Quarterdeck and Fok’sle: Stories of the Sea, by Molly Elliot Seawell

The friendship between Young Brydell and Grubb the marine came about in this way.

One morning in May, just after Admiral Beaumont had finished the beautiful toilet he made at precisely eight o’clock every morning, he threw wide his bedroom shutters to see if the toilet of the navy yard grounds had been made too. For the admiral was possessed by a demon of neatness and order that is apt to develop in a naval officer long used to the perfect cleanliness and discipline of a man-of-war.

The admiral was the tenderest-hearted old fellow in the world, but the strictest sort of martial law prevailed in the matter of tidiness in every part of the navy yard over which he exercised or could claim jurisdiction.

A perpetual warfare raged between him and the nursemaids at the yard. The nursemaids would let the babies roll over on the admiral’s dearly loved grass, and the sight of white dimity sunbonnets, dropped on the gravel paths, was not wholly unknown.

The admiral was a bachelor of long standing and had a wholesome awe of babies and their mammas, although he ordered the babies’ papas about without any awe of them whatever. In vain he tried to negotiate with the officers’ wives, offering as a basis that the babies be permitted a promenade around the main walks between two and four every day, the walks to be immediately rolled afterward. The officers’ wives simply laughed at him, and the babies continued to kick up the gravel, and the admiral retired completely discomfited.

As for the small boys at the yard, they harrowed the admiral’s kind soul to that degree that he gloomily declared he would have the flag half-masted and make the band play a dirge before the very next house in which a boy baby was born. Nevertheless he had been known more than once to have begged small boys off from the avenging birch switch.

To this general antagonism to small boys one exception was made—Young Brydell. He was called Young Brydell because, young as his father, the ensign, was, the boy was actually twenty years younger—being nine, and a beautiful, terrible, lovable imp. Perhaps it was because Young Brydell had no mother that the admiral and everybody else, except Aunt Emeline, winked at the mischief in which he reveled. When Young Brydell drew his first breath his mother had drawn her last—and so from the beginning a tender atmosphere of love and pity seemed to surround him.

However, the escapade in which young Brydell figured that May morning had so many elements of atrocity that the admiral at first determined to punish him just as he would any other malefactor. Grubb was the admiral’s orderly, and on this particular morning he had just knocked at the bedroom door with the letter bag, when he heard something between a roar and a shriek that caused him to dash the door open expecting to find the admiral rolling on the carpet in an epileptic fit.

“Orderly!” shouted the admiral, turning as red as a turkey cock with rage, “direct the pick and shovel squad at once to level that construction, and bring that young gentleman here to me,” pointing out the window to Young Brydell. Grubb then saw what was up.

In the middle of the great lawn, just in front of the admiral’s house, was a dirt fort, constructed with no inconsiderable skill. The turf for about twenty feet square had been ruthlessly torn up to make the glacis, and over it floated a small American flag about as big as a pocket handkerchief.

On top of the glacis stood Young Brydell with a miniature rifle pointed straight at the admiral’s window. Around him lay the bodies of:—

I. Reginald Cunliffe, the captain’s only child and a mother’s darling, who had been repeatedly told not to play with Young Brydell for fear he would get hurt. At that moment the mother’s darling was representing a wounded man and, rolling over in a new jacket was asking in feeble tones for water.

II. Jack Sawyer, the doctor’s son, who personated a dead man with intermittent returns to life to see how the thing was going.

III, IV, V. Dick, Rob, and Steve, young gentlemen belonging to the yard who obeyed Young Brydell implicitly, although at least two years older than he, and who submitted to pose as Indians slain by his victorious hand.

VI. Micky O’Toole, the washerwoman’s boy, who, although directed to fall dead at the first fire, had failed to do so and was crawling forward on all fours, with a knife between his teeth and a tomahawk in his hand to assassinate Young Brydell.

Grubb double-quicked it downstairs, but not so fast that the admiral was not right on his heels. The pick and shovel squad were just passing as Grubb called out to them:—

“The admiral says as how that there construction is to be leveled at once”—

“And that young gentleman sent immediately to me!” bawled the admiral from the doorway.

The squad started toward the middle of the lawn, where the turf had been slaughtered to make Young Brydell a holiday. The admiral, swelling with righteous wrath, remained on the steps, and Grubb, laughing in his sleeve, made a bee line for Young Brydell. Grubb walked as elegantly as any officer and was a fine, tall, handsome fellow to boot.

As the pick and shovel squad approached, Young Brydell, raising his miniature rifle, pointed it straight toward them and shrieked out an expression he had read in a book. “Up, men, and at ’em!”

But the men didn’t “up and at ’em.” They were too much engaged in watching the coming conflict between Grubb’s brawny arm and Young Brydell.

The rifle wasn’t much of an affair, but it had been known to kill a cat twenty feet away. Young Brydell, who had the face of a cherub and the alertness of a monkey, quickly brought the rifle to his shoulder and aimed it straight at the approaching Grubb.

“The admiral says,” shouted Grubb in his big baritone, “as how I’m to bring you immediately to him, and the Lord have mercy on your soul!”

Grubb, in saying this, reached forward to the rickety little flagstaff, meaning to save the flag. But Young Brydell construed it differently and thought Grubb meant to insult the national ensign.

“If you touch that flag, you’re a dead man!” shrieked he in his baby treble; and at the same moment, the toy rifle being at his shoulder, he called out to his demoralized command:—

Grubb put his hand to his ear, and when he brought it away, blood was plentiful on it. A queer look came into his eye. “By the jumping Moses, the monkey’s shot me,” said Grubb, reflectively and scarcely knowing what he was saying.

The admiral, standing on the porch, gave a sort of gasp when the shot rang out—and every man in the pick and shovel squad stood stock still for a moment. The boys, except Micky O’Toole, all ran away immediately.

Grubb was the first to recover himself. Young Brydell had never lost his composure and was now holding the rifle at parade rest, and the rifle was exactly as high as he was.

“You come along!” suddenly cried Grubb, seizing the boy and the rifle too, and forgetting to drop the flag. It hurt Young Brydell’s dignity to be hauled off so summarily in the presence of the public, and it also hurt his shoulder, but he said not a word until he stood before Admiral Beaumont. The admiral was small and lithe and had a pair of light blue eyes that could look through a man and nail him to the wall—and these eyes were fixed upon Young Brydell in a way that would have made him flinch to the marrow of his bones, had he been a man instead of a little lad.

“BOY!” said the admiral, “I sent for you in order to reprove you for your outrageous behavior in tearing up the turf and making ruin and destruction of the government’s lawn. I find you, instead, guilty of a most terrible act—a thing much more serious than any destruction you might do to government property. But for God’s Providence you might be this moment a murderer, boy as you are—for I saw you take deliberate aim at the orderly and fire in his face!”

“Oh, no, sir!” chirped Young Brydell quite cheerfully; “I didn’t mean to shoot, you know; I was just trying to scare Grubb!”

At that, Grubb, who had been standing very rigid, with his handkerchief to his bleeding ear, suddenly smiled broadly and whispered involuntarily under his breath:—

“You see, sir,” continued Young Brydell in a tone of animated argument, “it was like this. We got up early this morning and built the fort—there were seven of us, and it didn’t take half an hour.”

“There were others responsible, then?” asked the admiral, for like everybody else he had taken it for granted that Young Brydell was bound to be the ringleader, if not the sole culprit.

Young Brydell thrust his hands into the pockets of his sailor suit, planted his feet wide apart, and reflected.

“Well, sir,” he said, “there were the others—but I started it. Cunliffe was afraid; he said he knew his mother would punish him, but I told him I’d do something worser for him than his mother would if he didn’t obey orders—because I’m captain of the company; it’s C company, sir, you know, and orders must be obeyed.”

“Cunliffe was afraid, and so he did as I told him. The other fellows, except Micky O’Toole, said they were afraid of you—they say you are a regular Tartar about the grass.”

“But I told ’em,” cried Young Brydell in a triumphant voice, “that I’d fix you. I said: ‘We’ll plant the United States flag on that fort, and won’t anybody, not even the admiral himself, dare to pull it down!’”

“When I saw Grubb coming, sir, as I tell you, I just wanted to frighten him, but before I knew it, just by accident, sir, the rifle went off, and the first thing I knew the ball had hit Grubb’s ear. But I’m sorry for it, and when I get my ’lowance next week, I’ll give it to him. I get a silver half-dollar every Saturday, sir, from papa, but I think, sir,—I think Grubb deserved what he got for hauling down the flag, and if I’d have thought of it, I’d have peppered his legs for him, sure enough.”

There was a pause after this. The admiral’s keen old eyes looked into Young Brydell’s brown ones, and the man’s eyes had a kind of simplicity in them like a child’s, while the child’s had a determination like a man’s. Grubb still stood with a broad smile on his face, and the blood dripped upon the handkerchief he held to his ear.

“Now,” said the admiral, “will you tell me what you think I ought to do with you and your companions in mischief?”

“I think—I think you oughtn’t to do anything with the other fellows except me and Micky O’Toole, ’cause we led ’em on. Micky didn’t think about the fort first, but as soon as it was started, Micky helped me on and said he didn’t care if he did get a licking.”

“I am not concerned about Micky O’Toole,” said the admiral. “Micky, as I understand, occupies a subordinate position in your company.”

“Micky, I take it, is merely your tool. Very well, sir, I shall report this whole thing to your father, and you must take the consequences. Orderly, make my compliments to Mr. Brydell, and ask him to do me the favor to come here. But stop—your ear.”

“’Tis no matter, sir,” answered Grubb, touching his cap. “I’ll call by the dispensary after I’ve done my message.”

The admiral stepped through the open hall door for his cap, and putting it on as he came out, said to Young Brydell with awful sternness: “Remain where you are until I return.”

CHAPTER II.
YOUNG BRYDELL’S CHUMS.

The pick and shovel squad were hard at work, leveling the fort, and the sight of his beloved turf so maltreated made the admiral’s heart ache. But he began to examine the fort. It was very cleverly done, and the admiral’s gray mustache worked in a half-smile as he stood and looked at it. Presently up came Young Brydell’s father, the handsomest, trimmest, young ensign imaginable, but, as Grubb expressed it, “You see trouble in his face.”

“Good morning, Mr. Brydell!” cried the admiral quite jovially. “Have you heard of the doings of your young one?”

“I have, sir,” answered Young Brydell’s young father, looking unhappy, “from the orderly here, whom I asked. Believe me, admiral, the little fellow has not a bad heart; he is only mischievous, and he has no mother”—

“He’s the finest little chap I ever saw,” cried the admiral. “He wasn’t going to shoot, really; the thing went off by accident; he wants to give the orderly all his pocket money and takes the whole blame of this performance on himself. Look at this construction—tolerably ingenious this for a youngster.” The admiral groaned slightly as he said this.

The picks and shovels were fast leveling the fort, but the lines remained still. Young Brydell’s father could not forbear laughing.

“And you’ll give him a hauling over the coals,” said the admiral, “but I positively forbid any other punishment. The little lad has no mother, and we mustn’t forget that.”

“I never forget it,” answered Young Brydell’s father. “I do my best by the child—I keep him with me all I can—but as you say—he has no mother”— The ensign stopped.

“I know all about it,” said the admiral briskly, “so come along and we’ll try and frighten the youngster.”

Mr. Brydell smiled. “I’m afraid we can’t do that, sir,” he said, “but we can promise to take the rifle away, if he isn’t more careful.” This is about what the lecture amounted to after all.

When it was over, and Young Brydell was marching off holding on to his father’s hand, he called out to the orderly who was coming toward them from the dispensary:—

Grubb touched his cap in response to the ensign’s salute and answered gravely:—

“I’m sorry, Grubb, I’m awful sorry the rifle went off—’cause I’ve got a big scolding from papa and the admiral, too. But you hadn’t any business touching the flag; you know you hadn’t. Come around next Saturday morning and I’ll give you my half-dollar.”

“Thanky, sir,” answered the orderly, “but my feelin’s is too much hurt for to take money from you.”

“Well, then,” said Young Brydell promptly, “I’ll ask you to my birthday party instead. I’m going to have a birthday next week. I’ll be nine years old; and I’m to ask anybody I like, and I’ll ask you and Capps, the watchman, and some other fellows. Will that help your feelin’s?”

“Course it will, sir,” answered Grubb again; “and sailors and marines is so fond o’ one another.” Capps was a retired boatswain who was a watchman at the yard, and as Grubb said this he slightly closed his left eye.

On that understanding they parted. It was Young Brydell’s proud privilege on his birthday to ask his own guests, and he had before included Capps, who was until the advent of Grubb his most intimate friend.

On this Saturday, therefore, there was a table set on the broad back piazza of the ensign’s quarters. Aunt Emeline disapproved of the whole thing, but Cunliffe’s mother, who was a kindly woman, saw that the cake was there with nine candles in it, and Young Brydell sat at the head of the table. All the members of Company C, including Micky O’Toole, first sergeant, were present, and Capps, a bronzed old seaman, and Grubb, who was almost as handsome as the ensign, Young Brydell’s father. His ear still had a red scar, but over a bowl of lemonade Grubb and Young Brydell swore eternal friendship, and the friendship lasted until the end came.

The ensign’s quarters were just back of the admiral’s great roomy house, where he dwelt in solitary magnificence; and Admiral Beaumont, sometimes finding the house lonely and silent,—as houses are where there are no women and children,—would look from his back piazza and often see a lonely little boy, too, in the ensign’s quarters. For Young Brydell was never made to go to school as regularly as the other boys, and was, unluckily, allowed his own way entirely too much—all because he had no mother.

The admiral, feeling sorry for the child and finding a kind of odd and pleasant companionship with him, would send Grubb over with the request that Master Dick be allowed to come over to luncheon, and even Aunt Emeline could not ignore that request. So Young Brydell would go off quite joyfully with Grubb and soon be seated opposite the admiral at the round table in the big dining-room. The two would then exchange reminiscences—Young Brydell pumping the admiral industriously about “When you were on the old Potomac, sir,” or “That time you were in the siege of Vera Cruz.”

Behind the admiral’s chair stood Billy Bowline, once captain of the maintop but retired because of deafness. This was a sore point to Billy, who always protested: “I kin hear everything I wants to, and I never missed a call from the day I j’ined the sarvice, and I kin hear the admiral a sight better ’n Grubb, the jirene.”[1] The admiral, though, always roared at Billy so loud that everybody in the yard could hear him bawling.

It was of course agreed that but one career was possible for Young Brydell, and that was the navy. The ensign thought so, and so did the admiral and Grubb and Billy Bowline and Capps, the watchman, who was a chum of Billy’s as well as of Young Brydell’s.

One day, though, a strange thing happened about Capps. Young Brydell, coming along from school, whistling the bugle call, saw Capps sitting in his usual place on the bench in the shade by the ordnance building. Young Brydell called out as usual:—

But Capps did not move. His eyes were closed, and Young Brydell, after playfully prodding him with a slate pencil, went his way. Presently he met Cunliffe, who also saw the old sailor sitting so still upon the bench.

“No, you sha’n’t,” answered Young Brydell stoutly. “Capps is a friend of mine and I won’t have him teased.”

Words followed this, and it ended by Young Brydell giving his young friend a kick on the shin, by way of testifying his loyalty to his old friend. Just then Grubb came along and asked the cause of the difficulty. Young Brydell pointed to Capps. Grubb went up to him, touched him, and then came back to the two boys, looking rather strange.

“You young gentlemen go along now; I know the admiral’ll want you to go along, and I’ll tell you all about it after a while,” he said hurriedly.

The boys walked away, but from the window in Young Brydell’s room they saw Grubb and another marine take Capps up, who appeared to be quite limp, and carry him off to the dispensary, and an hour or two afterward they met Lucy, the apple-cheeked maid at the admiral’s house, with her apron to her eyes; she, too, had been a friend of the ex-boatswain.

“Mr. Capps is dead!” cried Lucy with a fresh burst of tears, “and ain’t it too dreadful?—oh, dear, oh, dear!”

The two boys each turned a little pale. This was their first knowledge of that unknown thing called Death. Next day Capps was buried. Ensign Brydell and one or two other officers walked in the old boatswain’s funeral procession. He had always said he wanted “a rale lively funeral, like as a sailor man is got a right to,” and he was gratified. The plain coffin rested on a caisson, and a squad of sailors and marines marched behind it with the band playing.

As the little procession moved slowly out of the navy yard gate in the hot sunshine, a company of seven small boys fell into line behind the last squad. It was C company, with Young Brydell at its head. The boy’s sunburned face was blistered with tears, but he was too much of a soldier to wipe them away, while marching—for he had been fond of old Capps and had felt lonely ever since Capps had died.

Nobody attempted to stop C company. They marched along in good order, their small legs being equal to the slow pace of the funeral procession. It was a long way to the sailors’ cemetery and the day was hot, but C company stood up to the work like men. Whether by design or not they were cut off from a good view of the grave when poor old Capps was let down into it, and the next moment the band struck up “Garryowen,” and to its rattling music the sailors and marines stepped out at a lively rate.

So did C company. But after ten minutes the pace was too much for it. First Cunliffe lagged behind, then one by one, even to Young Brydell, they gave out, and it was a good twenty minutes after the sailors and marines had turned in the great gate to the navy yard that C company, consisting of seven very hot and tired small boys, straggled through. But as soon as they appeared, the corporal of the guard sang out “Turn out the guard!” and the next minute the marine guard stood at “present arms” as the boys marched through.

The boy had the usual habit of asking questions, after the manner of his kind, and one day when he and Grubb had got to be very good friends, he suddenly asked:—

“So is papa,” answered Young Brydell. “The other fellows tease me and say papa will give me a stepmother some day, but I don’t believe it.”

Young Brydell felt so surprised and also so hurt at Grubb’s want of confidence in keeping these important facts to himself that he could only stare at him. Grubb laughed rather grimly.

“You see, my wife belonged to better folks than I. Her folks said she oughtn’t to marry a jirene, as they called me. Her father was a master mechanic, and when she died, poor thing! they took the boy, saying they could do a better part by him than I could; a marine don’t git much pay, you know; and, like a fool, I give him up. Now, in some way, the boy don’t seem like my child. He’s got schooling, more ’n I ever had, and he goes to school with fellers whose fathers I waits on, and he’s ashamed o’ this here uniform I wear. So when I seen how it was, a year or two back, I kinder let the thing go. I send him half my pay every month, and it don’t pay for the clothes he wears, they dress him so fine, and it seems to me I oughtn’t to bring him here, just to associate with Micky O’Toole and the rest o’ the men’s children.”

“That’s different. Micky knows how you are goin’ to be an officer and as how if ever he gits in the navy, ’twill be as a ’prentice boy, and Micky ain’t no sort o’ a aspiring fellow. He don’t want to be no gentleman. But my boy does. And my boy’s too good for me, that’s a fact.”

“He oughtn’t to be,” said Young Brydell stoutly. “You’re a good fellow; everybody says so, and you’re a handsome fellow, and papa says he never saw a better set-up fellow, and you’ll be promoted.”

“No, sir,” answered Grubb, shaking his head, “I ain’t eddicated. I know my business, but it takes book learnin’ to make a sergeant or even a corporal. I can read and write and cipher some, but my boy could beat me at it before he was eight years old. It seems to me like the boy was mine and yet he ain’t mine; but yonder’s the admiral comin’ and I ain’t been to the postoffice yet.” So Grubb strode off, leaving Young Brydell considerably mystified about the marine’s boy.

CHAPTER III.
BRYDELL’S FIRST FAILURE.

Just six years after the May day that Young Brydell had nearly shot Grubb’s ear off, on a day as bright, he sat with a number of other young fellows about his own age around a long table, answering the questions of three professors who were examining them. Each had a great stake in this examination, as it was for an appointment to the naval academy at Annapolis.

Young Brydell had ceased to be Young Brydell then, being quite fifteen years old. He has experienced a good many changes in those six years. Much of the time his father, now a lieutenant, had been at sea, but unluckily, whether his father were at sea or on shore, Brydell was still allowed to have his own way, and a good deal more of the lieutenant’s pay than was good for a boy.

The old tenderness and sympathy still encompassed him—he had no mother. Therefore whenever Brydell found himself dissatisfied at school a complaining letter to his father would result in his going somewhere else. When his teachers represented that Brydell, although an extremely bright fellow and fond of reading, yet neglected his recitations for athletics, Brydell would write a most convincing letter to his father explaining how impossible it was for him to do more at his books when his duties as captain of the football eleven were taken into consideration, and his letters were so bright and well written that his father, as foolishly fond in his way as poor Grubb, would persuade himself that the boy would come out all right.

He had even been sent to Switzerland to school, but like the other schools this one did not suit Brydell, and six months after he was home again. Fortunately Brydell possessed certain strong traits of character that are difficult to spoil. He was perfectly truthful, brave, and had naturally a good address.

Nothing could have been prettier than the devotion between him and the lieutenant. As Brydell said: “Dear dad, fatherly respect is out of the question. When you got married at twenty, you took the chances of having a boy in the field before you were ready to quit it yourself. I’ll agree to treat you as an elder brother, but we’ve been chums too long for you to come the stern father over me.” And this would be said with such an affectionate hug that the lieutenant could only make believe to growl.

And so Brydell grew up without any of the wholesome restraints and self-denial of more fortunate boys. He was not a conceited boy, but he realized that whenever he had failed it was because he had not really exerted himself, and he had a naturally optimistic way of looking at life, which so far had not been rudely contradicted.

The determination to go into the navy had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength, and no other plan of life had ever occurred to him. He knew the difficulties of getting an appointment, but like most happy young fellows of his age and inexperience, he thought all difficulties existed for other people; his own way would be easy enough.

His father had carefully retained a legal residence in his native town, expressly for Brydell’s sake, so he could be eligible for appointment from that district. But Brydell, having concluded to try private tutors for a while,—which were changed as often as the schools were,—had lived for nearly a year and a half with his Aunt Emeline in a town outside of his own congressional district.

One morning, picking up a paper, he had read that a competitive examination would be held for an appointment to Annapolis, open to all boys who had lived twelve months in the district.

“That suits me to a dot,” cried Brydell, and from then until the day of the examination he really worked hard, never doubting for a moment his ultimate success.

Aunt Emeline, it is true, croaked like a raven, but Aunt Emeline always croaked. Brydell had already in his own mind composed the letter announcing his success to his father and another one to the admiral, who had continued to be his fast friend, and another one to Grubb, his old chum, the marine. On the morning of the examination he therefore presented himself and was duly accepted in the competition.

Next him at the table sat a handsome young fellow about his own age. Something in the boy’s fresh, regular features and lithe young figure reminded Brydell of Grubb. Of all his early friends Brydell loved the kindly marine, with his manliness and truth and bad grammar, better than any of them. Although Grubb had done his share of sea duty, he and Brydell had met many times in all those years, and always Brydell felt as if he were a little lad again.

Once, Brydell remembered, Grubb, being about going to sea again, had paid the expenses of a long journey out of his small pay to see him, and Brydell suspected that Grubb’s ticket had taken about all his spare cash, and that he had lived on hard tack and a can of smoked beef most of the way, which was hard on a big fellow like the marine.

It suddenly flashed upon Brydell that this handsome fellow might be Grubb’s son; he was about the right age. Brydell at this pricked up his ears, but in a few minutes one of the professors, happening to address the young man, called him “Mr. Esdaile.” Then he was not Grubb’s boy, and Brydell lost all interest in him, except that he wished he could write the answers off as quickly as Esdaile could. For Esdaile never paused a moment, but with the ease and rapidity of one perfectly accustomed to his subject he answered every question put him.

