The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 18

Through the shattering roar of the guns, the rendings of planks, the scream of round-shot, came the voices of men, dim-seen. Jokes, blasphemies, prayers, groans, issued in nightmare medley from that death-fog.

"Chri', kill me!--My G.o.d, I sweats!--Pore old Jake's got it!"

On mid-deck a shadow was pirouetting madly. Suddenly it collapsed; and the boy saw it ended at the neck.

A dim figure lolled against an overturned gun. As the lad gazed, it pointed to a puddle beside it.

"That's me," it said with slow and solemn interest.

The boy trod on something in the smoke. A b.l.o.o.d.y wraith, spread-eagled upon the deck, raised tired eyes to his.

"That's all right, sir," came a whisper. "Don't make no odds. I got all I want."

A hand out of the mist clutched his ankle.

"Stop this racket," gasped a voice, querulous and tearful. "I ain't well." A stump flapped in his face.

A ghost, sitting up against the side close by, began to t.i.tter.

"Once I was mother's darling. Mightn't think it to see me now."

A shot, screeching past the boy's nose, took his breath away. He staggered back, and brought up against a gun-captain, his shoulders to the breech of the gun.

The man turned with a grin. It was the Gunner, naked to the waist, and smoke-grimed.

"Sweet mess, ain't it?" he coughed. "How d'ye like your first smell o powder, sir?"

"They're boarding!" panted Kit. "Quick!"

The man leapt up.

"Boardin!" he roared. "Board _ME!_ I'll give em board."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed up a chain-shot, and raced down the deck.

"Up aloft the lot o you!" he howled. "Heaven waits ye there!"

II

As he flamed through the smoke-drift, the crew caught fire from him.

Behind him in roaring flood they poured--black men and b.l.o.o.d.y, s.n.a.t.c.hing each the weapon nearest to hand.

An aweful joy seemed beating up through mists in their faces. Time and Eternity warred within them. Man, the creature, hideously afraid for his flesh, strove with Man, the Creator, impregnable in his immortality.

Kit, swept off his feet, was borne along with the flood.

The fury of enthusiasm, which the splendid drunkard had roused in the hearts of his men, had seized him too.

His body was aflame; and his veins ran fire. Now for the first time he knew what it was to be alive--Life spurting from his finger-tips, making madness in his blood, issuing riotously from his lips. He sang; he yelled; he laughed, battering at the lunatic in front. He caught the blasphemies of his battle-fellows, and echoed them shrilly and with joy. The light in his comrades' eyes revealed to him deeps of being undreamed of before. His spirit was pouring through his flesh, making glory as it went.

Uplifted as a lover, the wine of War drowned his senses. In the glory of doing he had no thought for the thing done. His was the midsummer madness of slaying. In that singing moment how should he remember the bleak and shuddering autumn of pain inevitably to follow?--the winter of clammy death?--the March-wind voices of distant women wailing their mates?

"Jam, ain't it?" yelled a man in his ear, as they raced up the ladder.

"Glory! glory!" sang the boy, beside himself with pa.s.sion.

III

Aft and alone stood the old Commander, a dead man at his feet.

Another swarmed over the side. The old Commander's boarding-pike met him fair in the face. Back the fellow went into darkness and death.

"Good old Ding-dong!" came the Gunner's rollicking bellow, as he stormed up on deck, swinging his chain-shot like a battle-axe. "That's your sort!--bash em! blast em!--disembowl the ---- Turks!"

Behind him, out of the smoke, poured the men, red-hot and roaring, like lava spewed up from the bowels of a volcano.

A stream of boarders, trickling over the bulwarks, raced across the deck to meet them.

"Love and War! O my G.o.d, ain't they glory?" howled the Gunner, and plunged into the opposing flood.

One man he felled with his chain-shot; then flung it aside.

"Naked does it!" he roared, and swept up a boarder in his arms. "Ow, the luscious little armful! no good kickin, duckie! You've got to ave it!" He rushed to the side, hugging his man, and screaming fearful laughter.

"Love me and forgive me, pretty tartie!" he roared, and smashed his burthen down over the side.

The fellow crashed into a ladder of boarders, swarming up one behind the other. Back they hurled into the boats, a hurricane of men, one on top of t'other. The boat rocked, crumpled up, and sank.

The tears were rolling down the Gunner's face.

"Quenched their little ardour!" he bellowed, leaping on to the bulwark.

"That's the style below there, boys! Go it, ye cripples! Give em the little _Tremendous_!"

Beneath him the sea was black with boats. From the port-holes of the main-deck the wounded were leaning out, hailing round-shot down into the boats.

"Plug em! ply em!" roared the Gunner. "Red ot shot--cannister--case!

anything ye like only give em slaughter for eaven's sweet sake!"

He was back in the thick of it, raving up and down the deck, sowing death broadcast, his great voice everywhere.

Not a man on board but seemed to have caught something of his heroic fury. The purser's steward, primmest of Methodists, who was said to pa.s.s his time in action converting the cook, came tripping out of the galley, a black-jack of boiling water in his hand.

"Glory for you!" he screamed, and flung the contents in the face of a boarder.