The news of their destination had created great satisfaction among the crew, as there was little honour or prize-money to be gained, and the vessel had been for some time incessantly engaged in hunting for foes that were never found. Not the least pleased was Will. He had left England a friendless ship’s-boy; he returned home a midshipman, with a most creditable record, and with a fortune that, when he left the service, would enable him to live in more than comfort.
On arriving at Portsmouth the crew were at once paid off, and Will was appointed to the Tartar, a thirty-four gun frigate. On hearing the name of the ship, Dimchurch and Tom Stevens at once volunteered. They were given a fortnight’s leave; so Will, with Tom Stevens, determined to take a run up to Scarcombe, and the same day took coach to London. Dimchurch said he should spend his time in Portsmouth, as there was no one up in the north he cared to see, especially as it would take eight days out of his fortnight’s leave to go to his native place and back.
On the fourth day after leaving London the two travellers reached Scarborough. Tom Stevens started at once, with his kit on a stick, to walk to the village, while Will made enquiries for the house of Mrs. Archer, which was Miss Warden’s married name. Without much trouble he made his way to it; and when the servant answered his knock he said: “I wish to see Mrs. Archer.”
“What name, sir?” the girl said respectfully, struck with the appearance of the tall young fellow in a naval uniform.
“I would rather not say the name,” Will said. “Please just say that a gentleman wishes to speak to her.”
“Will you come this way?” the girl said, leading him to a sitting-room. A minute later Mrs. Archer appeared. She bowed and asked: “What can I do for you, sir?”
“Then you do not know me, madam?” said Will.
She looked at him carefully. “I certainly do not,” she said, and after a pause: “Why, it can’t be!—yes, it is—Willie Gilmore!”
“It is, madam, but no doubt changed out of all recognition.”
“I have from time to time got your letters,” said Mrs. Archer, “and learned from them with pleasure and surprise that you had become an officer, but never pictured you as grown and changed in this way. I hope you have got my letters in return?”
“I only got one, Mrs. Archer, and it reached me just before we sailed from the Mediterranean two years ago. I was not surprised, however, for of course the post is extremely uncertain. It is only very seldom that letters reach a ship on a foreign station.”
“Dear, dear, you have lost some fingers!” Mrs. Archer cried, suddenly noticing Will’s left hand. “How sad, to be sure!”
“That is quite an old story, Mrs. Archer. I lost them at the attempt to capture St. Pierre, and am so accustomed to the loss now that I hardly notice it. It is surprising how one can do without a thing. I have to be thankful, indeed, that it was the left hand instead of the right, as, had it been the other way, I should probably have had to leave the navy, which would have meant ruin to me.”
“It is all very well to make light of it,” she said, “but you must feel it a great drawback.”
“Well, you see, Mrs. Archer, the loss of three fingers is of course terrible for a sailor, who has to row, pull at ropes, scrub decks, and do work of all sorts; but an officer does not have to do manual work of any kind, and hardly feels such a loss, except, perhaps, at meals. I am going to sea again almost directly, but the first time I have a long holiday I shall have some false fingers fitted on, more for the sake of avoiding being stared at than for anything else.”
“Well, I am more than pleased at seeing you again, Willie. It is so natural for me to call you that, that it will be some time before I can get out of it. So you have got on very well?”
“Entirely owing to you, Mrs. Archer, as I told you in the first letter I wrote to you after I got my promotion. You taught me to like study, and were always ready to help me on with my work, and it was entirely owing to my having learned so much, especially mathematics, that I was able to attract the attention of the officers and to get put on the quarter-deck. I have, I am happy to say, done very well, and I am sure of my step as soon as I have passed.
“I had the extraordinary good fortune,” he said, after chatting for some time, “to be put in command of a prize that had been taken from some pirates, and was thus able to earn a good deal of prize-money. But nothing has given me greater pleasure since I went away than the purchasing of this little present for you as a token, though a very poor one, of my gratitude to you for your kindness;” and he handed her a little case containing a diamond brooch, for which he had paid one hundred and fifty pounds as he came through London.
