My new acquaintance never ceased to congratulate himself on what he called the lucky accident that had led him to the barracks that morning, and thus brought about our meeting. ‘Little as you think of me, my dear,’ said he, ‘I’m one of the Tiernays of Timmahoo myself; faix, until I saw you, I thought I was the last of them! There are eight generations of us in the churchyard at Kells, and I was looking to the time when they’d lay my bones there as the last of the race, but I see there’s better fortune before us.’
‘But you have a family, I hope?’
‘Sorrow one belonging to me. I might have married when I was young, but there was a pride in me to look for something higher than I had any right—except from blood I mean, for a better stock than our own isn’t to be found; and that’s the way years went over and I lost the opportunity, and here I am now an old bachelor, without one to stand to me, barrin’ it be yourself.’
The last words were uttered with a tremulous emotion, and, on turning towards him, I saw his eyes swimming with tears, and perceived that some strong feeling was working within him.
‘You can’t suppose I can ever forget what I owe you, Mr. Tiernay.’
‘Call me Pat, Pat Tiernay,’ interrupted he roughly.
‘I ‘ll call you what you please,’ said I, ‘if you let me add friend to it.’
‘That’senough; we understand one another now—no more need be said. You’ll come home and live with me It’s not long, maybe, you’ll have to do that same; but when I go you ‘ll be heir to what I have. ‘Tis more, perhaps, than many supposes, looking at the coat and the gaiters I am wearin’. Mind, Maurice, I don’t want you, nor I don’t expect you, to turn farmer like myself. You need never turn a hand to anything. You ‘ll have your horse to ride—two, if you like it. Your time will be all your own, so that you spend a little of it now and then with me, and as much divarsion as ever you care for.’
I have condensed into a few words the substance of a conversation which lasted till we reached Baldoyle; and passing through that not over-imposing village, gained the neighbourhood of the sea-shore, along which stretched the farm of the ‘Black Pits,’ a name derived, I was told, from certain black holes that were dug in the sands by fishermen in former times, when the salt tide washed over the pleasant fields where corn was now growing. A long, low, thatched cabin, with far more indications of room and comfort than pretension to the picturesque, stood facing the sea. There were neither trees nor shrubs around it, and the aspect of the spot was bleak and cheerless enough, a colouring a dark November day did nothing to dispel.
It possessed one charm, however; and had it been a hundred times inferior to what it was, that one would have compensated for all else—a hearty welcome met me at the door, and the words, ‘This is your home, Maurice,’ filled my heart with happiness.
Were I to suffer myself to dwell even in thought on this period of my life, I feel how insensibly I should be led away into an inexcusable prolixity. The little meaningless incidents of my daily life, all so engraven on my memory still, occupied me pleasantly from day till night. Not only the master of myself and my own time, I was master of everything around me. Uncle Pat, as he loved to call himself, treated me with a degree of respect that was almost painful to me, and only when we were alone together did he relapse into the intimacy of equality. Two first-rate hunters stood in my stable; a stout-built half-deck boat lay at my command beside the quay; I had my gun and my greyhounds; books, journals; everything, in short, that a liberal purse and a kind spirit could confer—all but acquaintance. Of these I possessed absolutely none. Too proud to descend to intimacy with the farmers and small shopkeepers of the neighbourhood, my position excluded me from acquaintance with the gentry; and thus I stood between both, unknown to either.
For a while my new career was too absorbing to suffer me to dwell on this circumstance. The excitement of field-sports sufficed me when abroad, and I came home usually so tired at night that I could barely keep awake to amuse Uncle Pat with those narratives of war and campaigning he was so fond of hearing. To the hunting-field succeeded the Bay of Dublin, and I passed days, even weeks, exploring every creek and inlet of the coast—now cruising under the dark cliffs of the Welsh shore, or, while my boat lay at anchor, wandering among the solitary valleys of Lambay, my life, like a dream full of its own imaginings, and unbroken by the thoughts or feelings of others! I will not go the length of saying that I was self-free from all reproach on the inglorious indolence in which my days were passed, or that my thoughts never strayed away to that land where my first dreams of ambition were felt. But a strange fatuous kind of languor had grown upon me, and the more I retired within myself, the less did I wish for a return to that struggle with the world which every active life engenders. Perhaps—I cannot now say if it were so—perhaps I resented the disdainful distance with which the gentry treated me, as we met in the hunting-field or the coursing-ground. Some of the isolation I preferred may have had this origin, but choice had the greater share in it, until at last my greatest pleasure was to absent myself for weeks on a cruise, fancying that I was exploring tracts never visited by man, and landing on spots where no human foot had ever been known to tread.
If Uncle Pat would occasionally remonstrate on the score of these long absences, he never ceased to supply means for them; and my sea-store and a well-filled purse were never wanting, when the blue-peter floated from La Hoche, as in my ardour I had named my cutter. Perhaps at heart he was not sorry to see me avoid the capital and its society. The bitterness which had succeeded the struggle for independence was now at its highest point, and there was what, to my thinking at least, appeared something like the cruelty of revenge in the sentences which followed the state trials. I will not suffer myself to stray into the debatable ground of politics, nor dare I give an opinion on matters, where, with all the experience of fifty years superadded, the wisest heads are puzzled how to decide; but my impression at the time was that lenity would have been a safer and a better policy than severity, and that in the momentary prostration of the country, lay the precise conjuncture for those measures of grace and favour which were afterwards rather wrung from than conceded by the English Government. Be this as it may, Dublin offered a strange spectacle at that period. The triumphant joy of one party—the discomfiture and depression of the other. All the exuberant delight of success here, all the bitterness of failure there. On one side, festivities, rejoicings, and public demonstrations; on the other, confinement, banishment, or the scaffold.
The excitement was almost madness. The passion for pleasure, restrained by the terrible contingencies of the time, now broke forth with redoubled force, and the capital was thronged with all its rank, riches, and fashion, when its gaols were crowded, and the heaviest sentences of the law were in daily execution. The state-trials were crowded by all the fashion of the metropolis; and the heart-moving eloquence of Curran was succeeded by the strains of a merry concert. It was just then, too, that the great lyric poet of Ireland began to appear in society, and those songs which were to be known afterwards as ‘The Melodies,’ par excellence, were first heard in all the witching enchantment which his own taste and voice could lend them. To such as were indifferent to or could forget the past, it was a brilliant period. It was the last flickering blaze of Irish nationality, before the lamp was extinguished for ever.
Of this society I myself saw nothing. But even in the retirement of my humble life the sounds of its mirth and pleasure penetrated, and I often wished to witness the scenes which even in vague description were fascinating. It was, then, in a kind of discontent at my exclusion, that I grew from day to day more disposed to solitude, and fonder of those excursions which led me out of all reach of companionship or acquaintance. In this spirit I planned a long cruise down channel, resolving to visit the island of Valentia, or, if the wind and weather favoured, to creep around the south-west coast as far as Bantry or Kenmare. A man and his son, a boy of about sixteen, formed all my crew, and were quite sufficient for the light tackle and easy rig of my craft. Uncle Pat was already mounted on his pony, and ready to set out for market, as we prepared to start. It was a bright spring morning—such a one as now and then the changeful climate of Ireland brings forth in a brilliancy of colour and softness of atmosphere that are rare in even more favoured lands.
