The Battle and the Breeze by R. M. Ballantyne (easy to read books for adults list TXT) 📖

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 that he went through Texas an’ the States, where he got married, though he hadn’t nothin’ wotever, as I knows of, to keep a wife upon—”

“But he may have had somethin’ for all you didn’t know it,” suggested Bill Bowls.

“Well, p’r’aps he had. Hows’ever, the next we heard was that he’d gone to Canada, an’ tuk a small farm there, which was all well enough, but now we’ve got a letter from him sayin’ that he’s in trouble, an’ don’t see his way out of it very clear. He’s got the farm, a wife, an’ a sarvant to support, an’ nothin’ to do it with. Moreover, the sarvant is a boy what a gentleman took from a Reformation-house, or somethin’ o’ that sort, where they put little thieves, as has only bin in quod for the fust time. They say that many of ’em is saved, and turns out well, but this feller don’t seem to have bin a crack specimen, for Sam’s remarks about him ain’t complimentary. Here’s the letter, mates,” continued Riggles, drawing a soiled epistle from his pocket; “it’ll give ’e a better notion than I can wot sort of a fix he’s in, Will you read it, Bill Bowls?”

“No, thankee,” said Bill; “read it yerself, an’ for any sake don’t spell the words if ye can help it.”

Thus admonished, Tom began to read the following letter from his wild brother, interrupting himself occasionally to explain and comment thereon, and sometimes, despite the adjuration of Bill Bowls, to spell. We give the letter in the writer’s own words:—

“‘My dear mother (it’s to mother, d’ye see; he always writes to her, an’ she sends the letters to me),—My dear mother, here we are all alive and kicking. My sweet wife is worth her weight in gold, though she does not possess more of that precious metal than the wedding-ring on her finger—more’s the pity for we are sadly in want of it just now. The baby, too, is splendid. Fat as a prize pig, capable of roaring like a mad bull, and, it is said, uncommonly like his father. We all send our kind love to you, and father, and Tom. By the way, where is Tom? You did not mention him in your last. I fear he is one of these roving fellows whom the Scotch very appropriately style ne’er-do-weels. A bad lot they are. Humph! you’re one of ’em, Mister Sam, if ever there was, an’ my only hope of ye is that you’ve got some soft places in your heart.’”

“Go on, Tom,” said Ben Bolter; “don’t cut in like that on the thread of any man’s story.”

“Well,” continued Riggles, reading with great difficulty, “Sam goes on for to say—”

“‘We thank you