“Willie!” she exclaimed in surprise as she opened it, “how could you think of buying such a valuable ornament for me?”
“I should have liked to buy something more valuable,” he said. “If I had paid half my prize-money it would only have been fair, for I should never have won it but for you.”
“I have nothing nearly so valuable,” she said. “Well, now, you must take up your abode with us while you stay here. How long have you?”
“I have a fortnight’s leave, but it has taken me four days to come down here, and of course I shall have to allow as many for the return journey. I have therefore six days to spare, and I shall be very pleased indeed to stay with you. I must, of course, spend one day going over to the village to see John Hammond and his wife. I am happy to say that I shall be able to make their declining days comfortable. Your father is, I hope, well, Mrs. Archer?”
“Yes, he is going on just as usual. I was over there a fortnight ago. I am sure he will be very glad to see you; he always enquires, when I go over, whether I have had a letter from you, and takes great interest in your progress.”
“Tom Stevens has come back with me, and has gone on to-day to the village. I told him not to mention about my coming, as I want to take the old couple by surprise.”
“That you certainly will do. Of course they have aged a little since you went away, but there is no great change in them. Ah, there is my husband’s knock! Lawrence,” she said, as he entered, “this is the village lad I have so often spoken to you about. He has completely changed in the three years and a half he has been away. We heard, you remember, that he had become an officer, but I was quite unprepared for the change that has come over him.”
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Gilmore. My wife has talked about you so often that I quite seem to know you myself, but, of course, as I did not know you in those days I can hardly appreciate the change that has come over you. One thing I can say, however, and that is that you bear no resemblance whatever to a fisher lad.”
Will was soon quite at home with Mr. and Mrs. Archer, who introduced him with pride as “our sailor boy” to many of their friends. On the third day of his stay he hired a gig and drove over to Scarcombe. Alighting at the one little inn, he walked to John Hammond’s cottage, watched on the way by many enquiring eyes, the fisher folk wondering whether this was a new revenue officer. He knocked at the door, lifted the latch, and entered. The old couple were sitting at the fire, and looked in surprise at the young officer standing at the door.
“Well, sir,” John asked, “what can I do for you? I have done with smuggling long ago, and you won’t find as much as a drop of brandy in my house.”
“So I suppose, John,” Will said; “your smuggling didn’t do you much good, did it?”
“Well, sir, I don’t see as that is any business of yours,” the old man answered gruffly. “I don’t mind owning that I have handled many a keg in my time, but you can’t bring that against me now.”
“I have no intention of doing so, John. I dare say you gave it up for good when that dirty little boy who used to live with you chucked it and got into trouble for doing so. You recollect me, don’t you, mother?” he said, as the old woman sat staring at him with open eyes.
“Why, it is Willie himself!” she exclaimed; “don’t you know him, John, our boy Willie, who ran away and went to sea?”
“You don’t say it is Will!” the old man said, getting up.
“It is Will sure enough,” the lad said, holding out his hand first to one and then to the other. “He has come back, as you see, an officer.”
“Yes, Parson told us that. Well, well! Why, it was only two days ago that Tom Stevens came in. He has growed to be a fine young fellow too, and he told us that you were well and hearty and had been through lots of fights. But he didn’t say nothing about your having come home.”
“Well, here I am, John; and what is better, I have brought home some money with me, and I shall be able to allow you and the mother a guinea a week as long as you live.”
“You don’t mean it, lad!” the old man said with a gasp of astonishment; “a guinea a week! may the Lord be praised! Do you hear that, missis? a guinea a week!”
“Lord, Lord, only to think of it; why, we shall be downright rich!” said his wife. “Plenty of sugar and tea, a bit of meat when we fancy it, and a drop of rum to warm our old bones on Saturday night. It is wonderful, John. The Lord be praised for His mercies! But can you afford it, Will? We wouldn’t take it from you if you can’t, not for ever so.”
“I can afford it very well,” Will said, “and it will give me more pleasure to give it you than to spend it in any other way. Now, mother, let us say no more about it. Here is a guinea as a start, and I wish you would go to the shop and get some tea and sugar and bread and butter and a nice piece of bacon, and let us have a meal just as we used to do when we had made a good haul, or taken a hand in a successful run.”
