Rodney Stone

So Boy Jim went down to the George, at Crawley, under the charge of Jim Belcher and Champion Harrison, to train for his great fight with Crab Wilson, of Gloucester, whilst every club and bar parlour of London rang with the account of how he had appeared at a supper of Corinthians, and beaten the formidable Joe Berks in four rounds.  I remembered that afternoon at Friar’s Oak when Jim had told me that he would make his name known, and his words had come true sooner than he could have expected it, for, go where one might, one heard of nothing but the match between Sir Lothian Hume and Sir Charles Tregellis, and the points of the two probable combatants.  The betting was still steadily in favour of Wilson, for he had a number of bye-battles to set against this single victory of Jim’s, and it was thought by connoisseurs who had seen him spar that the singular defensive tactics which had given him his nickname would prove very puzzling to a raw antagonist.  In height, strength, and reputation for gameness there was very little to choose between them, but Wilson had been the more severely tested.

It was but a few days before the battle that my father made his promised visit to London.  The seaman had no love of cities, and was happier wandering over the Downs, and turning his glass upon every topsail which showed above the horizon, than when finding his way among crowded streets, where, as he complained, it was impossible to keep a course by the sun, and hard enough by dead reckoning.  Rumours of war were in the air, however, and it was necessary that he should use his influence with Lord Nelson if a vacancy were to be found either for himself or for me.

My uncle had just set forth, as was his custom of an evening, clad in his green riding-frock, his plate buttons, his Cordovan boots, and his round hat, to show himself upon his crop-tailed tit in the Mall.  I had remained behind, for, indeed, I had already made up my mind that I had no calling for this fashionable life.  These men, with their small waists, their gestures, and their unnatural ways, had become wearisome to me, and even my uncle, with his cold and patronizing manner, filled me with very mixed feelings.  My thoughts were back in Sussex, and I was dreaming of the kindly, simple ways of the country, when there came a rat-tat at the knocker, the ring of a hearty voice, and there, in the doorway, was the smiling, weather-beaten face, with the puckered eyelids and the light blue eyes.

“Why, Roddy, you are grand indeed!” he cried.  “But I had rather see you with the King’s blue coat upon your back than with all these frills and ruffles.”

“And I had rather wear it, father.”

“It warms my heart to hear you say so.  Lord Nelson has promised me that he would find a berth for you, and to-morrow we shall seek him out and remind him of it.  But where is your uncle?”

“He is riding in the Mall.”

A look of relief passed over my father’s honest face, for he was never very easy in his brother-in-law’s company.  “I have been to the Admiralty,” said he, “and I trust that I shall have a ship when war breaks out; by all accounts it will not be long first.  Lord St. Vincent told me so with his own lips.  But I am at Fladong’s, Rodney, where, if you will come and sup with me, you will see some of my messmates from the Mediterranean.”

When you think that in the last year of the war we had 140,000 seamen and mariners afloat, commanded by 4000 officers, and that half of these had been turned adrift when the Peace of Amiens laid their ships up in the Hamoaze or Portsdown creek, you will understand that London, as well as the dockyard towns, was full of seafarers.  You could not walk the streets without catching sight of the gipsy-faced, keen-eyed men whose plain clothes told of their thin purses as plainly as their listless air showed their weariness of a life of forced and unaccustomed inaction.  Amid the dark streets and brick houses there was something out of place in their appearance, as when the sea-gulls, driven by stress of weather, are seen in the Midland shires.  Yet while prize-courts procrastinated, or there was a chance of an appointment by showing their sunburned faces at the Admiralty, so long they would continue to pace with their quarter-deck strut down Whitehall, or to gather of an evening to discuss the events of the last war or the chances of the next at Fladong’s, in Oxford Street, which was reserved as entirely for the Navy as Slaughter’s was for the Army, or Ibbetson’s for the Church of England.

It did not surprise me, therefore, that we should find the large room in which we supped crowded with naval men, but I remember that what did cause me some astonishment was to observe that all these sailors, who had served under the most varying conditions in all quarters of the globe, from the Baltic to the East Indies, should have been moulded into so uniform a type that they were more like each other than brother is commonly to brother.  The rules of the service insured that every face should be clean-shaven, every head powdered, and every neck covered by the little queue of natural hair tied with a black silk ribbon.  Biting winds and tropical suns had combined to darken them, whilst the habit of command and the menace of ever-recurring dangers had stamped them all with the same expression of authority and of alertness.  There were some jovial faces amongst them, but the older officers, with their deep-lined cheeks and their masterful noses, were, for the most part, as austere as so many weather-beaten ascetics from the desert.  Lonely watches, and a discipline which cut them off from all companionship, had left their mark upon those Red Indian faces.  For my part, I could hardly eat my supper for watching them.  Young as I was, I knew that if there were any freedom left in Europe it was to these men that we owed it; and I seemed to read upon their grim, harsh features the record of that long ten years of struggle which had swept the tricolour from the seas.

When we had finished our supper, my father led me into the great coffee-room, where a hundred or more officers may have been assembled, drinking their wine and smoking their long clay pipes, until the air was as thick as the main-deck in a close-fought action.  As we entered we found ourselves face to face with an elderly officer who was coming out.  He was a man with large, thoughtful eyes, and a full, placid face—such a face as one would expect from a philosopher and a philanthropist, rather than from a fighting seaman.

“Here’s Cuddie Collingwood,” whispered my father.

“Halloa, Lieutenant Stone!” cried the famous admiral very cheerily.  “I have scarce caught a glimpse of you since you came aboard the Excellent after St. Vincent.  You had the luck to be at the Nile also, I understand?”

“I was third of the Theseus, under Millar, sir.”

“It nearly broke my heart to have missed it.  I have not yet outlived it.  To think of such a gallant service, and I engaged in harassing the market-boats, the miserable cabbage-carriers of St. Luccars!”

“Your plight was better than mine, Sir Cuthbert,” said a voice from behind us, and a large man in the full uniform of a post-captain took a step forward to include himself in our circle.  His mastiff face was heavy with emotion, and he shook his head miserably as he spoke.

“Yes, yes, Troubridge, I can understand and sympathize with your feelings.”

“I passed through torment that night, Collingwood.  It left a mark on me that I shall never lose until I go over the ship’s side in a canvas cover.  To have my beautiful Culloden laid on a sandbank just out of gunshot.  To hear and see the fight the whole night through, and never to pull a lanyard or take the tompions out of my guns.  Twice I opened my pistol-case to blow out my brains, and it was but the thought that Nelson might have a use for me that held me back.”

Collingwood shook the hand of the unfortunate captain.

“Admiral Nelson was not long in finding a use for you, Troubridge,” said he.  “We have all heard of your siege of Capua, and how you ran up your ship’s guns without trenches or parallels, and fired point-blank through the embrasures.”

The melancholy cleared away from the massive face of the big seaman, and his deep laughter filled the room.

