Blue Lights: Hot Work in the Soudan Part 11

While the poor mother was speaking, the unfinished letter was laid before her, and the handwriting at once recognised.

"That's his! Bless him! And he's sorry. Didn't I say he would be sorry? Didn't I tell his father so? Darling Miles, I--"

Here the poor creature broke down, and wept at the thought of her repentant son. It was well, perhaps, that the blow was thus softened, for she almost fell on the floor when her new friend told her, in the gentlest possible manner, that Miles had that very day set sail for Egypt.

They kept her at the Inst.i.tute that night, however, and consoled her much, as well as aroused her grat.i.tude, by telling of the good men who formed part of her son's regiment; and of the books and kind words that had been bestowed on him at parting; and by making the most they could of the good hope that the fighting in Egypt would soon be over, and that her son would ere long return to her, G.o.d willing, sound and well.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

MILES BEGINS TO DISCOVER HIMSELF--HAS A FEW ROUGH EXPERIENCES--AND FALLS INTO PEA-SOUP, SALT-WATER, AND LOVE.

While his mother was hunting for him in Portsmouth, Miles Milton was cleaving his way through the watery highway of the world, at the rate of fifteen knots.

He was at the time in that lowest condition of misery, mental and physical, which is not unfrequently the result of "a chopping sea in the Channel." It seemed to him, just then, an unbelievable mystery how he could, at any time, have experienced pleasure at the contemplation of food! The heaving of the great white s.h.i.+p was nothing to the heaving-- well, it may perhaps be wiser to refrain from particulars; but he felt that the beating of the two thousand horse-power engines--more or less-- was child's-play to the throbbing of his brain!

"And this," he thought, in the bitterness of his soul, "this is what I have sacrificed home, friends, position, prospects in life for! This is--soldiering!"

The merest shadow of the power to reason--if such a shadow had been left--might have convinced him that that was _not_ soldiering; that, as far as it went, it was not even sailoring!

"You're very bad, I fear," remarked a gentle voice at the side of his hammock.

Miles looked round. It was good-natured, lanky, cadaverous Moses Pyne.

"Who told you I was bad?" asked Miles savagely, putting a wrong--but too true--interpretation on the word.

"The colour of your cheeks tells me, poor fellow!"

"Bah!" exclaimed Miles. He was too sick to say more. He might have said less with advantage.

"Shall I fetch you some soup?" asked Moses, in the kindness of his heart. Moses, you see, was one of those lucky individuals who are born with an incapacity to be sick at sea, and was utterly ignorant of the cruelty he perpetrated. "Or some lobscouse?" he added.

"Go away!" gasped Miles.

"A basin of--"

Miles exploded, literally as well as metaphorically, and Moses retired.

"Strange," thought that healthy soldier, as he stalked away on further errands of mercy, stooping as he went to avoid beams--"strange that Miles is so changeable in character. I had come to think him a steady, reliable sort of chap."

Puzzling over this difficulty, he advanced to the side of another hammock, from which heavy groans were issuing.

"Are you very bad, corporal?" he asked in his usual tone of sympathy.

"Bad is it?" said Flynn. "Och! it's worse nor bad I am! Couldn't ye ax the captin to heave-to for a--"

The suggestive influence of heaving-to was too much for Flynn. He pulled up dead. After a few moments he groaned--

"Arrah! be off, Moses, av ye don't want my fist on yer nose."

"Extraordinary!" murmured the kindly man, as he removed to another hammock, the occupant of which was differently const.i.tuted.

"Moses," he said, as the visitant approached.

"Yes, Gaspard," was the eager reply, "can I do anything for you?"

"Yes; if you'd go on deck, refresh yourself with a walk, and leave us all alone, you'll con--fer--on--"

Gaspard ceased to speak; he had already spoken too much; and Moses Pyne, still wondering, quietly took his advice.

But if the Channel was bad, the Bay of Biscay was, according to Flynn, "far badder."

