In the Track of the Troops, R. M. Ballantyne [best pdf ebook reader TXT] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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My face must have turned very pale, for Nicholas, who came up at the moment, looked at me with anxious surprise, and asked if I were ill.
“No,” said I, hurriedly; “no, not ill—but—yes—it is a slow process at best, and not always certain—sometimes takes a day or two to culminate. The fusion may not have been quite completed, or it may have failed altogether. Too late, I fear, too late, but I cannot rest till I know. Tell my mother I’m off home—only business—don’t alarm her.”
Regardless of the amazed looks of those who stood near me, I broke from the grasp of Nicholas, leaped into one of the boats alongside, seized the oars, and rowed ashore in mad haste.
Fortune favoured me. The train had not left, though it was just in motion. I had no time to take a ticket, but leaping upon the moving footboard, I wrenched open a carriage-door and sprang in.
It was an express. We went at full sixty miles an hour, yet I felt as if we moved like a snail. No words can adequately explain the state of my mind and body—the almost uncontrollable desire I felt to spring out of the train and run on ahead. But I was forced to sit still and think. I thought of the nearness of the laboratory to our kitchen windows, of the tremendous energy of the explosive with which the model-torpedo was charged, of the mass of combustibles of all kinds by which it was surrounded, of the thousand and one possibilities of the case, and of my own inexcusable madness in not being more careful.
At last the train pulled up at the town from which our residence is about two miles distant. It was now evening; but it was summer, and the days were long. Hiring a horse at the nearest hotel, I set off at a break-neck gallop.
The avenue-gate was open. I dashed in. The laboratory was not visible from that point, being at the back of the house. At the front door I pulled up, sprang to the ground, let the horse go, and ran forward.
I was met by Lancey coming round the corner. I saw at once that all was over! His face and hands had been scorched, and his hair singed! I gasped for breath.
“No one killed?” I asked.
“No, sir, nobody killed, but most of us ’orribly scared, sir.”
“Nobody hurt, Lancey?” I asked again, leaning against the side of the house, and wiping my forehead.
“No, sir, nor ’urt,” continued my faithful groom, hastening to relieve my mind; “you’ve no need to alarm yourself, sir, for we’re all alive and ’earty, though I must say it’s about the wust buster, sir, that you’ve yet turned out of ’ands. It sent in the kitchen winders as if they’d bin made of tissue paper, sir, an’ cook she went into highstericks in the coal-bunker, Margaret she swounded in the scullery, and Mary went into fits in the wash’us. But they’re all right again, sir,—only raither skeery ever since. We ’ad some trouble in puttin’ it out, for the cumbustibles didn’t seem to care much for water. We got it under at last, early this morning.”
“This morning?”
“Yes, sir. It blow’d up about two hours arter you left for London, an’ we’ve bin at it ever since. We was so glad your mother was away, sir, for it did make an uncommon crack. I was just sayin’ to cook, not ’alf an hour since, the master would have enjoyed that, he would; it was such a crusher.”
“Any of—of—the torpedo left, Lancey?” I asked, with some hesitation.
“The torpedo, sir. Bless your ’art, it went up to the ’eavens like a sky-rocket, an’ blowed the out-’ouse about to that extent that you couldn’t find a bit big enough to pick your teeth with.”
On hearing this I roused myself, and hastened to the scene of devastation.
One glance sufficed. The spot on which my laboratory had stood was a blackened heap of rubbish!
“Now, mother,” said I next day, after relieving her mind by a full and rapid account of what had happened, “there is nothing that I know of to detain me at home. I will therefore see to having the yacht got ready, and we shall all go to sea without delay.”
Change of scene has almost always an invigorating effect on the mind. Whatever be the nature of your mind, variety, rest assured, will improve its condition.
So we thought, my mother and I, Nicholas and Bella, as we lay, one beautiful morning, becalmed in the English Channel.
The yacht turned out to be a most charming vessel. Schooner-rigged, with two cabins, one of which formed our salon during the day, and the gentlemen’s bed-room by night, the other being set apart entirely for the ladies. It was quite full. My mother and Bella filled it. Another female would have caused it to overflow.
Contrary to all expectation, my mother turned out a capital sailor; better even than Bella, on whom she attended during the first part of the voyage when the latter was ill.
“D’you think we shall have a good passage across the far-famed Bay of Biscay?” asked Nicholas, as he sat on the cabin skylight, smoking a mild cigar. Talking of that, smoking was the only thing in which I could not join my future brother-in-law. I know not how it is, but so it is that I cannot smoke. I have often tried to, but it invariably makes me sick, for which, perhaps, I ought to be thankful.
“It is to be hoped we shall,” I replied to his question; “but I am not a judge of weather. What think you, Mr Whitlaw?” I said, addressing my skipper.
“I hope we shall, sir,” replied the skipper, with a deferential touch of his cap, and a glance round the horizon; “but I don’t feel sure.”
