. We are true brothers in sorrow—our afflictions are the same—you have lost your identity, and I mine. Ever since that cursed night at Aniana, John Reud’s soul was loosened from his body; I have the greatest trouble to keep it fixed to my corporeal frame; it goes away, in spite of me, at times, and some other soul gets into this withered carcass, and plays me sad tricks—sad tricks, Rattlin—sad tricks. My identity is gone, and so, poor youth, is yours. We will part friends. These tears are not all for you—they are for myself; too. I do not mind crying before you now, for it is not the true John Reud that is now weeping. You think that I have been a tyrant to you—but, I tell you, Rattlin, there is a tyrant in the ship greater than I—it is that horrible Dr Thompson. He is plotting to take away my commission, and to get me into a madhouse!—oh, my God!—my God! remove from me this agony. Hath Thine awful storm no thunderbolt—Thy wave no tomb! Must I die on the straw, like a beast of burden worn to death by loathsome toil?—and so many swords to have flashed harmlessly over my head, so many balls to have whistled idly past my body! But, God’s will be done! Bear yourself, my dear body, carefully in the presence of all medical men. They have the eye of the fanged adder. You know that your identity also has been questioned; but your fate is happier than mine, for you can hear, see, touch, your double; but mine always eludes me, when I come home, after an excursion, to my own temple. But, if I were you, when I got hold of the thing that says it is, and is not, yourself, I would grind it, I would crush it, I would destroy it!”

“I will, so may Heaven help me at my utmost need!”

“Well said, my boy, well said—because he has no right to get himself flogged, and thus give a wretched world an opportunity of saying that Ralph Rattlin had been brought to the gangway. But do not let this cast you down. You will do well yet—while I—Oh, that I had a son!—I might then escape. God bless you!—I must pray for strength of mind—strength of mind—mark me, strength of mind. Go, my good boy; if misfortunes should overtake you, and they leave me anything better than a dark cell and clanking chains, come and share it with me. Now go (and he wrung my hands bitterly), and tell Doctor Thompson I wish to speak with him, and just hint to him how rationally and pleasantly we have been discoursing together—and remember my parting words—deport yourself warily before the doctors, carefully preserve your identity, and sometimes think on your poor captain.”

This last interview with Captain Reud, for it was my last, would have made me wretched, had it not been swallowed up by a deeper wretchedness of my own.

Early next morning, we weighed, and made sail for Sheerness. On anchoring in the Medway, Captain Reud went on shore; and, as I shall have no more occasion to refer to him, I shall state at once, that the very fate he so feared awaited him. Six months after he had left the Eos, he died raving mad, in a private receptacle for the insane.

At Sheerness we were paid off.

As I went over the side of the Eos for the last time, I was tempted to shake the dust from off my feet, for, of a surety, it had lately been an accursed abode to me.

In order entirely to elude all observation from my late companions, I abandoned everything I had on board, not worth much, truly, with the exception of my sextant and telescope; and took on shore with me only the clothes (miserable they were) in which I stood. I went to no hotel or inn; but, seeing a plain and humble house in which there were lodgings to let for single men, I went and hired a little apartment that contained a press bedstead. I took things leisurely and quietly. I was now fully determined to discover my parentage; and, after that event, entirely to be governed by circumstances as to my future course of life, and the resuming of the naval profession.

My first operations were sending for a tailor, hatter, and those other architects so essential in building up the outer man. The costume I now chose was as remote from official as could be made. I provided myself with one suit only, leaving the rest of my wardrobe to be completed in London.

Knowing that I had an active and intelligent enemy who had two days the start of me, I was determined to act with what I thought caution. I had more than a half-year’s stipend due to me; I accordingly drew for it upon the lawyer, nearly 75 pounds, intimating to him, at the same time, by letter, my arrival in England, and asking if he had any instructions as to my future disposal. This letter was answered by return of post, written with all the brevity of business, stating that no such instructions had been received, and inclosing an order on the Sheerness Bank for the money.

So far all was highly satisfactory. It proved two things: first, that Joshua Daunton had not yet carried his machinations in the quarter from which arose the supplies; and, secondly, that I should now have considerable funds wherewith to prosecute my researches. In the space of three days, behold me dressed in the fashionable costume of the period—blue coat, broad yellow buttons, yellow waistcoat with ditto, white corduroy continuations, tied with several strings at the knees, and topped boots. It was in the reign of the “bloods” and the “ruffians,” more ferocious species of coxcombs than our dandies, and much more annoying.

