The Battle and the Breeze, Robert Michael Ballantyne [best novel books to read txt] 📗

upon one another. About this period, Republican France, besides subduing and robbing Switzerland, Italy, Sardinia, and other States, was busily engaged in making preparation for the invasion of England,--Napoleon Bonaparte being in readiness to take command of what was styled the "army of England." Of course great preparations had to be made in this country to meet the invading foe. The British Lion was awakened, and although not easily alarmed or stirred up, he uttered a few deep-toned growls, which showed pretty clearly what the Frenchmen might expect if they should venture to cross the Channel. From John o' Groats to the Land's End the people rose in arms, and in the course of a few weeks 150,000 volunteers were embodied and their training begun.

Not satisfied with threatening invasion, the Directory of France sought by every means to corrupt the Irish. They sent emissaries into the land, and succeeded so well that in May 1798 the rebellion broke out. Troops, supplies, and munitions of war were poured into Ireland by France; but the troops were conquered and the rebellion crushed.

Finding at length that the invasion of England could not be carried out, this pet projection was abandoned, and Napoleon advised the Directory to endeavour to cripple her resources in the East. For the accomplishment of this purpose, he recommended the establishment on the banks of the Nile of a French colony, which, besides opening a channel for French commerce with Africa, Arabia, and Syria, might form a grand military depot, whence an army of 60,000 men could be pushed forward to the Indus, rouse the Mahrattas to a revolt, and excite against the British the whole population of those vast countries.

To an expedition on so grand a scale the Directory objected at first, but the master-spirit who advised them was beginning to feel and exert that power which ultimately carried him to the throne of the Empire. He overcame their objections, and the expedition to Egypt was agreed to.

With characteristic energy and promptitude Napoleon began to carry out his plans, and Great Britain, seeing the storm that was brewing, commenced with equal energy to thwart him. Accordingly, the great Sir Horatio Nelson, at that time rear-admiral, was employed with a squadron to watch the movements and preparations of the French in the Mediterranean.

Such was the state of matters when our hero, Bill Bowls, was conveyed on board the _Waterwitch_, a seventy-four gun frigate, and set to work at once to learn his duty.

Bill was a sensible fellow. He knew that escape from the service, except in a dishonourable manner, was impossible, so he made up his mind to do his duty like a man, and return home at the end of the war (which he hoped would be a short one), and marry Nelly Blyth. Poor fellow, he little imagined what he had to go through before--but hold, we must not anticipate the story.

Well, it so happened that Bill was placed in the same mess with the man whose nose he had treated so unceremoniously on the day of his capture. He was annoyed at this, but the first time he chanced to be alone with him, he changed his mind, and the two became fast friends. It happened thus:--

They were standing on the weather-side of the forecastle in the evening, looking over the side at the setting sun.

"You don't appear to be easy in your mind," observed Ben Bolter, after a prolonged silence.

"_You_ wouldn't be if you had left a bride behind you," answered Bill shortly.

"How d'ye know that?" said Ben; "p'r'aps I _have_ left one behind me. Anyhow, I've left an old mother."

"That's nothin' uncommon," replied Bill; "a bride may change her mind and become another man's wife, but your mother can't become your aunt or your sister by any mental operation that I knows of."

"I'm not so sure o' that, now," replied Ben, knitting his brows, and gazing earnestly at the forebrace, which happened to be conveniently in front of his eyes; "see here, s'pose, for the sake of argiment, that you've got a mothers an' she marries a second time--which some mothers is apt to do, you know,--and her noo husband has got a pretty niece. Nothin' more nat'ral than that you should fall in love with her and get spliced. Well, wot then? why, your mother is her aunt by vartue of her marriage with her uncle, and so your mother is _your_ aunt in consikence of your marriage with the niece--d'ye see?"

Bill laughed, and said he didn't quite see it, but he was willing to take it on credit, as he was not in a humour for discussion just then.

"Very well," said Ben, "but, to return to the p'int--which is, if I may so say, a p'int of distinkshun between topers an' argifiers, for topers are always returnin' to the pint, an' argifiers are for ever departin' from it--to return to it, I say: you've no notion of the pecoolier sirkumstances in which I left my poor old mother. It weighs heavy on my heart, I assure ye, for it's only three months since I was pressed myself, an' the feelin's ain't had time to heal yet. Come, I'll tell 'e how it was. You owe me some compensation for that crack on the nose you gave me, so stand still and listen."

Bill, who was becoming interested in his messmate in spite of himself, smiled and nodded his head as though to say, "Go on."