‘You have a fine day of it, Maurice, and just enough wind,’ said he, looking at the point from whence it came. ‘I almost wish I was going with you.’
‘And why not come, then?’ asked I. ‘You never will give yourself a holiday. Do so for once, now.’
‘Not to-day, anyhow,’ said he, half sighing at his self-denial. ‘I have a great deal of business on my hands to-day, but the next time—the very next you’re up to a long cruise, I’ll go with you.’
‘That’s a bargain, then?’
‘A bargain. Here’s my hand on it.’
We shook hands cordially on the compact. Little knew I it was to be for the last time, and that we were never to meet again!
I was soon aboard, and with a free mainsail skimming rapidly over the bright waters of the bay. The wind freshened as the day wore on, and we quickly passed the Kish light-ship, and held our course boldly down channel. The height of my enjoyment in these excursions consisted in the unbroken quietude of mind I felt, when removed from all chance interruption, and left free to follow out my own fancies and indulge my dreamy conceptions to my heart’s content. It was then I used to revel in imaginings which sometimes soared into the boldest realms of ambition, and at others strayed contemplatively in the humblest walks of obscure fortune. My crew never broke in upon these musings; indeed, old Tom Finerty’s low crooning song rather aided than interrupted them. He was not much given to talking, and a chance allusion to some vessel afar off, or some headland we were passing, were about the extent of his communicativeness, and even these often fell on my ear unnoticed.
It was thus, at night, we made the Hook Tower, and on the next day passed, in a spanking breeze, under the bold cliffs of Tramore, just catching, as the sun was sinking, the sight of Youghal Bay and the tall headlands beyond it.
‘The wind is drawing more to the nor’ard,’ said old Tom, as night closed in, ‘and the clouds look dirty.’
‘Bear her up a point or two,’ said I, ‘and let us stand in for Cork Harbour if it comes on to blow.’
He muttered something in reply, but I did not catch the words, nor, indeed, cared I to hear them, for I had just wrapped myself in my boat-cloak, and, stretched at full length on the shingle ballast of the yawl, was gazing in rapture at the brilliancy of the starry sky above me. Light skiffs of feathery cloud would now and then flit past, and a peculiar hissing sound of the sea told, at the same time, that the breeze was freshening. But old Tom had done his duty in mentioning this once, and thus having disburthened his conscience, he closehauled his mainsail, shifted the ballast a little to midships, and, putting up the collar of his pilot-coat, screwed himself tighter into the corner beside the tiller, and chewed his quid in quietness. The boy slept soundly in the bow, and I, lulled by the motion and the plashing waves, fell into a dreamy stupor, like a pleasant sleep. The pitching of the boat continued to increase, and twice or thrice struck by a heavy sea, she lay over, till the white waves came tumbling in over her gunwale. I heard Tom call to his boy something about the head-sail, but for the life of me I could not or would not arouse myself from a train of thought that I was following.
‘She’s a stout boat to stand this,’ said Tom, as he rounded her off at a coming wave, which, even thus escaped, splashed over us like a cataract. ‘I know many a bigger craft wouldn’t hold up her canvas under such a gale.’
‘Here it comes, father. Here’s a squall!’ cried the boy; and with a crash like thunder, the wind struck the sail, and laid the boat half under.
‘She’d float if she was full of water,’ said the old man, as the craft ‘righted.’
‘But maybe the spars wouldn’t stand,’ said the boy anxiously.
‘‘Tis what I ‘m thinking,’ rejoined the father. ‘There’s a shake in the mast, below the caps.’
‘Tell him it’s better to bear up, and go before it,’ whispered the lad, with a gesture towards where I was lying.
‘Troth, it’s little he’d care,’ said the other; ‘besides, he’s never plazed to be woke up.’
‘Here it comes again!’ cried the boy. But this time the squall swept past ahead of us, and the craft only reeled to the swollen waves, as they tore by.
‘We ‘d better go about, sir,’ said Tom to me; ‘there’s a heavy sea outside, and it’s blowing hard now.’
‘And there’s a split in the mast as long as my arm,’ cried the boy.
‘I thought she’d live through any sea, Tom!’ said I, laughing, for it was his constant boast that no weather could harm her.
‘There goes the spar!’ shouted he, while with a loud snap the mast gave way, and fell with a crash over the side. The boat immediately came head to wind, and sea after sea broke upon her bow, and fell in great floods over us.
‘Out away the stays—clear the wreck,’ cried Tom, ‘before the squall catches her!’
And although we now laboured like men whose lives depended on the exertion, the trailing sail and heavy rigging, shifting the ballast as they fell, laid her completely over; and when the first sea struck her, over she went. The violence of the gale sent me a considerable distance out, and for several seconds I felt as though I should never reach the surface again. Wave after wave rolled over me, and seemed bearing me downwards with their weight. At last I grasped something; it was a rope—a broken halyard; but by its means I gained the mast, which floated alongside of the yawl as she now lay keel uppermost. With what energy did I struggle to reach her! The space was scarcely a dozen feet, and yet it cost me what seemed an age to traverse. Through all the roaring of the breakers, and the crashing sounds of storm, I thought I could hear my comrades’ voices shouting and screaming; but this was in all likelihood a mere deception, for I never saw them more!
Grasping with a death-grip the slippery keel, I hung on to the boat through all the night. The gale continued to increase, and by daybreak it blew a perfect hurricane. With an aching anxiety I watched for light to see if I were near the land, or if any ship were in sight; but when the sun rose, nothing met my eyes but a vast expanse of waves tumbling and tossing in mad confusion, while overhead some streaked and mottled clouds were hurried along with the wind. Happily for me, I have no correct memory of that long day of suffering. The continual noise, but more still, the incessant motion of sea and sky around, brought on a vertigo, that seemed like madness; and although the instinct of self-preservation remained, the wildest and most incoherent fancies filled my brain. Some of these were powerful enough to impress themselves upon my memory for years after, and one I have never yet been able to dispel. It clings to me in every season of unusual depression or dejection; it recurs in the half-nightmare sleep of over-fatigue, and even invades me when, restless and feverish, I lie for hours incapable of repose. This is the notion that my state was one of afterlife punishment; that I had died, and was now expiating a sinful life by the everlasting misery of a castaway. The fever brought on by thirst and exhaustion, and the burning sun which beamed down upon my uncovered head, soon completed the measure of this infatuation, and all sense and guidance left me.
By what instinctive impulse I still held on my grasp, I cannot explain; but there I clung during the whole of that long dreadful day, and the still more dreadful night, when the piercing cold cramped my limbs, and seemed as if freezing the very blood within me. It was no wish for life, it was no anxiety to save myself, that now filled me. It seemed like a vague impulse of necessity that compelled me to hang on. It was, as it were, part of that terrible sentence which made this my doom for ever!
An utter unconsciousness must have followed this state, and a dreary blank, with flitting shapes of suffering, is all that remains to my recollection.