Chapter Sixty Three.

Ralph finds everywhere great changes—Gives way to his feelings, and makes a fool of himself—This chapter will be found either the worst or the best of Ralph’s confessions, according to the feelings of the reader.

Having stayed one week at Sheerness, and laid down my plan of future action, I started in the passage boat for Chatham. There was not much room for recumbency. I found it, however, and placed the only luggage that I had, a small parcel, covered with brown paper, under my head as a pillow. The parcel contained my logs, and my certificates, and a single change of linen. Very providentially, I had placed my pay-ticket, with my bank notes, in my pocket-book.

Once, as I opened my eyes at the explosion of an oath more loud than usual, methought I saw the sudden and white-complexioned face of Joshua Daunton hanging closely over mine. I started up, and rubbed my eyes, but the vision had fled. I was determined to be watchful; and, with this determination in full activity, I again fell asleep; nor was I once more properly awakened until we had arrived at Chatham. When I had roused myself up, to my consternation, I discovered that my pillow was nowhere to be found. Many of the passengers had already gone their ways, and those who remained knew nothing about me or my packet. Indeed, I only drew suspicions on myself, as my paucity of baggage and the pretensions of my dress were decidedly at variance. The gentleman in top-boots and with the brown paper parcel seemed ridiculous enough. Seeing how ineffectual noise was, I held my peace, now that I had nothing else to hold; got on the outside of the first coach for London; and, by ten at night, I found myself in the coffee-room of the White Horse, in Fetter Lane.

The next morning, when I arose, it was my birthday, the 14th of February; and I stood at mine inn, a being perfectly isolated. But I was not idle; on descending into the coffee-room, I procured the Court Guide; but my most anxious scrutiny could discover no such person among the baronets as Sir Reginald Rattlin. Paying my bill, I next went to Somerset House, and drew my pay; I then repaired to the aristocratic mansion of Lord Whiffledale, in Grosvenor Square. “Not at home,” and “in the country for some time,” were the surly answers of the indolent porter.

It was a day of disappointments. The lawyer who cashed my bills was civil and constrained. To all my entreaties first, and to my leading questions afterwards, he gave me cold and evasive answers. He told me he had received no further instructions concerning me; reiterated his injunctions that I should not endanger the present protection that I enjoyed, by endeavouring to explore what it was the intention of those on whom I depended to keep concealed; and he finally wished me a good morning, and was almost on the point of handing me out of his office.

But I would not be so repelled. I became impassioned and loud; nor would I depart until he assured me, on his honour, that he knew almost as little of the secret as myself, and that he was only the agent of an agent, never having yet had any communication with the principal, whose name, even, he assured me, he did not know.

I had now nearly exhausted the day. The intermingling mists of the season and the heavy smoke of the town were now shrouding the streets in a dense obscurity. There were no gas lights then. Profoundly ignorant of the intricacy of the streets of the metropolis, I was completely at the mercy of the hackney-coachmen, and they made me buy it extremely dear. Merely from habit, I again repaired to the White Horse, and concluded my nineteenth natal day in incertitude, solitude, and misery.

To Stickenham—yes, I would go there immediately. But the resolve gave no exulting throb to my bosom.

I went to that spot so consecrated to my memory by bright skies and brighter faces; the spot where I had so often urged the flying ball and marshalled the mimic army—it was there that I stood; and I asked of a miserable half-starved woman, “where was the play-ground of my youth?” and she showed me a “brick-field.”

I walked a few steps further, and asked for the school-house of my happiest days—and one pointed out to me a brawling ale-house. It was a bitter change. I asked of another where was now my old light-hearted, deep-learned, French schoolmaster, Monsieur Cherfeuil. He had gone back to France. The emigrés had been recalled by Napoleon.

There was one other question that I dreaded, yet burned to ask—I need not state how fearful it was to me, since it was to learn the fate of her whom I had honoured, and loved, and hailed, as my mother—the beautiful and the kind Mrs Cherfeuil. I conjectured that she, too, had gone to France with her husband, and the idea was painful to me.