Not so Brydell. He was well up in history and geography, for he was a great reader. But in mathematics he stumbled woefully and made something very like a fiasco.

When at last it was over and the young fellows each took his way home, Brydell felt a sickening sense of failure. He had really worked hard in preparing for the examination, but he forgot that he had never worked in his life before. His three weeks’ spurt had seemed to him a tremendous effort that must win success, but it had not. And then came a terrible apprehension; if he had failed at this examination, and he felt perfectly sure he had, he might fail at another. He might even fail in getting the appointment from his own district, for the congressman might well hesitate to give it to a boy who could not hold his own in a preliminary examination.

This thought staggered him and almost broke his heart, for he had dwelt so long on the navy that he could not think what to do with his life if his ambition in that way should be balked. He was only kept in suspense a week or two and then the blow fell. Esdaile had got the appointment, and Brydell was at the foot of the list.

Only a proud, sensitive, and inexperienced soul could imagine the pain that Brydell suffered. It was not alone the mortification of failure; he had allowed his passion for the navy to take such possession of him, body and mind, that any serious setback to this cherished hope seemed to him an appalling misfortune.

In his tempest of disappointment he turned for the first time in his life, even in his own mind, against his father.

“It is not my fault,” he thought in sullen fury. “I am bright enough, only I never was made to work. And yet everybody talks about my advantages. Was it any advantage that I should never stay at any school more than a year, and hardly ever more than six months? Was it any advantage to me to be sent to Europe where I picked up a smattering of French and came home to find myself behind every fellow of my age I knew, except in that one thing? Was it any advantage to me to have more money than almost any boy I knew, to squander on athletics and all sorts of rubbish?”

This last reflection brought Brydell suddenly to himself. He remembered poor Grubb’s giving his boy half his pay. “And my poor old dad—poor young dad, rather—gave me, I believe, a good deal more than half his pay.”

Brydell had learned something about how money went, and he stopped, startled at the idea of how much skimping and saving his father must have done to give him the money. He fell into a passion of remorse.

“Poor dad—poor dad!” was all he could think, and “dad” was so young—barely thirty-six, and did not look a day over thirty. “I dare say,” thought poor Brydell, with the ghost of a smile, “that’s why it was he never married again. I was squandering his pay.”

Brydell was too generous a fellow to reproach his father, except to himself in his first angry mood, and knowing the lieutenant would hear about the examination anyway, he sat down and wrote his father frankly and fully, admitting his failure, and his determination, if he could get another chance, to do better. But the lieutenant was far away in the Pacific and it would be months before he could get the letter, and perhaps other long months before Brydell could get an answer.

Then he wrote the admiral in the same strain. The admiral, who happened to have shore duty then, got the letter. He was sitting on the piazza, facing the salt sea, and when he had finished reading it he brought his fist down with a thump on the arm of his chair and shouted:—

The admiral always held that expletives were vulgar; but when much wrought up he took refuge in “By,” which might mean any and every thing.

“Just like the dog when he was about as big as a cockchafer, and took the whole blame of cutting up my turf, when there were six older boys aiding and abetting him. Bowline! here, sir!” and in a few minutes Billy Bowline came trotting along the hall.

“Bring me my portfolio and the ink,” said the admiral. “That little scamp of a Brydell has failed in a competitive examination for an appointment to the naval academy, and how his father could expect anything else, I can’t see, taking him to Europe, putting him at school one day and taking him away the next, and giving the boy no chance at all, simply because he was too soft-hearted to say no! And now the young fellow behaves like a man and shoulders it all. I say, Bowline, we can’t afford not to have that young fellow in the service.”

“No, sir, we can’t!” said Billy very seriously. “We’re ’bleeged to have him, sir, in the sarvice.”

“Beg your parding, sir, it’s easy enough,” answered Billy stoutly. “There ain’t nothin’ in the reg’lations as prevents a admiral from axin’ the member o’ Congress from Mr. Brydell’s districk, if he’s got a ’pintment to give away; and if he rightly understands his duty to a rear-admiral on the active list, he dasn’t say no, sir.”

“William Bowline,” said the admiral solemnly, “if you weren’t the biggest ass I ever saw, I’d say you were a genius. Bring me the navy register quick.”

The admiral glanced at the register and saw there would be a vacancy in that year in Brydell’s district. He then wrote fourteen pages to the member of Congress, and sealed it with his big red seal.

“That’ll fetch it,” thought Billy proudly. “It looks like it comes from the sekertary of the navy.”

As Billy was starting off to the postoffice with the important letter, the admiral picked up Brydell’s letter and read it over, half-aloud. “Esdaile, Esdaile; that has a familiar sound,” he said.

“In course, sir,” answered Billy with a sniff. “That’s the son o’ Grubb, the jirene. You know, sir, Grubb married a woman whose folks was ashamed o’ him; and Grubb, like a great big ass, give the boy to his wife’s people arter she died, and they stuffed that young ’un up with false pride until he got ashamed to speak to Grubb; and Grubb, he was a-sendin’ the boy half his pay straight along. So then the boy’s grandfather died and left him a small fortin’ on condition that he changes his name to his mother’s, Esdaile; and the brat were willin’ enough, for he thought hisself too good to be named Grubb, and now he’s goin’ to be a officer.”

Here Billy rumpled his hair up violently to show his contempt for Grubb’s boy, and the admiral again cried:—

There was a great running to and fro between the admiral’s house and the postoffice in those days, and the admiral and Billy both began to feel anxious about Brydell’s appointment. The day was fast approaching when the candidates must present themselves for examination at Annapolis, and at last, three days before the time, just long enough for the admiral to write to Brydell and for Brydell to get to Annapolis, the appointment came from the member of Congress.

Admiral Beaumont was so happy when he got the letter that he gave a kind of snort of pleasure, and Billy, who was standing by, eagerly watching the opening of the letters, had to go out in the backyard to chuckle. The admiral sent a dispatch and a letter to Brydell, and Billy stumped off gleefully with them, and three days afterward Brydell had presented himself at Annapolis.

CHAPTER IV.
BRYDELL’S SECOND FAILURE.

Far back in his babyhood, almost, Brydell remembered the academic buildings, the green lawns, and bright river at Annapolis, and when on a lovely May evening he walked in the great gates and passed the marine on guard, he felt so happy he could have danced and sung.

The weeks since his failure had been spent in a dull and hopeless mental lethargy. Aunt Emeline had been grimly consolatory and had tried to impress on him that he had made a lucky miss in not getting into the navy, and named at least a thousand professions and business ventures in which he could make more money. The good woman did not see in the least how it was with the boy—that he was simply born to be a sailor, and that nothing on earth could charm him then from his wish.

After that one outburst of generosity in writing to his father and the admiral, he had settled down to a sullen submission. It would be months before he could hear from his father, and until then nothing could be done. Suddenly, like the lifting of a mist by the glorious sun, came the admiral’s letter and the appointment, and within twenty-four hours Brydell was on his way to Annapolis to be examined for admission to the academy.

He had had no time to prepare for the examination, even if he could. But a boy of Brydell’s temperament does not learn prudence and caution in a day or a month, and he was as perfectly sanguine of success in the coming examinations as if he had not failed before. He could have hugged the admiral for his goodness, and had sat up half the night, when he got the treasured letter, writing his thanks to him and the member of Congress.

On this lovely May afternoon he walked with a springy step along the brick walks of the academy grounds under the giant trees, fresh in their spring livery, and as he looked at the velvet turf he smiled and thought of the admiral and the dirt fort and Grubb and that early time. It was not necessary for him to report until next morning, so he strolled along, the very happiest fifteen-year-old fellow in the world.

Presently sauntering along the sea wall and watching the reflection in the water of a steam launch filled with ladies and officers, he suddenly came directly upon his old friend Grubb, standing and talking with Esdaile, the handsome young fellow who had so far outstripped all the other candidates, himself included. Esdaile started, and then blushing a fiery red, nodded his head to Grubb and walked off.

As for Brydell, all the kindness he had ever received as a little boy from the handsome marine rushed to his mind. Grubb, as handsome as ever, although a good deal older, smiled delightedly as Brydell dashed forward, but seeing how tall the young fellow had grown, Grubb drew himself up and saluted as he said: “How d’ you do, Mr. Brydell?”

“Oh, hang the salute, Grubb! shake hands,” cried Brydell, delighted. “I’m not a cadet yet, so we needn’t stand on ceremony.” At which Grubb and he sawed the air for five minutes.

“And are you come down here for to be examined, sir?” asked Grubb, smiling broadly.

“Yes,” said Brydell, adding shamefacedly, “I had a chance in a competitive examination, but that fellow you were talking with—Esdaile—got ahead of me.”

At this it was Grubb’s turn to color. He shifted his feet and said hesitatingly:—

“Mr. Brydell, please don’t go for to tell it, sir, but Mr. Esdaile—Mr. Esdaile is my son. His grandfather’s left him some money, if he’d take the same name—Esdaile; and as the boy didn’t like the name o’ Grubb, nohow, he got his name changed by law—and I’d ruther—I’d ruther, sir, the folks here didn’t know it, bein’ as I ain’t nothin’ but a marine.”

Brydell was so taken aback for a moment that he did not know what to say, and Grubb with unwonted fluency continued:—

“I’ve sent in my application for a transfer, sir, ’cause the boy don’t want—I mean I don’t want—to be stationed here, a-doin’ guard duty while my boy is in the academy. I’ve talked it over with one o’ the officers as I’ve knowed, and who has been a good friend to me, and he says maybe it will be best all around. And I hope nobody will know that Cadet William Esdaile is the son o’ Grubb the marine.”

“You may be right in getting transferred somewhere else,” answered Brydell after a moment, “and if the officer advised you, I wouldn’t venture to say a word; but I don’t see why your boy should not want to recognize”— Here he stopped, not knowing how to keep on.

“Didn’t I tell you, sir, long years ago as how the boy was gittin’ above his father?” burst out poor Grubb, his eyes filling with tears. “He’s ashamed o’ me; he’s ashamed to be seen a-talkin’ with me, and I can give him half my pay, and I’d give him all o’ it if he needed it, but I can’t stand bein’ looked down upon by him.”

“Why, if you were my father, I shouldn’t be in the least ashamed of you,” cried Brydell hotly. “You haven’t had the advantage we other fellows have had, but you’re one of the most honest and respectable men in the world; so says my father and Admiral Beaumont, too, and it’s a great deal better to come out and be honest and above board about these things than to be skulking and hiding them.”

“That’s true for you, Mr. Brydell,” replied Grubb, who had natural good sense and much more experience than Brydell. “That’s your natur’. But it ain’t everybody’s natur’. It ain’t my boy’s natur’; I wish it was. It’s the easiest way and the best way o’ gittin’ through life, but it takes all sorts o’ people to make up a world, and there’s lots o’ people that could no more be aboveboard than a pig can fly.”

Brydell had not lived long enough to appreciate this truth, and he parted from Grubb with a mixture of respect and contempt for him, but with unabated affection, and a most genuine disgust for Esdaile. Perhaps it was helped a little by Esdaile’s triumph over him, but Brydell had always hated a sneak, and he had very good ground for thinking the accomplished Mr. Esdaile was constitutionally a sneak.

Next day he reported and the examination began, and then came a time that in torture far exceeded the sharp disappointment and sullen despair of the last few weeks. For, after days of struggle and nights of furious though ill-directed study, again did Brydell fail, and this time he thought it was forever.

When he knew it he had but one desire on earth—to get away from the place anywhere—anywhere. But where was he to go and what was he to do that people would not find him out? He hated to go back to that dreary house with Aunt Emeline; his father was completely out of his reach,—that too kind father,—and Brydell felt sick at the idea of meeting the admiral again.

Filled with the despair of the very young,—who can see nothing beyond the narrow horizon of the present,—Brydell, sitting in his room at the hotel, dropped his head upon his arms, and wished himself dead. He did not know how long he had lain thus, only that the sun was shining brightly in the afternoon when he heard the dreadful news, and it was quite dusk when he had a strange feeling that some one was present, and there stood over him Grubb’s tall figure.

“It’s mortal bad, Mr. Brydell,” said Grubb. Brydell answered not a word, and in the silence of the twilight the only sound was the melancholy call of a night bird heard through the open window.

“Whatever are you goin’ to do now, Mr. Brydell?” asked Grubb after a while.

“I don’t know,” said Brydell in a voice that he hardly recognized as his own.

“No!” cried Brydell bitterly; “sent from one school to another, as often as I wanted; allowed twice as much pocket money as any other boy in school, while my father was pinching and skimping himself to give it to me; with no home, no mother, to encourage me and nobody to govern me; of course I failed. I’ll always fail.”

“Don’t you go for to say that, Mr. Brydell, and it seems like I ain’t the only foolish father in the world. There’s others as had eddication and all sorts o’ things that don’t act no wiser nor poor old Grubb the marine.”

“Don’t say a word against my father!” cried Brydell, lifting his pale face for the first time.

“I’d be the last person in the world to say a word against the leftenant, sir, but I say as how ’twas always said of you when you was a little shaver: ‘Don’t be hard on him, he ain’t got no mother.’ Well, now it seems to me they’ve been monstrous hard on you when they thought they was bein’ easy.”

“Well, now, sir, let me tell you something. I knows all about these app’intments. You set down and write the admiral and ask him if he’ll ask that there congressman to give you a year to prepare yourself. Tell him as how you ain’t had half a chance, and give him your word as a gentleman you’ll pass next year if they’ll let you keep the app’intment.”

“Good night, Mr. Brydell,” said Grubb. “Them as is ashamed to ask for another trial when they ain’t had a good chance, seems to me, ain’t got much sand. It looks like you warn’t willin’ to work.”

“Sit down, Grubb,” answered Brydell, beginning to consider this sound advice, and before Grubb left the room the letter was written to the admiral.

“It won’t do any good; I know it won’t,” said poor Brydell despairingly. Nevertheless he agreed to remain at Annapolis long enough to get an answer.

It would take about three days to get an answer, supposing the admiral to be able to see the congressman at once. Those days Brydell remained shut up in his room. It was a turning point with him. He retained only a dim and chaotic memory of what he felt and suffered in those three days; but at the beginning he was a boy, and when he came out of the struggle he was a man.

The day was dark and rainy, but no June morning ever seemed brighter to Brydell when he read that dispatch. The transition seemed to him like passing from death to life.

He knew he had never had a chance at preparation, and he knew he had a good mind, capable of learning what other fellows did. But, above all, he felt suddenly develop within himself a determination, a strength of purpose, a power of will that could do great things if he tried.

This new force was always a part of his character, although quickly developed by a strange succession of fierce disappointments. But impetuosity was also a part of his character, and with this new sense of manliness and responsibility came a rash determination that he would prove his sincerity by working for his living while preparing himself for that other chance a year hence.

Brydell ran and posted this letter before he had time to change his mind about sending it. When it was gone he had a sudden feeling of shock, like a man just under a shower bath. But his word was passed. He had naturally the strength of mind to stick to what he said, and one of the things that had not been neglected with him was a most faithful regard for his own word. Rash his resolve might be, but not to be shirked on that account.

When Brydell realized to what he had committed himself he seemed to grow ten years older in half an hour. He felt a little afraid, but all these things were working together to make a man of him.

CHAPTER V.
STRIKING OUT FOR HIMSELF.

Next morning, bright and early, Brydell was up and dressed. He had no one to say farewell to except Grubb, but he wanted to see his humble friend and avail himself of Grubb’s excellent common sense about his future plans. For the marine had seen a good deal of the world and knew something of it from a working-man’s point of view. Grubb happened to be off duty that day, and early in the morning presented himself in Brydell’s room. Brydell told him the glorious news, and Grubb, taking off his cap and waving it three times, said in a half-whisper: “Hooray! hooray! hooray!”

“And now,” said Brydell, “I’ve got to go to work. I have about twenty-five dollars left after paying my hotel bill, and I can’t go very far on that. Besides, I’d rather stay near Annapolis. I can keep in touch with it better in some ways. I have my books, you know, and although I have only acquired a smattering from them, yet they are familiar enough to me to study by myself. And I’ve got an idea about employment.”

“Well, you see, I’ve been great on outdoor life—riding and walking and swimming; and I believe I could stand an outdoor life better than I could being shut up in a dingy office. I hear that the farmers about here find great difficulty in getting hands, even at high wages and particularly at this season of the year. If I could get work on a farm, I could get my living too, which I couldn’t get in a city.”

“Lord, bless the boy!” cried Grubb in great disgust. “The leftenant’s son, a-talkin’ about bein’ a hired man! Did ever anybody hear the likes o’ that for a gentleman?”

“I know I am a gentleman, Grubb, and that’s why it is I’m not afraid of work,” answered Brydell, who could not help laughing at Grubb’s look.

After Brydell had talked with him half an hour, though, the marine’s ideas changed. Brydell, who had been thinking hard on the subject all night, reminded him of how many young fellows walked the streets of towns, asking for employment, while in the country employment was waiting for twice as many men as could be found. “And besides,” said Brydell with a slight blush, “in the city I might be all the time running up against people I know, and if they were civil to me I’d probably lose the time with them I would have in the evenings for study, and if they didn’t notice me it would make me feel pretty bad; while in the country I wouldn’t be likely to meet a soul I ever knew. It always seemed to me, too, as if a country life was healthier for a young fellow.”

“And then I can get work right away in the country, and who knows when I could get it in town?”

“Mr. Brydell,” said Grubb, “the admiral allers said, when you were a little shaver, as you’d turn right side up, and I do believe he know’d what he was talking about.”

“The admiral’s the best friend I have in the world except you,” cried Brydell; “I believe if you were an admiral, you’d do just as much for me as Admiral Beaumont.”

“Right you are, Mr. Brydell. I ain’t nothin’ but a poor marine, without any book learnin’, but whenever I sees that motto of the corps, ‘Semper fidelis’ which means ‘Ever faithful,’ I think to myself, Grubb, my man, that means you ain’t never goin’ back on another feller; and, come to think of it, it do seem ridicklous that the leftenant’s son should be a-workin’ like a hired hand. But I’ve noticed, sir, as how you’ll put two horses to haulin’ bricks. If one o’ ’em is a scrub, and t’ other one has a strain o’ good blood in him, you’ll find the scrub all petered out by the time his work is done. But the horse with the good blood’ll haul all day, and be as frisky as a kitten when you take him out; for blood do tell, Mr. Brydell.”

Grubb said this with a sigh, and Brydell thought the poor fellow had his own son in mind.

Brydell did not care to say good-by to the few people he knew at Annapolis, so he started out on a round, leaving his cards marked “P.P.C.” at each acquaintance’s house and not waiting to see if they were at home. He could not help laughing as he did this. He imagined he saw himself at work in the fields in his shirt sleeves, and thought it would be a good while before he needed any more visiting cards.

A natural tinge of boyish adventure made him feel as if he would like to start out on foot to seek his fortune, so next morning, having packed up his belongings and left them in Grubb’s care, Brydell set out with his stick and a small bundle and twenty-five dollars in his pocket.

It was a lovely day, cool for the season, and as Brydell stepped out at a lively pace, the world did not by any means look black to him. When he looked back six months it seemed to him six years. In that time he had had one of those plunges into real life which turns a boy into a man in an inconceivably short time. He had had a pretty complete experience of what life meant, and he had set himself to work out his own salvation in earnest.

He thought he would walk about twelve miles before stopping, wishing to be at least that far from Annapolis. But the beauty of the day, the greenness and freshness of the country, led him on and on until it was nearly fifteen miles.

Then the weather suddenly changed. The sky became overcast, the wind sprung up, and the first thing Brydell knew he was caught in a drenching rain. He had a rain coat with him and he put it on, meanwhile keeping his bundle well protected. He was still following the main road and he determined to stop and ask for shelter at the first house he saw. And how that spring shower changed his views of life!

He realized he was wet and hungry, that he was alone, and far from all his friends, and all at once he began to feel very young. He pushed on rapidly, and in a little while saw across the rolling country a large and comfortable farmhouse. He made straight for it and in a little while he knocked at the open door.

A little girl in a white dimity sunbonnet came to the door. She was about ten years old and remarkably pretty. She did not show the least bit of shyness and asked Brydell in hospitably. Before he had time to answer, her father and mother appeared—handsome country people, looking, as they were, thoroughly prosperous.

Brydell, whose manners were naturally graceful and polished, introduced himself and asked the privilege of remaining until the shower was over, and with a secret determination to ask for work later on. The farmer’s address was not nearly so elegant as the young fellow’s who cherished the ambition of becoming his hired man. He said:—

“My name’s Laurison. Come in and sit down. If you’ve got any dry clothes in that bundle, my wife’ll show you a room where you can change ’em.”

Brydell looked at Mrs. Laurison and his heart went out to her instantly. She was not like the officers’ wives he had known, educated and traveled women; but she had a quiet dignity and a self-possession that was equally good in its way. And she had the softest, kindest eyes in the world, and her voice was so gentle when she invited Brydell upstairs to change his clothes that he almost loved her from the start. In a little while Brydell appeared with dry shoes and stockings and another pair of trowsers.

The farmer, being compelled to stay indoors, was not indisposed to talk with the young stranger, and Brydell had quite a gift of making himself agreeable. They sat talking in a large, airy, old-fashioned hall, with a dry rubbed floor; and the little girl Minna was so pleased with her new acquaintance that she came and perched herself on the arm of his chair and gazed fearlessly into his eyes with the grave scrutiny of an innocent girl.

Brydell knew much about country life, and talked so knowingly about cows and pigs and horses that even Mr. Laurison grew fluent, and Brydell imagined it would be easy enough to get work there, and he quickly determined to ask for it.

“Heaps of trouble,” answered Mr. Laurison with emphasis. “The negroes all go off about this time of the year for berry-picking, just when harvest is coming on and the corn needs weeding the worst you ever saw. I’ve got two men I can count on that stay with me the year round, but I ought to have four on a farm of this size.”

“You!” shouted Mr. Laurison. “Why, you never did any work in your life. Look at them hands!”

“Pretty brown, I think they are,” answered Brydell complacently, examining his own hands.

“Yes,” said Mr. Laurison; “but they’re brown with the playin’ of tennis and football and such. Any fool can see by your hands you ain’t done any work.”

“I have a father. He’s in the navy and away off in the Pacific. I haven’t any friend that can help me.”

“Oh, no; but I want to earn my living, and it’s easier to get work in the country than in town, and besides I know more about the country.”

Mr. Laurison’s manner underwent an instant change. He paused a little while and then said:—

“I ain’t got any work for you;” and after another pause: “I think it’s clearin’ up.”

Brydell rose at once. He felt that in a moment the attitude of his host was one of suspicion; but Mrs. Laurison’s kind gaze never changed in the least, and little Minna came closer to him and caught his hand.

“I must,” said Brydell gently, but feeling as if he would choke. Mr. Laurison got up very promptly.

The sun was now down and the purple twilight was upon them. The trees and grass were wet and a faint gray haze rose from the meadows at the back of the house. It had never dawned upon Brydell that he would be invited to take the road at such an hour, and he felt a strange sinking of the heart.

He thanked Mrs. Laurison for her kindness to him. She said no word to detain him, but Brydell felt she was sorry to see him go. He then turned to shake hands with little Minna. The child suddenly tiptoed and threw her arms around his neck, saying,—

“Some day, perhaps,” answered Brydell hurriedly, and feeling a sob rising in his throat at the childish words. The woman and the little girl had confidence in him. He said good-by to them both, thanked Mrs. Laurison again, and followed her husband out, and along a path bordered with alders, to the main road half a mile off.