“I’m not clever enough or slow enough for their Z-Z fashions,” said he.  “We got alongside and slapped it in through their port-holes until they struck their colours.  But where have you been, Sir Cuthbert?”

“With my wife and my two little lasses at Morpeth in the North Country.  I have but seen them this once in ten years, and it may be ten more, for all I know, ere I see them again.  I have been doing good work for the fleet up yonder.”

“I had thought, sir, that it was inland,” said my father.

Collingwood took a little black bag out of his pocket and shook it.

“Inland it is,” said he, “and yet I have done good work for the fleet there.  What do you suppose I hold in this bag?”

“Bullets,” said Troubridge.

“Something that a sailor needs even more than that,” answered the admiral, and turning it over he tilted a pile of acorns on to his palm.  “I carry them with me in my country walks, and where I see a fruitful nook I thrust one deep with the end of my cane.  My oak trees may fight those rascals over the water when I am long forgotten.  Do you know, lieutenant, how many oaks go to make an eighty-gun ship?”

My father shook his head.

“Two thousand, no less.  For every two-decked ship that carries the white ensign there is a grove the less in England.  So how are our grandsons to beat the French if we do not give them the trees with which to build their ships?”

He replaced his bag in his pocket, and then, passing his arm through Troubridge’s, they went through the door together.

“There’s a man whose life might help you to trim your own course,” said my father, as we took our seats at a vacant table.  “He is ever the same quiet gentleman, with his thoughts busy for the comfort of his ship’s company, and his heart with his wife and children whom he has so seldom seen.  It is said in the fleet that an oath has never passed his lips, Rodney, though how he managed when he was first lieutenant of a raw crew is more than I can conceive.  But they all love Cuddie, for they know he’s an angel to fight.  How d’ye do, Captain Foley?  My respects, Sir Ed’ard!  Why, if they could but press the company, they would man a corvette with flag officers.”

“There’s many a man here, Rodney,” continued my father, as he glanced about him, “whose name may never find its way into any book save his own ship’s log, but who in his own way has set as fine an example as any admiral of them all.  We know them, and talk of them in the fleet, though they may never be bawled in the streets of London.  There’s as much seamanship and pluck in a good cutter action as in a line-o’-battleship fight, though you may not come by a title nor the thanks of Parliament for it.  There’s Hamilton, for example, the quiet, pale-faced man who is learning against the pillar.  It was he who, with six rowing-boats, cut out the 44-gun frigate Hermione from under the muzzles of two hundred shore-guns in the harbour of Puerto Cabello.  No finer action was done in the whole war.  There’s Jaheel Brenton, with the whiskers.  It was he who attacked twelve Spanish gunboats in his one little brig, and made four of them strike to him.  There’s Walker, of the Rose cutter, who, with thirteen men, engaged three French privateers with crews of a hundred and forty-six.  He sank one, captured one, and chased the third.  How are you, Captain Ball?  I hope I see you well?”

Two or three of my father’s acquaintances who had been sitting close by drew up their chairs to us, and soon quite a circle had formed, all talking loudly and arguing upon sea matters, shaking their long, red-tipped pipes at each other as they spoke.  My father whispered in my ear that his neighbour was Captain Foley, of the Goliath, who led the van at the Nile, and that the tall, thin, foxy-haired man opposite was Lord Cochrane, the most dashing frigate captain in the Service.  Even at Friar’s Oak we had heard how, in the little Speedy, of fourteen small guns with fifty-four men, he had carried by boarding the Spanish frigate Gamo with her crew of three hundred.  It was easy to see that he was a quick, irascible, high-blooded man, for he was talking hotly about his grievances with a flush of anger upon his freckled cheeks.

“We shall never do any good upon the ocean until we have hanged the dockyard contractors,” he cried.  “I’d have a dead dockyard contractor as a figure-head for every first-rate in the fleet, and a provision dealer for every frigate.  I know them with their puttied seams and their devil bolts, risking five hundred lives that they may steal a few pounds’ worth of copper.  What became of the Chance, and of the Martin, and of the Orestes?  They foundered at sea, and were never heard of more, and I say that the crews of them were murdered men.”

Lord Cochrane seemed to be expressing the views of all, for a murmur of assent, with a mutter of hearty, deep-sea curses, ran round the circle.

“Those rascals over yonder manage things better,” said an old one-eyed captain, with the blue-and-white riband for St. Vincent peeping out of his third buttonhole.  “They sheer away their heads if they get up to any foolery.  Did ever a vessel come out of Toulon as my 38-gun frigate did from Plymouth last year, with her masts rolling about until her shrouds were like iron bars on one side and hanging in festoons upon the other?  The meanest sloop that ever sailed out of France would have overmatched her, and then it would be on me, and not on this Devonport bungler, that a court-martial would be called.”

They loved to grumble, those old salts, for as soon as one had shot off his grievance his neighbour would follow with another, each more bitter than the last.

“Look at our sails!” cried Captain Foley.  “Put a French and a British ship at anchor together, and how can you tell which is which?”

“Frenchy has his fore and maintop-gallant masts about equal,” said my father.

“In the old ships, maybe, but how many of the new are laid down on the French model?  No, there’s no way of telling them at anchor.  But let them hoist sail, and how d’you tell them then?”

“Frenchy has white sails,” cried several.

“And ours are black and rotten.  That’s the difference.  No wonder they outsail us when the wind can blow through our canvas.”

“In the Speedy,” said Cochrane, “the sailcloth was so thin that, when I made my observation, I always took my meridian through the foretopsail and my horizon through the foresail.”

There was a general laugh at this, and then at it they all went again, letting off into speech all those weary broodings and silent troubles which had rankled during long years of service, for an iron discipline prevented them from speaking when their feet were upon their own quarter-decks.  One told of his powder, six pounds of which were needed to throw a ball a thousand yards.  Another cursed the Admiralty Courts, where a prize goes in as a full-rigged ship and comes out as a schooner.  The old captain spoke of the promotions by Parliamentary interest which had put many a youngster into the captain’s cabin when he should have been in the gun-room.  And then they came back to the difficulty of finding crews for their vessels, and they all together raised up their voices and wailed.

“What is the use of building fresh ships,” cried Foley, “when even with a ten-pound bounty you can’t man the ships that you have got?”

But Lord Cochrane was on the other side in this question.

“You’d have the men, sir, if you treated them well when you got them,” said he.  “Admiral Nelson can get his ships manned.  So can Admiral Collingwood.  Why?  Because he has thought for the men, and so the men have thought for him.  Let men and officers know and respect each other, and there’s no difficulty in keeping a ship’s company.  It’s the infernal plan of turning a crew over from ship to ship and leaving the officers behind that rots the Navy.  But I have never found a difficulty, and I dare swear that if I hoist my pennant to-morrow I shall have all my old Speedies back, and as many volunteers as I care to take.”