“There have been great alterations here, my good girl,” said I to a young person whom I afterwards met.

“Very great, indeed, sir,—they have ruined father and mother.”

“Your name, my dear, is Susan Archer.”

“Bless me, so it is, sir!”

“And you seem a very intelligent little girl, indeed.”

“Yes, I have had a good deal of book-learning, but all that is past and gone now. When Mrs Cherfeuil lived in that house, she took care that we should always have a home of our own, fire in the grate, and a loaf in the cupboard—she had me sent to school—but now she is gone!”

“Gone!—where?—with her husband?”

“Don’t you know, sir,” said she, with a quiet solemnity, that made me shudder with dreadful anticipations. “If you will come with me, I will show you.”

I dared not ask the awful question, “Is she dead?” I took my gentle guide by the hand, and suffered her to lead me slowly through the village. Neither of us spoke. We had almost attained to the end of the hamlet, when my sad guide gently plucked me by the arm to turn down to the right.

“No,” said I, tremulously, “that is not the way; we must go forward. That lane leads to the churchyard.”

“And to Mrs Cherfeuil.”

“Go on, and regard me not.”

In another minute we were both sitting on a newly-made grave, the little girl weeping in the innocent excess of that sorrow that brings its own sweet relief.

My at first low and almost inaudible murmurs gradually grew more loud and more impassioned. At last they aroused the attention of my weeping companion, and she said to me, artlessly, “It is of no use taking on in this way, sir; she can never speak up from the grave. She is in heaven now; and God does not permit any of His blessed saints to speak to us sinners below.”

“You are quite right, my good girl,” said I, ashamed of this betrayal of my emotion. “It is very foolish indeed to be talking to the dead over their damp graves, and not at all proper. But I have a great fancy to stay here a little while by myself. Pray go and wait for me at the end of the lane. I will not keep you long, and I have something to say to you.”

“I will do as you tell me, sir, most certainly. I will tell you all about her death, for I was a sort of help to the nurse. I know you now, sir, and thought I knew you from the first.”

I shall not repeat the extravagances that I uttered when alone. I was angry with myself and with all the world; and I fear that I exasperated myself with the thought that I did not sufficiently feel the grief with which I strove to consecrate my loss. I remember, I concluded my rhapsody thus:

“Again I call upon you by the sacred name of mother—for such you were—and no other will my heart ever acknowledge. I adjure you to hear me swear that I will have all the justice done to your memory that man can do! and may we never meet in those realms where only the injured find redress, if I fail to scatter this sacred earth in token of dishonour upon the head of him who has dishonoured you—were he even my own father! It is an oath. May it be recorded, should that record be used as my sentence of death!”

Having made this harsh and impious vow, the effect of over-excitement, I tore a considerable portion of the earth from the grave, and, folding it in my handkerchief I knotted it securely, and placed it round my heart next to my skin, like those belts that are worn by Roman Catholics as instruments of penance.

With a wish for something very like the shedding of blood in my heart, and with a fervent prayer in my imagination and on my lips, I left Mrs Cherfeuil’s humble grave, and joined my companion.

In one little half-hour, I found my belt of vengeance so cold and so inconvenient, that I heartily wished I was well rid of it: it is a miserable confession, a sad falling off in my heroics; but the oath that I had voluntarily and so solemnly taken prevented me from ridding myself of the disgusting incumbrance.

According to the account of my companion, all was smiles, and happiness, and sunshine, around Mrs Cherfeuil; when a person made his appearance, by the description of whom I at once recognised that fiend, Daunton. Domestic happiness then ceased for the poor lady; rumours of the worst nature got abroad; her little French husband, instead of being as for twelve years before he had been, her shadow, her slave, and her admirer, became outrageous and cruel, and after the horrid word bigamy had been launched against her, she never after held up her head.

She sickened and died. Nor did Daunton succeed in his plans of extorting money—but his scheme was infinitely more deep and more hellish. He had, but not till after her death, declared himself to be her son. This, instead of having any effect upon the outraged widower, only made him more eager to drive the impostor from his presence; and, the opportunity offering itself to leave the spot now so hateful to him, and the country that had sheltered him and in which he had grown so rich, he availed himself of it eagerly. This account did not aggravate my implacable feelings against this Daunton, for my hate was beyond the capability of increase.