Probably within the whole range of human sensations, there is not one so perfect in its calm and soothing influence as the first burst of gratitude we feel when recovering from a long and severe illness. There is not an object, however humble and insignificant, that is not for the time invested with a new interest. The air is balmier, flowers are sweeter, the voices of friends, the smiles and kind looks, are dearer and fonder than we have ever known them. The whole world has put on a new aspect for us, and we have not a thought that is not teeming with forgiveness and affection. Such, in all their completeness, were my feelings as I lay on the poop-deck of a large three-masted ship, which, with studding and topgallant sails all set, proudly held her course up the Gulf of St Lawrence.
She was a Danzig barque, the Hoffnung, bound for Quebec, her only passengers being a Moravian minister and his wife, on their way to join a small German colony established near Lake Champlain. To Gottfried Kroller and his dear little wife I owe not life alone, but nearly all that has made it valuable. With means barely removed from absolute poverty, I found that they had spared nothing to assist in my recovery; for, when discovered, emaciation and wasting had so far reduced me that nothing but the most unremitting care and kindness could have succeeded in restoring me. To this end they bestowed not only their whole time and attention, but every little delicacy of their humble sea-store. All the little cordials and restoratives, meant for a season of sickness or debility, were lavished unsparingly on me, and every instinct of national thrift and carefulness gave way before the more powerful influence of Christian benevolence.
I can think of nothing but that bright morning, as I lay on a mattress on the deck, with the ‘Pfarrer’ on one side of me, and his good little wife, Lieschen, on the other; he with his volume of ‘Wieland,’ and she working away with her long knitting-needles, and never raising her head save to bestow a glance at the poor sick boy, whose bloodless lips were trying to mutter her name in thankfulness. It is like the most delicious dream as I think over those hours, when, rocked by the surging motion of the large ship, hearing in half distinctness the words of the ‘Pfarrer’s’ reading, I followed out little fancies—now self-originating, now rising from the theme of the poet’s musings.
How softly the cloud-shadows moved over the white sails and swept along the bright deck! How pleasantly the water rippled against the vessel’s side I With what a glad sound the great ensign napped and fluttered in the breeze! There was light, and life, and motion on every side, and I felt all the intoxication of enjoyment.
And like a dream was the portion of my life which followed. I accompanied the Pfarrer to a small settlement near ‘Crown Point,’ where he was to take up his residence as minister. Here we lived amid a population of about four or five hundred Germans, principally from Pomerania, on the shores of the Baltic, a peaceful, thrifty, quiet set of beings, who, content with the little interests revolving around themselves, never troubled their heads about the great events of war or politics. And here in all likelihood should I have been content to pass my days, when an accidental journey I made to Albany, to receive some letters for the Pfarrer, once more turned the fortune of my life.
It was a great incident in the quiet monotony of my life, when I set out one morning, arrayed in a full suit of coarse, glossy black, with buttons like small saucers, and a hat whose brim almost protected my shoulders. I was, indeed, an object of very considerable envy to some, and I hope, also, not denied the admiring approval of some others. Had the respectable city I was about to visit been the chief metropolis of a certain destination which I must not name, the warnings I received about its dangers, dissipations, and seductions, could scarcely have been more earnest or impressive. I was neither to speak with, nor even to look at, those I met in the streets. I was carefully to avoid taking my meals at any of the public eating-houses, rigidly guarding myself from the contamination of even a chance acquaintance. It was deemed as needless to caution me against theatres or places of amusement, as to hint to me that I should not commit a highway robbery or a murder; and so, in sooth, I should myself have felt it. The patriarchal simplicity in which I had lived for above a year had not been without its affect in subduing exaggerated feeling, or controlling that passion for excitement so common to youth. I felt a kind of dreamy, religious languor over me, which I sincerely believed represented a pious and well-regulated temperament. Perhaps in time it might have become such. Perhaps with others, more happily constituted, the impression would have been confirmed and fixed; but in my case it was a mere lacquer, that the first rubbing in the world was sure to brush off.
I arrived safely at Albany, and having presented myself at the bank of Gabriel Shultze, was desired to call the following morning, when all the letters and papers of Gottfried Kröller should be delivered to me. A very cold invitation to supper was the only hospitality extended to me. This I declined on pretext of weariness, and set out to explore the town, to which my long residence in rural life imparted a high degree of interest.
I don’t know what it may now be—doubtless a great capital, like one of the European cities; but at that time I speak of, Albany was a strange, incongruous assemblage of stores and wooden houses, great buildings like granaries, with whole streets of low sheds around them, where, open to the passer-by, men worked at various trades, and people followed out the various duties of domestic life in sight of the public: daughters knitted and sewed; mothers cooked, and nursed their children; men ate, and worked, and smoked, and sang, as if in all the privacy of closed dwellings, while a thick current of population poured by, apparently too much immersed in their own cares, or too much accustomed to the scene, to give it more than passing notice.
It was curious how one bred and born in the great city of Paris, with all its sights and sounds, and scenes of excitement and display, could have been so rusticated by time as to feel a lively interest in surveying the motley aspect of this quaint town. There were, it is true, features in the picture very unlike the figures in ‘Old-World’ landscape. A group of ‘red men,’ seated around a fire in the open street, or a squaw carrying on her back a baby, firmly tied to a piece of curved bark; a Southern-stater, with a spanking waggon-team, and two grinning negroes behind, were new and strange elements in the life of a city. Still, the mere movement, the actual busy stir and occupation of the inhabitants, attracted me as much as anything else; and the shops and stalls, where trades were carried on, were a seduction I could not resist.
The strict puritanism in which I had lately lived taught me to regard all these things with a certain degree of distrust. They were the impulses of that gold-seeking passion of which Gottfried had spoken so frequently; they were the great vice of that civilisation, whose luxurious tendency he often deplored; and here, now, more than one-half around me were arts that only ministered to voluptuous tastes. Brilliant articles of jewellery; gay cloaks, worked with wampum, in Indian taste; ornamental turning, and costly weapons, inlaid with gold and silver, succeeded each other, street after street; and the very sight of them, however pleasurable to the eye, set me a-moralising in a strain that would have done credit to a son of Geneva. It might have been that, in my enthusiasm, I uttered half aloud what I intended for soliloquy; or perhaps some gesture, or peculiarity of manner, had the effect; but so it was, I found myself an object of notice; and my queer-cut coat and wide hat, contrasting so strangely with my youthful appearance and slender make, drew many a criticism on me.
‘He ain’t a Quaker, that’s a fact,’ cried one, ‘for they don’t wear black.’
‘He’s a down-easter—a horse-jockey chap, I’ll be bound,’ cried another. ‘They put on all manner of disguises and “masqueroonings.” I know ‘em!’
‘He’s a calf preacher—a young bottle-nosed Gospeller,’ broke in a thick, short fellow, like the skipper of a merchant-ship. ‘Let’s have him out for a preachment.’
‘Ay, you’re right,’ chimed in another. ‘I’ll get you a sugar hogshead in no time’; and away he ran on the mission.
Between twenty and thirty persons had now collected; and I saw myself, to my unspeakable shame and mortification, the centre of all their looks and speculations. A little more aplomb or knowledge of life would have taught me coolness enough in a few words to undeceive them; but such a task was far above me now, and I saw nothing for it but flight. Could I only have known which way to take, I need not have feared any pursuer, for I was a capital runner, and in high condition; but of the locality I was utterly ignorant, and should only surrender myself to mere chance. With a bold rush, then, I dashed right through the crowd, and set off down the street, the whole crew after me.