“That is very well, my lord,” said the old captain, with some warmth; “when the Jacks hear that the Speedy took fifty vessels in thirteen months, they are sure to volunteer to serve with her commander.  Every good cruiser can fill her complement quickly enough.  But it is not the cruisers that fight the country’s battles and blockade the enemy’s ports.  I say that all prize-money should be divided equally among the whole fleet, and until you have such a rule, the smartest men will always be found where they are of least service to any one but themselves.”

This speech produced a chorus of protests from the cruiser officers and a hearty agreement from the line-of-battleship men, who seemed to be in the majority in the circle which had gathered round.  From the flushed faces and angry glances it was evident that the question was one upon which there was strong feeling upon both sides.

“What the cruiser gets the cruiser earns,” cried a frigate captain.

“Do you mean to say, sir,” said Captain Foley, “that the duties of an officer upon a cruiser demand more care or higher professional ability than those of one who is employed upon blockade service, with a lee coast under him whenever the wind shifts to the west, and the topmasts of an enemy’s squadron for ever in his sight?”

“I do not claim higher ability, sir.”

“Then why should you claim higher pay?  Can you deny that a seaman before the mast makes more in a fast frigate than a lieutenant can in a battleship?”

“It was only last year,” said a very gentlemanly-looking officer, who might have passed for a buck upon town had his skin not been burned to copper in such sunshine as never bursts upon London—“it was only last year that I brought the old Alexander back from the Mediterranean, floating like an empty barrel and carrying nothing but honour for her cargo.  In the Channel we fell in with the frigate Minerva from the Western Ocean, with her lee ports under water and her hatches bursting with the plunder which had been too valuable to trust to the prize crews.  She had ingots of silver along her yards and bowsprit, and a bit of silver plate at the truck of the masts.  My Jacks could have fired into her, and would, too, if they had not been held back.  It made them mad to think of all they had done in the south, and then to see this saucy frigate flashing her money before their eyes.”

“I cannot see their grievance, Captain Ball,” said Cochrane.

“When you are promoted to a two-decker, my lord, it will possibly become clearer to you.”

“You speak as if a cruiser had nothing to do but take prizes.  If that is your view, you will permit me to say that you know very little of the matter.  I have handled a sloop, a corvette, and a frigate, and I have found a great variety of duties in each of them.  I have had to avoid the enemy’s battleships and to fight his cruisers.  I have had to chase and capture his privateers, and to cut them out when they run under his batteries.  I have had to engage his forts, to take my men ashore, and to destroy his guns and his signal stations.  All this, with convoying, reconnoitring, and risking one’s own ship in order to gain a knowledge of the enemy’s movements, comes under the duties of the commander of a cruiser.  I make bold to say that the man who can carry these objects out with success has deserved better of the country than the officer of a battleship, tacking from Ushant to the Black Rocks and back again until she builds up a reef with her beef-bones.”

“Sir,” said the angry old sailor, “such an officer is at least in no danger of being mistaken for a privateersman.”

“I am surprised, Captain Bulkeley,” Cochran retorted hotly, “that you should venture to couple the names of privateersman and King’s officer.”

There was mischief brewing among these hot-headed, short-spoken salts, but Captain Foley changed the subject to discuss the new ships which were being built in the French ports.  It was of interest to me to hear these men, who were spending their lives in fighting against our neighbours, discussing their character and ways.  You cannot conceive—you who live in times of peace and charity—how fierce the hatred was in England at that time against the French, and above all against their great leader.  It was more than a mere prejudice or dislike.  It was a deep, aggressive loathing of which you may even now form some conception if you examine the papers or caricatures of the day.  The word “Frenchman” was hardly spoken without “rascal” or “scoundrel” slipping in before it.  In all ranks of life and in every part of the country the feeling was the same.  Even the Jacks aboard our ships fought with a viciousness against a French vessel which they would never show to Dane, Dutchman, or Spaniard.

If you ask me now, after fifty years, why it was that there should have been this virulent feeling against them, so foreign to the easy-going and tolerant British nature, I would confess that I think the real reason was fear.  Not fear of them individually, of course—our foulest detractors have never called us faint-hearted—but fear of their star, fear of their future, fear of the subtle brain whose plans always seemed to go aright, and of the heavy hand which had struck nation after nation to the ground.  We were but a small country, with a population which, when the war began, was not much more than half that of France.  And then, France had increased by leaps and bounds, reaching out to the north into Belgium and Holland, and to the south into Italy, whilst we were weakened by deep-lying disaffection among both Catholics and Presbyterians in Ireland.  The danger was imminent and plain to the least thoughtful.  One could not walk the Kent coast without seeing the beacons heaped up to tell the country of the enemy’s landing, and if the sun were shining on the uplands near Boulogne, one might catch the flash of its gleam upon the bayonets of manoeuvring veterans.  No wonder that a fear of the French power lay deeply in the hearts of the most gallant men, and that fear should, as it always does, beget a bitter and rancorous hatred.

The seamen did not speak kindly then of their recent enemies.  Their hearts loathed them, and in the fashion of our country their lips said what the heart felt.  Of the French officers they could not have spoken with more chivalry, as of worthy foemen, but the nation was an abomination to them.  The older men had fought against them in the American War, they had fought again for the last ten years, and the dearest wish of their hearts seemed to be that they might be called upon to do the same for the remainder of their days.  Yet if I was surprised by the virulence of their animosity against the French, I was even more so to hear how highly they rated them as antagonists.  The long succession of British victories which had finally made the French take to their ports and resign the struggle in despair had given all of us the idea that for some reason a Briton on the water must, in the nature of things, always have the best of it against a Frenchman.  But these men who had done the fighting did not think so.  They were loud in their praise of their foemen’s gallantry, and precise in their reasons for his defeat.  They showed how the officers of the old French Navy had nearly all been aristocrats.  How the Revolution had swept them out of their ships, and the force been left with insubordinate seamen and no competent leaders.  This ill-directed fleet had been hustled into port by the pressure of the well-manned and well-commanded British, who had pinned them there ever since, so that they had never had an opportunity of learning seamanship.  Their harbour drill and their harbour gunnery had been of no service when sails had to be trimmed and broadsides fired on the heave of an Atlantic swell.  Let one of their frigates get to sea and have a couple of years’ free run in which the crew might learn their duties, and then it would be a feather in the cap of a British officer if with a ship of equal force he could bring down her colours.

Such were the views of these experienced officers, fortified by many reminiscences and examples of French gallantry, such as the way in which the crew of the L’Orient had fought her quarter-deck guns when the main-deck was in a blaze beneath them, and when they must have known that they were standing over an exploding magazine.  The general hope was that the West Indian expedition since the peace might have given many of their fleet an ocean training, and that they might be tempted out into mid-Channel if the war were to break out afresh.  But would it break out afresh?  We had spent gigantic sums and made enormous exertions to curb the power of Napoleon and to prevent him from becoming the universal despot of Europe.  Would the Government try it again?  Or were they appalled by the gigantic load of debt which must bend the backs of many generations unborn?  Pitt was there, and surely he was not a man to leave his work half done.