Neither spoke a word. When they reached a stile, beyond which the white line of the sandy road glimmered faintly in the half-light, the farmer turned to him:—

“Young man,” he said, “if you’ve done anything wrong,—and I can’t help suspecting you have,—’tain’t too late for you to mend. You’re young yet, and you’ve got a whole lifetime to make up for it in.”

Brydell had realized that the farmer suspected him, but hearing it put into words was a shock that altogether unnerved him.

“Why do you suspect me?” he asked in a voice he hardly recognized as his own.

“Because I can’t help suspecting an educated young feller with his father in the navy, who tramps about, asking for work on a farm.”

In all of his grief and anxiety and despair about his failing in his examinations, and when he thought the desire of his heart was thwarted, Brydell had never shed a tear. But when this new horror came upon him, he did what he had not done since he was a little boy—he broke into a passion of sobbing and crying. The farmer looked at him compassionately.

“You’re sorry for what you’ve done,” he said, “and that’s a good sign.”

“I’m not sorry, for I haven’t done anything,” burst out Brydell. “I am as honest as you are and as respectable. How do you think you’d feel if anybody accused you of being crooked? I’ve told you the truth. I got an appointment at the Naval Academy and I failed, and the congressman who gave it to me said he would hold it over for a year if I would work hard and promise to pass, and I wrote my father I meant to work for that and for my living, too, and I’m going to do it. That’s all.”

Mr. Laurison hesitated for a moment. He had the wisdom of guileless people, which is sometimes better than that of worldly people, and he saw that Brydell was telling the truth, and he said so.

“And you can come back to the house with me and spend the night, and we’ll talk about work to-morrow,” he said.

“No,” said Brydell stoutly, “I won’t spend the night in the house of a man that takes me for a crook.”

“I like your pluck, but you’re a fool all the same,” was Mr. Laurison’s answer, accompanied by a friendly shove, “so come along back with me.”

Brydell had meant to show great spirit, but he was not proof against kindness, and he turned and walked rather sullenly back to the house. Mrs. Laurison and Minna were still standing on the porch. The lamps were lighted in the hall and dining-room, and the house had a hospitable and inviting look. The two figures appeared out of the dusk.

“Wife,” said Mr. Laurison, “I’ve brought this young feller back. He’s all right. He just failed in his examination to get into the Naval Academy, and like a wrong-headed boy he wrote his father he’d work for his own living until he could get in the academy,—he’ll have another chance next year,—and then, like a man, he determined to live up to what he said. So we’ll just keep him to-night, and maybe we can find something for him to do to-morrow.”

Mrs. Laurison said only three words—“I am glad”—but Brydell knew they came straight from her tender heart. Little Minna began to jump about, singing, “I’m so glad! I’m so glad!”

“You’ll find I can work,” said Brydell with rather a wan smile. “I’ve worked in the hot sun a good many hours at cricket and football and tennis and polo, and I daresay I can drive a plow or weed corn or hoe potatoes just about as well.”

The evening passed quickly. There was a wheezy piano in the parlor, and Brydell, who played a little and could sing some college songs, pleased his hosts very much with a performance that would not have been so highly appreciated elsewhere.

At nine o’clock he was shown to a comfortable room, not the best bedroom, as he found out, and turning in fell asleep in five minutes, well pleased with his first day’s battle with the world.

CHAPTER VI.
A NEW LIFE.

Next morning, by sunrise, Brydell was up and dressed and outdoors. The two negro men on the place were feeding the stock under Mr. Laurison’s directions, while a negro woman milked the cows.

Brydell looked about and saw that the vegetable garden was well weeded, but there was a long straight walk down the garden, with flower beds on each side of it, that were full of weeds. There were clumps of lilac, both white and purple, great masses of the syringa, making the morning air heavy with its sweet perfume, and snowball bushes blooming profusely. Some early roses were out and a few gaudy peonies still lingered.

“If I had a garden hoe and rake, I could weed those flower beds,” said Brydell to Mr. Laurison as they met in the backyard.

“I wish to goodness you would,” answered Mr. Laurison. “My wife has nearly broken her heart over those flower beds. I’ve had to keep the hands to work so steady that I actually haven’t had a chance to get at the flowers; and she ain’t strong enough to do it herself, and it’s just been a trial to her.”

Brydell had been taught to weed flowers under that stern martinet, Aunt Emeline, and when an hour afterward Mrs. Laurison and Minna appeared, one whole square was as neatly weeded as possible, the refuse piled up in a wheelbarrow, and the garden looked like a different place.

“You couldn’t have done anything that pleased me better, and a young fellow that’s kind and considerate to women and children is apt to be a good one. If Mr. Laurison keeps you, I’ve made up my mind to let you have the little bedroom you slept in last night, instead of staying with the hired men in the barn, because I see you are a gentleman’s son, and your mother”—

“I haven’t any mother,” said Brydell, his eyes filling with tears at Mrs. Laurison’s kind tones.

Little Minna immediately dragged him off to see her garden, which was the disorderly patch which usually satisfied children, and then they all went in to breakfast.

After breakfast Mr. Laurison and Brydell had a business talk. Mr. Laurison agreed to keep him a month on trial and to pay him ten dollars besides his board. If he was satisfactory, he could keep the place indefinitely.

Brydell never was so thankful and so relieved in his life, except when he got that dispatch from Admiral Beaumont.

How much better was this wholesome country life than that dreary search for employment in a city! And he had a good room to sleep in, instead of a box on the top floor in a city boarding-house, and country milk and butter and vegetables to eat—Brydell had an astonishing appetite—and his work, although hard, was nothing like as hard as being perched upon an office stool ten hours a day.

He had to buy himself some working clothes, but, as one result of his training as a gentleman, Brydell never appeared at the table without being neatly dressed. This worked a much-needed reform in Mr. Laurison, who before Brydell came had no scruples about appearing at the dinner table in his shirt sleeves. But he could not afford to be less well dressed than his young hired hand and he began to take more pains with his daily toilet.

This pleased Mrs. Laurison very much, who like most women attached importance to the refinements of life, and who felt hurt to think that though her husband put on his coat when they had guests to dinner, he left it off when they were alone.

At the end of the month Mr. Laurison said nothing about Brydell’s leaving and was secretly rather afraid that Brydell had got tired of his job. But not so; Brydell had a great fund of sound sense, after all the nonsense had been knocked out of him, and he knew he was in good luck to have such a means of livelihood.

As soon as he felt any certainty about his position, he wrote a number of letters—to his father, to Admiral Beaumont, to his Aunt Emeline, and to Grubb the marine, who had got transferred to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

He got very prompt answers from the three of his correspondents who could communicate with him. His Aunt Emeline wrote, saying if he wouldn’t come back, she couldn’t help it—but there was nothing urgent in her invitation. Brydell smiled rather bitterly as he laid the letter down.

The admiral’s letter was overflowing. He could not give Brydell too much encouragement, considered him bound to pass No. 1 next year, and conveyed a long message from Billy Bowline to the effect that “Mr. Brydell, he is bound to be a sailor man, ’cause he’s built that away.”

And Grubb’s letter, which was recklessly spelled and not fully up to the standard of classic English, bade him “go in and Win. You have got Sand, Mr. Brydell, and Sand is what makes a man. Some fellows as learns a lott out of books ain’t got no natural manly carackter and disapp’ints their friends. But you are not the sort to disapp’int.” Grubb then went on to lament that he was stationed at Portsmouth. “For the cadets cruze will most likely be here, Mr. Brydell, and there’s one of them, for reasons which is known to you, as I would ruther not see in present serkumstances.”

Every evening after supper he would be claimed for half an hour by little Minna, to play on the piano for her, to tell her stories, or to amuse her in some way. Then he would take a lamp and go to his room and study hard.

Often he was very tired, but it was a healthful fatigue. He did not feel any sense of nervous exhaustion, but, if he found himself falling asleep over his books, he would go to bed and get up at daylight next morning feeling perfectly refreshed.

The outdoor life agreed with him wonderfully, and his boyish figure began to fill out and lose some of its angles. And he had the consciousness of making headway with his studies. He was forced to adopt the old-fashioned plan of relying upon himself, instead of the new-fashioned one of having a tutor to study with him and to take most of the trouble off him.

Besides making steady progress in studies and character and physique, he actually found himself happy. He had no associates of his own age, it is true; the neighborhood was sparsely populated and he did not find any very congenial acquaintances among boys of his own age, but he comforted himself by thinking, “Never mind, I’ll have lots of fellows for company next year.” He came to like Mr. Laurison; and Mrs. Laurison’s kindness was unvarying. Little Minna became the apple of his eye.

In the summer she had a slight illness, and Brydell did not realize until then how fond he was of the little girl. He was always on hand to do anything for her, and the child would take her medicine more readily from him than from anybody else.

This still more won Mrs. Laurison’s heart, and there was keen sympathy between her and the boy who had never known a mother’s love. He often thought: “If Aunt Emeline had been like this!” Minna got well quickly, but from that day on Brydell’s affection for the mother and child became intense. Mrs. Laurison knew that Brydell was preparing for his examination another year, but as she said to him sometimes:

“The farm won’t be the same for any of us after you go away. I never had any boys of my own; I always wanted them and it seems to me now I feel the want of them more than ever, because I see how nice a nice boy really is.”

“I never was accused of being a nice boy by my best friends,” cried Brydell, laughing but pleased. “Ask Aunt Emeline what she thinks of me.”

As for Minna, every mention of Brydell’s leaving was met by her throwing her arms around his neck and pleading, “You won’t go away and leave me?” Brydell partially gained her consent to go, on promising that he would send her chests full of magnificent things and a dolly as big as herself.

Toward the last of the summer he got a letter from his father. It was very kind and affectionate, and almost humble in tone.

“I feel that I have erred through my tenderness for you,” he wrote; “but I hope that you have experienced the worst you will have to undergo of the effects of my fondness. I do not know what you are doing now, and shall wait eagerly to hear, but I rely upon your manliness and uprightness to carry you through.”

One day in the autumn, as Brydell in his blue overalls was driving an ox-wagon loaded with fodder down the lane, he suddenly caught sight of a trim military old figure standing at the gate, with another rather slouchy one, and the next minute he recognized Admiral Beaumont’s hearty laugh.

The admiral was highly amused at the spectacle his young friend presented, mounted on a load of hay, while Billy Bowline grinned appreciatively at the sight. Brydell was delighted to see his old friend and, noticing that his employment as teamster seemed to afford the admiral great diversion, he cried out:—

“Delighted to see you, admiral! Just let me get my team through this gate and I’ll jump down and shake hands with you. Gee, buck!”

“Ha, ha!” roared the admiral. “You haven’t sea room enough, my young friend, in which to manœuvre that craft. You’ll foul that gatepost as sure as a gun.”

“No, I won’t; whoa!” shouted Brydell in reply. The oxen made a sudden turn that really did threaten to foul the gatepost.

“Keep your luff,” called out the admiral, waving his stick excitedly, “and keep your head to the wind.”

“Can’t,” replied Brydell, who was not an expert ox-driver by any means; “you see she yaws about so there’s no keeping her head to the wind.”

At last, after the expenditure of much lung power, both by Brydell and the admiral, the wagon got through, and Brydell, jumping down, shook hands heartily with his old friends.

“Bless my soul!” cried the admiral, “I never saw a fellow grow like you. Why, you are about a foot taller and two feet broader than you were last year—eh, Bowline?”

“He do grow amazin’ fast,” said Billy solemnly, “and I reckon as how he’ll be the finest-lookin’ feller in the sarvice when he gits there. But, Mr. Brydell, beg your parding, sir, you ought not to risk your life, sir, in no sich a craft as that. Horses is bad enough, but oxen is the most dangersome thing alive. Like as not they run away with you or kick your head off, sir. Now, sir, aboard ship you ain’t never in no danger. That’s the beauty of the sarvice, sir, ain’t no horses for to kick you, nor no oxen for to run away with you; jist nothin’ to hurt you; and when the wind blows, all you’ve got to do, sir, is to make everything snug and git to sea, and there you is, sir, safe and sound.”

“The old dunderhead is right,” chuckled the admiral highly pleased, while Brydell in his heart really thought a ship was the safest thing under heaven, particularly a United States ship.

Brydell took his two old friends up to the house, where Mrs. Laurison received them, as she did everybody, kindly and graciously. The admiral, struck by her gentle and refined manner, bowed over the hand of the farmer’s wife as if she were the greatest lady in the land, while Billy Bowline stood just outside the door, twiddling his cap, and could not be induced to sit down even in the hall.

“For ’tain’t for the likes o’ me to be sittin’ down afore ladies,” said Billy. “But I’d like mightily to have a word with that little ’un as looks like a angel.”

Minna, after having made friends with the admiral, was quite willing to make friends with the old sailor. Presently they saw her put her chubby hand in his and lead him out under a tree, where they both sat down on the grass, and through the window floated in scraps of a thrilling narrative that Billy was telling her: “The prin-cess, she then give orders, ‘Bring up my palankeen,’ and she climbed over the side and then she trimmed the palankeen, and it’s a mighty onhandy thing to trim, my dear”—

Mrs. Laurison invited the admiral to stay to dinner, and he accepted frankly. Brydell slipped upstairs and washed and changed his clothes; then the admiral went upstairs, too, and had a long talk with him. He took Brydell’s books and gave him a pretty sharp examination, which Brydell stood remarkably well; he had not wasted his time.

When dinner was ready they found Mr. Laurison dressed in his best clothes, and Mrs. Laurison had put on a pretty gown for the admiral. The dinner was very jolly, and Brydell was glad that the admiral saw what excellent quarters he had fallen into.

After dinner, when it was time for the train, Mr. Laurison wanted to send the admiral to the station in the old carriage that was used on great occasions, but the admiral preferred to walk. He and Brydell started off, therefore, in the autumn evening to walk, with Billy Bowline rolling along after them.

“I have waited to write to your father until I should see you,” said the admiral; “but now I can write with a cheerful heart. Zounds, sir, you are in luck; a year of hard study, hard work, and independence will make a man of you. I thought your failure in your examination the worst thing that could befall you. But don’t you see, youngster, that what seems to be the worst may sometimes be wrested to make the very best?”

Brydell was not quite prepared to admit that his two mortifying failures were the best things that could have happened to him; but he rightly considered himself a fortunate fellow in the way his resolve to earn his living had turned out. He told the admiral of the letter he had received from his father, and what he had replied. And then he spoke of Grubb and Esdaile.

“I have heard of that Esdaile fellow, and mark my words, he’s a scamp. It’s well enough to elevate himself; poor Grubb is an honest, sensible fellow, though uneducated; but I hear that his boy would have nothing to do with him, except on the sly, and actually has been heard to deny that Grubb is his father. I say that fellow is a pernicious, unqualified, and unmitigated scamp and scalawag; and I don’t care if he passes No. 1 in his class, I’d fire him out of the navy in short order, if I had my way.”

Presently out of the darkness came the roar and thunder of the train, the admiral wrung Brydell’s hand as did Billy Bowline, Billy saying, “Good-by, Mr. Brydell, I hopes as how you’ll git through and be a ornament to the sarvice, sir, afore I trips my anchor and sets out for the other coast.”

Brydell went back wonderfully encouraged. The admiral believed in him, and that belief of others in us does wonders. Even Billy Bowline’s appreciation was not lost on Brydell.

The autumn and winter passed rapidly. Lieutenant Brydell’s ship was still cruising in the Pacific, stopping occasionally for letters that were months in reaching their destination. Brydell received several letters from his father, all encouraging in tone, especially after Admiral Beaumont’s letter.

The spring came on apace, and at last one day in May, exactly a year from the time Brydell had gone to Annapolis before, he was notified to present himself before the examining board.

Brydell felt reasonably confident. Not only had he worked hard, but, forced to depend upon himself and to solve his own difficulties, he felt that he stood a better chance of making a four years’ course than if he had been crammed by a tutor to get through his examinations and then make a flat failure afterward.

It was hard on him to say good-by to the Laurisons, and Minna was so distressed at the idea of parting from him that Mrs. Laurison and he agreed that it would be better for him to slip off early in the morning before sunrise, so that the child would be spared the pain of parting. Both Mr. and Mrs. Laurison were up to give him his breakfast and see him off. Mrs. Laurison said to him:—

“If ever your Aunt Emeline said you were a disagreeable boy, I think she must have been a very disagreeable woman, for in the year you have lived with us I don’t think I could have found fault with you if I had tried.”

“Dear Mrs. Laurison, it was because you were all so good to me,” answered Brydell with tears in his eyes.

The farewells were said, and Brydell struck off in the path that led through the field to the little roadside station. Just as he shut the gate that led from the path to the farm enclosures a childish figure, topped by a ruffled dimity sunbonnet, rose from beside the gate.

“I heard you get up,” said Minna, “and I knew you were going to-day, so I slipped out of bed and dressed myself, for I heard mamma say something to you about not telling me good-by because I would cry so; and I’m not a cry-baby, and I want to say good-by too.”

Brydell kissed her and promised to write to her, and although she evidently wanted to cry she did not shed a tear. Brydell started her back to the house and Minna trotted off obediently, but he saw her stop once or twice and put her apron to her eyes.

In a few hours he was at Annapolis and in a few days he had passed a splendid examination and was formally notified that he was a naval cadet at last.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SUMMER CRUISE.

Esdaile was a third-class man, of course, and he was almost the first person that Brydell ran across. Bearing in mind what the admiral had said about Esdaile being ashamed of his father, it was not without a wish to make Esdaile ashamed of himself that Brydell, the first time they met alone, said carelessly:—

“By the way, Esdaile, I believe you are the son of one of the best friends I have in the world—Private Grubb, of the marines. I nearly killed him once, when I was a kid, and after that we came to be tremendously fond of one another.”

“I’d—I’d rather you wouldn’t mention about my father,” answered Esdaile. “You know my mother’s people, the Esdailes, were altogether different from my father’s. My grandfather Esdaile was an ambitious man—the Esdailes are a good family—and left me some money on condition I changed my name, and it would be awkward for me when I’m an officer to have it known that my father is a private of marines.”

“Very awkward for Grubb,” said Brydell coolly; “I should think your father would be awfully ashamed of you. Grubb, you know, is a fine man; every officer he ever served under thinks highly of him; and you are evidently a cad of the most pronounced description. No, I won’t mention the relationship, for Grubb’s sake.”

Now this was highly insubordinate talk from a plebe to a third-class man. Esdaile straightened himself up.

“Oh, come off!” answered Brydell carelessly. “This isn’t any class question; it’s a mere private matter between us two. I say your father, if he is an uneducated man, is twice as much of a gentleman at heart as you are, for all your education and your money and your fine name, because Grubb respects himself, and that’s the first thing about a gentleman, so I’ve been told.”

Esdaile walked off in silent fury. He did not care to undertake to discipline Brydell on such a matter, as it would only be proclaiming what he earnestly desired to conceal, so he swallowed his chagrin and determined to get even with Brydell some other way.

Although hazing is strictly prohibited by act of Congress, the milder form of it, known as “running,” is not wholly unpractised, and Brydell had his experience of singing the clothes list to the tune of “Hail Columbia,” chewing soap, standing on his head, for the amusement of the Third Class, and various other of the boyish tricks that seem to afford such intense satisfaction to the third-class men. Brydell, being a very good-tempered fellow, took it all in good part.

Esdaile had no share in it, but avoided Brydell as much as possible. Brydell soon found out that Esdaile’s reputation for straightforwardness was none of the best. The code of truth-telling is absolutely rigid at the Naval Academy, and a fellow caught in a lie would undoubtedly be forced to leave, whether the wrongdoing came to the ear of the authorities or not.

Now, Esdaile had not actually been caught in a falsehood by any of his classmates, but there was a general sinister impression that he would just as soon lie as tell the truth, provided he was not caught. His recitations had been admirable, and he had very few demerits and stood well with the instructors, but he did not stand so well with his own class. Apparently no one knew of his relationship to the marine, and Brydell was quite above the meanness of telling it.

Early in June the graduating exercises were held, and Lieutenant Brydell’s ship having got to San Francisco a few weeks before, Brydell was delighted one day to get a dispatch from his father, saying he would be at Annapolis before the cadets sailed on their summer cruise.

Oh, the happiness that Brydell felt one June day when he once more hugged his “dear old dad”! Brydell himself had grown and improved so much, and the brief “setting up” process he had gone through with had made him look so much more mature, that he and his father looked more like two brothers than ever.

The lieutenant felt perfectly happy in his boy. He had all along been conscious of the weak points in the boy’s training, and when young Brydell had of his own accord cast aside all indulgence and worked manfully in the face of heart-breaking disappointments, his father’s joy in him knew no bounds. Brydell showed his hands, which were rough and sunburned, to his father, with pride.

“Just look at ’em, dad!” he cried with a natural boyish conceit; “got that by holding the plow and tossing hay and feeding the cattle and chopping wood. You ought to have heard the admiral laugh when he saw me trying to drive the ox-team through the gate. I’m not exactly a first-class farm hand,—I wasn’t worth more than ten dollars a month,—but I didn’t shirk, I can tell you. And you don’t know how much better it was working in the fresh air, with a plenty of wholesome country food to eat, than drudging in an office; and the horses and cows were excellent company. I pity the poor fellows that have to work in city offices. Give me the country every time.”

The lieutenant gazed at him while a mist gathered in his eyes. He could only say: “My brave boy! My brave boy!”

Brydell told his father that he must go out to see the Laurisons, and the lieutenant, nothing loth, went and spent the day. He came home delighted with the kind people, for whom he felt sincere gratitude, and he brought back a large nosegay from little Minna and a childish letter written in a big, round hand to young Brydell.

Before the Constellation sailed, Brydell sent her a cap ribbon with “U. S. S. Constellation” on it in gold letters and a set of cadet buttons for her jacket. Of course every cadet had his “best girl” and perhaps half a dozen other “girls,” generally young ladies older than themselves. But Brydell maintained a mysterious silence about his “best girl,” only admitting that her name was Minna and she had long light hair.

One lovely morning in June the Constellation, that had been lying at anchor in Annapolis Roads for several days, set her white sails and with a fair wind took her majestic way to the open sea. She has never had steam in her, and, except for being frequently repaired and even rebuilt, she is very much the same as in the times when she was one of the crack frigates of the nation and when she made her glorious record as a fighting ship. From the days when she had come off victorious in two fights against ships that were her superiors, and had remained uncaptured, although blockaded by a great fleet for years, in 1812-15, she had been always classed as a lucky ship, and lucky she proved.

To Brydell every moment at sea was happiness. He took to seamanship and navigation as a duck takes to water, much to Admiral Beaumont’s delight, who was not wholly reconciled to the new-fashioned ships, where, as he disgustedly declared, “The chief engineer is captain, and the ship is no better than an iron kettle with an engine inside of her.”

They made their way along the coast leisurely. Every morning the cadets were made to go aloft and over all the rigging for exercise, and they did it like cats. Brydell excelled at this from the first with the utmost smartness. Esdaile, on the contrary, although his class rank was high, did not do at all well in the practical exercises of seamanship. He was growing more unpopular every day with his class, and among the sailors he was hated.

The blue jackets who worked side by side with the cadets on the summer’s cruise were generally fine seamen and honest fellows, and a pleasant feeling existed between them and the cadets, although the distance between an embryo officer and a sailor was necessarily strictly preserved. Brydell enjoyed nothing more than his turn at the wheel, when, with a foremast man, he had his watch.