The dusk of the closing evening was in my favour; and although volunteers were enlisted in the chase at every corner and turning, I distanced them, and held on my way in advance. My great object being not to turn on my course, lest I should come back to my starting point, I directed my steps nearly straight onward, clearing apple-stalls and fruit-tables at a bound, and more than once taking a flying-leap over an Indian’s fire, when the mad shout of the red man would swell the chorus that followed me. At last I reached a network of narrow lanes and alleys, by turning and wending through which I speedily found myself in a quiet secluded spot, with here and there a flickering candle-light from the windows, but no other sign of habitation. I looked anxiously about for an open door; but they were all safe barred and fastened; and it was only on turning a corner I spied what seemed to me a little shop, with a solitary lamp over the entrance. A narrow canal, crossed by a rickety old bridge, led to this; and the moment I had crossed over, I seized the single plank which formed the footway, and shoved it into the stream. My retreat being thus secured, I opened the door, and entered. It was a barber’s shop; at least, so a great chair before a cracked old looking-glass, with some well-worn combs and brushes, bespoke it; but the place seemed untenanted, and although I called aloud several times, no one came or responded to my summons.
I now took a survey of the spot, which seemed of the poorest imaginable. A few empty pomatum pots, a case of razors that might have defied the most determined suicide, and a half-finished wig, on a block painted like a red man, were the entire stock-in-trade. On the walls, however, were some coloured prints of the battles of the French army in Germany and Italy. Execrably done things they were, but full of meaning and interest to my eyes in spite of that. With all the faults of drawing and all the travesties of costume, I could recognise different corps of the service, and my heart bounded as I gazed on the tall shakos swarming to a breach, or the loose jacket as it floated from the hussar in a charge. All the wild pleasures of soldiering rose once more to my mind, and I thought over old comrades who doubtless were now earning the high rewards of their bravery in the great career of glory. And as I did so, my own image confronted me in the glass, as with long lank hair, and a great bolster of a white cravat, I stood before it. What a contrast!—how unlike the smart hussar, with curling locks and fierce moustache! Was I as much changed in heart as in looks? Had my spirit died out within me? Would the proud notes of the bugle or the trumpet fall meaningless on my ears, or the hoarse cry of ‘Charge!’ send no bursting fulness to my temples? Ay, even these coarse representations stirred the blood in my veins, and my step grew firmer as I walked the room.
In a passionate burst of enthusiasm, I tore off my slouched hat and hurled it from me. It felt like the badge of some ignoble slavery, and I determined to endure it no longer. The noise of the act called up a voice from the inner room, and a man, to all appearance suddenly roused from sleep, stood at the door. He was evidently young, but poverty, dissipation, and raggedness made the question of his age a difficult one to solve. A light-coloured moustache and beard covered all the lower part of his face, and his long blonde hair fell heavily over his shoulders.
‘Well,’ cried he, half angrily, ‘what’s the matter; are you so impatient that you must smash the furniture?’
Although the words were spoken as correctly as I have written them, they were uttered with a foreign accent; and, hazarding the stroke, I answered him in French by apologising for the noise.
‘What! a Frenchman,’ exclaimed he, ‘and in that dress! what can that mean?’
‘If you’ll shut your door, and cut off pursuit of me, I’ll tell you everything,’ said I, ‘for I hear the voices of people coming down that street in front.’
‘I’ll do better,’ said he quickly; ‘I’ll upset the bridge, and they cannot come over.’
‘That’s done already,’ replied I; ‘I shoved it into the stream as I passed.’
He looked at me steadily for a moment without speaking, and then approaching close to me, said, ‘Parbleu! the act was very unlike your costume!’ At the same time he shut the door, and drew a strong bar across it. This done, he turned to me once more—‘Now for it: who are you, and what has happened to you?’
‘As to what I am,’ replied I, imitating his own abruptness, ‘my dress would almost save the trouble of explaining; these Albany folk, however, would make a field-preacher of me, and to escape them I took to flight.’
‘Well, if a fellow will wear his hair that fashion, he must take the consequence,’ said he, drawing out my long lank locks as they hung over my shoulders. ‘And so you wouldn’t hold forth for them—not even give them a stave of a conventicle chant.’ He kept his eyes riveted on me as he spoke, and then seizing two pieces of stick from the firewood, he beat on the table the rataplan of the French drum. ‘That’s the music you know best, lad, eh?—that’s the air, which, if it has not led heavenward, has conducted many a brave fellow out of this world at least. Do you forget it?’
‘Forget it! no,’ cried I;’ but who are you; and how comes it that—that——’ I stopped in confusion at the rudeness of the question I had begun. ‘That I stand here, half fed, and all but naked—a barber in a land where men don’t shave once a month. Parbleu! they’d come even seldomer to my shop if they knew how tempted I feel to draw the razor sharp and quick across the gullet of a fellow with a well-stocked pouch.’
As he continued to speak, his voice assumed a tone and cadence that sounded familiar to my ears as I stared at him in amazement.
‘Not know me yet!’ exclaimed he, laughing; ‘and yet all this poverty and squalor isn’t as great a disguise as your own, Tiernay. Come, lad, rub your eyes a bit, and try if you can’t recognise an old comrade.’
‘I know you, yet cannot remember how or where we met,’ said I, in bewilderment.
‘I’ll refresh your memory,’ said he, crossing his arms, and drawing himself proudly up. ‘If you can trace back in your mind to a certain hot and dusty day, on the Metz road, when you, a private in the Ninth Hussars, were eating an onion and a slice of black bread for your dinner, a young officer, well looking and well mounted, cantered up and threw you his brandy flask. Your acknowledgment of the civility showed you to be a gentleman; and the acquaintance thus opened soon ripened into intimacy.’
‘But he was the young Marquis de Saint-Trône,’ said I, perfectly remembering the incident.
‘Or Eugène Santron, of the republican army, or the barber at Albany, without any name at all,’ said he, laughing. ‘What, Maurice, don’t you know me yet?’
‘What! the lieutenant of my regiment? The dashing officer of hussars?’
‘Just so, and as ready to resume the old skin as ever,’ cried he, ‘and brandish a weapon somewhat longer, and perhaps somewhat sharper, too, than a razor.’
We shook hands with all the cordiality of old comrades, meeting far away from home, and in a land of strangers; and although each was full of curiosity to learn the other’s history, a kind of reserve held back the inquiry, till Santron said, ‘My confession is soon made, Maurice: I left the service in the Meuse, to escape being shot. One day, on returning from a field manouvre, I discovered that my portmanteau had been opened, and a number of letters and papers taken out. They were part of a correspondence I held with old General Lamarre, about the restoration of the Bourbons—a subject, I’m certain, that half the officers in the army were interested in, and, even to Bonaparte himself, deeply implicated in, too. No matter, my treason, as they called it, was too flagrant, and I had just twenty minutes’ start of the order which was issued for my arrest to make my escape into Holland. There I managed to pass several months in various disguises, part of the time being employed as a Dutch spy, and actually charged with an order to discover tidings of myself, until I finally got away in an Antwerp schooner to New York. From that time my life has been nothing but a struggle—a hard one, too, with actual want, for in this land of enterprise and activity, mere intelligence, without some craft or calling, will do nothing.