And then suddenly there was a bustle at the door.  Amid the grey swirl of the tobacco-smoke I could catch a glimpse of a blue coat and gold epaulettes, with a crowd gathering thickly round them, while a hoarse murmur rose from the group which thickened into a deep-chested cheer.  Every one was on his feet, peering and asking each other what it might mean.  And still the crowd seethed and the cheering swelled.

“What is it?  What has happened?” cried a score of voices.

“Put him up!  Hoist him up!” shouted somebody, and an instant later I saw Captain Troubridge appear above the shoulders of the crowd.  His face was flushed, as if he were in wine, and he was waving what seemed to be a letter in the air.  The cheering died away, and there was such a hush that I could hear the crackle of the paper in his hand.

“Great news, gentlemen!” he roared.  “Glorious news!  Rear-Admiral Collingwood has directed me to communicate it to you.  The French Ambassador has received his papers to-night.  Every ship on the list is to go into commission.  Admiral Cornwallis is ordered out of Cawsand Bay to cruise off Ushant.  A squadron is starting for the North Sea and another for the Irish Channel.”

He may have had more to say, but his audience could wait no longer.  How they shouted and stamped and raved in their delight!  Harsh old flag-officers, grave post-captains, young lieutenants, all were roaring like schoolboys breaking up for the holidays.  There was no thought now of those manifold and weary grievances to which I had listened.  The foul weather was passed, and the landlocked sea-birds would be out on the foam once more.  The rhythm of “God Save the King” swelled through the babel, and I heard the old lines sung in a way that made you forget their bad rhymes and their bald sentiments.  I trust that you will never hear them so sung, with tears upon rugged cheeks, and catchings of the breath from strong men.  Dark days will have come again before you hear such a song or see such a sight as that.  Let those talk of the phlegm of our countrymen who have never seen them when the lava crust of restraint is broken, and when for an instant the strong, enduring fires of the North glow upon the surface.  I saw them then, and if I do not see them now, I am not so old or so foolish as to doubt that they are there.

My father’s appointment with Lord Nelson was an early one, and he was the more anxious to be punctual as he knew how much the Admiral’s movements must be affected by the news which we had heard the night before.  I had hardly breakfasted then, and my uncle had not rung for his chocolate, when he called for me at Jermyn Street.  A walk of a few hundred yards brought us to the high building of discoloured brick in Piccadilly, which served the Hamiltons as a town house, and which Nelson used as his head-quarters when business or pleasure called him from Merton.  A footman answered our knock, and we were ushered into a large drawing-room with sombre furniture and melancholy curtains.  My father sent in his name, and there we sat, looking at the white Italian statuettes in the corners, and the picture of Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples which hung over the harpsichord.  I can remember that a black clock was ticking loudly upon the mantelpiece, and that every now and then, amid the rumble of the hackney coaches, we could hear boisterous laughter from some inner chamber.

When at last the door opened, both my father and I sprang to our feet, expecting to find ourselves face to face with the greatest living Englishman.  It was a very different person, however, who swept into the room.

She was a lady, tall, and, as it seemed to me, exceedingly beautiful, though, perhaps, one who was more experienced and more critical might have thought that her charm lay in the past rather than the present.  Her queenly figure was moulded upon large and noble lines, while her face, though already tending to become somewhat heavy and coarse, was still remarkable for the brilliancy of the complexion, the beauty of the large, light blue eyes, and the tinge of the dark hair which curled over the low white forehead.  She carried herself in the most stately fashion, so that as I looked at her majestic entrance, and at the pose which she struck as she glanced at my father, I was reminded of the Queen of the Peruvians as, in the person of Miss Polly Hinton, she incited Boy Jim and myself to insurrection.

“Lieutenant Anson Stone?” she asked.

“Yes, your ladyship,” answered my father.

“Ah,” she cried, with an affected and exaggerated start, “you know me, then?”

“I have seen your ladyship at Naples.”

“Then you have doubtless seen my poor Sir William also—my poor, poor Sir William!”  She touched her dress with her white, ring-covered fingers, as if to draw our attention to the fact that she was in the deepest mourning.

“I heard of your ladyship’s sad loss,” said my father.

“We died together,” she cried.  “What can my life be now save a long-drawn living death?”

She spoke in a beautiful, rich voice, with the most heart-broken thrill in it, but I could not conceal from myself that she appeared to be one of the most robust persons that I had ever seen, and I was surprised to notice that she shot arch little questioning glances at me, as if the admiration even of so insignificant a person were of some interest to her.  My father, in his blunt, sailor fashion, tried to stammer out some commonplace condolence, but her eyes swept past his rude, weather-beaten face to ask and reask what effect she had made upon me.

“There he hangs, the tutelary angel of this house,” she cried, pointing with a grand sweeping gesture to a painting upon the wall, which represented a very thin-faced, high-nosed gentleman with several orders upon his coat.  “But enough of my private sorrow!”  She dashed invisible tears from her eyes.  “You have come to see Lord Nelson.  He bid me say that he would be with you in an instant.  You have doubtless heard that hostilities are about to reopen?”

“We heard the news last night.”

“Lord Nelson is under orders to take command of the Mediterranean Fleet.  You can think at such a moment—But, ah, is it not his lordship’s step that I hear?”

My attention was so riveted by the lady’s curious manner and by the gestures and attitudes with which she accompanied every remark, that I did not see the great admiral enter the room.  When I turned he was standing close by my elbow, a small, brown man with the lithe, slim figure of a boy.  He was not clad in uniform, but he wore a high-collared brown coat, with the right sleeve hanging limp and empty by his side.  The expression of his face was, as I remember it, exceedingly sad and gentle, with the deep lines upon it which told of the chafing of his urgent and fiery soul.  One eye was disfigured and sightless from a wound, but the other looked from my father to myself with the quickest and shrewdest of expressions.  Indeed, his whole manner, with his short, sharp glance and the fine poise of the head, spoke of energy and alertness, so that he reminded me, if I may compare great things with small, of a well-bred fighting terrier, gentle and slim, but keen and ready for whatever chance might send.

“Why, Lieutenant Stone,” said he, with great cordiality, holding out his left hand to my father, “I am very glad to see you.  London is full of Mediterranean men, but I trust that in a week there will not be an officer amongst you all with his feet on dry land.”

“I had come to ask you, sir, if you could assist me to a ship.”

“You shall have one, Stone, if my word goes for anything at the Admiralty.  I shall want all my old Nile men at my back.  I cannot promise you a first-rate, but at least it shall be a 64-gun ship, and I can tell you that there is much to be done with a handy, well-manned, well-found 64-gun ship.”

“Who could doubt it who has heard of the Agamemnon?” cried Lady Hamilton, and straightway she began to talk of the admiral and of his doings with such extravagance of praise and such a shower of compliments and of epithets, that my father and I did not know which way to look, feeling shame and sorrow for a man who was compelled to listen to such things said in his own presence.  But when I ventured to glance at Lord Nelson I found, to my surprise, that, far from showing any embarrassment, he was smiling with pleasure, as if this gross flattery of her ladyship’s were the dearest thing in all the world to him.