All sailors can tell plenty of interesting things, and as they all liked Brydell they made the watch pass quickly enough. Not so was it with Esdaile. He treated the sailors with a superciliousness and selfish indifference that made them hate him, and they sometimes took a sly revenge on him by letting things go wrong, for which he was responsible, without telling him.

When he was sharply called to account by the officer of the deck or the executive, there was a universal grin in the fok’sle. With the other cadets the sailors were only anxious to shield them, if anything did go awry. Brydell and Esdaile were upon the most distant terms, and neither showed any disposition to change them.

After a leisurely cruise along the coast they reached Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a soft July evening, and the wind was fair for them to enter the difficult harbor. Brydell, with Atkins, a very smart sailor, was at the wheel when they were weathering the Point.

It requires skilful seamanship for a sailing vessel to weather this dangerous point, where the slightest mistake in the moment to put the helm up or down will place a ship on the rocks. The captain trusted nobody but himself to bring the frigate in. The ship, with all her light canvas set, floated lightly on almost like a phantom ship.

The Piscataqua is one of the most beautiful rivers on the Atlantic coast, and in the pale sunset glow the water shimmered like a sea of opal. The white-winged Constellation came on and on, without tacking, and seemed literally rushing upon her doom as the rocky point reared itself menacingly in her way. But when so near that her bowsprit almost touched the rock, the captain, who stood at the steersman’s side, gave the word, and the ship, answering her helm beautifully, came about like magic and rounded the dangerous point.

In a little while she reached her anchorage, and came to anchor in true man-of-war style, her sails being furled and her anchors dropped in an inconceivably short time.

Brydell was at that happy age when every change seems delightful, and he was just as glad to get ashore at Portsmouth as if he had not enjoyed every moment when he was actually cruising.

He looked forward with the greatest pleasure to seeing his old friend Grubb, and only regretted the forms which must be observed between an officer and a private. Grubb was such a sensible, self-respecting fellow that he was not at all likely to let Brydell’s natural generosity lead him beyond the right point with a subordinate.

Brydell made up his mind that Grubb would keep off the ship if possible, and determined the first time he got leave to go ashore to hunt up his humble friend. But the very next morning, happening to go on deck, he ran across Grubb delivering a message to the officer of the deck.

Grubb touched his cap respectfully to Brydell, but his pleasure was evident in his handsome sunburned face. The officer was just handing him a note. Brydell could not help shaking hands with the marine, saying to the officer, “Private Grubb and I are old friends. I have known him ever since I was a little lad. He got me the very worst wigging I ever had, for almost killing him with my parlor rifle.”

“I dunno about that, sir,” answered Grubb, blushing. “I’ve been in the sarvice twenty-four years, now going on twenty-five. I ain’t never asked for promotion, because I ain’t a eddicated man, and I’m very well satisfied with my increased pay, but I reckon I’ll stay Private Grubb as long as the government’ll let me.”

Just then Esdaile appeared, strolling along the deck. The instant Grubb caught sight of him the marine’s face changed and hardened. The officer detained him a moment to add something to the note he had written, and Brydell stood talking with the marine. Esdaile’s face did not show the slightest recognition.

No one on the ship except Brydell knew of the relationship, and as he had not thought fit to mention it, Esdaile in his selfish soul hoped that it would not be suspected. Certainly it would not be from the manner of either father or son.

The officer had come back then, and giving his note to Grubb, and civilly returning his salute, the marine went over the side and was soon being pulled away in the boat.

Brydell remained talking with the officer, who was very friendly to him, and telling the story of the parlor rifle which came so near being a tragedy instead of a comedy.

“And my father and Admiral Beaumont both say that Grubb is one of the most deserving men they ever knew, and he could have had promotion lots of times, except that he is a timid sort of an old fellow about some things, although as brave as a lion in others.”

“Those men are very valuable,” answered the officer, “and you youngsters ought to treat them with the highest consideration.”

“Indeed, Grubb and I have always been the greatest chums in the world,” said Brydell, showing his boyish dimples in a smile. “The only thing I regret in being a cadet is that I can’t go and spend the day with Grubb at his quarters as I used to when I was ten years old, and eat salt pork and boiled onions; how good it tasted then.”

Brydell had despised Esdaile before, but after that utter ignoring of his father, Esdaile became even more contemptible than ever in his eyes. Nor did he ever see the slightest recognition afterward between the two. They constantly met on shore, but never exchanged a word or a sign, except the conventional salute.

Brydell indeed could not go to Grubb’s quarters as he had done as a little boy, but when he had leave, he would sometimes get a boat and he and Grubb would go fishing as in the old days, and be very happy together. Everybody on the ship knew of the old association between them, and the fondness of the smart young cadet for the grizzled marine was perfectly understood.

CHAPTER VIII.
A QUESTION OF HONOR.

Esdaile avoided Brydell more than ever at Portsmouth, and as they were in different classes it was easy for them to see but little of each other. One night, though, Brydell having come on board, after a day’s leave spent fishing with Grubb, was met by a third-class man as soon as he had got on board and reported. This was his old acquaintance Cunliffe, who had turned out a remarkably quiet and level-headed young fellow and belonged to the section in every class which keeps up the tone and discipline of the class.

“Brydell,” said he, “will you come into the steerage with me? Something very important is on hand, and we want your testimony.”

Brydell went, quite ignorant of what was up, except the surmise that some infringement of the code of cadet ethics was under discussion, and he knew from Cunliffe’s manner it was something serious. For among these cadets there is a rigid code of ethics which is carried out with a stern impartiality that would do honor to much older men.

Uncontaminated by the influences of self-interest, which are learned later in life, these young fellows insist upon certain points of honor so tenaciously that they can practically drive any cadet out of the academy who does not live up to them. And the greatest of these is truthfulness.

Any failure to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is regarded as unfitting a cadet for any association with his fellows, and so well understood is this that there are few offences against truth. Two things, lying and tale-bearing, are treated as crimes, and a cadet convicted of them is not only put in Coventry, but every other cadet makes it his business to load the offender down with demerits, so that the class may be relieved of his presence. It is stern, but the effect is indescribably good.

Brydell followed Cunliffe to the steerage and sitting around the table were about a dozen of the oldest and steadiest members of the third class, while others were grouped about as listeners. Esdaile, looking deadly pale, sat in a chair a little way off.

“Mr. Brydell,” said the oldest of them, Maxwell,—known as “Old McSwell,” because of his elegant appearance, but who was one of the most reliable young fellows in the class,—“we want your testimony in regard to a question affecting Mr. Esdaile’s honor. It has been whispered about the ship that Mr. Esdaile is the son of Private Grubb of the marines, whom you say you have known nearly all your life. The difference in their names is explained by Mr. Esdaile taking another name. Some days ago Mr. Esdaile went to call on the captain’s wife at the hotel, and in the course of conversation complained that this report, which he considered injurious to him, was going about. He denied flatly that Private Grubb was his father, and said he was the son of Thomas Esdaile. The captain’s wife thereupon denied it and has been very much embarrassed by hearing from the very best authority that Private Grubb really is Mr. Esdaile’s father. Can you give us any facts in the case?”

The first idea that occurred to Brydell as he looked at the culprit was, “What a fool!” Esdaile had stood near the top of his class; still he lacked the good sense that almost invariably goes with good morals and had told a lie which, like all lies, must in the end be detected. Brydell could feel no sympathy for Esdaile, but the idea of poor Grubb’s distress shook him. He hesitated a moment or two before he spoke.

“I know all the facts, I think,” he said in a low voice. “Private Grubb is Mr. Esdaile’s father. I have known it ever since I knew Private Grubb, seven or eight years ago. Mr. Esdaile’s grandfather gave him some money on condition that he should take the name of his mother’s family, Esdaile. I want to say right here that Private Grubb is one of the best men in the world. Admiral Beaumont and my father have both said so a hundred times in my presence, and although he is a plain, uneducated man, not one of us here need be ashamed to own him.”

At this there was a long and painful pause. Esdaile’s face, that had been pale, turned a greenish hue; he had still enough sense left to feel the accumulated scorn of his classmates. It was a solemn moment for those young judges. Esdaile had not been popular among them, but they fully realized that they were branding him in a way he would probably retain as long as he lived.

“It is the opinion of your class,” continued Maxwell after a pause, “that it would be best for you to resign at once. If you think differently, you may depend upon it that the class will take every means of making the academy too hot to hold you. Some liars and tale-bearers have been found who tried to stick it out, but there is no instance recorded of any one of them succeeding. You may go now.”

In a few minutes they had all scattered. Most of them went on deck, where in little groups they discussed the matter gravely and with heavy hearts, for the presence of meanness and dishonor is among the most painful things in the world.

The officers said no word to the cadets about it, nor did the cadets speak of it to the officers. It was within their own province to maintain the standard of probity in their class, and they had a stern and effective way of doing it. Therefore when for the next few days no cadet spoke to Esdaile except when absolutely required in the performance of duty, the officers saw plainly enough what was in the wind.

Within another week Esdaile received an imposing document from the navy department, and everybody knew that his resignation had been accepted. He formally announced it to the captain, who asked no questions. The officers bade him a distant good-by, and in two hours from the time Esdaile received the notification he was off the ship and, as his classmates supposed, forever out of the navy.

Brydell had been almost broken-hearted over the effect of Esdaile’s disgrace upon poor Grubb. He wanted to go to see the marine at once, but could not get leave for a day or two. Then he was suddenly taken down with a violent cold and fever. He managed to write a few agitated lines to Grubb, but got no answer. It was nearly ten days before he was well enough to leave the ship and go in search of his friend.

It was about dusk of the midsummer evening when Brydell, rather pale from his recent illness, was going toward Grubb’s quarters. Halfway there he met the surgeon, Dr. Wayne, a kindly, elderly man, who Brydell knew had known the marine for many years.

“Can you tell me, sir, anything about Private Grubb of the marines?” asked Brydell without mentioning Esdaile at all.

“I don’t know whether he can be called Private Grubb of the marines any longer,” answered the doctor with solemn eyes. “His time was up the very day he heard of his son’s disgrace. He was on his way to the office ready to reënlist when he heard it. He walked straight to the office,—you know what a fine, erect fellow he was,—asked for his discharge without a word of explanation, except to know when he could get his papers, and turned away. He had not got a block before he fell. People ran and picked him up,—he had on his uniform,—and they were going to carry him to the hospital, but he wouldn’t let them. He said he was out of the service, and he had no right to go, and no wish to go, nor could they make him go. I happened to be near by and went to him. I said: ‘You must go to the hospital.’ You see, he was such a sort of institution that I couldn’t quite take in why he shouldn’t obey orders. He tried to touch his cap and managed to say: ‘I’ve worn this uniform twenty-four years and I have never disobeyed an officer, but I can’t go to the hospital.’ He became so excited over it that for fear it would kill him I let them take him into a little tavern at hand, a respectable sort of a place patronized by workingmen. I saw he had had a stroke, and that it was a mortal one. He asked to be left alone with me, and then that poor fellow begged and pleaded with me not to send him to the hospital, where everybody would know him and know of his son’s disgrace—he told me all about it. I couldn’t have forced him to go after that, if it had cost me my commission. He’s going to die, and as he is a good and faithful man he shall die in as much peace as I can give him.”

Brydell grew a little faint at the words, and in an instant he was carried back to that day so long ago when old Capps the boatswain had been carried out of the navy yard gate on a caisson. He had not been brought face to face with majestic Death since.

“No—he can’t get well,” answered the doctor quietly. “Poor honest Grubb is dying of grief and shame over his son’s disgrace. I and the other surgeons here have worked over him faithfully; if he had been the ranking officer in the marine corps, we couldn’t have done any more. But when a man is sick of life it is an incurable disease.”

“Go to see him, by all means. If you can rouse him, you will do him more good than all the doctors in the world can.”

Brydell walked rapidly through the fast-closing evening to the little tavern in a back street. The proprietor, in his shirt sleeves, answered his inquiries civilly enough.

“We’re doin’ all we can for poor Grubb,” he said, “but I never see a man so hopeless.”

Brydell stumbled up the narrow stairs to the little back room where, in response to his knock, Grubb’s voice weakly answered: “Come in.” Brydell entered.

On the narrow bed Grubb’s gaunt figure, only a little while ago so trim and soldierly, was stretched out. His skin had lost its ruddy glow and was quite grayish, and his eyes had sunk back into his head until they seemed cavernous. Brydell advanced to the bed and took his hand. He was not prepared for the change in poor Grubb, and his boyish face wore a startled look.

“I knowed you would come as soon as you could,” the marine began. “I asked for you right after—right after—it happened. They told me you was sick. I got that note you wrote me. It’s a mighty comfort to me to know there’s one honest boy in the world.”

Brydell could not say a word. He sat down in a chair by the bed, and in spite of every effort to control himself tears started from his eyes and fell on Grubb’s thin hands.

“Now, Mr. Brydell, what are you a-cryin’ for? You don’t want me to live in this here world where things is so hard. And you see I’m to blame some about that boy. I give him all I had, and I didn’t require nothin’ o’ him in return. When he first began to be ashamed of me, instead of makin’ him see as how I was to be treated with respect, because I was his father and a respectable man to boot, I let it go and sneaked out of his way. But I think he must ’a’ been born a liar, ’cause your father the leftenant indulged you just as much as I did my boy, but you allers was a up and down truthful boy.”

“No, sir, and I don’t count on hearin’, neither. He’s got some money, and as long as that holds out it’s all he cares for. And besides, I ain’t got no pay now. You see I just felt it like a flash, the minute I heard o’ that boy’s disgrace, as if I didn’t want to wear this here uniform unless I could walk down the main street lookin’ folks square in the eye. I had worn that uniform twenty-four years and there wasn’t no commissioned officer as kep’ himself straighter nor cleaner nor prouder than Grubb the marine.”

“Well, Mr. Brydell, I couldn’t look anybody in the face after that, so I asked for my discharge papers instead of reënlistin’, and then I dropped down in the street and it give me sort o’ relief to know that I couldn’t git over it, because them doctors,—they’re mighty kind and attentive, and they sets where you’re settin’ and tries to skeer me into gittin’ well,—and I know I can’t git well, and I don’t want to git well.”

Brydell could not say a word. There was something imposing in the fierce, simple honor of the man who preferred dying to living because he “couldn’t look anybody in the face again.” Presently Grubb spoke again feebly: “I hope you’ll give my respectful compliments to the leftenant and Admiral Beaumont, and tell ’em as how I hope I’ve did my duty to their satisfaction.”

He sat there and talked a long time with Grubb—talked with him until he had barely time to catch the ship’s boat, and had to run every step of the way to the dock.

CHAPTER IX.
GRUBB’S HONORABLE DISCHARGE.

All the night and the next day Brydell’s heart was heavy for his old friend. The next evening at the same time he got leave. The officers knew of Brydell’s affection for Grubb, and he had no difficulty in getting off when they knew where he wished to go.

Walking rapidly along the street from the wharf, whom should Brydell almost run over but Admiral Beaumont with Billy Bowline as always rolling along behind him.

“I was just thinking about you, boy!” shouted the admiral. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

“Going to see poor Grubb, sir,” answered Brydell, shaking hands with the admiral and nodding pleasantly to Billy Bowline. And then with the admiral’s hand upon his shoulder, standing in the narrow, fast-darkening street, Brydell told of Esdaile’s disgrace and of the terrible blow it was to poor Grubb.

His story was punctuated with explosions of wrath from the admiral, such as “Infamous cad, the boy! Shoot me, but I’d like to get that young villain on a ship of mine! Why didn’t you lick him, sir? Why didn’t you lick him when you found the rascal out? Poor old Grubb—one of the best men I ever knew; ten good men like him will keep a whole ship’s company in order.”

Billy Bowline’s indignation was expressed by sundry snorts, sniffs, and angry hitchings up of his trowsers, but was not the less emphatic because not expressed in the admiral’s vigorous language.

“Come along, sir,” cried the admiral when Brydell had finished his brief account. “I’m going to see Grubb with you.”

The admiral mounted the rickety stairs with his quick step, as alert as Brydell’s. Billy Bowline remained below because, as he whispered to Brydell:—

“There ain’t no love lost between sailors and jirenes, and Grubb, he were the best jirene I ever see; but I don’t reckon as how he keers about seein’ sailor men when he is in trouble.”

After knocking at the door the admiral and Brydell entered Grubb’s little room. By the light of the small lamp they could see him distinctly, and he looked more gaunt, more ashy, and nearer death than the evening before. But he was feebly delighted to see them.

“How’s this, Grubb?” began the admiral in his “quarterdeck voice.” “You must get up. You must get well. You were the best orderly I ever had, and it never occurred to me that you intended getting out of the service like this.”

“Thankee, sir, for your good opinions,” answered Grubb, a light appearing in his sunken eyes, “but I can’t git well.”

“Nonsense, nonsense. You’ve had trouble with your boy; but you must bear up—bear up, sir.”

“Ah, sir, askin’ your pardon, you don’t know what it is to have trouble with your own flesh and blood! I couldn’t abear to be p’inted out as Grubb, the feller whose son was drove out of his class for lyin’. I’m a plain man, sir, and maybe that’s why I hold on to be respectable so hard—I ain’t got nothin’ else. I didn’t think, though, ’twould go so hard with me. I made up my mind in a minute to git out o’ the corps and take off this uniform as I respects and loves. But I didn’t think to fall down in the street, and I know I’ve got a shock as I’ll never get over.”

The admiral could not but believe him. For three or four days Brydell and the admiral went to see Grubb regularly, and so did Dr. Wayne, and it was plain to the most inexperienced eye that the marine was traveling fast out of this world. At last one evening about the usual hour of dusk, when Brydell went in the room he saw that Grubb had started on the great journey. His face was slightly flushed and his eyes bright, and occasionally his mind would wander.

“I’ve been a-waitin’ for you, Mr. Brydell,” he cried in a weak voice. “There’s two things as I want done. One is, I want you to git that little Bible out o’ my haversack hanging up yonder and read them promises about them as believes in Jesus Christ shall live though they die. And the other is, to put my best uniform on me. You see, sir, something’s goin’ to happen; it’s a inspection, seems to me, but my head ain’t clear—yes, it’s a inspection sure. And Private Grubb ain’t never been reported at inspection in twenty-four, goin’ on twenty-five years, as long as I’ve been in the service.”

“Don’t you think you’d better wait until the doctor comes, Grubb?” asked Brydell soothingly.

“Lord, no, sir! I’ve got to be on time—there’s the bugle now, sir”—and indeed a faint echo of the bugle came through the open windows from the Constellation lying out in the harbor, half a mile away. He was so insistent that Brydell went to the closet and took out a new private’s uniform that hung there. He brought it to the bed and laid it down. Grubb began to finger it, and his face changed and his manner calmed.

“I know what ’tis, sir,” he said. “It ain’t no inspection here on earth I’m in for; it’s a inspection by the Great Captain as to how we’ve did our duty. But all the same, Mr. Brydell, I want this here uniform on—because I always said I wanted to die in it. Howsomever, do you think it’s right, as I might get my discharge papers any day, for me to be wearin’ it and bein’ buried in it?”

“Well, sir, I’m glad to hear you say that. It does seem hard if, after I’ve served twenty-four, goin’ on twenty-five years, I’m to die and be buried like a plain cit.[2] And I’d like you to ask the admiral as how if I couldn’t have the right sort of a funeral; you know we give it to old Capps. I ain’t set on the band particklar, but I want the flag on my coffin, and I want to be carried by my messmates. Now will you ask the admiral all about this?”

“Yes,” said Brydell in a trembling voice. Then holding Grubb up by main force he managed to get the uniform on him, the poor fellow helping feverishly and showing unexpected strength. When at last it was done Brydell got the thumbed Bible and read to him those promises of comfort to the dying.

“That’s it, that’s it, Mr. Brydell. Life’s a sort o’ puzzle to me. I don’t know where my boy got his bad ways from,—and I’m afraid he won’t get over ’em,—but if ever you have a chance, I want you to befriend him for the sake of poor old Grubb. Ha! ha! What a 118 funny little shaver you were! I can see you now, sir, the day I grabbed you for tearing up the turf at the navy yard and the way you banged away at me with that little rifle.”

“Don’t you think you had better keep quiet and try to go to sleep? The doctor will be here presently,” said Brydell, trying to restrain his tears.

In a little while the door opened softly and the doctor walked in. He went up to the bed. “He’s asleep, sir,” said Brydell in a whisper. The doctor bent over him and listened for his breathing.

So poor Grubb, after having served twenty-four, going on twenty-five years, was buried in his uniform and taken covered with the flag to his last resting-place, and nobody asked a word about his discharge papers; the admiral arranged all that.

Behind the coffin of his humble friend walked Brydell, in full uniform; and as he kept the slow step of the funeral march solemnly played by the band, he thought to himself: “This man was a poor uneducated private, but I hope I shall be able to have as good a report to give the Great Captain.”

CHAPTER X.
IN COMMAND OF THE SQUADRON.

One night about seven years after this, the handsome fifty-four gun frigate, the Naiad, flagship of Admiral Beaumont’s squadron, and the sloops-of-war Vixen and Spitfire lay at anchor off a town on the South American coast.

The night was clear, although there was no moon, and the harbor lights shone steadily. The town itself was full of life and light, the governor’s castle blazed, and across the dark water floated the inspiring music of several military bands. A grand official reception in honor of the admiral and his officers was in progress.

Walking the deck of the Naiad was Brydell, now a handsome young ensign. He wore a look of sublime resignation. He had a wholesome appetite for receptions, but it being his watch that night he was obliged to remain on board. In vain had he made all sorts of advantageous offers of exchanging duty with the other young watch officers, of whom Maxwell, his old acquaintance of the Constellation, was one, and Cunliffe was another. Brydell had pleaded, cajoled, and stormed; the other fellows only laughed at him and went off to enjoy themselves.

“Just look over there at the Spitfire,” growled Brydell to himself—the Spitfire was commanded by Brydell’s father. “Dad hates these affairs and has let all the fellows go and stays at home and keeps ship himself. I wish our captain was an unsocial widower like dad.”

And as if to exasperate him further came a burst of music from the shore, borne fitfully over the water. Brydell glanced cynically up at the frigate’s lights which indicated by their arrangement that both admiral and captain were on shore, while the Spitfire, a short distance off, although looming up indistinctly, yet showed by the lanterns on her shadowy spars that her captain was aboard.

“However,” thought Brydell, slamming his cap fiercely on his head, “Admiral Beaumont is nearer right than my father, for he gets all the solid fun there is out of life. That’s the sort of admiral I mean to be.”

Brydell had enjoyed every moment of his cruise on the flagship. It was Admiral Beaumont’s last sea service before his retirement. They expected to sail for home within a few days, and when the admiral hauled down his flag it would be for good. He had been known as a great martinet, but for the last few weeks he had become rather more indulgent, especially in the matter of shore leave; and now, for the first time on the cruise, the ship had on her only one lieutenant, Verdery; one ensign, Brydell; two young naval cadets, and one assistant engineer.

As Brydell walked the deck some strange thoughts crossed his mind. They had that day taken on board from the Vixen a number of men whose time was up, and who were to be conveyed back to the United States, while the Vixen remained on the South Atlantic station.