‘I tried fifty things: to teach riding—and when I mounted into the saddle, I forgot everything but my own enjoyment, and caracoled, and plunged, and passaged, till the poor beast hadn’t a leg to stand on; fencing—and I got into a duel with a rival teacher, and ran him through the neck, and was obliged to fly from Halifax; French—I made love to my pupil, a pretty-looking Dutch girl, whose father didn’t smile on our affection; and so on, I descended from a dancing-master to a waiter, a laquais de place, and at last settled down as a barber, which brilliant speculation I had just determined to abandon this very night, for to-morrow morning, Maurice, I start for New York and France again; ay, boy, and you’ll go with me. This is no land for either of us.’
‘But I have found happiness, at least contentment, here,’ said I gravely.
‘What! play the hypocrite with an old comrade! shame on you, Maurice,’ cried he. ‘It is these confounded locks have perverted the boy,’ added he, jumping up; and before I knew what he was about, he had shorn my hair, in two quick cuts of the scissors, close to the head. ‘There,’ said he, throwing the cut-off hair towards me, ‘there lies all your saintship; depend upon it, boy, they ‘d hunt you out of the settlement if you came back to them cropped in this fashion.’
‘But you return to certain death, Santron,’ said I; ‘your crime is too recent to be forgiven or forgotten.’
‘Not a bit of it; Fouché, Cassaubon, and a dozen others, now in office, were deeper than I was. There’s not a public man in France could stand an exposure, or hazard recrimination. It’s a thieves’ amnesty at this moment, and I must not lose the opportunity. I’ll show you letters that will prove it, Maurice; for, poor and ill-fed as I am, I like life just as well as ever I did. I mean to be a general of division one of these days, and so will you too, lad, if there’s any spirit left in you.’
Thus did Santron rattle on, sometimes of himself and his own future; sometimes discussing mine; for while talking, he had contrived to learn all the chief particulars of my history, from the time of my sailing from La Rochelle for Ireland.
The unlucky expedition afforded him great amusement, and he was never weary of laughing at all our adventures and mischances in Ireland. Of Humbert, he spoke as a fourth or fifth-rate man, and actually shocked me by all the heresies he uttered against our generals, and the plan of campaign; but, perhaps, I could have borne even these better than the sarcasms and sneers at the little life of ‘the settlement.’ He treated all my efforts at defence as mere hypocrisy, and affected to regard me as a mere knave, that had traded on the confiding kindness of these simple villagers. I could not undeceive him on this head; nor, what was more, could I satisfy my own conscience that he was altogether in the wrong; for, with a diabolical ingenuity, he had contrived to hit on some of the most vexatious doubts which disturbed my mind, and instinctively to detect the secret cares and difficulties that beset me. The lesson should never be lost on us, that the devil was depicted as a sneerer! I verily believe the powers of temptation have no such advocacy as sarcasm. Many can resist the softest seductions of vice; many are proof against all the blandishments of mere enjoyment, come in what shape it will; but how few can stand firm against the assaults of clever irony, or hold fast to their convictions when assailed by the sharp shafts of witty depreciation!
I am ashamed to own how little I could oppose to all his impertinences about our village and its habits; or how impossible I found it not to laugh at his absurd descriptions of a life which, without having ever witnessed, he depicted with a rare accuracy. He was shrewd enough not to push this ridicule offensively; and long before I knew it, I found myself regarding, with his eyes, a picture in which, but a few months back, I stood as a foreground figure. I ought to confess, that no artificial aid was derived from either good cheer or the graces of hospitality; we sat by a miserable lamp, in a wretchedly cold chamber, our sole solace some bad cigars, and a can of flat, stale cider.
‘I have not a morsel to offer you to eat, Maurice, but to-morrow we’ll breakfast on my razors, dine on that old looking-glass, and sup on two hard brushes and the wig!’
Such were the brilliant pledges, and we closed a talk which the nickering lamp at last put an end to.
A broken, unconnected conversation followed for a little time, but at length, worn out and wearied, each dropped off to sleep—Eugène on the straw settle, and I in the old chair—never to awake till the bright sun was streaming in between the shutters, and dancing merrily on the tiled floor.
An hour before I awoke, he had completed the sale of all his little stock-in-trade, and with a last look round the spot where he had passed some months of struggling poverty, out we sailed into the town.
‘We’ll breakfast at Jonathan Hone’s,’ said Santron.
‘It’s the first place here. I’ll treat you to rump-steaks, pumpkin pie, and a gin twister that will astonish you. Then, while I’m arranging for our passage down the Hudson, you’ll see the hospitable banker, and tell him how to forward all his papers, and so forth, to the settlement, with your respectful compliments and regrets, and the rest of it.’
‘But am I to take leave of them in this fashion?’ asked I.
‘Unless you want me to accompany you there, I think it’s by far the best way,’ said he laughingly. ‘If, however, you think that my presence and companionship will add any lustre to your position, say the word, and I’m ready. I know enough of the barber’s craft now to make up a head en Puritain, and, if you wish, I’ll pledge myself to impose upon the whole colony.’
Here was a threat there was no mistaking; and any imputation of ingratitude on my part were far preferable to the thought of such an indignity. He saw his advantage at once, and boldly declared that nothing should separate us.
‘The greatest favour, my dear Maurice, you can ever expect at my hands is, never to speak of this freak of yours; or, if I do, to say that you performed the part to perfection.’
My mind was in one of those moods of change when the slightest impulse is enough to sway it, and, more from this cause, than all his persuasion, I yielded; and the same evening saw me gliding down the Hudson, and admiring the bold Catskills, on our way to New York.
As I cast my eyes over these pages, and see how small a portion of my life they embrace, I feel like one who, having a long journey before him, perceives that some more speedy means of travel must be adopted, if he ever hope to reach his destination. With the instinctive prosiness of age I have lingered over the scenes of boyhood, a period which, strange to say, is fresher in my memory than many of the events of few years back; and were I to continue my narrative as I have begun it, it would take more time on my part, and more patience on that of my readers, than are likely to be conceded to either of us. Were I to apologise to my readers for any abruptness in my transitions, or any want of continuity in my story, I should perhaps inadvertently seem to imply a degree of interest in my fate which they have never felt; and, on the other hand, I would not for a moment be thought to treat slightingly the very smallest degree of favour they may feel disposed to show me. With these difficulties on either hand, I see nothing for it but to limit myself for the future to such incidents and passages of my career as most impressed themselves on myself, and to confine my record to the events in which I personally took a share.
Santron and I sailed from New York on the 9th of February, and arrived in Liverpool on the 14th of March. We landed in as humble a guise as need be. One small box contained all our effects, and a little leathern purse, with something less than three dollars, all our available wealth. The immense movement and stir of the busy town, the din and bustle of trade, the roll of waggons, the cranking clatter of cranes and windlasses, the incessant flux and reflux of population, all eager and intent on business, were strange spectacles to our eyes as we loitered houseless and friendless through the streets, staring in wonderment at the wealth and prosperity of that land we were taught to believe was tottering to bankruptcy.