“Come, come, my dear lady,” said he, “you speak vastly beyond my merits;” upon which encouragement she started again in a theatrical apostrophe to Britain’s darling and Neptune’s eldest son, which he endured with the same signs of gratitude and pleasure.  That a man of the world, five-and-forty years of age, shrewd, honest, and acquainted with Courts, should be beguiled by such crude and coarse homage, amazed me, as it did all who knew him; but you who have seen much of life do not need to be told how often the strongest and noblest nature has its one inexplicable weakness, showing up the more obviously in contrast to the rest, as the dark stain looks the fouler upon the whitest sheet.

“You are a sea-officer of my own heart, Stone,” said he, when her ladyship had exhausted her panegyric.  “You are one of the old breed!”  He walked up and down the room with little, impatient steps as he talked, turning with a whisk upon his heel every now and then, as if some invisible rail had brought him up.  “We are getting too fine for our work with these new-fangled epaulettes and quarter-deck trimmings.  When I joined the Service, you would find a lieutenant gammoning and rigging his own bowsprit, or aloft, maybe, with a marlinspike slung round his neck, showing an example to his men.  Now, it’s as much as he’ll do to carry his own sextant up the companion.  When could you join?”

“To-night, my lord.”

“Right, Stone, right!  That is the true spirit.  They are working double tides in the yards, but I do not know when the ships will be ready.  I hoist my flag on the Victory on Wednesday, and we sail at once.”

“No, no; not so soon!  She cannot be ready for sea,” said Lady Hamilton, in a wailing voice, clasping her hands and turning up her eyes as she spoke.

“She must and she shall be ready,” cried Nelson, with extraordinary vehemence.  “By Heaven! if the devil stands at the door, I sail on Wednesday.  Who knows what these rascals may be doing in my absence?  It maddens me to think of the deviltries which they may be devising.  At this very instant, dear lady, the Queen, our Queen, may be straining her eyes for the topsails of Nelson’s ships.”

Thinking, as I did, that he was speaking of our own old Queen Charlotte, I could make no meaning out of this; but my father told me afterwards that both Nelson and Lady Hamilton had conceived an extraordinary affection for the Queen of Naples, and that it was the interests of her little kingdom which he had so strenuously at heart.  It may have been my expression of bewilderment which attracted Nelson’s attention to me, for he suddenly stopped in his quick quarter-deck walk, and looked me up and down with a severe eye.

“Well, young gentleman!” said he, sharply.

“This is my only son, sir,” said my father.  “It is my wish that he should join the Service, if a berth can be found for him; for we have all been King’s officers for many generations.”

“So, you wish to come and have your bones broken?” cried Nelson, roughly, looking with much disfavour at the fine clothes which had cost my uncle and Mr. Brummel such a debate.  “You will have to change that grand coat for a tarry jacket if you serve under me, sir.”

I was so embarrassed by the abruptness of his manner that I could but stammer out that I hoped I should do my duty, on which his stern mouth relaxed into a good-humoured smile, and he laid his little brown hand for an instant upon my shoulder.

“I dare say that you will do very well,” said he.  “I can see that you have the stuff in you.  But do not imagine that it is a light service which you undertake, young gentleman, when you enter His Majesty’s Navy.  It is a hard profession.  You hear of the few who succeed, but what do you know of the hundreds who never find their way?  Look at my own luck!  Out of 200 who were with me in the San Juan expedition, 145 died in a single night.  I have been in 180 engagements, and I have, as you see, lost my eye and my arm, and been sorely wounded besides.  It chanced that I came through, and here I am flying my admiral’s flag; but I remember many a man as good as me who did not come through.  Yes,” he added, as her ladyship broke in with a voluble protest, “many and many as good a man who has gone to the sharks or the land-crabs.  But it is a useless sailor who does not risk himself every day, and the lives of all of us are in the hands of Him who best knows when to claim them.”

For an instant, in his earnest gaze and reverent manner, we seemed to catch a glimpse of the deeper, truer Nelson, the man of the Eastern counties, steeped in the virile Puritanism which sent from that district the Ironsides to fashion England within, and the Pilgrim Fathers to spread it without.  Here was the Nelson who declared that he saw the hand of God pressing upon the French, and who waited on his knees in the cabin of his flag-ship while she bore down upon the enemy’s line.  There was a human tenderness, too, in his way of speaking of his dead comrades, which made me understand why it was that he was so beloved by all who served with him, for, iron-hard as he was as seaman and fighter, there ran through his complex nature a sweet and un-English power of affectionate emotion, showing itself in tears if he were moved, and in such tender impulses as led him afterwards to ask his flag-captain to kiss him as he lay dying in the cockpit of the Victory.

My father had risen to depart, but the admiral, with that kindliness which he ever showed to the young, and which had been momentarily chilled by the unfortunate splendour of my clothes, still paced up and down in front of us, shooting out crisp little sentences of exhortation and advice.

“It is ardour that we need in the Service, young gentleman,” said he.  “We need red-hot men who will never rest satisfied.  We had them in the Mediterranean, and we shall have them again.  There was a band of brothers!  When I was asked to recommend one for special service, I told the Admiralty they might take the names as they came, for the same spirit animated them all.  Had we taken nineteen vessels, we should never have said it was well done while the twentieth sailed the seas.  You know how it was with us, Stone.  You are too old a Mediterranean man for me to tell you anything.”

“I trust, my lord, that I shall be with you when next we meet them,” said my father.

“Meet them we shall and must.  By Heaven, I shall never rest until I have given them a shaking.  The scoundrel Buonaparte wishes to humble us.  Let him try, and God help the better cause!”

He spoke with such extraordinary animation that the empty sleeve flapped about in the air, giving him the strangest appearance.  Seeing my eyes fixed upon it, he turned with a smile to my father.

“I can still work my fin, Stone,” said he, putting his hand across to the stump of his arm.  “What used they to say in the fleet about it?”

“That it was a sign, sir, that it was a bad hour to cross your hawse.”

“They knew me, the rascals.  You can see, young gentleman, that not a scrap of the ardour with which I serve my country has been shot away.  Some day you may find that you are flying your own flag, and when that time comes you may remember that my advice to an officer is that he should have nothing to do with tame, slow measures.  Lay all your stake, and if you lose through no fault of your own, the country will find you another stake as large.  Never mind manœuvres!  Go for them!  The only manœuvre you need is that which will place you alongside your enemy.  Always fight, and you will always be right.  Give not a thought to your own ease or your own life, for from the day that you draw the blue coat over your back you have no life of your own.  It is the country’s, to be most freely spent if the smallest gain can come from it.  How is the wind this morning, Stone?”

“East-south-east,” my father answered, readily.

“Then Cornwallis is, doubtless, keeping well up to Brest, though, for my own part, I had rather tempt them out into the open sea.”