And among them was a sailor rated on the ship’s books as “William Black, able seaman,” whom Brydell instantly recognized, in spite of a heavy full beard, as Esdaile. He had heard nothing of Grubb’s disgraced son in all those seven years, and had thought that an American man-of-war was the last place on earth to look for him. But he concluded that Esdaile had no doubt spent his little patrimony and had probably enlisted for a living, failing in other things.

Esdaile or Black had given no sign of recognition, and probably hoped that his altered name, his beard, and the changes of seven years would keep his identity unknown. The meeting had given Brydell a shock. He had never forgotten his promise to poor Grubb to befriend his son if possible, but he had had no means of doing so.

Then his thoughts turned to pleasanter things. He had received a letter from Minna Laurison that day, enclosing her photograph in her white commencement gown. She was a pretty girl of seventeen then, and eager to enter college, which she would do the next year.

Brydell had been back to the Laurison place several times since he had spent his year of farm work there, and Minna and he had continued fast friends. Minna, in her enthusiasm for the higher education, was loftily indifferent to receptions, never having been to one; and Brydell made her very indignant and amused himself very much by promising her that her head would no doubt be completely turned by the first she should go to.

“Never mind,” thought Brydell to himself as he walked up and down the deserted quarterdeck. “Some time or other I’ll go to a more gorgeous reception than this, and I’ll have a sweeter girl to take than any here—it will be Minna Laurison.”

The sea had been rough when the boats put off, and it grew rougher as the wind suddenly began to rise. Lieutenant Verdery, one of the oldest lieutenants, who was left in command of the ship, had gone forward for a few moments and presently came back. The wind began then to blow in earnest, and the big frigate was rocking like a cockle shell. The sky, too, became black and lowering in an inconceivably short time.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if we were in for a norther,” said Verdery. “We have had most uncommon good weather for this coast, and it’s about time for it to change. I shouldn’t be surprised if the admiral got wet coming off to-night.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t get off at all,” answered Brydell, pointing to the northwest.

A great mass of black clouds had collected as if by magic, and at that instant it was torn by a flash of forked green light that seemed to rend the heavens. Nothing could have been more sudden. Verdery dashed below to look at the glass and to see the engineer, for if the storm struck them, the safety of the ship and of the four hundred men she carried would depend upon the power of the engines to keep her off the giant rocks that fringed the shore.

Almost instantly the distant roar of the advancing tempest was heard, and in another moment the cabin orderly came running up excitedly to Brydell.

“If you please, sir,” he said, “Mr. Verdery was just going in the cabin to look at the glass when, one of the ports being loose, the wind blew it in and it struck Mr. Verdery right full in the forehead and knocked him insensible. The cabin steward run to him to do everything he could, but Mr. Verdery can’t give no orders, and the steward, as was a hospital steward once, says as how it was a pretty bad blow, and when Mr. Verdery comes to, he can’t give no orders ’cause both his eyes is bleeding and he can’t see.”

For one moment Brydell’s heart stood still. He was the next officer in rank to Verdery on board, the only others besides the assistant engineer being Manning and Buxton, both his juniors, and upon him would rest the command of the flagship and her company in a gale which promised to be a hurricane. In another moment, though, his courage rose.

“I can only do my best,” he thought, “and all my life and training has been steadily toward making me fit for such an emergency; and all I can do is to keep off shore and trust in God.”

At that very moment the advance guard of the storm struck them. As they were at anchor their canvas was secure, but their steam was low, and the wind was driving them straight on to destruction. The Naiad’s head had been pointed seaward, but as the tempest struck her it knocked the great frigate around as if it had been a paper ship, and her heavy anchors began to drag.

“Call the boatswain!” was Brydell’s first quick order, given calmly enough although his heart was thumping like a steam engine, and his next was, “Call the signal man!”

In another moment the sharp call of the whistle was heard to get up the anchor, and above the darkness the night signal went up to the other ships, “Up anchors and go to sea!”

Their only safety lay in seeking the open ocean. Manning and Buxton were on deck immediately, cool and composed. Crawford, the young engineer, was at his post working hard to get up steam, and in a few minutes the throb of the engines, slow but steady, was heard.

Brydell was at the wheel with Atkins, his old acquaintance of his cadet days, who was now a quartermaster and remarkably cool-headed and reliable. The helm was put hard aport, and in the teeth of the gale the ship was brought about by slow degrees.

A black and blinding rain had come along with thunder, lightning, and wind, and it was only during the flashes of lightning that the Vixen and the Spitfire could be seen. Both sloops-of-war had more powerful engines for their size and worked better than the Naiad. As soon as the signal was sent up, Brydell saw that both ships had come about and were heading seaward for safety. They made but slow progress, but still they were moving steadily and passed close to the Naiad on the port quarter. The Naiad was struggling with the fury of the storm and, although her head had been brought partly around, she lay in the trough of the sea, her laboring engines seemingly unable to move her against the force of the hurricane.

All her company were on deck except the force down in the engine rooms, and the men had begun to make silent preparation for the fight for their lives. Most of them had kicked off their shoes and stripped off their jackets, expecting every moment to be engulfed in the boiling sea.

Suddenly a flash of lightning that lasted nearly a minute and played over the whole heavens showed them the Spitfire, passing them easily though slowly, followed by the Vixen. Captain Brydell was standing on the bridge of the Spitfire, and saw at a glance that Brydell was in command. He at once surmised that Lieutenant Verdery was disabled.

As he forged ahead of the flagship, Captain Brydell took off his cap and waved it; and Brydell, knowing the spirit of fortitude that his father expected of him, waved his cap back in that one moment of ghastly light. Then, as the darkness descended, a cheer rang out above the howling of the wind; it was the men on the Naiad cheering their more fortunate comrades, while they themselves seemed doomed to destruction.

But at that moment the frigate, as if gathering herself for a mighty effort, moved forward a little, then stopped and staggered, and again she was moving ahead, although but slowly and unsteadily. Brydell managed to keep her head to the wind, and by degrees as the steam got up she made a little more headway.

In the blinding flashes of light they could see the two sloops-of-war for a while ahead of them, but when they had got a mile or two from shore not even the lightning gleam could pierce the whole of the awful darkness.

Brydell’s sensations as he stood by the wheel, occasionally leaving it to mount the bridge for a minute or two, could not be described. He was simply doing what any other officer could do or would have done, but no young officer in the world, having for his first command the safety of a flagship in a furious gale and the lives of four hundred souls, could feel anything but awed and solemn.

The quickness with which he had seized the situation and had signaled the course to pursue had inspired the men with confidence, and he was well supported by the coolness and steadiness of the young midshipmen. Presently, while walking forward to see how things were going, he was met by the cabin orderly, who in attempting to salute lost his cap in the shrieking wind.

“Mr. Verdery, sir, has come to,” he yelled in Brydell’s ear above the roaring of wind and water, “and the cabin steward is helpin’ him on deck; but he can’t see ’cause both his eyes were hurt by that ’ere port blowin’ out.”

In the half-darkness that the ship’s lights could only pierce like star points Brydell saw Verdery, with his eyes bandaged, being helped up the companionway. Brydell hurried to him.

“You have done admirably, Mr. Brydell,” was Verdery’s generous greeting, “and it shall be known to your credit. My first dread when I recovered my senses was that you had not grasped the situation, but when I asked I found out that you had put to sea as promptly as any officer could.”

“And I immediately signaled the other ships to go to sea also,” replied Brydell.

At that a sudden change came over Verdery’s pale and anxious face which was visible below the bandages. In the midst of the horrors and dangers of the hour he suddenly burst out laughing.

“Quite right you were,” said he, “but your father was in command of the Spitfire. I wonder how he would have felt if he had known it was you who ordered him to go outside?”

“He did know it, sir,” answered Brydell, smiling faintly. “They passed quite close to us, and a great flash of light came, and I saw my father as plainly as I see you now, and of course he saw I was in command. He waved his cap to me, and I waved mine back at him.”

Verdery, in spite of his dangerous hurt and helpless condition, remained on deck, but he gave no orders, nor did he find it necessary to make any suggestions, and his presence was only from the feeling that he wished to be found at his post, even if he could not do duty.

The fury of the storm continued, but the Naiad, with her engines revolving quickly, was better able to withstand it. They had now worked their way well out to sea and were in fairly good condition to weather the gale.

Brydell, although absorbed in trying to save the ship, had yet noticed Black, the seaman whom he knew to be Esdaile. There was little for the men to do, so they gathered forward on the fok’sle ready for any emergency.

Not so Black, who stood as far aft as discipline would allow, and apart from his mates. Just then the fury of the gale blew a part of the main staysail out of the bolt ropes, and the men sprang aloft to reef the ragged sail.

It was Black’s duty to go and he went, but Brydell, watching him in the half-light, saw that he shirked his work. He was the last man aloft, and he was so careless in what he was doing that the captain of the maintop, pushing him aside, secured the sail himself. Black dropped to the deck unconcernedly, close by Brydell.

“My man,” said Brydell sharply, “you must be smarter at your duty than that.”

Without a word Black rushed at Brydell and with one blow felled him to the deck; then, as if maddened, he jumped on him and began kicking him furiously. In an instant a dozen brawny arms had seized the insubordinate sailor and he was dragged below, fighting and resisting violently.

Neither the blow nor the kicks had seriously hurt Brydell. He was dazed by the suddenness of it, but in half a minute he was on his feet, none the worse but for a few bruises. The men, seeing his escape and knowing how much the safety of all on board depended on the young ensign, with one accord gave him three thundering cheers that echoed above the roaring of the storm.

All night the tempest raved, and when a ghastly dawn followed, the ship was still fighting for her life. Brydell did not once leave the deck, but toward noon the wind calmed, and although the sea still ran high the fury of the storm was over.

About two o’clock in the day the Spitfire was sighted. Brydell, knowing her superior speed, signaled: “Report us all right and we will be in some time to-day.”

The Spitfire signaled back: “Congratulations. Who commands?” The answer came: “Ensign Brydell. Verdery hurt, but not seriously.”

CHAPTER XI.
A SAFE RETURN.

Just at sunset that night the anxious group of officers on the dock caught sight of the smoke from the Naiad’s funnels, and in a little while the great frigate came in sight. As she neared her anchorage in the sunset glow they could see the scarcity of officers on her decks; there were only Brydell, Manning, and Buxton; for, although Verdery was on deck, he was seated in a chair with his eyes bound up.

“Gentlemen,” said Admiral Beaumont to his officers as the ship was hove to and anchored in seamanlike style, “yonder shows what can be done by a lot of schoolboys who know their duty and can do it. The eldest of those young officers, young Brydell, is scarcely more than a boy, yet he acted with all the boldness and decision of a man, and has done as well as you or I or any of us could.”

And then a cheer went up from the crowds on the dock, the admiral leading and waving his cap enthusiastically. As soon as a boat could be set off Admiral Beaumont, the captain, and the officers went aboard.

When Brydell met them at the gangway he was far from being the trim and fresh-looking young fellow he had been twenty-four hours before. His eyes were heavy from want of sleep, and his face evidently needed washing. His uniform had got wet and dried on him without improving his appearance in the least. But Admiral Beaumont saw none of this; he only wrung Brydell’s hand without speaking. Brydell, with a flush rising in his wan face, said, smiling:—

“No accidents, admiral, except Mr. Verdery’s with his eyes, and the surgeon says that will not be serious, and one staysail torn, but I think it can be mended.”

Verdery, holding on to the surgeon’s arm, rose to shake hands with the admiral. “And I wish to tell you, sir,” he said loudly so everybody could hear him, “that I was disabled at the very beginning of the storm and never gave an order, and the safety of the ship and her company is due entirely to the coolness, ability, and courage of Mr. Brydell, who commanded through it all, and that of the other officers acting under his orders.”

Brydell turned crimson; he had only done his duty, and he felt ashamed to be made a hero of in that way.

“Any other officer, I am sure, would have done as well,” he managed to stammer. “Mr. Crawford, Mr. Manning, Mr. Buxton—all did equally well.”

“Very true,” said the admiral, smiling. “It is presumed that all officers do their duty intelligently in an emergency, but it is very great good fortune for a young officer to have a chance for distinction, and to be equal to the occasion, and I desire to express my very great satisfaction at your conduct.”

The other two young midshipmen and the engineer were also highly praised, nor was Verdery’s admirable example in remaining on deck forgotten, and the Naiad was indeed a happy ship. And in a little while a boat was seen pulling from the Spitfire, and in a few minutes Captain Brydell stepped aboard the Naiad.

Brydell was so worn out with fatigue and excitement that as soon as the captain resumed command he would have gone below at once except for the expectation of seeing his father, but he waited for that. Captain Brydell had meant to shake hands with him formally in the presence of so many officers and men, but before they knew it, almost, father and son were in each other’s arms. The admiral took Brydell by the shoulder.

“Young man,” said he, “do you go below and go to sleep. Captain Brydell and I want to hear all about the affair from someone who observed your gallant conduct, and will do it justice much more than you would—so go.”

Brydell needed no second order. He went below, and throwing himself, all dressed as he was, upon his bunk, in five minutes was sleeping like a log.

CHAPTER XII.
BRYDELL REDEEMS HIS PROMISE.

When Brydell waked it was near daylight next morning. His first thoughts were confused and then the recollection of Black’s blow and the terrible consequences to a sailor of striking an officer rushed to his mind. And he remembered poor Grubb, his early friend, and thought to himself: “If I can do anything for Esdaile, I will for Grubb’s sake.”

He was so troubled that he could sleep no more, and dressed and went on deck very early. As soon as the regular routine was gone through, the admiral sent for him into the cabin, where he asked an exact account of everything, especially in regard to Black’s attack on him.

Brydell at once told him that he felt convinced Black was Esdaile. This troubled Admiral Beaumont as it had troubled Brydell. He had sincerely respected poor Grubb, and the spectacle of his boy’s downfall was a painful one.

“I have issued an order this morning for a court-martial, and you will probably be the first witness called,” said he.

“Admiral,” said Brydell after a moment, “I would like your permission to see Black; I don’t care anything for him, but I promised my poor old friend to do what I could for his son, and I’d like to tell him that I haven’t any animosity toward him.”

The admiral gave his permission and Brydell went below to the dark place where Black was in irons. He was sitting up with a scowl on his face, and even in the dim light of the gruesome place Brydell saw that it was Esdaile.

“I’m sorry to see you here,” said he when the marine on guard had turned his back. “The more so that I believe your father was a man I loved very much.”

“I’m Esdaile, if that is what you mean,” answered the supposed Black coolly. “Of course I’ve gone to the dogs, driven to it by being driven out of my class. My money went a long time ago, and as I knew no way of making a living but by shipping before the mast, here I am.”

Brydell said not a word, but the thought of poor Grubb, his simple honesty, his mistaken indulgence to his boy, his enduring poverty, and privation all his life for this boy almost overcame him. Esdaile, watching Brydell’s face, saw he was deeply moved, and so touching is the sight of magnanimity and sympathy that few hearts can withstand it. Esdaile’s could not.

After a few moments he broke the painful pause, saying hesitatingly and with something like a sob between his words, “And when I saw you standing there last night, an officer, and with such a chance for distinction, I couldn’t help hating you; and when you spoke to me sharply about my duty, I went crazy, I believe, and struck you. Now I suppose I’ll have five or ten years in prison and after that I’ll take my choice between the workhouse and the jail.”

Brydell, like most courageous and upright men, had a tender heart, and the words of the man before him, scarcely a year older than himself, gave him a powerful shock.

“I’m sorry to hear you talk in that way,” he said after a moment; “but I want to tell you this—that although I shall have to tell exactly what happened before the court-martial, I can’t find in my heart the least feeling of revenge against poor old Grubb’s son, and when you are let out of prison, if you’ll come to me, I’ll do what I can for you, because I promised him when he was dying”—Brydell paused, and a slight change came over Esdaile’s face at this, but he said nothing and Brydell turned away.

The next day but one the court met, and it made short work with Esdaile. The testimony was complete, and the offence of striking an officer, under the circumstances, was almost as grave as if it were in time of war.

When Brydell was called upon for his evidence he gave it in a plain and straightforward way, and his examination brought out the fact that the alleged Black was the son of Grubb the marine, who had been known to one or two of the older officers in the court. Brydell could not but make the best showing he could for Esdaile, and something in Esdaile’s face seemed to indicate that a humanizing process was going on within him. It was indeed the turning point in his life. Before that he had not fully realized the wrongdoing of his whole life, but finding himself on trial for a charge that must send him to prison, gave him some awful moments of reflection.

Only a day or two were consumed in the trial. Every time that Brydell saw Esdaile led forward to his place to be tried for what was in military morals and discipline a terrible offence, it gave him a feeling of agony. He thought of his kind old friend, and the tears would come into his eyes in spite of himself. Esdaile was singularly cool and behaved civilly and respectfully to the court.

At last the verdict was given out—five years in prison. Everybody was surprised at its leniency. Esdaile when called up for sentence was asked if he had anything to say.

“Only this, if you please, gentlemen,” he answered calmly, in the tone and manner of an educated man. “The time was when Mr. Brydell and I were not so unequal in our standing. I made a mistake, committed a fault, if you will, in my early youth, that has made me what I am. I had not seen Mr. Brydell since; we had both of us been youths together. On the night of the storm I stood apart from my mates, watching him and envying him. Here, thought I, is he—an officer, suddenly finding himself in the position to reap the greatest credit, with the admiral, the captain, and all the officers in the squadron to witness it, while I, a sailor before the mast, forced to conceal my real name, poor and friendless, might have been where he is. And when I went aloft I scarcely knew what I was doing. When I came down on deck he spoke to me; I believe he acknowledged that he spoke impatiently, and some devil seemed to rise up in me, and I would have killed him if I could. But that has all passed. I have been tried fairly and impartially, and all I can ask is the mercy of the court.”

In the midst of a deep and breathless silence the verdict was read—five years in prison. Esdaile, still wearing his impassive look, neither groaned nor fell as men sometimes do in his awful circumstances; he only said after a painful pause of a few minutes:—

“I thank the court for its very moderate punishment, and I should like the favor of seeing Mr. Brydell.”

Brydell was hastily sent for. He had purposely kept out of the way; the sight of Esdaile’s misery was terrible to him. He was found though, and at once came in response to the summons.

“Mr. Brydell,” said Esdaile in the same composed and reasonable voice, “I have received my sentence and nothing I may say or do now can mitigate it. You will therefore think me sincere when I ask your pardon for my conduct, and tell you that if I live to get out of prison I will lead a different life. Won’t you shake hands with me, sir?”

Brydell, choking with emotion, held out his hand and, for the first time in the lives of the two young men, they met in mutual goodwill.

It was now time for the Naiad to sail for home, and Esdaile had to be taken back in her before he was consigned to prison. He was kept in solitary confinement and treated rigorously but not unkindly.

Brydell asked permission of the admiral to go to Esdaile’s cell every day for a few minutes. They would talk together, and Brydell began to see that Esdaile was indeed a changed man. These visits became the one bright spot in Esdaile’s hard life, and when at last the ship reached New York he felt that he had at least one friend in the world.

One night some years after that Brydell, now one of the brightest lieutenants in the navy, sat in his pleasant quarters writing. His wife sat near him under a softly shaded lamp, reading. After a long silence, broken only by the scratching of Brydell’s pen, he turned to her and handed her a paper.

“Read that, Minna,” he said. “Esdaile, I believe, is a reformed man. These people will give him a place as bookkeeper, but as he told them frankly his past history, they write me that if I will go on Esdaile’s bond for five thousand dollars they will take him. I don’t believe there is the slightest danger; his fault, you know, was not connected with money; but I don’t think it right for any man to assume this sort of responsibility without his wife’s consent. So it rests with you whether I shall guarantee Esdaile or not.”

Minna took the letter and read it carefully. Then handing it back said softly: “Of course you must sign it. Didn’t you promise the poor marine when he was dying that you would befriend his boy?”

“It is you who are befriending him now,” answered Brydell. “Whenever a man is saved there is always a good woman who has a share in it. Between us we will redeem my promise to dear old Grubb. Here goes!” And Brydell signed the letter.

A FOK’SLE STORY.

CHAPTER I.
ON BOARD THE DIOMEDE.

At sunset, on a wild January afternoon in 1776, the Diomede frigate passed Beaver-Tail light and entered the harbor of Newport. At that time the town was held by a large British fleet and land force.

The Diomede was a crack frigate and evidently had a crack crew from the beautiful precision with which she made a flying moor. It seemed as if in one minute her yards were squared, her sails furled, and her cable rushed out of the hawse hole in a blaze of sparks.

All this was done under the orders of the Diomede’s commander, Captain Forrester, who, being one of the best seamen in the British navy, liked to show his skill in anchoring before the assembled fleet. As soon as everything was made snug the captain went below and, seating himself at the cabin table, began to examine some papers by the light of the swinging lamp. He had a kindly, frank face, which was an index to a kindly, frank nature.

After reading and writing for a while he called to the orderly who stood at the cabin door.

“Direct the master-at-arms to bring me the man and the boy taken prisoners on the brig Betsey,” he said.

The orderly disappeared and a few minutes later the master-at-arms marched in with a remarkably handsome old sailor of about sixty and a boy of ten or twelve.

As soon as the old sailor saw the captain, he touched his glazed hat with prompt civility and in a way very suggestive of a naval man, although he wore the rough pea jacket of a merchant sailor.

Captain Forrester motioned to the master-at-arms to leave him alone with the two prisoners. As soon as the master-at-arms’ back was turned, the captain said to the old sailor: “Shut the door, Bell.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Bell in a tone and manner of deference clearly never learned in the merchant service.

“You see I know your name,” continued Captain Forrester, looking at him keenly.

“Yes, sir,” replied the old sailor slyly, with something suspiciously near a smile; “Bell ain’t a uncommon name, and I once knowed a midshipman named Forrester, sir; a mighty smart little reefer he was, too, sir.”

“The man Bell that I knew was an American, but he had spent most of his life in His Majesty’s service—Jack Bell he was—captain of the mizzentop when I was midshipman on the Indomptable, and captain of the maintop when I was sailing master on the old Colossus.”

Jack Bell’s eyes gleamed as the captain spoke, and there was an answering gleam in the captain’s eyes. The tie that unites good shipmates is a strong one, no matter how great the difference in rank; and the old sailor’s delight at being recognized, although it might mean trouble for him, was evident.

The captain remembered that in his reefer days, when as a mere lad he was ordered to command a boat’s crew, that Jack Bell had always been orderly, respectful, and sober, and had helped him out of not a few scrapes, and had occasionally got him into some.

“The first time I ever went aloft,” said the captain, smiling involuntarily, “Jack Bell was in the mizzentop, and I recollect my feelings when I was ready to go down, and Jack held on to me, insisting I should pay my footing.”

“Ten shillings it were, sir,” chimed in Jack with a broad grin. “That’s what was axed reg’lar of the reefers on the old Indomptable, and many’s the shilling you’ve give me besides—I—I mean—you give that ’ere Jack Bell.”

“And that Jack Bell was a famous singer. Many a night when the ship was going along under easy sail with a fair wind, I have sat for hours listening to Jack’s sea songs, like ‘Tom Bowline,’ ‘When the Wind at Night Whistles o’er the Deep,’ and all those fine old catches. I never heard anybody sing them so well as he.”

“His voice is badly cracked now, sir,” said Jack solemnly, “but this ’ere little brat Dicky Stubbs can sing all them old songs—Jack Bell l’arned ’em to him. But, Jack, he remembers that ’ere little midshipman Forrester—and a gallant officer, sir, he turned out to be arterwards—when he was sailin’ master on the Colossus. Did you ever see, sir, such a ornhandy ship for tackin’ as the old Colossus? If Mr. Forrester hadn’t been a rale sailor, he’d ’a’ got hisself in trouble all the time with that old three-decker.”