After hearing all that the little wench had to discover, and rewarding her, I proceeded alone to wander over the spots that were once so dear to me. In this melancholy occupation, when the cold mists of the early evening fell, I continued heaping regret upon regret, until a more miserable being, short of being impelled to suicide, could not have trod the earth. About five, it began to grow dark; and, weary both in mind and body, I commenced climbing the long hill that was the boundary of the common, on my return to London.

On the Surrey side of the hill, for its apex separated it from another county, the descent was more precipitous—so much so, that it is now wholly disused as a road for carriages; and not only was it precipitous, but excessively contorted, the bends sometimes running at right angles with each other. High banks, clothed with impervious hedges, and shadowed by tall trees, made the road both dank and dark; and, at the time that I was passing, or, rather, turning round one of the elbows of this descent, a sturdy fellow, with a heavy cudgel, followed at some distance by a much smaller man, accosted me in a rude tone of voice, by bawling out:

“I say, you sir, what’s o’clock?”

“Go about your business, and let me pass.”

“Take that for your civility!” and, with a severe blow with his stick, he laid me prostrate. I was not stunned, but I felt very sick, and altogether incapable of rising. In this state I determined to feign stupefaction, so I nearly closed my eyes, and lay perfectly still. The huge vagabond then placed his knee upon my chest, and called out to his companion:

“I say, Mister, come and see if this here chap’s the right un.”

The person called to, came up; and, immediately after, through my eyelashes, I beheld the diabolical white face of Daunton. It was so dark, that, to recognise me, he was obliged to place his countenance so close to mine that his hot breath burned against my cheek. He was in a passion of terror, and trembled as if in an access of ague.

“It is,” said he, whilst his teeth chattered. “Is he stunned?”

“Mister, now I take that as an insult. D’ye think that John Gowles need strike such a strip of a thing as that ere twice?”

“Hush!—How very, very cold it is! Where is your knife? Will you do it?”

“Most sartainly not. There—he’s at your mercy—I never committed murder yet—no, no, must think of my precious soul. A bargain’s a bargain—my part on’t is done.”

“Gowles, don’t talk so loud. I can’t bear the sight of blood—and, oh God!—of this blood—it would spurt upon my hand. Strike him again over the head—he breathes heavily—strike him!”

“No,” said the confederate, sullenly. “Tell ye—u’ll have neither ’art nor part in this ’ere murder.”

During this very interesting conference, I was rallying all my energies for one desperate effort, intending, however, to wait for the uplifted knife, to grasp it, in order that I might turn the weapon against the breast of one assassin, and then use it as a defence against the other.

“Would to God,” said the villain, adding blasphemy to concerted murder—“would to God that my hand was spared this task! Give me the knife now. Where shall I strike him?—I have no strength to drive it into him far.”

“Tell ye, Mister, u’ll have nought to do with the murder—but u’d advise thee to bare his neck, and thrust in the point just under his right ear.”

“Hush! Will it bleed much?”

“Damnably!”

“Horrible!—horrible! Do you think the story about Cain and Abel is true?”

“As God is in heaven!”

“Can’t it be done without blood?”

“I’ll have nothing to do with the murder. But, Mister, if so be as you are so craven-hearted, take your small popper, and send a ball right into his heart. It is a gentleman’s death, and will make the prettiest small hole imaginable, and bleed none to signify. But, mind ye, this ’ere murder’s all your own.”

At this critical moment, as I was inhaling a strong breath, in order to invigorate my frame for instant exertion, I heard two or three voices in the distance carolling out, in a sort of disjointed chorus—

“Many droll sights I’ve seen, But I wish the wars were over.”

“Now or never,” said Joshua, producing and cocking his pistol. I leaped upon my legs in an instant, and, seizing the weapon, which was a small tool, manufactured for a gentleman’s pocket, by the barrel with my left hand, and this amiable specimen of fraternity by the right, the struggle of an instant ensued. The muzzle of the pistol was close upon my breast when my adversary discharged it. I felt the sharp, hard knock of the ball upon my chest, and the percussion for the moment took away my breath, but my hold upon the villain’s throat was unrelaxed. The gurgling of suffocation became audible to his brutal companion.