Santron affected to be pleased with all—talked of the beau pillage it would afford one day or other; but in reality this appearance of riches and prosperity seemed to depress and discourage him. Both French and American writers had agreed in depicting the pauperism and discontent of England, and yet where were the signs of it? Not a house was untenanted, every street was thronged, every market filled; the equipages of the wealthy vied with the loaded waggons in number; and if there were not the external evidences of happiness and enjoyment the gayer population of other countries display, there was an air of well-being and comfort such as no other land could exhibit.
Another very singular trait made a deep impression on us. Here were these islanders with a narrow strait only separating them from a land bristling with bayonets. The very roar of the artillery at exercise might be almost heard across the gulf, and yet not a soldier was to be seen about! There were neither forts nor bastions. The harbour, so replete with wealth, lay open and unprotected, not even a gunboat or a guardship to defend it! There was an insolence in this security that Santron could not get over, and he muttered a prayer that the day might not be distant that should make them repent it.
He was piqued with everything. While on board ship we had agreed together to pass ourselves for Canadians, to avoid all inquiries of the authorities! Heaven help us! The authorities never thought of us. We were free to go or stay as we pleased. Neither police nor passport officers questioned us. We might have been Hoche and Massena for aught they either knew or cared. Not a mouchard tracked us; none even looked after us as we wont. To me this was all very agreeable and reassuring; to my companion it was contumely and insult. All the ingenious fiction he had devised of our birth, parentage, and pursuits, was a fine romance inedited, and he was left to sneer at the self-sufficiency that would not take alarm at the advent of two ragged youths on the quay of Liverpool.
‘If they but knew who we were, Maurice,’ he kept continually muttering as we went along—‘if these fellows only knew whom they had in their town, what a rumpus it would create! How the shops would close! What barricading of doors and windows we should see! What bursts of terror and patriotism! Par St. Denis, I have a mind to throw up my cap in the air and cry ‘Vive la République!’ just to witness the scene that would follow.’ With all these boastings, it was not very difficult to restrain my friend’s ardour, and to induce him to defer his invasion of England to a more fitting occasion, so that at last he was fain to content himself with a sneering commentary on all around him; and in this amiable spirit we descended into a very dirty cellar to eat our first dinner on shore.
The place was filled with sailors, who, far from indulging in the well-known careless gaiety of their class, seemed morose and sulky, talking together in low murmurs, and showing unmistakable signs of discontent and dissatisfaction. The reason was soon apparent; the pressgangs were out to take men off to reinforce the blockading force before Genoa, a service of all others the most distasteful to a seaman. If Santron at first was ready to flatter himself into the notion that very little persuasion would make these fellows take part against England, as he listened longer he saw the grievous error of the opinion, no epithet of insult or contempt being spared by them when talking of France and Frenchmen. Whatever national animosity prevailed at that period, sailors enjoyed a high preeminence in feeling. I have heard that the spirit was encouraged by those in command, and that narratives of French perfidy, treachery, and even cowardice, were the popular traditions of the sea-service. We certainly could not controvert the old adage as to ‘listeners,’ for every observation and every anecdote conveyed a sneer or an insult on our country. There could be no reproach in listening to these unresented, but Santron assumed a most indignant air, and more than once affected to be overcome by a spirit of recrimination. What turn his actions might have taken in this wise I cannot even guess, for suddenly a rush of fellows took place up the ladder, and in less than a minute the whole cellar was cleared, leaving none but the hostess and an old lame waiter along with ourselves in the place.
‘You’ve got a protection, I suppose, sirs,’ said the woman, approaching us; ‘but still I’ll advise you not to trust to it overmuch; they’re in great want of men just now, and they care little for law or justice when once they have them on the high-seas.’
‘We have no protection,’ said I; ‘we are strangers here, and know no one.’
‘There they come, sir; that’s the tramp,’ cried the woman; ‘there’s nothing for it now but to stay quiet and hope you ‘ll not be noticed. Take those knives up, will ye,’ said she, flinging a napkin towards me, and speaking in an altered voice, for already two figures were darkening the entrance, and peering down into the depth below, while turning to Santron she motioned him to remove the dishes from the table—a service in which, to do him justice, he exhibited a zeal more flattering to his tact than his spirit of resistance.
‘Tripped their anchors already, Mother Martin?’ said a large-whiskered man, with a black belt round his waist; while, passing round the tables, he crammed into his mouth several fragments of the late feast.
‘You wouldn’t have ‘em wait for you, Captain John,’ said she, laughing.
‘It’s just what I would, then,’ replied he. ‘The Admiralty has put thirty shillings more on the bounty, and where will these fellows get the like of that? It isn’t a West India service, neither, nor a coastin’ cruise off Newfoundland, but all as one as a pleasure-trip up the Mediterranean, and nothing to fight but Frenchmen. Eh, younker, that tickles your fancy,’ cried he to Santron, who, in spite of himself, made some gesture of impatience.
‘Handy chaps, those, Mother Martin; where did you chance on’em?’
‘They’re sons of a Canada skipper in the river yonder,’ said she calmly.
‘They aren’t over like to be brothers,’ said he, with the grin of one too well accustomed to knavery to trust anything opposed to his own observation. ‘I suppose them’s things happens in Canada as elsewhere,’ said he, laughing, and hoping the jest might turn her flank. Meanwhile the press leader never took his eyes off me, as I arranged plates and folded napkins with all the skill which my early education in Boivin’s restaurant had taught me.
‘He is a smart one,’ said he, half musingly. ‘I say, boy, would you like to go as cook’s aid on board a king’s ship? I know of one as would just suit you.’
‘I’d rather not, sir; I’d not like to leave my father,’ said I, backing up Mrs. Martin’s narrative.
‘Nor that brother, there; wouldn’t he like it?’
I shook my head negatively.
‘Suppose I have a talk with the skipper about it,’ said he, looking at me steadily for some seconds. ‘Suppose I was to tell him what a good berth you ‘d have, eh?’
‘Oh, if he wished it, I’d make no objection,’ said I, assuming all the calmness I could.
‘That chap ain’t your brother—and he’s no sailor neither. Show me your hands, youngster,’ cried he to Santron, who at once complied with the order, and the press captain bent over and scanned them narrowly. As he thus stood with his back to me, the woman shook her head significantly, and pointed to the ladder. If ever a glance conveyed a whole story of terror hers did. I looked at my companion as though to say, ‘Can I desert him?’ and the expression of her features seemed to imply utter despair. This pantomime did not occupy half a minute. And now, with noiseless step, I gained the ladder, and crept cautiously up it. My fears were how to escape those who waited outside; but as I ascended I could see that they were loitering about in groups, inattentive to all that was going on below. The shame at deserting my comrade so nearly overcame me, that, when almost at the top, I was about to turn back again. I even looked round to see him; but, as I did so, I saw the press leader draw a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and throw them on the table. The instincts of safety were too strong, and with a spring I gained the street, and, slipping noiselessly along the wall, escaped the ‘lookout.’ Without a thought of where I was going to, or what to do, I ran at the very top of my speed directly onwards, my only impulse being to get away from the spot. Could I reach the open country I thought it would be my best chance. As I fled, however, no signs of a suburb appeared; the streets, on the contrary, grew narrower and more intricate; huge warehouses, seven or eight storeys high, loomed at either side of me; and at last, on turning an angle, a fresh sea-breeze met me, and showed that I was near the harbour. I avow that the sight of shipping, the tall and taper spars that streaked the sky of night, the clank of chain-cables, and the heavy surging sound of the looming hulls, were anything but encouraging, longing as I did for the rustling leaves of some green lane; but still, all was quiet. A few flickering lights twinkled here and there from a cabin window, but everything seemed sunk in repose.