“That is what every officer and man in the fleet would prefer, your lordship,” said my father.

“They do not love the blockading service, and it is little wonder, since neither money nor honour is to be gained at it.  You can remember how it was in the winter months before Toulon, Stone, when we had neither firing, wine, beef, pork, nor flour aboard the ships, nor a spare piece of rope, canvas, or twine.  We braced the old hulks with our spare cables, and God knows there was never a Levanter that I did not expect it to send us to the bottom.  But we held our grip all the same.  Yet I fear that we do not get much credit for it here in England, Stone, where they light the windows for a great battle, but they do not understand that it is easier for us to fight the Nile six times over, than to keep our station all winter in the blockade.  But I pray God that we may meet this new fleet of theirs and settle the matter by a pell-mell battle.”

“May I be with you, my lord!” said my father, earnestly.  “But we have already taken too much of your time, and so I beg to thank you for your kindness and to wish you good morning.”

“Good morning, Stone!” said Nelson.  “You shall have your ship, and if I can make this young gentleman one of my officers it shall be done.  But I gather from his dress,” he continued, running his eye over me, “that you have been more fortunate in prize-money than most of your comrades.  For my own part, I never did nor could turn my thoughts to money-making.”

My father explained that I had been under the charge of the famous Sir Charles Tregellis, who was my uncle, and with whom I was now residing.

“Then you need no help from me,” said Nelson, with some bitterness.  “If you have either guineas or interest you can climb over the heads of old sea-officers, though you may not know the poop from the galley, or a carronade from a long nine.  Nevertheless—But what the deuce have we here?”

The footman had suddenly precipitated himself into the room, but stood abashed before the fierce glare of the admiral’s eye.

“Your lordship told me to rush to you if it should come,” he explained, holding out a large blue envelope.

“By Heaven, it is my orders!” cried Nelson, snatching it up and fumbling with it in his awkward, one-handed attempt to break the seals.  Lady Hamilton ran to his assistance, but no sooner had she glanced at the paper inclosed than she burst into a shrill scream, and throwing up her hands and her eyes, she sank backwards in a swoon.  I could not but observe, however, that her fall was very carefully executed, and that she was fortunate enough, in spite of her insensibility, to arrange her drapery and attitude into a graceful and classical design.  But he, the honest seaman, so incapable of deceit or affectation that he could not suspect it in others, ran madly to the bell, shouting for the maid, the doctor, and the smelling-salts, with incoherent words of grief, and such passionate terms of emotion that my father thought it more discreet to twitch me by the sleeve as a signal that we should steal from the room.  There we left him then in the dim-lit London drawing-room, beside himself with pity for this shallow and most artificial woman, while without, at the edge of the Piccadilly curb, there stood the high dark berline ready to start him upon that long journey which was to end in his chase of the French fleet over seven thousand miles of ocean, his meeting with it, his victory, which confined Napoleon’s ambition for ever to the land, and his death, coming, as I would it might come to all of us, at the crowning moment of his life.

And now the day of the great fight began to approach.  Even the imminent outbreak of war and the renewed threats of Napoleon were secondary things in the eyes of the sportsmen—and the sportsmen in those days made a large half of the population.  In the club of the patrician and the plebeian gin-shop, in the coffee-house of the merchant or the barrack of the soldier, in London or the provinces, the same question was interesting the whole nation.  Every west-country coach brought up word of the fine condition of Crab Wilson, who had returned to his own native air for his training, and was known to be under the immediate care of Captain Barclay, the expert.  On the other hand, although my uncle had not yet named his man, there was no doubt amongst the public that Jim was to be his nominee, and the report of his physique and of his performance found him many backers.  On the whole, however, the betting was in favour of Wilson, for Bristol and the west country stood by him to a man, whilst London opinion was divided.  Three to two were to be had on Wilson at any West End club two days before the battle.

I had twice been down to Crawley to see Jim in his training quarters, where I found him undergoing the severe regimen which was usual.  From early dawn until nightfall he was running, jumping, striking a bladder which swung upon a bar, or sparring with his formidable trainer.  His eyes shone and his skin glowed with exuberent health, and he was so confident of success that my own misgivings vanished as I watched his gallant bearing and listened to his quiet and cheerful words.

“But I wonder that you should come and see me now, Rodney,” said he, when we parted, trying to laugh as he spoke.  “I have become a bruiser and your uncle’s paid man, whilst you are a Corinthian upon town.  If you had not been the best and truest little gentleman in the world, you would have been my patron instead of my friend before now.”

When I looked at this splendid fellow, with his high-bred, clean-cut face, and thought of the fine qualities and gentle, generous impulses which I knew to lie within him, it seemed so absurd that he should speak as though my friendship towards him were a condescension, that I could not help laughing aloud.

“That is all very well, Rodney,” said he, looking hard into my eyes.  “But what does your uncle think about it?”

This was a poser, and I could only answer lamely enough that, much as I was indebted to my uncle, I had known Jim first, and that I was surely old enough to choose my own friends.

Jim’s misgivings were so far correct that my uncle did very strongly object to any intimacy between us; but there were so many other points in which he disapproved of my conduct, that it made the less difference.  I fear that he was already disappointed in me.  I would not develop an eccentricity, although he was good enough to point out several by which I might “come out of the ruck,” as he expressed it, and so catch the attention of the strange world in which he lived.

“You are an active young fellow, nephew,” said he.  “Do you not think that you could engage to climb round the furniture of an ordinary room without setting foot upon the ground?  Some little tour-de-force of the sort is in excellent taste.  There was a captain in the Guards who attained considerable social success by doing it for a small wager.  Lady Lieven, who is exceedingly exigeant, used to invite him to her evenings merely that he might exhibit it.”

I had to assure him that the feat would be beyond me.

“You are just a little difficile,” said he, shrugging his shoulders.  “As my nephew, you might have taken your position by perpetuating my own delicacy of taste.  If you had made bad taste your enemy, the world of fashion would willingly have looked upon you as an arbiter by virtue of your family traditions, and you might without a struggle have stepped into the position to which this young upstart Brummell aspires.  But you have no instinct in that direction.  You are incapable of minute attention to detail.  Look at your shoes!  Look at your cravat!  Look at your watch-chain!  Two links are enough to show.  I have shown three, but it was an indiscretion.  At this moment I can see no less than five of yours.  I regret it, nephew, but I do not think that you are destined to attain that position which I have a right to expect from my blood relation.”

“I am sorry to be a disappointment to you, sir,” said I.

“It is your misfortune not to have come under my influence earlier,” said he.  “I might then have moulded you so as to have satisfied even my own aspirations.  I had a younger brother whose case was a similar one.  I did what I could for him, but he would wear ribbons in his shoes, and he publicly mistook white Burgundy for Rhine wine.  Eventually the poor fellow took to books, and lived and died in a country vicarage.  He was a good man, but he was commonplace, and there is no place in society for commonplace people.”