Mr Whitlaw was an American, and a splendid specimen of the nation to which he belonged,—tall, lanky, broad-shouldered, gentlemanly, grave, self-possessed, prompt, good-humoured: I have seldom met a more agreeable man. He had been in the Northern navy of America during the last war, and had already introduced some of the discipline, to which he had been accustomed, amongst my small crew.
Bella was up on deck enjoying the sunset; so was my mother. Lancey was busy cleaning my fowling-piece, near the companion-hatch.
“It is charming,” exclaimed my mother.
“So calm,” said Bella.
“And settled-looking,” remarked Nicholas, flipping the end of his cigar over the side.
“Mr Whitlaw does not appear to think so favourably of the weather,” I remarked.
The skipper, looking gravely at a particular point on the horizon, said, in a quiet tone—
“The clouds are heavy.”
“From which you judge that the fine weather may not last?”
“It may be so, but the indications are not certain,” was his cautious reply.
That night we were in a perfect chaos of wind and water. The storm-fiend seemed to have reserved all his favours in order to give us a befitting reception. The sea roared, the wind yelled, the yacht—but why repeat the oft-told tale that invariably ends with “Biscay, O!” A week later and we were in a dead calm, revelling in warmth, bathed in sunshine, within the straits of Gibraltar.
It was evening. All sail was set. Not a puff of wind rendered that display available. The reef-points pattered as the yacht rolled gracefully from side to side on the gentle heave of the Mediterranean’s bosom.
Sitting on a rug on the deck, between my mother and Nicholas, Bella said, in a low quiet tone, “This is perfect felicity.”
“Agreed,” said Nicholas, in a similar tone, with a puff from his cigar.
Bella referred to the calm, of course!
A sea-captain, sitting astride the bulwarks of his ship in the “Doldrums,” far far away from Bella, said, in reference to a similar calm which had beset him for three weeks, “This is perfectly maddening,” with many other strong expressions which we would rather not record; but Bella, of course, did not know that, and could not be expected to reflect on it. She was taken up with her own comforts at the time.
“My dear,” said Mrs Childers, “I think I shall go to bed. Come with me. Good-night, Nicholas. Will you keep the skylight off to-night, Jeffry? It was too hot in our cabin last night.”
“Of course I will,” said I; “why did you not ring, and let me know that you would like fresh air? But I shall see to it to-night.”
About eleven o’clock that night, I lay on one of the lockers of the main cabin, in a wakeful mood. Nicholas lay on the other locker, in that profound slumber which is so characteristic of healthy youth. His regular breathing was the only sound I heard, except the soft footfall of our skipper, as he slowly paced the deck.
Presently I heard another step. It advanced, and a low “Fine night, sir,” apprised me that it was Lancey, who had come on deck to air himself after the culinary and other labours of the day, for he served in the capacity of cook and steward to the yacht.
“I wish you’d tell me about that expedition you was speakin’ off to the master this morning,” said Lancey.
“With pleasure,” replied the skipper; “sit down here, and I’ll spin it off to you right away.”
I knew by the sound of their motions that they had seated themselves at the foot of the main-mast, just between the skylights of the two cabins, and feared that their talk might disturb my mother; but, reflecting that she must have got to sleep long ago, I thought it better not to disturb them, unless their talk should become too loud. As for myself, in my wakeful mood, their converse could not annoy me. After a time it began to interest me deeply.
“It was about the blowing-up of Southern ironclads, was it not?” said the skipper. As he spoke I could distinctly hear the puff, puff, of his pipe between each half-dozen words.
“Just so,” replied Lancey. “The master is uncommon fond of blowin’s-up and inquirin’ into the natur’ of things. I never know’d another except one as beat ’im at inwestigation, but that one beat everybody I ever seen or heard of. He was a Scotch boy, named Sandy—”
“What was his other name?” asked the skipper.
“’Aven’t a notion,” replied Lancey. “We never called ’im anythink else. I don’t believe he ’ad any other name. He said he was the son of an apothecary. No doubt the schoolmaster knew ’is other name, if he ’ad one, but he never used it, and we boys were content with Sandy. That boy, sir, seemed to me to know everythink, and was able, I believe, to do hanythink. He was a tremendous fighter, too, though not out o’ the way as regards size. He could lick the biggest boy in the school, and when he made up his mind to do a thing, nothin’ on earth could stop him a-doin’ of it.”
“Good,” said the skipper, with an emphatic puff; “that’s what we Americans call the power to go ahead. Did Sandy become a great man?”
“Don’t know,” answered Lancey. “He went a’ead too fast for me to foller. One day the master gave ’im a lickin’. He vowed he’d be revenged. Next mornin’ early he got up an’ smashed the school winders, redooced the master’s desk to matchwood, an’ walked away whistlin’. I never seed ’im since.”
“Nor heard of him?”
“Nor ’eard of ’im.”
“That was a pity,” said the skipper, with a prolonged whiff.
“It was. But go on, Mister Whitlaw, with your hanecdotes. I couldn’t rightly hear all you said
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