The quay was thickly studded with hogsheads and bales of merchandise, so that I could easily have found a safe resting-place for the night, but a sense of danger banished all wish for sleep, and I wandered out, restless and uncertain, framing a hundred plans, and abandoning them when formed.
So long as I kept company with Santron, I never thought of returning to ‘Uncle Pat’; my reckless spendthrift companion had too often avowed the pleasure he would feel in quartering himself on my kind friend, dissipating his hard-earned gains, and squandering the fruits of all his toil. Deterred by such a prospect, I resolved rather never to revisit him than in such company. Now, however, I was again alone, and all my hopes and wishes turned towards him. A few hours’ sail might again bring me beneath his roof, and once more should I find myself at home. The thought was calming to all my excitement; I forgot every danger I had passed through, I lost all memory of every vicissitude I had escaped, and had only the little low parlour in the ‘Black Pits’ before my mind’s eye, the wild, unweeded garden, and the sandy, sunny beach before the door. It was as though all that nigh a year had compassed had never occurred, and that my life at Crown Point and my return to England were only a dream. Sleep overcame me as I thus lay pondering, and when I awoke the sun was glittering in the bright waves of the Mersey, a fresh breeze was flaunting and fluttering the half-loosened sails, and the joyous sounds of seamen’s voices were mingling with the clank of capstans, and the measured stroke of oars.
It was full ten minutes after I awoke before I could remember how I came there, and what had befallen me. Poor Santron, where is he now? was my first thought, and it came with all the bitterness of self-reproach.
Could I have parted company with him under other circumstances, it would not have grieved me deeply. His mocking, sarcastic spirit, the tone of depreciation which he used towards everything and everybody, had gone far to sour me with the world, and day by day I felt within me the evil influences of his teachings. How different were they from poor Gottfried’s lessons, and the humble habits of those who lived beneath them! Yet I was sorry, deeply sorry, that our separation should have been thus, and almost wished I had stayed to share his fate, whatever it might be.
While thus swayed by different impulses, now thinking of my old home at Crown Point, now of Uncle Pat’s thatched cabin, and again of Santron, I strolled down to the wharf, and found myself in a considerable crowd of people, who were all eagerly pressing forward to witness the embarkation of several boatfuls of pressed seamen, who, strongly guarded and ironed, were being conveyed to the Athol tender, a large three-master, about a mile off, down the river. To judge from the cut faces and bandaged heads and arms, the capture had not been effected without resistance. Many of the poor fellows appeared more suited to a hospital than the duties of active service, and several lay with bloodless faces and white lips, the handcuffed wrists seeming a very mockery of a condition so destitute of all chance of resistance.
The sympathies of the bystanders were very varied regarding them. Some were full of tender pity and compassion; some denounced the system as a cruel ‘and oppressive tyranny; others deplored it as an unhappy necessity; and a few well-to-do-looking old citizens, in drab shorts and wide-brimmed hats, grew marvellously indignant at the recreant poltroonery of ‘the scoundrels who were not proud to fight their country’s battles.’
As I was wondering within myself how it happened that men thus coerced could ever be depended on in moments of peril and difficulty, and by what magic the mere exercise of discipline was able to merge the feelings of the man in the sailor, the crowd was rudely driven back by policemen, and a cry of ‘Make way,’ ‘Fall back there,’ given. In the sudden retiring of the mass I found myself standing on the very edge of the line along which a new body of impressed men were about to pass. Guarded front, flank, and rear, by a strong party of marines, the poor fellows came along slowly enough. Many were badly wounded, and walked lamely; some were bleeding profusely from cuts on the face and temples; and one, at the very tail of the procession, was actually carried in a blanket by four sailors. A low murmur ran through the crowd at the spectacle, which gradually swelled louder and fuller till it burst forth into a deep groan of indignation, and a cry of ‘Shame I Shame!’ Too much used to such ebullitions of public feeling, or too proud to care for them, the officer in command of the party never seemed to hear the angry cries and shouts around him; and I was even more struck by his cool self-possession than by their enthusiasm. For a moment or two I was convinced that a rescue would be attempted. I had no conception that so much excitement could evaporate innocuously, and was preparing myself to take part in the struggle when the line halted as the leading files gained the stairs, and, to my wonderment, the crowd became hushed and still. Then, one burst of excited pity over, not a thought occurred to any to offer resistance to the law, or dare to oppose the constituted authorities. How unlike Frenchmen! thought I; nor am I certain whether I deemed the disparity to their credit!
‘Give him a glass of water!’ I heard the officer say, as he leaned over the litter; and the crowd at once opened to permit some one to fetch it. Before I believed it were possible to have procured it, a tumbler of water was passed from hand to hand till it reached mine, and, stepping forwards, I bent down to give it to the sick man. The end of a coarse sheet was thrown over his face, and as it was removed I almost fell over him, for it was Santron. His face was covered with a cold sweat, which lay in great drops all over it, and his lips were slightly frothed. As he looked up I could see that he was just rallying from a fainting-fit, and could mark in the change that came over his glassy eye that he had recognised me. He made a faint effort at a smile, and, in a voice barely a whisper, said, ‘I knew thou’d not leave me, Maurice.’
‘You are his countryman?’ said the officer, addressing me in French.
‘Yes, sir,’ was my reply.
‘You are both Canadians, then?’
‘Frenchmen, sir, and officers in the service. We only landed from an American ship yesterday, and were trying to make our way to France.’
‘I’m sorry for you,’ said he compassionately; ‘nor do I know how to help you. Come on board the tender, however, and we’ll see if they’ll not give you a passage with your friend to the Nore. I’ll speak to my commanding officer for you.’
This scene all passed in a very few minutes, and before I well knew how or why, I found myself on board of a ship’s longboat, sweeping along over the Mersey, with Santron’s head in my lap, and his cold, clammy fingers grasped in mine. He was either unaware of my presence or too weak to recognise me, for he gave no sign of knowing me; and during our brief passage down the river, and when lifted up the ship’s side, seemed totally insensible to everything.