“It is three years and a half since I saw a golden guinea,” the old woman said as she put on her bonnet, “and they won’t believe their eyes at the shop when I go in with it. You are sure you would like tea better than beer?”
“Much better, though if John would prefer beer, get it for him; but I think we had better put that off till this evening, then we will have a glass of something hot together before I start.”
“You are not going away so soon as that, Will, surely?” the old man said when his wife had left them.
“Yes, John, this is a short visit. I have only four days, and am staying with Miss Warden; that is to say, Miss Warden that was. I must go in and see her father for a few minutes. We’ll have plenty of time to talk over everything before I leave, which I won’t do till eight o’clock. I don’t suppose you have much to tell me, for there are not many changes in a place like this. This man, perhaps, has lost his boat, and that one his life, but that is about all. Now I have gone through a big lot, and have many adventures to tell you.”
“But how did you come to be made an officer, Will? That is what beats me.”
“Entirely owing to my work at books, which you used always to be raging about. But for that I should have remained before the mast all my life. Now in a couple of years or so I’ll be a lieutenant.”
“Well, well! one never knows how things will turn out. I did think you were wasting your time in reading, and reading, and reading. I didn’t see what good so much book-learning would do you; but if it got you made an officer, there is no doubt that you were right and I was wrong. But you see, lad, I was never taught any better.”
“It has all turned out right, John, and there is no occasion for you to worry over the past. I felt sure that it would do me good some day, so I stuck to it in spite of your scolding, and you will allow that I was never backward in turning out when you wanted me for the boat.”
“I will allow that, Will, allow it hearty; for there was no better boy in the village. And so you have been fighting, I suppose, just like Tom Stevens.”
“Just the same, father. We have been together all the time, and we have come back together.”
“And he didn’t say a word about it!” the old man said. “He talked about you just as if you were somewhere over the sea.”
“I told him not to tell,” Will said, “as I wanted to take you by surprise.”
“But he is not an officer, Will. He is just a sailor like those revenue men. How does that come about? Didn’t he fight well?”
“Yes, no one could fight better. If he had had as much learning as I had he would have been made an officer too; but, you see, he can hardly read or write, and, fight as he may, he will always remain as he is. A finer fellow never stepped; but because he has no learning he must always remain before the mast.”
“And you have lost some fingers I see, Will.”
“Yes, they were shot off by a musket-ball in the West Indies. Luckily it was my left hand; so I manage very well without them.”
“I hope you blew off the fingers of the fellow that shot you.”
“No, I can’t say who did it, and indeed I never felt anything at all until some little time after.”
“I wish I had been there,” John said, “I would have had a slap at him with a musket. That was an unlucky shot, Will.”
“Well, I have always considered it a lucky one, for if it had gone a few inches on one side it would have probably finished me altogether.”
“Well, well, it is wonderful to me. Here am I, an old man, and never, so far as I can remember, been a couple of miles from Scarcombe, and you, quite a young chap, have been wandering and fighting all over the world.”
“Not quite so much as that, John, though I have certainly seen a good deal. But here is mother.”
Mrs. Hammond entered with a face beaming with delight.
“You never saw anyone so astonished as Mrs. Smith when I went in and ordered all those things. Her eyes opened wider and wider as I went on, and when I offered her the gold I thought she would have a fit. She took it and bit it to make sure that it was good, and then said: ‘Have you found it, Mrs. Hammond, or what good fortune have you had?’
“ ‘The best of fortunes, Mrs. Smith,’ says I. ‘My boy Will has come back from the wars a grand officer, with his pocket lined with gold, so you will find I’ll be a better customer to you than I have been.’
“ ‘You don’t say so, Mrs. Hammond!’ says she. ‘I always thought he was a nice boy, well spoken and civil. And so he is an officer, is he? Only to think of it! Well, I am mighty pleased to hear it,’ and with that I came off with my basket full of provisions. The whole village will be talking of it before nightfall. Mrs. Smith is a good soul, but she is an arrant gossip, and you may be sure that the tale will gain by the telling, and before night people will believe that you have become one of the royal family.”