Captain Forrester knew this was honest praise from an honest man, and it pleased him more than many fine words from fine people. After a moment Jack continued:—

“Axin’ your parding, sir, there’s a midshipman on this ’ere ship as is named Mr. Forrester. I never see a young gentleman so like that other midshipman Forrester as I knowed more ’n twenty-five year ago.”

“That’s my son—my only child—and a smart fellow, if I do say it myself. But I want to hear something about Jack Bell. The man I knew was a devoted American. I wonder what he did when the colonies rebelled against His Majesty?”

Jack twiddled his cap awkwardly for a moment, glanced around and saw the door was shut, and then began to speak. His manner was respectful and not without a rude and simple eloquence of his own.

“Cap’n Forrester, that man Jack Bell wanted for to do his duty. He had tooken the oath to King George when he ’listed in the navy and had served him stiddy for more ’n forty year. But that man, Cap’n Forrester, sir, was a American, and when that there Congress at Philadelphy said Ameriky was free and independent, Jack Bell, he were in a peck o’ trouble. There was his oath o’ allegiance to King George starin’ him in the face, and there were the heart and soul o’ him tellin’ him he were a villain to fight ag’in his own country. Well, sir, Bell, not bein’ a eddicated man, couldn’t think out easy what was right for him to do—’cause that man, sir, wanted for to do his duty. But he knowed if he had suspicioned King George was a-goin’ to declare war ag’in Ameriky, Bell, he’d ’a’ never tooken that oath; so at last he thought it was his duty to desert.”

The old sailor paused slightly at this word, and the officer and the former captain of the maintop looked each other squarely in the eye. The boy Dicky Stubbs, who had a bright glance, gazed first at one and then at the other, wondering what it all was about. After a little pause Jack Bell continued:—

“Well, sir, that man Bell had a considerable sum o’ prize money due him, but he thought as how he’d ruther not take it, as he was goin’ to take French leave; so he give that up willin’ and cheerful. And he knowed, too, if he were caught, he’d be strung up at the yardarm in spite of his havin’ served King George for more ’n forty years faithful; but he thought he couldn’t die but oncet for his country, and it didn’t matter much which way he went, if only he was a-doin’ of his duty. So one night at Gibralty, Jack Bell disappeared from his ship—’twas a ship o’ the line. Maybe the Don Spaniards garroted him; maybe he was tooken by pirates; maybe he got on a American merchant vessel that was took arterwards by the British, who thought she was a privateer. Anyhow Jack Bell did what he thought was right, and if he’s got to be hanged for it, well, that’s a easy, comfortable way o’ gittin’ out o’ the world, and Jack Bell ain’t got no apologies to make, excep’”—and here the old sailor’s voice deepened—“excep’ for not desertin’ sooner.”

All this time the officer and the sailor had looked steadily at each other. Captain Forrester knew perfectly well that the man before him was Jack Bell, and, if openly recognized, there would be but a short step for him from the fok’sle of the Diomede to the whip[3] at the yardarm. But Captain Forrester also believed Jack had acted from his conscience, and he did not believe in hanging a man for that. After a pause the captain spoke:—

“Sometimes it is as hard for an educated man as for an uneducated one to know on which side his duty lies; but it is safer to be on the side of mercy. If I should meet Bell, I should not feel obliged to know him.”

At this Jack stood upright at “attention” and saluted the captain. Each knew what that meant. It was Jack’s way of thanking the captain, who knew him perfectly well, for not betraying him.

“There is one thing, though, my conscience would require me to do if I should meet Bell,” continued Captain Forrester. “It is to land him here where he can be watched, that he can’t get away to enlist in the rebel navy, army, or marine corps. If King George can’t have his services, the rebels sha’n’t.”

Jack’s face was a study in its intense disappointment, but in a little while he seemed to submit to the inevitable.

“Well, sir,” he said, “Jack’s pretty old now—goin’ on to sixty—and he ain’t wuth his salt, excep’ as a foremast man on a man-o’-war. So neither King George nor Ameriky ain’t losin’ much. He’d ’a’ liked to jine the navy, but as for the marines, poor Jack Bell wouldn’t trust hisself with them murderin’ marines.”

“The Jack Bell I know always hated the marines,” said Captain Forrester with a smile.

“I reckon he do still,” calmly remarked Jack. “And as for fightin’ on dry land—why, sir, he’d git so tired runnin’ about he never could do no fightin’. Landsmen instid o’ fightin’ at close quarters fights over forty or fifty acres and does more walkin’ than fightin’, I’m thinkin’.”

“Well, then,” said Captain Forrester, “to leave Jack Bell and come to your own affairs. When I land you to-morrow morning I shall ask the authorities to give you the run of the town of Newport, but not to let you go outside. I think I can contrive it through the admiral, who is my friend. And how about this youngster here?”

“That brat, axin’ your parding, sir, is the son o’ the Widow Stubbs at Newport—a excellent woman, and a good hand at book-larnin’, as well as at the spinnin’ wheel. Her husband was killed in one o’ the fust scrimmages o’ the war, and this ’ere brat, he run away to jine the ’Merican navy and was took on the Betsey along with me. I knowed his mother well, and I’ve kinder kep’ my eye on the young one. He is a right handy sort o’ boy, and he can sing a lot o’ chunes I’ve larned him. He can sing all the old songs and two or three ‘Tid re I’s’ I’ve set him.”

“Pipe up, youngster,” said the captain; “I’d like to hear one of the old songs again. Give me ‘When the Wind at Night Whistles o’er the Deep.’”

Little Dicky Stubbs looked scared to death. His mouth came open, but no sound issued. Jack Bell, giving him a nudge that nearly broke his ribs, whispered:—

When the wind at night whistles o’er the deep

And sings to landsmen dreary,

The sailor, fearless, goes to sleep

Or takes his watch most cheery.

Snoozing here,

Tossing there,

Steadily, readily,

Cheerily, merrily,

Still from care and thinking free,

Is a sailor’s life at sea.

Before he reached the third line Dicky’s courage, and his voice too, returned and he sang like some sweet-throated bird the next verse:—

Captain Forrester, leaning his head on his hand, listened to the song that carried him back to his midshipman days, and watched the boy whose young fresh voice echoed through the low-pitched cabin. Dicky was unmistakably a child of the people, but his honest face, his bright, intelligent eyes, and his clean though ragged attire made him a prepossessing little fellow.

“You may go now,” said Captain Forrester to Jack Bell, and meanwhile giving Dicky a bright shilling, “but do not forget what I have told you, and also that you have got off very well. As for that lad, take him to his mother and tell her to keep him at home until he has cut his wisdom teeth.”

“Thank ye kindly, sir,” answered Jack. “I’ll not forget your orders, sir, and as long as I live I’ll not forget your kindness, sir.” And, with a parting salute, Jack returned to the custody of the waiting master-at-arms.

CHAPTER II.
A GALLANT RESCUE.

The next morning ushered in a blustering day, and the wind blew so hard as to make it decidedly uncomfortable for small boats in the harbor.

In the forenoon a boat was lowered from the Diomede to take Jack Bell and Dicky Stubbs ashore. Captain Forrester had seen the admiral, and had got permission to let Jack Bell remain at Newport in a merely nominal imprisonment, upon the ground of the old sailor’s age; and with many thanks Jack bade the captain good-by and got in the boat, with Dicky after him.

The boat was commanded by young Forrester, the captain’s son, and so like his father that Jack felt as if he had turned back many pages of his life, and it was the Midshipman Forrester of twenty-five years ago before him.

The captain’s gig had put off from the ship with the captain, bound ashore, and was far behind the midshipman’s boat. The young midshipman steered straight for the landing-place, but he knew nothing of the tides and currents of the harbor. The fierce wind was against them, and he suddenly found the boat too close to the shore, and fast nearing a ledge of sunken rocks, around which the waves were boiling. As he half-rose from his seat the boat lurched violently and he suddenly lost his balance; in another moment he was jerked overboard and disappeared. A cry went up from every man in the boat except Jack Bell. It was not a mere everyday fall overboard, but a fall amid sharp-pointed rocks and dangerous eddies. Before the echo of that cry had died over the water, Jack Bell had kicked off his shoes, peeled off his jacket, and had plunged into the icy water after the young midshipman.

Every movement was plain to Captain Forrester in his gig, only a short distance away; and his crew, in a moment, pulled furiously toward the other boat.

Jack Bell had dived exactly over the spot where young Forrester had disappeared. In a minute or two he came up, but alone. At this the agonized father covered his face and groaned. But after a few long breaths Jack dived again. This time when he rose a great shout went up—he had young Forrester in his arms.

In another minute he was in the boat, which headed for the nearest shore, closely followed by the captain’s gig. Just above where they landed was a lonely little cottage, and as soon as the keel touched the sand two powerful sailors seized the unconscious young midshipman and, led by Jack Bell and followed by Dicky Stubbs, rushed up the steep incline toward the cottage.

Captain Forrester was not far behind, but when he reached the cottage the little midshipman’s clothes had been stripped from him, Jack Bell was vigorously rolling, rubbing, and pounding him, while Dicky Stubbs and his mother—for it was the Widow Stubbs’ plain cottage—were wringing out hot cloths to put on young Forrester. Just as Captain Forrester entered, the young midshipman gave a loud gasp and opened his eyes, only to close them again.

“He’s all right, sir,” cheerily called out Jack Bell, not stopping in his rubbing. “He’s wuth all the dead reefers betwixt Newport and Chiny. He got a whack on his head from some o’ them jagged rocks, and he just fainted like—but he’s a-comin’ to fast, sir.”

“He would not have been here to come to at all if it had not been for you, my friend,” said the captain in a choking voice.

Jack Bell said nothing,—he was too busy,—and the captain, seeing the color return to his boy’s face, and that he was breathing better at every moment, sat and watched with longing eyes his return to life. The Widow Stubbs was as useful in her way as Jack Bell, while Dicky seemed to have six hands and four legs, he was so helpful.

In half an hour the young fellow was laid in the widow’s plain though clean bed, and, except a little weakness, was as well as ever he was in his life, and was carried on board the Diomede that very afternoon. The story of Jack Bell’s plunge into the surf for him was known on board, and from that hour Jack was safe from being denounced as a deserter.

The fact that he was born in America had already deprived his offence of the moral guilt that would have attached to it. It was common enough for British sailors to be pressed into the service of Spanish and French ships when captured on merchant vessels, but there was an unwritten law that they should desert the first chance they had. This rule applied perfectly to Jack Bell, and his plucky dive after a young British officer secured for him that his past should be universally winked at among the officers and sailors at Newport who might recognize him.

That same night Captain Forrester came ashore and went straight to the Widow Stubbs’ cottage, where he felt certain he would meet the three persons he most desired to see there.

Sure enough, on opening the door he found the widow, Jack Bell, and the boy Dicky sitting before a blazing hickory fire in the humble living-room. The widow sat at her spinning wheel in one corner, and the wheel hummed merrily. They were so poor they could not afford even a tallow dip, but the fire made the tidy little place quite bright and cheery. Jack Bell sat on the wooden settle, and curled up by him was Dicky Stubbs.

Dicky had just been displaying his new accomplishments in the singing line, and the Widow Stubbs had swelled with pride at the display of Dicky’s talents. It was happiness enough to get him back alive and well, but to find him so grown, so much improved from the ragged urchin who had run away, and with such a wonderful new gift of singing, made the Widow Stubbs an uncommonly happy woman.

They all rose as Captain Forrester entered, and the widow gave him her only armchair.

“I have come to thank you all for my son’s life,” said Captain Forrester as soon as he was seated, “but especially Jack Bell, here, who risked his own life in jumping overboard among the rocks for my son. Of course I never can pay you for it—but here is something that at least may give you some comforts;” and the captain took from his breast a small package made up of golden sovereigns banded together and held it toward Jack Bell.

“I thank ’ee, sir, most respectful for ’em, and I don’t mean to hurt your feelin’s by refusin’; but I can’t take money for savin’ anybody’s life—and leastways from you, Cap’n Forrester—as was”— Jack Bell paused, smiled knowingly, and then continued: “This ’ere boy sings a song called ‘Old Shipmates.’”

“Yes, I know,” answered the captain, smiling back and knowing that Jack meant that he and the captain had been shipmates; “but think of the pleasure you would give me to know that this little present would make your old age comfortable.”

“True, sir,” answered Jack; “but I ain’t used to livin’ on my money, and I’d be a sight happier if I had sumpin’ to do, like bein’ a night watchman or some sich thing. You see, sir, I has had a watch now for more ’n forty year, and it seems so ornnateral for me to git into a standin’ bed place and know I ain’t got to hear the boatswain’s call when it’s time to turn out, that I can’t sleep a wink. Now it seems to me, sir, as if I had a watch on shore I could walk up and down this ’ere town callin’ out the hours, and it would seem like I was standin’ my reg’lar watch.”

“But couldn’t you stand watch on shore, as you call it, just as well if you knew you had a little money put away?”

“Not for savin’ a life, sir,” answered Jack as politely as ever; but the captain knew then there was no hope of his taking the money. “If you’d be so kind, sir, as to git me the place as watchman, I wouldn’t ax no better.”

“You shall certainly have a watchman’s place,” said the captain, who mentally added, “if I have to pay your wages out of my own pocket.”

“It would seem mightily like the lookout,” continued Jack evidently tickled with his new scheme. “I dessay I’d forgit and call out: ‘Eight bells! Bright light, weather cathead!’ instid o’ ‘Twelve o’clock, and all’s well!’”

“And you, madam, and your son—will you not permit me to give you some little token of gratitude for your help in restoring my son?”

The Widow Stubbs blushed at this, but, like Jack Bell, she had scruples about taking any recompense for the saving of life, especially as she was a woman of some education and stood a little higher in the world than Jack Bell.

“No, sir, I thank you; but I could not accept money from anyone. What I did was very little, and what my boy did was still less. I am glad, though, we were able to do that little.”

The captain felt disappointed when he put his money back in his breast pocket, but he was too much the gentleman to insist on these humble people receiving what they felt themselves above taking.

“At all events,” he said, looking toward Dicky’s round, bright face, “I might be able to do something for your boy.”

“I am afraid not,” answered the widow with a faint smile. “We are patriots—my boy and I; my husband was killed only six months ago in the Continental Army, and there is nothing that a British officer could do for him, no matter how kindly meant.”

“I have just got him back after he ran away. I have not had time to think; but there is always work hereabouts for a good strong boy like Dicky.”

Dicky turned a rosy red at finding himself the subject of conversation and astonished his mother by stuttering out,—

“P-p-please, sir, don’t the British ever give folks their parole? I—I mean, let ’em—go—if they promise they won’t do so any more?”

The Widow Stubbs heard this with surprise and indignation. She had been much distressed when Dicky had run away to join the Continental navy, although he never got farther than the merchant ship Betsey; but his apparent eagerness to promise he would not do so any more struck her as a want of spirit in the boy that mortified her keenly.

“Yes; we take paroles,” said Captain Forrester, supposing Dicky knew it referred only to officers.

“Then, sir,” cried Dicky, whose ideas of a parole were very hazy, “all I’ve got to say is that I don’t want no parole,—I wouldn’t take it if you was to offer it to me,—and I ain’t going to give no promise about not running away again. Just as soon as I am big enough to carry my father’s musket I’m a-going to enlist in the ’Merican army under General Washington, and it won’t be long before I do it, neither!”

This sudden outbreak was followed by the Widow Stubbs clasping Dicky in her arms and crying,“That’s my own boy!” while Jack Bell said “Hooray!” under his breath.

But Captain Forrester, instead of sternly calling upon Dicky to recant, as Dicky hoped, who meant to hurl defiance at him, only laughed. Dicky could have cried with rage and disappointment when the captain got up, still laughing, and said:—

“General Washington will gain a valuable recruit, and King George a dangerous enemy.”

“I hope you’ll excuse him,” said the widow, smiling, but a little ashamed of Dicky’s forwardness; “he doesn’t mean to be impudent.”

“I know it,” said the captain. “He is a lad of spirit, and I like that kind. I will now bid you good evening with a thousand thanks for your kindness to my son; and if you get in any trouble with that youngster of yours, write to General Prescott and mention my name; and as for you, Bell, the less we say about the days on the Indomptable and the old Colossus, the better, eh?”

“Good-by, then,” said Captain Forrester. “You shall be made a watchman; and remember, if you get in any trouble you must manage to communicate with me; but I hope that prosperity may attend all of you, whom I can never forget and must always feel grateful to.”

The Widow Stubbs made a low bow, Jack Bell saluted, and Dicky, getting a lantern, lighted the captain to his boat, which lay at the foot of the cliff.

CHAPTER III.
DICKY’S PATRIOTISM.

Jack Bell very promptly got his appointment as a watchman, and soon every night he paraded the streets of Newport with a stick and a lantern, calling out the hours as the night slipped away. He never could bring himself, though, to calling as the other watchmen did,—the hour, and then, “All’s well!”—but sung out every half-hour the time according to the ship’s bells, always adding what the weather was, and where the wind lay, such as, “Six bells! Wind sou’-sou’-east!”

The townspeople soon got used to the old sailor’s way and he was not molested in his peculiar ideas of the time. At all events, evil characters who prowled by night had great respect for him after having once felt the force of his stick, because in spite of his age Jack’s arm was still stalwart, and he was not given to arguing with offenders.

At that time there was a large British fleet under Admiral Wallace lying off Newport, besides a large land force under General Prescott. It was impossible for Jack not to have a great many more acquaintances than he desired among the sailors of the fleet. But although his true story was more than suspected, it was perfectly well known that he had a powerful protector in Captain Forrester. Jack’s bold dive into the icy water had turned out a good thing for him. So Jack walked his beat all night, and went back at daylight to the Widow Stubbs’ cottage where he slept in the loft until midday, and was as little unhappy as he could be on shore.

The Widow Stubbs had spoken quite confidently to Captain Forrester of Dicky’s capacity to make a living, but it turned out not so easy as she fancied in spite of the fact that Dicky was strong and bright and willing to work. But he was only a twelve-year-old boy, and the war times made business of all sorts dull. Dicky worked around the wharves, but there were scarcely any merchant vessels plying, and the waterfront was almost deserted except by the British warships and crews.

The Americans held the opposite shore of Narragansett Bay, and Dicky imagined that on fine days he could see the American flag flying there, and the sight always made him feel very well disposed to run away again, but he never did.

Dicky, however, discovered very unexpectedly that he possessed a means of livelihood in his beautiful young voice, and in the songs that Jack Bell had taught him. But the treasure of Dicky’s life was a little dog’s-eared, ill-printed book of patriotic songs, all predicting the speedy overthrow of John Bull, and the certainty that the patriots would soon drive every British soldier and sailor off American soil. The book had been smuggled over from the Narragansett side, and was rather a dangerous possession. But as Dicky soon learned the songs all by heart, it would not have mattered if it had been found and destroyed.

It was the dream of Dicky’s life though, as well as of Jack Bell’s, to compose a song themselves. They had no scruples about adapting somebody else’s music, but they burned with ambition to create a new set of words which rhymed. Many a night before it was time for Jack’s watch to begin, would he and Dicky struggle over a slate on which they had marked lines, something like this:—

“Seems to me, young ’un,” said Jack, scratching his head, “we’re beginnin’ at the wrong end. It’s stern foremost, d’ye see?”

“Yes, sir,” Dicky would reply, “but in poetry I believe you are obliged to begin stern foremost—because if you begin at the beginning you never get any poetry—just as if it was makin’ a song like this:—

“The ’Mericans are gallant lads; they’re bound to whip Johnny Bull. It don’t make no matter if Johnny Bull has got more ships and soldiers. We’re goin’ to whip him. Now that ain’t poetry, because I begun at the beginning.”

“That’s so,” Jack would reluctantly admit; “but if it ain’t poetry, it’s mighty good sense, and I hope it’ll all come true.”

In those days tavern kitchens were very respectable resorts of the humbler classes of people and Jack Bell was very fond of the kitchen of the Eagle Tavern. The proprietor, Jacob Dyer, was a patriot at heart; but his house was so much the resort of British sailors and soldiers that he dared not avow the full extent of his sympathies.

In the kitchen Dicky made most of his pennies—and he made so many that they soon grew into shillings. It might have been rather a dangerous place to trust a weak or a vicious boy; but Dicky was neither weak nor vicious. He went to the tavern to sing his songs, and when he got through he scampered off home to his mother with his money and was very glad to get there. Besides, at the time when he usually turned up at the tavern to sing, Jack Bell was comfortably established in the chimney-corner and he kept a sharp eye on Dicky and promptly reported any bad manners or other small offences to the Widow Stubbs, who upon the few occasions that Dicky had transgressed always came down on him with the heavy hand of justice armed with a good birch switch.

One afternoon Dicky turned up at the tavern, as usual, and found the kitchen full of sailors from several cruisers of Lord Howe’s fleet that had rendezvoused at Newport.

“Here you are, you young rapscallion!” called out one jolly man-o’-war’s-man. “Come here and give us ‘Black-eyed Susan’ or I’ll give you the cat.”

This being the usual form in which those requests were made, Dicky nodded his head, grinned, and perched himself on the kitchen dresser to be heard the better. Having trolled out “Black-eyed Susan,” “Strike Eight Bells,” and other nautical ditties in his sweet boyish treble, Dicky got down and began to hand his homespun hat around for pennies. The sailors were liberal and Dicky was beginning to think how his mother would smile as he upset the hat in her lap, when one of the sailors, a fellow with a great voice, seized him and, holding up a glass of rum, called out: “Here, you lubber! come and drink the king’s health.”

“Much obliged, sir,” answered Dicky readily; “but my mother don’t on no account let me touch rum, and I’ve promised her I won’t.”

How glad was Dicky at that moment that he had made the promise! His mother had asked him and he had done it without giving it any particular thought; but when it came to saving him from drinking the king’s health, Dicky’s patriotic soul rejoiced that he had so good an excuse.

The man, rough as he was, could not ask the boy to break his word, but he was determined to get some British sentiment out of Dicky.

“I c-c-can’t,” said Dicky, looking around at Jack Bell in the corner. Jack gave him an almost imperceptible wink and nod, which meant: “You’re right; stick to it.”

“But I won’t!” shouted Dicky boldly, and making a dash for the rolling-pin on the dresser, which he seized and flourished stoutly.

The sailor made a dash for Dicky, who, as alert as a monkey, pushed a chair in front of him, over which the sailor fell sprawling. The next minute Dicky gave the window a terrific whack that smashed sash and all, and, scrambling through, took to his heels and was almost home by the time the sailor had got through rubbing his bruised shins.

The Widow Stubbs was scrupulously honest, and her first comment after she had praised Dicky for keeping his word about the rum and refusing to sing “God Save the King” was:—

“Yes, mammy,” said Dicky ruefully; “and I lost three shillings and my hat too.”

That night when Jack Bell came in for his usual chat on the settle, he told Dicky: “You’re right, boy, and if it’s too hard a pull for you and your mammy to pay for the winder, why, Jack Bell has got some of the rhino and you’re welcome to it, for I see how you stuck up to your promise and to your country.”

Just at that minute a knock came at the door, and when Dicky opened it Jacob Dyer walked in. Both the widow and Dicky thought he had come for his money for the window, and the Widow Stubbs began: “Don’t you have any fear, sir, that I won’t pay for what my boy did to-day, and pay it cheerful, to know I’ve got a boy who can keep his word to me, and can’t be frightened into singing ‘God Save the King.’”