“Then I fear, sir, that there is none for me,” said I.  “But my father has every hope that Lord Nelson will find me a position in the fleet.  If I have been a failure in town, I am none the less conscious of your kindness in trying to advance my interests, and I hope that, should I receive my commission, I may be a credit to you yet.”

“It is possible that you may attain the very spot which I had marked out for you, but by another road,” said my uncle.  “There are many men in town, such as Lord St. Vincent, Lord Hood, and others, who move in the most respectable circles, although they have nothing but their services in the Navy to recommend them.”

It was on the afternoon of the day before the fight that this conversation took place between my uncle and myself in the dainty sanctum of his Jermyn-Street house.  He was clad, I remember, in his flowing brocade dressing-gown, as was his custom before he set off for his club, and his foot was extended upon a stool—for Abernethy had just been in to treat him for an incipient attack of the gout.  It may have been the pain, or it may have been his disappointment at my career, but his manner was more testy than was usual with him, and I fear that there was something of a sneer in his smile as he spoke of my deficiencies.  For my own part I was relieved at the explanation, for my father had left London in the full conviction that a vacancy would speedily be found for us both, and the one thing which had weighed upon my mind was that I might have found it hard to leave my uncle without interfering with the plans which he had formed.  I was heart-weary of this empty life, for which I was so ill-fashioned, and weary also of that intolerant talk which would make a coterie of frivolous women and foolish fops the central point of the universe.  Something of my uncle’s sneer may have flickered upon my lips as I heard him allude with supercilious surprise to the presence in those sacrosanct circles of the men who had stood between the country and destruction.

“By the way, nephew,” said he, “gout or no gout, and whether Abernethy likes it or not, we must be down at Crawley to-night.  The battle will take place upon Crawley Downs.  Sir Lothian Hume and his man are at Reigate.  I have reserved beds at the George for both of us.  The crush will, it is said, exceed anything ever known.  The smell of these country inns is always most offensive to me—mais que voulez-vous?  Berkeley Craven was saying in the club last night that there is not a bed within twenty miles of Crawley which is not bespoke, and that they are charging three guineas for the night.  I hope that your young friend, if I must describe him as such, will fulfil the promise which he has shown, for I have rather more upon the event than I care to lose.  Sir Lothian has been plunging also—he made a single bye-bet of five thousand to three upon Wilson in Limmer’s yesterday.  From what I hear of his affairs it will be a serious matter for him if we should pull it off.  Well, Lorimer?”

“A person to see you, Sir Charles,” said the new valet.

“You know that I never see any one until my dressing is complete.”

“He insists upon seeing you, sir.  He pushed open the door.”

“Pushed it open!  What d’you mean, Lorimer?  Why didn’t you put him out?”

A smile passed over the servant’s face.  At the same moment there came a deep voice from the passage.

“You show me in this instant, young man, d’ye ’ear?  Let me see your master, or it’ll be the worse for you.”

I thought that I had heard the voice before, but when, over the shoulder of the valet, I caught a glimpse of a large, fleshy, bull-face, with a flattened Michael Angelo nose in the centre of it, I knew at once that it was my neighbour at the supper party.

“It’s Warr, the prizefighter, sir,” said I.

“Yes, sir,” said our visitor, pushing his huge form into the room.  “It’s Bill Warr, landlord of the One Ton public-’ouse, Jermyn Street, and the gamest man upon the list.  There’s only one thing that ever beat me, Sir Charles, and that was my flesh, which creeps over me that amazin’ fast that I’ve always got four stone that ’as no business there.  Why, sir, I’ve got enough to spare to make a feather-weight champion out of.  You’d ’ardly think, to look at me, that even after Mendoza fought me I was able to jump the four-foot ropes at the ring-side just as light as a little kiddy; but if I was to chuck my castor into the ring now I’d never get it till the wind blew it out again, for blow my dicky if I could climb after.  My respec’s to you, young sir, and I ’ope I see you well.”

My uncle’s face had expressed considerable disgust at this invasion of his privacy, but it was part of his position to be on good terms with the fighting-men, so he contented himself with asking curtly what business had brought him there.  For answer the huge prizefighter looked meaningly at the valet.

“It’s important, Sir Charles, and between man and man,” said he.

“You may go, Lorimer.  Now, Warr, what is the matter?”

The bruiser very calmly seated himself astride of a chair with his arms resting upon the back of it.

“I’ve got information, Sir Charles,” said he.

“Well, what is it?” cried my uncle, impatiently.

“Information of value.”

“Out with it, then!”

“Information that’s worth money,” said Warr, and pursed up his lips.

“I see.  You want to be paid for what you know?”

The prizefighter smiled an affirmative.

“Well, I don’t buy things on trust.  You should know me better than to try on such a game with me.”

“I know you for what you are, Sir Charles, and that is a noble, slap-up Corinthian.  But if I was to use this against you, d’ye see, it would be worth ’undreds in my pocket.  But my ’eart won’t let me do it, for Bill Warr’s always been on the side o’ good sport and fair play.  If I use it for you, then I expect that you won’t see me the loser.”

“You can do what you like,” said my uncle.  “If your news is of service to me, I shall know how to treat you.”

“You can’t say fairer than that.  We’ll let it stand there, gov’nor, and you’ll do the ’andsome thing, as you ’ave always ’ad the name for doin’.  Well, then, your man, Jim ’Arisen, fights Crab Wilson, of Gloucester, at Crawley Down to-morrow mornin’ for a stake.”

“What of that?”

“Did you ’appen to know what the bettin’ was yesterday?”

“It was three to two on Wilson.”

“Right you are, gov’nor.  Three to two was offered in my own bar-parlour.  D’you know what the bettin’ is to-day?”

“I have not been out yet.”

“Then I’ll tell you.  It’s seven to one against your man.”

“What?”

“Seven to one, gov’nor, no less.”

“You’re talking nonsense, Warr!  How could the betting change from three to two to seven to one?”

“Ive been to Tom Owen’s, and I’ve been to the ’Ole in the Wall, and I’ve been to the Waggon and ’Orses, and you can get seven to one in any of them.  There’s tons of money being laid against your man.  It’s a ’orse to a ’en in every sportin’ ’ouse and boozin’ ken from ’ere to Stepney.”

For a moment the expression upon my uncle’s face made me realize that this match was really a serious matter to him.  Then he shrugged his shoulders with an incredulous smile.

“All the worse for the fools who give the odds,” said he.  “My man is all right.  You saw him yesterday, nephew?”

“He was all right yesterday, sir.”

“If anything had gone wrong I should have heard.”