"Well, you must know my old mother is just turned eighty, an' I'm thirty-six, so, as them that knows the rule o' three would tell ye, she was just forty-four when I began to trouble her life. I was a most awful wicked child, it seems. So they say at least; but I've no remembrance of it myself. Hows'ever, when I growed up and ran away to sea and got back again an' repented--mainly because I didn't like the sea--I tuk to mendin' my ways a bit, an' tried to make up to the old 'ooman for my prewious wickedness. I do believe I succeeded, too, for I got to like her in a way I never did before; and when I used to come home from a cruise--for, of course, I soon went to sea again--I always had somethin' for her from furrin' parts. An' she was greatly pleased at my attentions an' presents--all except once, when I brought her the head of a mummy from Egypt. She couldn't stand that at all--to my great disappointment; an' what made it wuss was, that after a few days they had put it too near the fire, an' the skin it busted an' the stuffin' began to come out, so I took it out to the back-garden an' gave it decent burial behind the pump.

"Hows'ever, as I wos goin' to say, just at the time I was nabbed by the press-gang was my mother's birthday, an' as I happened to be flush o' cash, I thought I'd give her a treat an' a surprise, so off I goes to buy her some things, when, before I got well into the town--a sea-port it was--down comed the press-gang an' nabbed me. I showed fight, of course, just as you did, an floored four of 'em, but they was too many for me an' before I knowed where I was they had me into a boat and aboord this here ship, where I've bin ever since. I'm used to it now, an' rather like it, as no doubt you will come for to like it too; but it _was_ hard on my old mother. I begged an' prayed them to let me go back an' bid her good-bye, an' swore I would return, but they only laughed at me, so I was obliged to write her a letter to keep her mind easy. Of all the jobs I ever did have, the writin' of that letter was the wust. Nothin' but dooty would iver indooce me to try it again; for, you see, I didn't get much in the way of edication, an' writin' never came handy to me.

"Hows'ever," continued Ben, "I took so kindly to His Majesty's service that they almost look upon me as an old hand, an' actooally gave me leave to be the leader o' the gang that was sent to Fairway to take you, so that I might have a chance o' sayin' adoo to my old mother."

"What!" exclaimed Bowls, "is your mother the old woman who stops at the end o' Cow Lane, where Mrs Blyth lives, who talks so much about her big-whiskered Ben?"

"That same," replied Ben, with a smile: "she was always proud o' me, specially after my whiskers comed. I thought that p'r'aps ye might have knowed her."

"I knows her by hearsay from Nelly Blyth, but not bein' a native of Fairway, of course I don't know much about the people.--Hallo! Riggles, what's wrong with 'e to-day?" said Bill, as his friend Tom came towards him with a very perplexed expression on his honest face, "not repenting of havin' joined the sarvice already, I hope?"

"No, I ain't troubled about that," answered Riggles, scratching his chin and knitting his brows; "but I've got a brother, d'ye see--"

"Nothin' uncommon in that," said Bolter, as the other paused.

"P'r'aps not," continued Tom Riggles; "but then, you see, my brother's such a preeplexin' sort o' feller, I don't know wot to make of him."

"Let him alone, then," suggested Ben Bolter.

"That won't do neither, for he's got into trouble; but it's a long story, an' I dessay you won't care to hear about it."

"You're out there, Tom," said Bowls; "come, sit down here and let's have it all."

The three men sat down on the combings of the fore-hatch, and Tom Riggles began by telling them that it was of no use bothering them with an account of his brother Sam's early life.

"Not unless there's somethin' partikler about it," said Bolter.

"Well, there ain't nothin' very partikler about it, 'xcept that Sam was partiklerly noisy as a baby, and wild as a boy, besides bein' uncommon partikler about his wittles, 'specially in the matter o' havin' plenty of 'em. Moreover, he ran away to sea when he was twelve years old, an' was partiklerly quiet after that for a long time, for nobody know'd where he'd gone to, till one fine mornin' my mother she gets a letter from him sayin' he was in China, drivin' a great trade in the opium line. We niver felt quite sure about that, for Sam wornt over partikler about truth. He was a kindly sort o' feller, hows'ever, an' continued to write once or twice a year for a long time. In these letters he said that his life was pretty wariable, as no doubt it was, for he wrote from all parts o' the world. First, he was clerk, he said, to the British counsel in Penang, or some sich name, though where that is I don't know; then he told us he'd joined a man-o'-war, an' took to clearin' the pirates out o' the China seas. He found it a tough job appariently, an' got wounded in the head with a grape-shot, and half choked by a stink-pot, after which we heard no more of him for a long time, when a letter turns up from Californy, sayin' he was there shippin' hides on the coast; and after