“Widder,” said Jacob, “your boy is welcome to smash that winder. Maybe he’s got more courage than Jacob Dyer; for although I can’t sing ‘God Save the King,’ chiefly because I don’t know how to sing anything, I feel sometimes as if I ought to be more outspoken than I am for my country. But I have a wife and eight children to support, and if I got the redcoats down on me, they’d close my tavern and then I’d be on the town. But sometimes my blood biles when I hear ’em talk about lickin’ General Washington. I kem to-night to tell you that if I look cross at your boy the next time he comes to the tavern he needn’t mind. You sha’n’t pay a cent for the winder, and I’d be a good deal more of a ’Merican if my livin’ didn’t depend on the redcoats.”

The very next day Dicky showed up in the tavern kitchen. As usual, redcoats were plenty. Jacob Dyer, in a huge white apron, was superintending the turning of the spit. As soon as he caught sight of Dicky he began to grumble.

“Here comes that Stubbs boy as cost me five shilling for a glazier’s bill. If it warn’t that his mother’s a widder, I’d be after him, I can tell you. But look out, you young scamp, if ever you get to wreckin’ my premises again, I’ll get after you as sure as shootin’. Do you mind that?”

CHAPTER IV.
AN IMPORTANT ERRAND.

Visitors were few at the widow’s cottage, but the very night after Jacob Dyer had been there another knock at the door ushered in a very different visitor. The widow had just trimmed the fire, swept the hearth, and drawn up the settle, and was waiting for Jack and Dicky to come in and get their supper of milk and porridge and potatoes, when a thundering rat-tat-tat came at the door. When she opened it, there stood an elderly gentleman in a cocked hat and handsome knee buckles and a gold-headed cane. The widow knew him in a moment. He was Squire Stavers, one of the richest citizens of Newport and a staunch patriot. The widow was rather flustered by the importance of her caller, but invited him in politely.

“I understand, madam,” began Squire Stavers, “that you have an uncommonly reliable boy—a little fellow who goes about singing for his living.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the widow, all in a flutter. “It mayn’t seem such a steady business for a boy, but the times are so hard I can’t find anything else for him to do, and he makes a very good living and brings all his money to me.”

“His employment will answer very well for the present,” replied the squire, “and when times become more settled no doubt you can find honorable work for him. What I came to see you about to-night was in connection with him. Is there any danger of being overheard?”

For answer the widow rose and bolted the door of the cottage and—rare luxury!—lighted two tallow candles. Then the squire continued:

“I know, madam, that you are the widow of a Continental soldier and may be depended upon to help your country.”

“This, then, is what I wish to say. The patriots of Newport desire to communicate with the Continental forces at Providence Plantations, and if they can get a trusty messenger as far as Tiverton, there will be no difficulty the rest of the way. We dare not employ a man on this service as we are closely watched. But a boy would never be suspected, and our communication would be in the form of a letter that would reveal nothing in case it was found. Mr. James Barton, who has a gallant son in the Continental Army, and myself are old friends, and we are supposed to be corresponding for pleasure and profit. Mr. Barton, for example, has beeves to sell, and writes me asking the price in the market. His younger son has lately visited my house, and in my letter I speak of him. Yet there is a hidden meaning in all this, and it would be of substantial help to the cause if we could carry information in that manner.”

“If you will wait a few moments, sir, I will ask Mr. Bell’s opinion. He’s a steady, sensible man, and although I’m perfectly willing to let my boy do all he can, I’d rather consult Mr. Bell.”

At that moment they both heard Dicky and Jack Bell fumbling at the latch. The widow rose and let them in, then bolted the door again.

Jack Bell knew well enough who Squire Stavers was, and when Dicky heard that he, Dicky Stubbs, was actually wanted for an important service, he could scarcely forbear hurrahing and cutting the pigeon wing in his delight.

“Now let me read you the letter I wish the lad to carry,” said the Squire, putting on his great gold spectacles, and taking a letter from his pocket. “Suppose your boy is stopped. Let him at once produce this letter, and if the British can find out anything from it, they are cleverer than I take it.”

Jack Bell listened with great solemnity to the reading of this letter, and when the Squire finished reading and lay back in the chair with a triumphant smile, Jack remarked with emphasis:—

“There ain’t nothin’ to hurt a babby in that ’ere letter. It’s all plain sailin’, as fur as I can see.”

The Widow Stubbs agreed with him, and Dicky thought privately it was one of the stupidest letters he had ever read.

“Well, now,” cried the Squire with a victorious air, “suppose you read every third line, beginning at the third from the bottom. Here you are.

“General Prescott has taken up his quarters at the Overing House on the outskirts of the town. He is an able officer and his loss would be a serious matter. There is but an indifferent watch kept, and it would not be difficult to surround and capture him. The place is not closely patrolled, and, although the force here is large, they are overconfident. The bearer of this can bring a verbal message straight enough. But let me know in regard to the beeves; the contents no one can understand.

“Now, what do you say to that?” inquired the Squire as he finished the interpretation of the letter.

Jack Bell’s jaw dropped and Dicky almost rolled on the floor in his surprise, while his mother took the letter and, counting the lines, saw how the information conveyed in it was so different from what appeared on the surface. Presently Jack Bell recovered himself enough to bring his hand down on the table with a thwack that made the candles jump and everybody in the room jump, too.

The Squire enjoyed the sensation he had given his simple audience and looked around with an air of much satisfaction.

“Now,” said he, “I want this letter taken to Tiverton, ten miles up. If the boy takes it, I will lend him a horse,”—here Dicky could not forbear thrusting his tongue into his cheek and wagging his head with rapture,—“and if he is stopped on the way, let him hand out the letter. They will probably read it and pass him on. And one thing may be of use to you—I will give you two shillings if you bring me an answer back; so, if you are stopped, tell your captors that and they will probably let you go.”

The Squire then rose to leave and, standing with his hand on his gold-headed cane, spoke impressively:—

“I have confided in all of you to-night, and if one word from any of you gives rise to suspicion, there will be deep and serious trouble for all of us.”

“I can answer for me and my boy,” said the widow, while Jack Bell made reply:—

“I can answer, sir, for Jack Bell, as who is a uneddicated man, but ain’t a fool, nor yet a rascal.”

“I believe you, and good-by to all of you. The boy must be at my house at sunrise to-morrow morning. He ought to be back by the early afternoon, and if he is not, I myself will go and look for him.”

The Squire then went out and the widow and Jack Bell and Dicky sat and looked at each other, the widow unmindful of the extravagance of burning two candles when there was no distinguished company.

“Well,” said she after a pause, “the boy can’t come to harm just riding between here and Tiverton—do you think so, Mr. Bell?”

Instead of the hearty assurance that the widow expected, Jack looked quite solemn and seemed to avoid an answer. But the widow’s pleading eyes forced a reply out of him.

“’Tain’t the distance, ma’am—that’s neither here nor there—and the boy could leg it easy enough. But horses is ornnateral sort o’ beasts and they’ve got a special spite ag’in sailor men and sailor boys too. I never see a sailor man git on a horse that I didn’t see the four-legged scoundrel kinder look around with a devilish grin, as much as to say: ‘Aha, I’ve got you now! You ain’t a-ridin’ the spanker boom, nor yet the topsail yard, and I’ll bounce you off or bust’—and they most in gin’ally don’t bust. I can’t help feelin’ oneasy about trustin’ him a horseback, ma’am.”

“Why, Mr. Bell, I’d just as lief ride anything from an elephant to a goat. ’Tain’t any harder to stick on a horse than it is to hold on to the topsail yard.”

“Yes, it is, boy,” answered Jack with much severity, “and a sight more dangersome. Horses, I tell you, has a spite ag’in sailor men—and they’re mighty cunnin’ in carryin’ out their ill-will. I wish you was goin’ to leg it. That’s all.”

CHAPTER V.
AN ADVENTURE WITH THE REDCOATS.

Dicky was sent to bed early that night, so he could have a good sleep before his journey. But he was so excited over the prospect of his coming adventures that he scarcely closed his eyes. He was up and dressed by daybreak, and his mother had hard work holding him until sunrise before starting off.

As it was, he arrived at the Squire’s fine house in the town, before the Squire was up. When the horse was led out for him to mount, Dicky made a rush at him and scrambled up, beaming with delight. It was quite a sober old cart horse, named Blackberry—but had he been the finest thoroughbred in the world he could not have given Dicky more pleasure.

The Squire gave him the letter before several of the servants, without any extraordinary charges of carefulness, merely telling him to deliver it with his own hands to Mr. Josiah Barton, of Tiverton, and to return as soon as possible, when he would receive two shillings—and not to ride Blackberry too hard.

Dicky listened very respectfully, put the letter in the bosom of his jacket and pinned it, and started off. He rode very slowly as long as he was in sight of the Squire’s house, but it must be admitted that as soon as he turned the first corner he gave old Blackberry a cut that started him on a sharp trot. Blackberry, however, like the Squire himself, was well fed, his load was light, the day was pleasant, and he was quite willing to play the colt for a while, so he and Dicky got on beautifully.

The morning was deliciously fresh, and Dicky, who had never been ten miles from Newport in his life, except when he had run away on the Betsey, was as happy as a bird and felt himself quite as much of a man as Jack Bell. He was so happy that when he had gone two or three miles he could not forbear breaking into song—and as galloping and singing are somewhat incongruous he brought Blackberry down to a leisurely walk. Then with his knee crossed on the saddle he began to sing some of his favorite songs.

Unluckily though, he chose one of his rebel songs as they were called, and he was trolling it out in his sweetest voice when presently looking up, he found himself almost riding over a squad of redcoats marching along the road with a sergeant at their head.

“Look out, you young rebel!” called out the sergeant, catching Blackberry’s bridle; “what are you up to?”

“Nothing wrong,” answered Dicky boldly although he felt a slight tremor at heart—but he knew the necessity of keeping a cool exterior. “I am on my way to Tiverton on an errand for Squire Stavers.”

“And do you know this is the King’s highway, and you were singing a song about,

Dicky remained prudently silent and wished he had not sung his Bunker Hill song.

The sergeant, who was a powerful fellow with a good-natured face in spite of his bluff words, reached up, and lifting Dicky off the horse as if he were a baby, set him down on the ground and proceeded to search him. The first thing he ran across was the letter. “Come now,” said the sergeant, “the lieutenant must see this. From Squire Stavers to Josiah Barton of Tiverton. Both of them out-and-out rebels. Young man, will you please to ’bout face and march along, while I’ll ride your battle horse?”

This was an unkind slur on Blackberry, who was unmistakably a horse who had spent his life in civil pursuits. The sergeant mounted him, and the old horse, out of whom Dicky had taken most of the spirit, struck into a slow and dejected trot.

Dicky went along silently, and appeared to be neither frightened or discomposed. Indeed after a while he rather relished his adventure, and anticipated the telling of it with the keenest pleasure, in which he meant to do full justice to his own calmness under trying circumstances. The whole party walked down the road about half a mile, when they came to a deserted farmhouse. The sergeant, then dismounting, took Dicky by the shoulder and shoved him into a room where a young officer sat at a table writing. “If you please, sir,” said the sergeant, touching his cap, “I found this boy riding along the road, singing rebel songs. I thought I’d examine him to see if there was anything suspicious about him, and I found this letter directed to Josiah Barton of Tiverton,—a rank rebel,—and the boy says it is from Squire Stavers of Newport, who is another rank rebel. So I thought it would be safer to bring him and the letter to you.”

“Quite right,” said the young officer, and taking the letter he coolly broke the seal. Both he and the sergeant were keeping half an eye on Dicky, who was perfectly quiet and composed, and gave no indications of fear.

“Do you know what is in this letter?” asked the lieutenant of Dicky after glancing at it.

“Sir!” answered Dicky, suddenly recalled from a contemplation of old Blackberry through the window.

“Something about beef cattle, I believe, sir,” answered Dicky, returning to the contemplation of his steed.

It was an ordinary letter enough, but still the lieutenant did not seem able to persuade himself that it was exactly what it appeared to be. He could scarcely imagine, though, that a compromising letter would be sent by a boy, and, moreover, a boy who loitered by the road-side singing songs. It occurred to him that he could find out something of the value of the letter by the price that was paid Dicky for taking it.

“Look here, my lad,” he said suddenly; “how much are you to get if you deliver this letter and bring a reply?”

“Two shillings, sir,” promptly replied Dicky; “but if I don’t deliver it, I ain’t to get anything.”

“That settles it,” said the young officer more to himself than to Dicky. “A two-shilling messenger is not likely to be charged with serious undertakings. You may go, youngster.”

And the next minute Dicky had darted out of the door and, seizing old Blackberry, was off at a smarter trot than Blackberry had known for a good many years.

Dicky arrived at Tiverton about nine o’clock and easily found the solid, substantial Barton mansion.

Mr. Barton was standing on the broad brick porch when Dicky swung himself off Blackberry and, holding his shabby cap in his hand, presented the letter.

“The seal, sir, was broken by a redcoat officer a little way out from Newport; but he didn’t understand the letter,” Dicky added significantly.

“It is easily understood,” said Mr. Barton, looking up after he got to the end.

Boylike, Dicky was charmed at being able to show the extent of his knowledge and responsibilities. Coming up close to Mr. Barton, he pointed out the third line from the bottom. Mr. Barton’s eyes followed Dicky’s finger as it traveled upward over the page, and he grasped the meaning immediately.

“Boy,” said he after a pause, “there are some things I want to ask you. Come in the house with me and do exactly what I tell you.”

Dicky followed him in a small, dark room on the first floor, fitted up as a library. Mr. Barton directed him to take a chair and then disappeared behind him for a few moments. When he came back he said:—

“Now answer freely and to the best of your ability all the questions I shall ask you, but remember not to turn your head to look on either side or behind you.”

Dicky thought this strange, but he obeyed implicitly. Mr. Barton, then taking out a quill pen and paper, began to ask him a series of questions respecting the Overing House—its distance from the shore, the lay of the land, and many other things of information. Dicky, not being one of those boys who can spend a lifetime in a place without knowing anything about it, was able to give a pretty accurate description of things in and around Newport. Especially did he know where the British ships were moored, the hours for the boats, and many other particulars about them.

While looking in front of him, as Mr. Barton carefully wrote down what he said, Dicky observed a round mirror, and what he saw in it almost made him drop off his chair in surprise. For there was a door behind him slightly ajar, and every now and then he caught a glimpse of a young man wearing a Continental uniform and listening intently to what was said.

Dicky felt an intense curiosity to know who it was, and, while describing as well as he could a tortuous path that he knew leading from the shore to a clump of woods behind the Overing House, he happened to glance up at the mirror. The soldier behind him had become so interested that he had poked his head completely outside the door.

One glance in the mirror showed Dicky that the young man was the son of Mr. Barton, and he surmised shrewdly that it was the young Captain Barton of the Continental Army who was his unseen listener. He was plainly in hiding, and Dicky understood very well why the elder Barton imposed cautions upon him.

Mr. Barton was very well pleased with Dicky’s sensible and well-considered answers, and when he had got through he folded up the memorandum he had made, wrote a few lines to Squire Stavers about the beeves, and then handed Dicky two new shillings.

“Money is a scarce commodity about here,” he said, smiling, “but I think you have earned this.”

Mr. Barton then asked him to stay until dinner was ready, but this Dicky declined to do. He was very proud of the success of his errand so far and wanted to return promptly, so that in a little while he was on his way back to Newport.

Squire Stavers was not without his doubts concerning the time Dicky would return. A boy trusted with a horse is extremely liable to overstay his time; but before twelve o’clock Dicky turned up. The Squire looked sharply at Blackberry, but, although the old horse had had a pretty good morning’s work, he seemed to realize that he was bent upon a patriotic errand and was as lively as a colt.

Dicky did not fail to do ample justice to his own coolness and composure when nabbed by the redcoats, and his prompt surrendering of the letter. The Squire chuckled when Dicky described how the young lieutenant puzzled over it and handed Dicky out two shillings with great readiness, saying,—

“And as you are such a good hand in the transaction of business, I will employ you again.”

Dicky ran home as fast as his legs could carry him with his four shillings clutched in his hands, and, throwing three of them in his mother’s lap, held up the fourth, bawling,—

“I’m going to give Mr. Bell and me a treat with this, mammy, because I’m a very bright boy, I am,—the Squire said so,—and a reliable one, too. There’s a show in town of dancing bears and monkeys, and Mr. Bell and me are going sure.”

When Jack came in that night Dicky recounted all of his adventures, even to the seeing the officer behind him in the glass, which he had not mentioned to Squire Stavers. The widow was immensely proud of Dicky’s shrewdness and courage, and Jack Bell was perfectly delighted, especially that Dicky had proved a match for old Blackberry.

“You’re doin’ a sight better sarvice for your country than if you was a powder boy ’board ship,” he remarked; “and it’s a deal more riskier to handle a horse than it is to handle gunpowder, and I’m a-thinkin’ sumpin’ will happen soon;” with which sententious remark Bell retired to the loft to sleep, while Dicky tumbled into his flock bed—a very tired but a very happy boy—and dreamed all night about dancing bears.

CHAPTER VI.
JACK BELL’S SECRET.

Three more trips did Dicky make to Tiverton, and each time, under the cover of a transaction in beef cattle, carried important news. He was rather puzzled, though, to know what the news was, as Squire Stavers did not tell him the contents of any letters but the first. Neither the Squire nor Mr. Barton ever mentioned General Prescott’s name before him. Dicky rashly concluded that the scheme to capture the British general had been abandoned.

He had never seen General Prescott to know him in his life. There were crowds of British officers dashing about the town with orderlies trotting after them; but which was the general he did not know. In fact, after a while Dicky begun to suspect that his trips were for the sole purpose of conveying news about the cattle after all, and felt a distinct decrease in his own importance.

Jack Bell, too, seeing that everything appeared quiet and that the British had lately had successes, especially in having captured Major-General Henry Lee,—“Light Horse Harry,”—began to be very much depressed. He and Dicky discussed affairs very often, and both of them came to the melancholy conclusion that Newport would remain in the hands of the British until the end of the war and that nothing would be attempted in the way of a capture.

The Americans were anxious to make an exchange for General Lee, but had no officer of rank high enough to offer for him. This was a mortifying fact, and Jack Bell, commenting on it, wondered why the plan to kidnap General Prescott had fallen through.

One night, though, Squire Stavers sent for him, and Jack came away from the Squire’s house wearing a look of delighted expectancy.

About a week after that, one morning as soon as he wakened—which was late, as he was out all night—he called Dicky, and the two strolled together toward a lonely point of rocks some distance from any house and where they were not likely to be disturbed by anyone.

The sun shone brightly, while a sharp wind ruffled the waters of Narragansett Bay and gave a kick to the sterns of several vessels that were rounding Point Judith.

It fluttered the pennants of a great British fleet that lay off Block Island and dashed the steel blue water fiercely against the rocky shores upon which the town of Newport is perched. So blue was the sky and so blue was the sea that they came together invisibly on the far horizon, and a fine English frigate which was sailing in under a huge spread of canvas seemed to be suspended between the sky and the sea.

Among the fleet there was the usual activity and business of the morning. A great line-of-battle ship, with the red pennant flying at her fore, indicating that she was taking on powder, lay out in the foreground. An admiral’s barge at the gangway of a handsome black frigate showed that she had distinguished company on board, and the sound of the band playing on the quarterdeck and the noise made by the parading of the marine guard was distinctly borne ashore by the wind. On every ship something was going on in the way of the orderly bustle of a man-of-war.

On shore, too, the morning drill was taking place, and the regiments of redcoats made a brilliant splash of color in the sombre tones of the ancient town. The scene was charming in itself, but to Jack Bell and Dicky Stubbs nothing was more disheartening than the evidences of the might of England.

Presently the advancing frigate, which was trotting along briskly, came near enough for Jack Bell to recognize her.

“That’s the Diomede, sonny,” said Jack dolefully, as if the arrival of another British ship filled his cup of woe to overflowing. “That’s Cap’n Forrester on the bridge—a mighty fine man he is, if he is a Britisher.”

As the frigate rounded to, in her usual grand style, Jack’s eyes kindled although he sighed. “It do a sailor man’s heart good for to see a ship anchored that way. I’ve knowed the Diomede ever since she slid off the stocks, and she never was counted on bein’ no great sailer—but the sailin’ qualities of a ship depends on the cap’n—d’ ye mind that, youngster; and Cap’n Forrester, he knows how to handle a ship, d’ ye see, boy? But I’m a-wishin’ she warn’t flying that ’ere flag at her peak. If ’twas only the American flag now!”

“Yonder ’tis,” said Dicky, pointing across to Narragansett Bay, where he fancied he could see it flying in the blue air.

“Maybe you can see it,” answered Jack reflectively as he gazed over the blue water.

“How I wish I were fighting under it!” cried Dicky, whose patriotic ardor increased rather than abated by living under British rule.

“I dessay,” remarked Jack slyly, who was much given to “pulling a leg” at Dicky’s expense, “if our people over yonder knowed about you, they’d be most as distrested as they are about Gineral Lee bein’ held by the British—’twould take a major-gineral to exchange for Gineral Lee, but maybe they could git you for a major or a colonel, p’r’aps. What a pity they ain’t never heard on you!”

Dicky at this turned very red, and giving a vicious kick to a stone sent it skimming across the water.

“Anyway,” said Dicky presently in a low voice, looking around to be sure they were completely alone on the rocks, “I did the best I could. I took three letters to Tiverton and back—and I knew what they was meant for too.”

“True for you, boy,” said Jack, slapping him on the back; “and now tell me, what do you think I fetched you down on these rocks for?”

“Well, then,” said Jack very softly, “sumpin’ ’s up to-night. I’ve knowed it for more ’n a week, and I tell you because we want your valuable sarvices.” Jack could not refrain from giving Dicky this little dig. “And I’ve pledged my word, as you are a safe boy and ain’t a-goin’ to blow the gaff.”

“You’re right there, Mr. Bell,” answered Dicky proudly. “I ain’t the sort to blow the gaff.”

“Well, then, listen to me and come close, so I can speak easy. There’s a plot on hand to-night to bag Gineral Prescott. He’s a long-headed old feller, although he is mighty proud, treatin’ quarterdeck folks like they was foremast people. But he knows more ’n most of ’em what to do, so that’s w’y the patriots is hankerin’ arter him. At nine o’clock to-night a boat is goin’ to be pulled acrost the bay, and Cap’n Barton with twenty men’s goin’ to sneak up to the Overing House, where the Gin’ral is stayin’, while they’re fixin’ reg’lar headquarters for him. They’re goin’ to take the house by boardin’—I dunno what the soldiers’ word is for ketchin’ him with a rush—and they’re goin’ to put him in the boat and take him back to Providence Plantations. Now the redcoats is monstrous keerless about standin’ watch round the Overing House—they’ve got a sentry or two that marches up and down and then goes and stands in the corner o’ the house by the chimney—but Cap’n Barton wants some one to give him the word about twelve o’clock to-night when the coast is clear.”

“Not if you act that a-way,” answered Jack severely. “When sailor men has got work in hand they don’t go bawlin’ out and jumpin’ like a lizard over it. They says ‘Aye, Aye, sir,’ and then they goes and does it.”