“But perhaps,” said Warr, “it ’as not gone wrong with ’im yet.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I’ll tell you what I mean, sir.  You remember Berks?  You know that ’e ain’t to be overmuch depended on at any time, and that ’e ’ad a grudge against your man ’cause ’e laid ’im out in the coach-’ouse.  Well, last night about ten o’clock in ’e comes into my bar, and the three bloodiest rogues in London at ’is ’eels.  There was Red Ike, ’im that was warned off the ring ’cause ’e fought a cross with Bittoon; and there was Fightin’ Yussef, who would sell ’is mother for a seven-shillin’-bit; the third was Chris McCarthy, who is a fogle-snatcher by trade, with a pitch outside the ’Aymarket Theatre.  You don’t often see four such beauties together, and all with as much as they could carry, save only Chris, who is too leary a cove to drink when there’s somethin’ goin’ forward.  For my part, I showed ’em into the parlour, not ’cos they was worthy of it, but ’cos I knew right well they would start bashin’ some of my customers, and maybe get my license into trouble if I left ’em in the bar.  I served ’em with drink, and stayed with ’em just to see that they didn’t lay their ’ands on the stuffed parroquet and the pictures.

“Well, gov’nor, to cut it short, they began to talk about the fight, and they all laughed at the idea that young Jim ’Arrison could win it—all except Chris, and e’ kept a-nudging and a-twitchin’ at the others until Joe Berks nearly gave him a wipe across the face for ’is trouble.  I saw somethin’ was in the wind, and it wasn’t very ’ard to guess what it was—especially when Red Ike was ready to put up a fiver that Jim ’Arrison would never fight at all.  So I up to get another bottle of liptrap, and I slipped round to the shutter that we pass the liquor through from the private bar into the parlour.  I drew it an inch open, and I might ’ave been at the table with them, I could ’ear every word that clearly.

“There was Chris McCarthy growlin’ at them for not keepin’ their tongues still, and there was Joe Berks swearin’ that ’e would knock ’is face in if ’e dared give ’im any of ’is lip.  So Chris ’e sort of argued with them, for ’e was frightened of Berks, and ’e put it to them whether they would be fit for the job in the mornin’, and whether the gov’nor would pay the money if ’e found they ’ad been drinkin’ and were not to be trusted.  This struck them sober, all three, an’ Fighting Yussef asked what time they were to start.  Chris said that as long as they were at Crawley before the George shut up they could work it.  ‘It’s poor pay for a chance of a rope,’ said Red Ike.  ‘Rope be damned!’ cried Chris, takin’ a little loaded stick out of his side pocket.  ‘If three of you ’old him down and I break his arm-bone with this, we’ve earned our money, and we don’t risk more’n six months’ jug.’  ‘’E’ll fight,’ said Berks.  ‘Well, it’s the only fight ’e’ll get,’ answered Chris, and that was all I ’eard of it.  This mornin’ out I went, and I found as I told you afore that the money is goin’ on to Wilson by the ton, and that no odds are too long for the layers.  So it stands, gov’nor, and you know what the meanin’ of it may be better than Bill Warr can tell you.”

“Very good, Warr,” said my uncle, rising.  “I am very much obliged to you for telling me this, and I will see that you are not a loser by it.  I put it down as the gossip of drunken ruffians, but none the less you have served me vastly by calling my attention to it.  I suppose I shall see you at the Downs to-morrow?”

“Mr. Jackson ’as asked me to be one o’ the beaters-out, sir.”

“Very good.  I hope that we shall have a fair and good fight.  Good day to you, and thank you.”

My uncle had preserved his jaunty demeanour as long as Warr was in the room, but the door had hardly closed upon him before he turned to me with a face which was more agitated than I had ever seen it.

“We must be off for Crawley at once, nephew,” said he, ringing the bell.  “There’s not a moment to be lost.  Lorimer, order the bays to be harnessed in the curricle.  Put the toilet things in, and tell William to have it round at the door as soon as possible.”

“I’ll see to it, sir,” said I, and away I ran to the mews in Little Ryder Street, where my uncle stabled his horses.  The groom was away, and I had to send a lad in search of him, while with the help of the livery-man I dragged the curricle from the coach-house and brought the two mares out of their stalls.  It was half an hour, or possibly three-quarters, before everything had been found, and Lorimer was already waiting in Jermyn Street with the inevitable baskets, whilst my uncle stood in the open door of his house, clad in his long fawn-coloured driving-coat, with no sign upon his calm pale face of the tumult of impatience which must, I was sure, be raging within.

“We shall leave you, Lorimer,” said he.  “We might find it hard to get a bed for you.  Keep at her head, William!  Jump in, nephew.  Halloa, Warr, what is the matter now?”

The prizefighter was hastening towards us as fast as his bulk would allow.

“Just one word before you go, Sir Charles,” he panted.  “I’ve just ’eard in my taproom that the four men I spoke of left for Crawley at one o’clock.”

“Very good, Warr,” said my uncle, with his foot upon the step.

“And the odds ’ave risen to ten to one.”

“Let go her head, William!”

“Just one more word, gov’nor.  You’ll excuse the liberty, but if I was you I’d take my pistols with me.”

“Thank you; I have them.”

The long thong cracked between the ears of the leader, the groom sprang for the pavement, and Jermyn Street had changed for St. James’s, and that again for Whitehall with a swiftness which showed that the gallant mares were as impatient as their master.  It was half-past four by the Parliament clock as we flew on to Westminster Bridge.  There was the flash of water beneath us, and then we were between those two long dun-coloured lines of houses which had been the avenue which had led us to London.  My uncle sat with tightened lips and a brooding brow.  We had reached Streatham before he broke the silence.

“I have a good deal at stake, nephew,” said he.

“So have I, sir,” I answered.

“You!” he cried, in surprise.

“My friend, sir.”

“Ah, yes, I had forgot.  You have some eccentricities, after all, nephew.  You are a faithful friend, which is a rare enough thing in our circles.  I never had but one friend of my own position, and he—but you’ve heard me tell the story.  I fear it will be dark before we reach Crawley.”

“I fear that it will.”

“In that case we may be too late.”

“Pray God not, sir!”

“We sit behind the best cattle in England, but I fear lest we find the roads blocked before we get to Crawley.  Did you observe, nephew, that these four villains spoke in Warr’s hearing of the master who was behind them, and who was paying them for their infamy?  Did you not understand that they were hired to cripple my man?  Who, then, could have hired them?  Who had an interest unless it was—I know Sir Lothian Hume to be a desperate man.  I know that he has had heavy card losses at Watier’s and White’s.  I know also that he has much at stake upon this event, and that he has plunged upon it with a rashness which made his friends think that he had some private reason for being satisfied as to the result.  By Heaven, it all hangs together!  If it should be so—!”  He relapsed into silence, but I saw the same look of cold fierceness settle upon his features which I had marked there when he and Sir John Lade had raced wheel to wheel down the Godstone road.

The sun sank slowly towards the low Surrey hills, and the shadows crept steadily eastwards, but the whirr of the wheels and the roar of the hoofs never slackened.  A fresh wind blew upon our faces, while the young leaves drooped motionless from the wayside branches.  The golden edge of the sun was just sinking behind the oaks of Reigate Hill when the dripping mares drew up before the Crown at Redhill.  The landlord, an old sportsman and ringsider, ran out to greet so well-known a Corinthian as Sir Charles Tregellis.