Before reaching that celebrated bay, however, most of the men had recovered, and, with more or less lugubrious aspects and yellow-green complexions, were staggering about, attending to their various duties.

No doubt their movements about the vessel were for some time characterised by that disagreement between action and will which is sometimes observed in feeble chickens during a high wind, but, on the whole, activity and cheerfulness soon began to re-animate the frames and spirits of Britain's warriors.

And now Miles Milton began to find out, as well as to fix, in some degree, his natural character. Up to this period in his life, a mild existence in a quiet home, under a fairly good though irascible father and a loving Christian mother, had not afforded him much opportunity of discovering what he was made of. Recent events had taught him pretty sharply that there was much room for improvement. He also discovered that he possessed a very determined will in the carrying out of his intentions, especially when those intentions were based upon his desires. Whether he would be equally resolute in carrying out intentions that did _not_ harmonise with his desires remained to be seen.

His mother, among her other teachings, had often tried to impress on his young mind the difference between obstinacy and firmness.

"My boy," she was wont to say, while smoothing his curly head, "don't mistake obstinacy for firmness. A man who says `I _will_ do this or that in spite of all the world,' against advice, and simply because he _wants_ to do it, is obstinate. A man who says, `I _will_ do this or that in spite of all the world,' against advice, against his own desires, and simply because it is the right thing to do, is firm."

Remembering this, and repenting bitterly his having so cruelly forsaken his mother, our hero cast about in his mind how best he could put some of her precepts into practice, as being the only consolation that was now possible to him. You see, the good seed sown in those early days was beginning to spring up in unlikely circ.u.mstances. Of course the habit of prayer, and reading a few verses from the Bible night and morning, recurred to him. This had been given up since he left home.

He now resumed it, though, for convenience, he prayed while stretched in his hammock!

But this did not satisfy him. He must needs undertake some disagreeable work, and carry it out with that degree of obstinacy which would amount to firmness. After mature consideration, he sought and obtained permission to become one of the two cooks to his mess. Moses Pyne was the other.

Nothing, he felt, could be more alien to his nature, more disgusting in every way to his feelings--and he was right. His dislike to the duties seemed rather to increase than to diminish day by day. Bitterly did he repent of having undertaken the duty, and earnestly did he consider whether there might not be some possible and honourable way of drawing back, but he discovered none; and soon he proved--to himself as well as to others--that he did indeed possess, at least in some degree, firmness of character.

The duties that devolved on him were trying. He had to scrub and keep the mess clean and tidy; to draw all the provisions and prepare them for cooking; then, to take them to the galley, and fetch them when cooked.

That this last was no simple matter, such as any sh.o.r.e-going tail-coated waiter might undertake, was brought forcibly out one day during what seamen style dirty weather.

It was raining at the time. The sea was grey, the sky was greyer, and as the steamer itself was whitey-grey, it was a grave business altogether.

"Is the soup ready, Moses?" asked Miles, as he ascended towards the deck and met his _confrere_ coming down.

"I don't know. Shall I go an' see?"

"No; you can go and look after the table. I will fetch the soup."

"A nasty sea on," remarked a voice, which sounded familiar in Miles's ears as he stepped on deck.

"Hallo! Jack Molloy!" he exclaimed, catching hold of a stanchion to steady himself, as a tremendous roll of the vessel caused a sea to flash over the side and send a shower-bath in his face. "What part of the sky did you drop from? I thought I had left you snug in the _Sailors'

Welcome_."

"Werry likely you did, John Miles," answered the tar, balancing himself with perfect ease, and caring no more for spray than if he had been a dolphin; "but I'm here for all that--one o' the crew o' this here transport, though I means to wolunteer for active sarvice when I gets out. An' no wonder we didn't come across each other sooner! In sitch a enormous tubful o' lobsters, etceterer, it's a wonder we've met at all.

An' p'r'aps you've bin a good deal under hatches since you come a-boord?"

Molloy said this with a knowing look and a grin. Miles met the remark in a similar spirit.