In half an hour a meal was ready—tea, crisp slices of fried bacon, and some boiled eggs—and never did three people sit down to table in a more delighted state of mind.
“My life,” the old woman said, when at last the meal was finished, “just to think that we’ll be able to feed every day of the year like this! Why, we’ll grow quite young again, John; we sha’n’t know ourselves. We had five shillings a week before, and now we’ll have six-and-twenty. I don’t know what we’ll do with it. Why, we didn’t get that on an average, not when you were a young man and as good a fisherman as there was in the village. We did get more sometimes when you made a great haul, or when a cargo was run, but then, more often, when times were bad, we had to live on fish for weeks together.”
“Now, missis, clear away the things and reach me down my pipe from the mantel, and we’ll hear Will’s tales. I’ll warrant me they will be worth listening to.”
When the table was cleared the old woman put some more coal on the fire and they sat round it, the old folk one on each side, with Will in the middle. Then Will told his adventures, the fight with the French frigate, the battle with the three Moorish pirates, how he had had the luck to save the first lieutenant’s life and so obtained his promotion, and how the next prize they took was recaptured, but that he and a portion of the crew again overcame the Moors. Then he related how he had had the good fortune to obtain the command of a prize, with forty men and another midshipman under him, and gave a vivid account of the adventures he had gone through while cruising about in her.
“Well, well!” John Hammond said, when he brought his story to a conclusion, “you have had goings-on. To think that a boy like you should command a vessel and forty men, and should take three pirates.”
“But the most awful part of it all,” the old woman said, “is about them black negroes that carried you off and were going to burn you alive. Lor’, I’ll dream of it at nights.”
“I hope not, missis,” John said. “You dream more than enough now, and wake me up with your jumps and starts, and give me a lot of trouble to pacify you and convince you that you have only been dreaming. I am sorry, Will, that you told us about those niggers. I know I’ll have lots of trouble over it. Generally all she has had to dream about has been that my boat was sinking, or that the revenue officers had taken me and were going to hang me; but that will be nothing to this ’ere negro business.”
“They are terrible creatures these negroes, ain’t they?” the old woman said. “I have heard tell that they have horns and hoofs like the devil.”
“No, no, mother, they are not so bad as that, and they don’t have tails, either. They are not good-looking men for all that, and they look specially ugly when they are gathering firewood to make a bonfire of you.”
“For goodness sake don’t say more about them; it makes me all come over in a sweat to think about them.”
Just at this moment Tom Stevens came in and sat and chatted for some time. Will asked him to come in again later and to bring with him a bottle of the best spirits he could find in the village.
“I’ll warrant I will get some good stuff,” Tom said. “There are plenty of kegs of the best hidden away in the village, and I think I know where to lay my hand on one of them.”
Will then went to the rectory and had a chat with Mr. Warden, who was unaffectedly glad to see him.
“I never quite approved,” he said, “of my daughter’s hobby of educating you, but I now see that she was perfectly right. I thought myself that at best you would obtain some small clerkship, and that your life would be a happier one as a fisherman. It has, however, turned out admirably well, and she has a right to be proud of her pupil. After the way you have begun there is nothing in your own line to which you may not attain.”
“I wanted to ask you, Mr. Warden, what you could remember about my father. My own recollection of him is very dim. I am going to sea again in a week, but next time I return I’ll have a longer spell on shore, and I am resolved to make an effort to discover who he was.”
“I fear that is quite hopeless, but I will certainly tell you all I know about him. I saw him, of course, many times in the village. He was a tall thin man with what I might call a devil-may-care, and at the same time a mournful expression. I have no doubt that had his death not been so sudden he would have told you something about himself. I have his effects tied up in a bundle. I examined them at the time, but there was nothing of any value in them except a signet-ring. It bore a coat-of-arms with a falcon at the top. I intended to hand this to you when you grew up, but of course you left so suddenly that I had no opportunity to do so. I will give you the bundle now.”
