The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 28

He arranged the body orderly, straightening the legs and pulling down the coat.

As he did so, he felt something bulky in the flaps. He looked. It was a little old leather-bound New Testament, sea-soaked; and between the leaves of it the Articles of War.

The book fell open at the fly-leaf. On it three names were written, each in a different hand.

_Horatio Nelson, Christopher Caryll, William Harding._

A bracket bound the three, and opposite the bracket, in the same hand as the first name, the words,

_England and Duty_.

The date was a week before St. Vincent.

The fly-leaf turned. On the back of it, in the great vague hand of a peasant-woman, rheumatic-ridden,

_bili from mother Xmas_ 1755 _be a good boy_.

Kit read the inscription with full throat. In his chest, awaiting him at the Bridge at Newhaven, there was such another book, with such another inscription, from such another mother--given him the night before his setting out on his life's voyage, she sitting on his bed with rather a rainy smile.

The old man had left him that little sea-worn book with his last breath; but he could not take it, perhaps the last gift from mother to son. It had seen the old man through his life; in it were to be found the Fighting Instructions which had led him on through fifty years of battle to the last great Victory; in death the two should not be divided.

He laid the book on the old man's breast, and his sword beside him, as he remembered his mother had done when Uncle Jacko Gordon died.

What more could he do?

It seemed an ill thing to desert the old man; to leave him alone among the sea-birds. Yet he must.

Putting his arm round the other, he raised his head; then thrust a boulder between the dead man's shoulders to prop him.

A moment he knelt beside the old Commander with closed eyes. Then he bent and kissed the chill forehead.

"Good-bye, sir," he said in breaking voice, and rising to his feet saluted.

III

Old Ding-dong was left alone: his back against the white cliffs for which he had lived and died; his head with a skyward c.o.c.k; his gaze seaward to where, when the mists rose with the morning, he would see the Colours of his Country waving above those waters that he, and his peers, had made hers for ever.

The old man asked no more.

Tired now, he wished to be alone with his sword, his Bible, and his memories.

CHAPTER XXI

KIT STARTS ON HIS MISSION

The boy blew his nose, and set off along the foot of the cliff, the scent-bottle in his hand.

Beneath the chalk boulders that strewed the bottom of the cliff, weird in the white gloom, a band of s.h.i.+ngle ran like a road before him. He took it, the s.h.i.+ngle crunching beneath his feet.

The tide was rising: he could hear its stealthy rustle beneath him. He must reach the Head and round it before the water; and how far off the ultimate point might be, he did not know, and could not see.

Once round it, if he had understood the old man aright, the cliffs fell away. There he would climb them; and he hoped to be on the top of the Downs before the mist rolled away and the frigate, were she still lying off the wreck, could send boats to search the beach.

He was very hungry; but his heart soared. Youth, the great healer, had done its work. Already the terrors of that fierce yesterday, the tendernesses of that solemn night, were far away.

He laboured on as rapidly as the backward drag of the s.h.i.+ngle would permit; at every stride clutching the scent-bottle to make sure of it.

His was a tremendous mission.

Yet surely it was not for the first time he had set out on such an errand? alone, journeying through perilous lands, the fate of the world on his shoulders. No, no, no. Somewhere, somewhen.... He had forgotten; yet somehow he remembered.

Well, he had won through then: he must have--else he would not be here now. Yet not in this little life, these fifteen years of home- experience. Death then, perhaps a thousand deaths, must have intervened between him--and him. Such a strange mystery!--What was the answer to it?--Was death a sham? was there no such thing?--did He, the real He, go on for ever not merely in heaven, as the parsons affirmed, but on earth? was this life of his One, One reiterated, One to Everlasting, a tide ebbing and flowing between the night of Time and the day of Eternity? these recurring deaths only barriers blocking off terms of his Eternal Self?

Digging his toes into the s.h.i.+ngle, he marched on, his heart strangely uplifted, the sense of his immortality strong on him.

And besides, the darkness and danger lay behind. Discretion, sharp eyes, and a nimble pair of feet should do the rest. Above all, his experience of the last thirty-six hours had given him confidence, the mother of success. He began to be aware of his own power. Action had revealed him to himself. Responsibility now confirmed him. The boy was merging in the man with extraordinary swiftness. There was in his soul an aweful joy, the joy of dawn, the dawn of holy manhood.

Rejoicing in his newly found strength, he laboured on gallantly. With luck, he would be in Lewes before the coach left; in London before night; and at Merton before Nelson sat down to breakfast to-morrow morning.

His, his, his, to save Nelson!

And O, mother? would not her heart be proud?

The mist grew thin before him, as though lace curtain after lace curtain was being swept back by unseen hand. The sun, the colour of a s.h.i.+lling, and as round, glimmered above the horizon. At his feet he could distinguish the sea silvery-twinkling; and not a hundred yards away the Head, bluff as a wall, loomed before him.

His heart leapt.... Hurrah!... Once round that....

He began to run with noisy feet.

A shadow stooping on the edge of the tide sprang up.

"_h.e.l.l_!" came a sudden scream.

CHAPTER XXII

FAT GEORGE & CO.

Kit's heart brought up with an appalling jerk.