The scene of uproar, noise, and confusion on board the Athol is far beyond my ability to convey. A shipwreck, a fire, and mutiny, all combined, could scarcely have collected greater elements of discord. Two large detachments of marines, many of whom, fresh from furlough, were too drunk for duty, and were either lying asleep along the deck, or riotously interfering with everybody; a company of Sappers en route to Woolwich, who would obey none but their own officer, and he was still ashore; detachments of able-bodied seamen from the Jupiter, full of grog and prize-money; four hundred and seventy impressed men, cursing, blaspheming, and imprecating every species of calamity on their captors; added to which, a crowd of Jews, bumboat women, and slop-sellers of all kinds, with the crews of two ballast-lighters, fighting for additional pay, being the chief actors in a scene whose discord I never saw equalled. Drunkenness, suffering, hopeless misery, and even insubordination, all lent their voices to a tumult, amid which the words of command seemed lost, and all effort at discipline vain.
How we were ever to go to sea in this state, I could not even imagine. The ship’s crew seemed inextricably mingled with the rioters, many of whom were just sufficiently sober to be eternally meddling with the ship’s tackle; belaying what ought to be ‘free,’ and loosening what should have been ‘fast’; getting their fingers jammed in blocks, and their limbs crushed by spars, till the cries of agony rose high above every other confusion. Turning with disgust from a spectacle so discordant and disgraceful, I descended the ladders, which led, by many a successive flight, into the dark, low-ceilinged chamber called the ‘sick bay,’ where poor Santron was lying in, what I almost envied, insensibility to the scene around him. A severe blow from the hilt of a cutlass had caused a concussion of the brain, and, save in the momentary excitement which a sudden question might cause, left him totally unconscious. His head had been already shaved before I descended, and I found the assistant-surgeon, an Irishman, Mr. Peter Colhayne, experimenting a new mode of cupping as I entered. By some mischance of the machinery, the lancets of the cupping instrument had remained permanently fixed, refusing to obey the spring, and standing all straight outside the surface. In this dilemma, Peter’s ingenuity saw nothing for it but to press them down vigorously into the scalp, and then saw them backwards the whole length of the head—a performance the originality of which, in all probability, was derived from the operation of a harrow in agriculture. He had just completed a third track when I came in, and, by great remonstrance and no small flattery, induced him to desist. ‘We have glasses,’ said he, ‘but they were all broke in the cock-pit; but a tin porringer is just as good.’ And so saying, he lighted a little pledget of tow, previously steeped in turpentine, and, popping it into the tin vessel, clapped it on the head. This was meant to exhaust the air within, and thus draw the blood to the surface—a scientific process he was good enough to explain most minutely for my benefit, and the good results of which he most confidently vouched for.
‘They’ve a hundred new conthrivances,’ said Mr. Colhayne, ‘for doing that simple thing ye see there. They’ve pumps, and screws, and hydraulic devilments as much complicated as a watch that’s always getting out of order and going wrong; but with that ye’ll see what good ‘twill do him; he’ll he as lively as a lark in ten minutes.’
The prophecy was destined to a perfect fulfilment, for poor Santron, who lay motionless and unconscious up to that moment, suddenly gave signs of life by moving his features, and jerking his limbs to this side and that. The doctor’s self-satisfaction took the very proudest form. He expatiated on the grandeur of medical science, the wonderful advancement it was making, and the astonishing progress the curative art had made even within his own time. I must own that I should have lent a more implicit credence to this paean if I had not waited for the removal of the cupping-vessel, which, instead of blood, contained merely the charred ashes of the burnt tow, while the scalp beneath it presented a blackened, seared aspect, like burnt leather. Such was literally the effect of the operation; but as from that period the patient began steadily to improve, I must leave to more scientific inquirers the task of explaining through what agency, and on what principles.
Santron’s condition, although no longer dangerous, presented little hope of speedy recovery. His faculties were clouded and obscured, and the mere effort at recognition seemed to occasion him great subsequent disturbance. Colhayne, who, whatever may have been his scientific deficiencies, was good-nature and kindness itself, saw nothing for him but removal to Haslar, and we now only waited for the ship’s arrival at the Nore to obtain the order for his transmission.
If the Athol was a scene of the wildest confusion and uproar when we tripped our anchor, we had not been six hours at sea when all was a picture of order and propriety. The decks were cleared of every one not actually engaged in the ship’s working, or specially permitted to remain; ropes were coiled, boats hauled up, sails trimmed, hatches down, sentinels paced the deck in appointed places, and all was discipline and regularity. From the decorous silence that prevailed, none could have supposed so many hundred living beings were aboard, still less, that they were the same disorderly mob who sailed from the Mersey a few short hours before. From the surprise which all this caused me I was speedily aroused by an order more immediately interesting, being summoned on the poop-deck to attend the general muster. Up they came from holes and hatchways, a vast host, no longer brawling and insubordinate, but quiet, submissive, and civil. Such as were wounded had been placed under the doctor’s care, and all those now present were orderly and servicelike. With a very few exceptions they were all sailors, a few having already served in a king’s ship. The first lieutenant, who first inspected us, was a grim, greyheaded man past the prime of life, with features hardened by disappointment and long service, but who still retained an expression of kindliness and good-nature. His duty he despatched with all the speed of long habit—read the name, looked at the bearer of it, asked a few routine questions, and then cried ‘Stand by,’ even ere the answers were finished. When he came to me he said—
‘Abraham Hackett. Is that your name, lad?’
‘No, sir. I ‘m called Maurice Tiernay.’
‘Tiernay, Tiernay,’ said he a couple of times over. ‘No such name here.’
‘Where’s Tiernay’s name, Cottle?’ asked he of a subordinate behind him.
The fellow looked down the list—then at me—then at the list again—and then back to me, puzzled excessively by the difficulty, but not seeing how to explain it.
‘Perhaps I can set the matter right, sir,’ said I. ‘I came aboard along with a wounded countryman of mine—the young Frenchman who is now in the sick bay.’
‘Ay, to be sure; I remember all about it now,’ said the lieutenant, ‘You call yourselves French officers?’ ‘And such are we, sir.’
‘Then how the devil came ye here? Mother Martin’s cellar is, to say the least of it, an unlikely spot to select as a restaurant.’
‘The story is a somewhat long one, sir.’
‘Then I haven’t time for it, lad,’ he broke in. ‘We’ve rather too much on hand just now for that. If you ‘ve got your papers, or anything to prove what you assert, I’ll land you when I come into the Downs, and you’ll, of course, be treated as your rank in the service requires. If you have not, I must only take the responsibility on myself to regard you as an impressed man. Very hard, I know, but can’t help it. Stand by.’
These few words were uttered with a most impetuous speed; and as all reply to them was impossible, I saw my case decided and my fate decreed, even before I knew they were under litigation.
As we were marched forwards to go below, I overheard an officer say to another—
‘Hay will get into a scrape about those French fellows; they may turn out to be officers, after all.’
‘What matter?’ cried the other. ‘One is dying; and the other Hay means to draft on board the Téméraire. Depend upon it, we’ll never hear more of either of them.’
This was far from pleasant tidings; and yet I knew not any remedy for the mishap. I had never seen the officer who spoke to me ashore since we came on board. I knew of none to intercede for me; and as I sat down on the bench beside poor Santron’s cot, I felt my heart lower than it had ever been before. I was never enamoured of the sea-service; and certainly the way to overcome my dislike was not by engaging against my own country; and yet this, in all likelihood, was now to be my fate. These were my last waking thoughts the first night I passed on board the Athol.