“Thank you very much, sir! That ring may be the means of discovering my identity. Of course I have no time to make enquiries now, but when I next return I will advertise largely and offer a reward for information. It is not that I want to thrust myself on any family, or to raise any claim, but I should like, for my own satisfaction, to know that I come of a decent family.”
“That is very natural,” the clergyman said; “but were I you I should not hope to be successful. You see, nearly thirteen years have elapsed since his death, and he may have been wandering about for three or four years before. That is a long time to elapse before making any enquiries.”
“That may be so, but if these arms belong, as I suppose, to a good family, there must be others bearing them, and an advertisement of a lost member of it might at once catch their eye, and might very possibly bring a reply. Besides, surely there must be some place where a record is kept of these things.”
“I do not know that, but I am sure I wish you success in your search, and can well understand that, now you are an officer in His Majesty’s navy, you would like to claim relationship with some big family.”
“Quite so, sir. Of course I cannot imagine how it was my father came to be in such reduced circumstances.”
“I should say, Will, that he quarrelled with his father, perhaps over his marriage, and left home in a passion. He was a man who, I could well imagine, when he once quarrelled, would not be likely to take the first step to make it up.”
“Perhaps that was it, sir. Well, I am exceedingly obliged to you, and will, you may be sure, investigate the contents of the bundle carefully.”
Returning to the cottage, Will found Tom Stevens already there with a small keg of brandy.
“This is good stuff, Will,” he said; “it has been lying hidden for eight years, and was some of the choicest landed. I got it as a favour, and had to pay pretty high for it; but I knew you would not stick at the price.”
“Certainly not, I wanted the best that could be got. Now, mother, mix us three good stiff tumblers, and take a glass for yourself.”
“It is twenty year since I tasted spirits,” the old woman said, “though John has often got a drop after a successful run; but this afternoon I don’t mind if I do try a little, if it is only to put the thought of them bonfiring negroes out of my mind.”
“I hope it will have that effect,” Will laughed.
“Now, John, I told you about my adventures; let me hear a little village gossip.”
John’s tale was not a very long, nor, it must be owned, a very interesting one. Mary Johnson, Elizabeth Cruikshank, Mary Leaper, and Susie Thurston had all had boys, while there had been five girls born. It was not necessary, however, to specify the names of their mothers, as girls were considered quite secondary persons in Scarcombe. One small cargo had been run, but the revenue people were so sharp that the French lugger had given up making the village a landing-place. John Mugby and his two sons had been drowned, and John Hawkins’s boat had been smashed up. As a result of the decline of smuggling there had been a revulsion of the feeling against Will, and the four men who had been the ringleaders in the movement had made themselves so generally obnoxious that they had had to leave the village.
At seven o’clock Will said:
“Now, father, I must be moving. Here are fifty guineas. They will last you for nearly a year. I’ll hand another fifty to Mr. Archer, and ask him to send you twenty pounds at a time. I’ll probably be back in England before it has all gone, and if not I will manage to find a means of sending more over to you.”
“I sha’n’t sleep,” the old woman said; “I never shall sleep with all that money in the house. It is sure to get known about, and I should never feel safe.”
“Very well, mother, take the money up to Mr. Warden, and ask him to hand you a guinea every Monday.”
“Tom Stevens,” said the old woman, “I will ask you to go up to the rectory with me this very evening. I daren’t keep it here, and I daren’t carry it through the village, for there might be a pedlar about, and everybody knows that pedlars are apt to be thieves.”
“Very well,” Tom said with a smile, “I will go with you, missis, when Will has left. I am big enough to tackle a pedlar if we meet one on the way.”
“Thank you very heartily, Tom! I’ll be comfortable now; but I should never get a wink of sleep with fifty gold guineas in the house.”
Will had noticed that the old couple’s clothes were sorely patched, and the next morning he purchased a complete new outfit for both. These he sent over by a carrier, with a note, saying: “My dear father, it is only right that you should start with a fair outfit, and I therefore send you and the missis a supply that will last you for some time.”
Tom Stevens came over two days later, and he and Will started together for London. On their arrival at Portsmouth they at once joined the Tartar, which was quite ready to sail, and which was under orders to join Lord Hood’s fleet in the Mediterranean.