“I’d give the word myself, for I ain’t under no promise to Cap’n Forrester. He just told me the redcoats would see that I didn’t git away—and they do watch me pretty sharp—so most likely I’d be the very one they’d suspect. So I says to Squire Stavers: ‘There’s that little tow-headed Dicky Stubbs that I knows has got a head on his shoulders and a pair of eyes as is worth sumpin’—and he kin hang round the house and won’t nobody think it’s nothin’ but stayin’ out ag’in his mother’s orders’—and you’re that chap,” said Jack Bell, giving Dicky a friendly thwack that nearly sent him head foremost into the sea.

“To-night!” he whispered excitedly; “twelve o’clock; to keep a bright lookout round the Overing House!”

“Purcisely,” answered Jack Bell; “the boat will be down at the cove, and when you see a man comin’ along the ravine through the woods from the cove, with one hand raised up this way—you’ll slip up and let him know if the coast is clear; and if the gineral is in bed—as they wants him to be—you kin tell by the blowin’ out of his candle in the room in the nor’west corner where he sleeps. So now, go along with you, and don’t come a-nigh me to-day, ’cause folks might be wonderin’ what we was a-talkin’ about. And I’ll tell your mother some time to-day, as you will be out p’r’aps all night—but you won’t be doin’ any harm. And if they catch you, mind you, set up a mighty howl, like a great baby, and tell ’em you’re afraid your mother’ll give you the cat—so they’ll think you’re too young to know anythin’—and now be off with you.”

Dicky, with a beaming face, ran off. The first thing that occurred to him was: “If they do nab the British general, what a fine song it will make!” for he had by no means given up his ambition to write a song, and a rebel song at that.

CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL PRESCOTT’S CAPTURE.

Dicky sang very industriously that day, and was lucky, having nearly four shillings to take home to his mother. Jack Bell did not come to the kitchen that evening as usual, but he had been there during the day. After Dicky got his supper he lay down on the settle before the fire and said knowingly to his mother:—

“I will,” said Mrs. Stubbs quietly to this uncommon request. She knew well enough what was meant.

Dicky fully intended taking merely a cat nap, but when ten o’clock came his mother had to shake him and pound him and drag him nearly all over the floor to wake him up. However, once waked up he knew in an instant what was required of him, and he put on his shabby greatcoat and hat quickly enough.

“Good night, mother,” he said. “Don’t fret about me—I’ll be home by daylight.”

“Good night, my boy,” said the Widow Stubbs in her calm way. “Be sure you act like a boy of sense.”

The night was murky, and as Dick glanced out upon the dark bosom of the bay he could only tell the position of the British ships by the lights twinkling dimly at their mastheads, while the huge bulk of their black hulls made only a deeper shadow in the half-darkness. Dicky trudged along the straggling streets of the town and presently he found himself in a country lane that led toward the Overing House, a comfortable old tavern convenient to the cantonments of the troops, and where General Prescott had established himself temporarily.

The house was not fully alight, as people went to bed earlier in those days and ten o’clock was considered quite late. The kitchen where the host and his humble friends gathered was perfectly dark, but in the northwest corner of the house a light still burned. This was in General Prescott’s room.

Dicky crept close to the fence that surrounded the house. Everything was perfectly quiet—even the housedog slept peacefully on the kitchen steps. After looking about very carefully, he saw a path leading into the underbrush toward the ravine.

He slipped across the yard and into this path, and after what seemed to him a long, long wait, he saw advancing noiselessly through the gloom a man with one hand held up, as Jack Bell had described. Dicky went up and whispered:—

“Everything is quiet. The dog is asleep on the back steps, and General Prescott’s room is directly at the front door.”

In a minute more twenty men had silently appeared, as if out of the ground, and among them was a burly negro known as Sam Ink, from his jetty blackness.

They crept through the fence and noiselessly surrounded three sides of the house, the dog meanwhile sleeping peacefully, as they were careful not to go near enough to rouse him. Almost as soon as their preparations were completed the light in the northwest room was put out. Dicky wondered what means they would take to open the front door, which according to the custom of the time was no doubt barred as well as locked. He was quickly enlightened, though, for as soon as the preparations were complete Sam Ink backed off about twenty yards, and then, starting on a run, he lowered his head and made straight for the door, and the next minute the crash of splintered wood was heard and Sam’s head had gone through the panel of the door.

It was only the work of a second then to undo the lock and take down the bar, and as the sound of shuffling feet in various parts of the house was heard General Prescott himself opened the door of his room to see what was the matter. He had no time to strike a flint, but one of the Americans, who had a dark lantern, suddenly flashed it on the group and then twenty stalwart arms seized the British officer and dragged him out of the door and made a rush for the path through the woods.

Dicky had watched it all, having crept up on the porch, and seeing in the one flash of the lantern that General Prescott had on only his nightclothes, Dicky darted in the room, grabbed a pile of clothes that lay upon a chair, and flew after the party in the boat.

They had already made much headway, and as it was some minutes before the people in the house had been able to get a light from the slow process of the tinder box or raking over the kitchen fire, the Americans had a good start. They changed their direction soon after entering the ravine, and half an hour’s rapid walking, and carrying the British officer, brought them to their boats.

Dicky had expected to hear a loud protest from General Prescott, but when he had followed the party to their boats he saw the reason of the general’s silence. A long horse pistol had been held to his head every step of the way. General Prescott broke silence for the first time as he was being hustled into the boat.

“Here they be,” cried Dicky in an excited but subdued voice, and he threw a bundle of clothes into the boat.

Desperate as their circumstances still were, the Americans could not help laughing at this; the more so when Sam Ink, his head uninjured by being used as a battering ram, said politely:

“Lem me be your vally, suh. I’se used to bein’ great men’s vally, suh.”

“Thank you, my good man,” coolly replied General Prescott as Sam with more haste than elegance hustled the general’s clothes on.

The boats then put out for the other side of the bay, and Dick quickly turned and ran toward home. A general alarm had been given by that time, but everybody supposed that the kidnappers were somewhere in the woods near by, or possibly in some deserted quarter of the town. Soldiers were running about, the drum was beating, skyrockets had been sent up, and the alarm had been conveyed to the guardship in the harbor, which sent a boat ashore to find out the cause of the commotion.

Dicky got on all right until just as he reached his mother’s door in the narrow street where they lived, when he ran full tilt into the arms of a sergeant with a searching party. Remembering that he had to play the part of a small and frightened boy, Dicky, who was not frightened in the least, screwed his face up and broke out into a frightful howl as the sergeant caught him by the collar of his jacket.

“Oh! O-o-o-ooh!” yelled Dicky. “Let me go—let me go! Please, sir, let me go! I know my mother will give me a whipping for bein’ out so late!”

“See here,” cried the sergeant gruffly, “have you seen anything of the gang that has carried off General Prescott?”

The door opened just then and the Widow Stubbs appeared with a candle in her hand.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Oh, it’s you, Dicky. Very well, very well. A pretty time of night it is for you to be out. Just hand him over to me, sir,” said the artful Mrs. Stubbs to the sergeant, “and I’ll promise you he won’t be going around the streets at this disreputable hour of the night for a good while.”

Dicky, at this, who could hardly keep from roaring out laughing, opened his mouth and wailed louder than ever, until the sergeant nearly shook the breath out of him.

“Shut that potato trap of yours,” cried the sergeant, “and listen to me. Have you seen a gang of men carrying an officer off into the woods? for that is what has just happened.”

“A tall, fine looking man, as I’ve seen going in and out of the Overing House?” he whimpered.

At this Mrs. Stubbs turned pale, thinking Dicky meant to turn traitor; but the sergeant answered him eagerly:—

“Well, sir,” said Dicky, stammering and hesitating, “I see a crowd o’ men carryin’ somebody off, and they was on horseback—gallopin’ along. The officer was tied to the saddle”—Dicky here remembered about the pistol. “They had a pistol to his head, and they took the main road through Tiverton, sir. The officer was on a white horse, sir. I seen that, though it was so dark.”

It was impossible not to believe this circumstantial account. The sergeant and his men doublequicked it back to the barracks to send mounted scouts out on the Tiverton road. And meanwhile the Americans had rowed with muffled oars across the bay and had landed their prisoner on the opposite shore.

Dicky went into the house, and his mother securely locked and barred the door and put out the light; and when safe in darkness and silence she caught Dicky in her arms and cried:—

Dicky never felt in all his life so proud and happy before. And at that moment, they heard Jack Bell, marching up and down the streets, and roaring out, at the top of his lungs,—

CHAPTER VIII.
DICKY’S NEW SONG.

The sensation in Newport for a day or two was tremendous. It was not lessened when a flag of truce from the American commander announced that General Prescott was in his hands, and he would be pleased to exchange the British officer upon parole for an American officer of equal rank, suggesting Major-General Henry Lee, of the Light Horse Brigade. In a short time the exchange was effected, and General Prescott returned to Newport as a paroled prisoner.

The British officers were deeply chagrined at the boldness and success of the attack. Much sympathy was felt for General Prescott. He was a brave and capable officer, although a stern martinet, and the ridiculous circumstances of the affair leaked out and were much laughed at on the sly.

No two souls were more delighted at the outcome than old Jack Bell and Dicky Stubbs. Dicky’s ambition to have a song about it did not seem likely to be gratified, so he and the old sailor conceived the daring design of composing the song themselves. This was done in the long winter evenings sitting before the kitchen fire and by the light of a single tallow dip.

Jack Bell’s accomplishments in the reading and writing line consisted of the ability to spell out the paragraphs of “The Newport News Letter” and to write with much time and trouble, in a large round hand, “Jno. Bell.” Dicky, however, was quite expert with the pen, although his poetic faculty was not nearly so well developed. After a month’s hard work, and with infinite pains and labor, the song was composed. An air was found for it, and Dicky found himself possessed of the most popular song in Newport.

He dared not sing it where there was a chance of redcoats being around, but at tavern gatherings, with the doors and windows securely fastened, “The Capture of Prescott” was sure to be called for, and when trolled forth the boy’s sweet and thrilling treble always brought down a roaring chorus of laughter and cheers and more shillings than pennies. It was not of a very high order of poetic merit. Dicky was no embryo Milton or Shakespeare, but it touched the pride of the Americans, and that was enough.

Whenever this ditty was being sung Jack Bell’s face was a study. He leaned forward in his chair, his hands on his knees, and his deep, cavernous eyes glowing with delight, and at intervals his great hobnailed boots would come down on the floor with a loud thwack of approval. Dicky, perched upon a table and swinging his legs, as he cocked his chin in the air, would trill it out with all the pleasure in his life, and was naturally enormously proud of his literary as well as his artistic success.

One night about three months after the capture and exchange, and while General Prescott was on board the Diomede frigate waiting for a fair wind to set sail for England, a farewell dinner was given on board to the officers of the army and navy then at Newport.

Now, what poor Dicky Stubbs, the widow’s son, had to do with this dinner Dicky himself would have been puzzled to tell, and he was a much astonished and slightly frightened boy when about dusk a corporal of marines knocked at his mother’s door and demanded Dicky’s presence. Jack Bell was sitting in the kitchen, as he usually was at that hour, and both he and the Widow Stubbs were certain that the authorities had heard of the boy’s rebel songs and had come to arrest him.

As for Dicky, although a very courageous boy in the main, he thought it prudent to retire under the bed in the next room. The corporal, though, having seen him rush in and disappear, all except a pair of tell-tale heels, caught him by the leg and dragged him out.

Dicky, finding himself in the hands of the enemy, recovered his self-possession and stood up quite coolly and unconcernedly.

“Y-y-yes, sir, I am,” stammered Dicky, expecting the next moment to be put in double irons and carried to headquarters.

“Then,” said the corporal, “you’re to come aboard the Diomede frigate with me to sing for the officers at a big jollification they’re havin’ to-night, and you wash your face and comb your hair and put on your best jacket.”

This sounded reassuring, and Dicky proceeded to make his toilet with his mother’s help. The marine meanwhile entered into conversation with Jack Bell in the kitchen.

“Seems to me,” said the corporal, “I’ve seen you at Gibralty on the old Colossus ’long about ’70.”

“Gibralty? Gibralty?” meditatively replied Jack Bell. “Now where in the world is Gibralty?”

“Come,” said the marine, laughing, “we knows all about you—and it was a deuced lucky thing for you that you saved that officer’s life. Men has been shot for deserters afore this.”

“Now you’re jokin’!” exclaimed Jack earnestly; “you marines is allust pullin’ a leg with we poor sailor men, and we never knows when you’re jokin’ and when you ain’t. Gibralty—ain’t that somewheres nigh to the Arches of Pelago, close by Villy Franky?”

“You’ve got it uncommon mixed up, but I reckon you know more ’n you’d let on,” answered the marine, still laughing. And Dicky’s toilet being completed by that time, the marine rose to go.

“Don’t you worrit about this ’ere youngster, ma’am,” he said politely to the Widow Stubbs. “He’s just a-goin’ to sing to the officers after dinner, and I’ll fetch him home before ten o’clock.” With which the marine walked out, with Dicky trudging after him. They soon made the boat and were pulled to the Diomede.

The marine took him to the fok’sle, Dicky staring with all his might at everything he saw. In a few minutes an orderly appeared from the ward room, and Dicky followed him aft.

When they reached the cabin door and Dicky got his first peep inside, it literally took his breath away. Such lights, such gorgeous uniforms, such splendor his simple eyes had never beheld.

Around a long table glittering with glass and plate and wax candles sat thirty or forty officers all in uniform. Most of them wore the dark blue and gold of the navy, but there were many in blazing scarlet. Dicky recognized Captain Forrester, and his eyes fell upon one directly facing the door—a tall, handsome, stern-looking man of middle age, in a brilliant uniform of scarlet, a gold-hilted sword, and with his breast covered with medals. The other officers addressed him as “General.” All were in a jovial humor and a rollicking chorus was dying away as Dicky and the orderly appeared at the door.

“Oh!” cried Captain Forrester at the head of the table, “this is our sweet-throated thrush from the town of which we have heard so much. This lad, gentlemen, is said to be the very finest singer hereabouts, and we have sent for him to add to our jollity this evening.”

Dicky blushed at this compliment to his powers and shuffled from one foot to another in his embarrassment.

“Now,” continued Captain Forrester to him, “pipe up, sir; do your best, and give us a new song. Something that we have never heard before.”

“If you please, sir—if you please, the only new song I’ve got is a patriot song, what you calls a rebel song, sir—and—and”—

“Very well, very well,” cried the officers, laughing. “Give us a rebel song, then. Come, my little man, pipe up.”

Dicky still hesitated between fear and bashfulness, when the “General” in scarlet spoke up:—

“Give us that song, you young rebel, or I’ll see that you get the cat, sure!”

Thus admonished, while much merriment prevailed among the officers at the notion of the rebel song being sung, Dicky cleared his throat and in the midst of a dead silence began to sing in his clear, sweet, boyish voice:—

As soon as Dicky began the song he had noticed that it seemed to create great amusement, and many sly looks were directed toward the general. When Barton’s name was mentioned the fun became contagious, and at the last line of the second stanza it became uncontrollable. Shouts and roars of laughter resounded, in which the general joined heartily, and it was some minutes before Dicky could proceed.

All this time he looked, as he was, perfectly innocent, and could not for the life of him imagine what the laughter was about. Dicky’s seriousness seemed to increase the hilarity, which grew steadily as he kept on.

At the mention of General Prescott’s name a perfect hullabaloo of laughter, stamping, shouts, and cheers broke forth, none joining in more heartily than the general, and it suddenly dawned upon Dicky that it was General Prescott himself who was present.

At the bare idea of this the boy grew ashy pale and looked as if he would drop to the floor, but this only increased the rapture of their amusement. And in the midst of the terrific noise General Prescott’s voice was heard shouting,—

Thus admonished, Dicky managed to continue his song in a quavering voice, every moment interrupted by shrieks of laughter from his delighted audience.

Never was there such a scene witnessed on board a ship as at the conclusion of this song. So wild was the noise of the stamping on the floor and pounding on the table that the people below thought the deck would come through. Yells of laughter and enthusiastic cheering mutually tried to drown out the other. Officers threw themselves on the table, convulsed with laughter, while tears streamed down their cheeks.

Others leaned their shaking sides up against the wall and yelled with laughter. In the midst of it General Prescott, who had laughed until he was almost in hysterics, threw Dicky a bright gold guinea, crying, “There, you young dog, is a guinea for you!”

Dicky caught the guinea as it spun toward him and, pulling his forelock as he ducked his head, exclaimed: “Thanky, sir!” and then turning made a bee-line for the fok’sle.

A boat was just leaving—he scrambled into it, and in a few minutes he was trotting up the narrow street toward his home, a very happy but somewhat frightened boy. He dashed into the kitchen where the Widow Stubbs sat peacefully knitting, while Jack Bell occupied his usual seat.

“That’s for you, mammy!” shouted Dicky, throwing a gold guinea in his mother’s lap.

“From General Prescott,” answered Dicky with twinkling eyes; and then he told the story of the song. The Widow Stubbs laughed until she cried, and Jack Bell roared like a bull with merriment.

“It does indeed,” answered Dicky as he thrust his tongue knowingly into his cheek; “but I’ll say hooray for one British officer—hooray for General Prescott!—and I’m glad I give him his breeches!”

CHAPTER IX.
DICKY ENLISTS.

A time came, though, when Newport was evacuated by the British—and on that glorious day there were no happier souls than Dicky Stubbs and Jack Bell. Among the great events was the sailing in to Newport of the small squadron which made the beginning of the American navy. To Jack Bell’s patriotic eyes they were the handsomest ships he had ever seen in his life.

Jack and Dicky stood on the highest point of the rocky shores of Newport and watched with rapture the coming of the little squadron of five vessels which, though small and lightly armed, were yet to give a noble account of themselves.

“Boy!” shouted Jack Bell as he gripped Dicky by the collar, “d’ye see them ships? They ain’t big, and they ain’t got nothin’ in ’em heavier ’n a twelve pounder—but they’ve got hearts of oak—and let me tell you, boy, it’s the kind of heart you’ve got, as mostly settles whether you’re goin’ to take a lickin’ or give one, in a fight.”

Dicky showed his appreciation of this sentiment by bawling out “Hooray!” as loud as he could—but as he had been “hooraying” pretty steadily for forty-eight hours past, his voice was somewhat cracked. Dicky, however, was still capable of making a good deal of patriotic noise.

The shores were black with shouting crowds, and the American sailors and soldiers received a greeting that made them sure of their welcome. Dicky ran about all day long, sang all his rebel songs to listening crowds, and refused to accept a penny for his singing. At night when he reached home, tired, hungry, sleepy, and hoarse, but perfectly happy, he said to his mother as he marched in: “Mammy, I ain’t got any money for you—I couldn’t take it on a day like this—and I’ve sung the Bunker Hill song and the General Prescott song and all the patriotic songs I know—and I never had such a good time in my life!”

“I know it, my boy,” said the Widow Stubbs, “and I’m glad you didn’t take any money for singing on this glorious day.”

The very next morning the inevitable occurred. Dicky announced that he meant to enlist as a seaman apprentice in the American navy. His mother turned a little pale but said no word. She was a brave woman and a sensible one, too; and she saw that Dicky’s taste for a sea life was so strong that, if balked of it, he would probably never be of much account in any other calling. Jack Bell gave him one of those friendly thwacks that almost knocked him down.

“Right, youngster,” said he. “The navy’s the place for a lad as wants to make his forting. I don’t mean a forting in money—there’s fortings and fortings; I means in carackter, and bein’ stiddy and faithful, and in havin’ lashin’s o’ fun when your cruise is up.”

“But I thought,” said the Widow Stubbs timidly, “there were some hard characters in the navy, Mr. Bell?”

“Mighty few—mighty few,” answered Jack, shaking his head gravely. “When a landsman and a sailor man gits to fightin’, it’s allus the landsman’s fault. And if it warn’t for them meddlesome marines, the sailor men never would git into no trouble. But all the wuthless rapscallions in creation is arter sailor men—and if they warn’t jest as stiddy and k’rect as they can be, ’taint no tellin’ the mischief they’d git into. There ain’t no peaceabler folks in the world nor sailor men, if they is jest let alone and ain’t balked of their will.”

Among the small American squadron, the Raleigh, a smart little frigate armed with twelve pounders, was easily the best; and Jack Bell, having examined her all over, determined that Dicky should enlist on her. No bright, capable boy was likely to be refused, and Captain Thompson, her commander, would have been glad to get Jack Bell, too, of whom he had heard something. The day that Jack took Dicky aboard, to enlist him, Captain Thompson asked to have the old sailor sent down in the cabin. Jack went down and found a very dashing young continental officer, proud of his ship and anxious to do something for his country.

“Well, my man,” said he to Jack; “I have had the lad you brought aboard put on the ship’s books, and I would like very much to have you, too. I know all about you, and such a man is valuable among the foremast people.”

“And I’d like mightily to come, sir,” answered Jack respectfully, “but I was give my choice, by Cap’n Forrester of the Diomede frigate, of promisin’ I wouldn’t enlist or of bein’ h’isted up at the yardarm. You see, sir,” continued Jack, coming a little nearer and putting on a knowing look which Captain Thompson understood perfectly well. “Cap’n Forrester had got it into his head that I were one Jack Bell who sarved forty year in the British navy. But when the war broke out, that there Jack Bell thought as how he’d be a villian to fight ag’in his own country, so he up and deserted. Now, sir, supposin’ Cap’n Forrester had said I were that man? Why, sir, ’twouldn’t ha’ taken a court martial two hours to string me up at the yardarm. So Cap’n Forrester said as how he wouldn’t mention his suspicions to nobody, if I’d promise him I wouldn’t enlist in the American army, navy, or marine corps—and as you see, sir, not bein’ a officer, the only thing for me to do was to promise—so that’s how it lays.”

“I understand,” answered Captain Thompson. “Nothing else could be expected of you; but I am sorry. You can assist me though by bringing me recruits,—men that you know are steady and reliable,—and in that way you may be of almost as much use to me as if you were on the ship.”

“Thankee, sir; I’ll do it,” responded Jack with alacrity. Meanwhile Dicky had been inducted into the fok’sle as drummer boy and helper to the Jack o’ the dust. He found plenty of work to do, and a boatswain’s mate after him to see it well done; and the fare was hard and the pay small. But Dicky was like everybody who has found his real place in life, perfectly satisfied. Every day Jack Bell came on board to see him, and every day Dicky saw that the old sailor became more and more despondent because he, too, could not serve his country. One day after Jack had very dolefully left the ship, Jenkins, the boatswain’s mate on board, said:—

Now, Dicky knew very well what a press gang was—a body of sailors who went ashore at night with an officer and authority to seize and press men into the naval service. This set Dicky to thinking, and he began to wonder if Jack would not be very well pleased if he were seized and forcibly taken on board the Raleigh and made to work and fight. The very next night Dicky got his first liberty on shore, and going to his mother’s cottage found Jack there, as usual, smoking his pipe.

The Widow Stubbs was delighted to see her boy, and he looked so clean and smart and bright in his sailor’s rig that she could not but see that he had improved in the little while that he had been aboard ship. Jack showed his usual interest in everything that happened on the Raleigh, but Dicky saw that the old sailor was much depressed.

“Mr. Bell,” said Dicky after a while, “Mr. Jenkins, the boatswain’s mate, says, as if there was a press gang ’lowed in the American navy, we could get some mighty good men; we’d like to have—you, sir, for one.”

“There ain’t no press gang, more’s the pity. If there was, and they knowed there was a able-bodied sailor man like me ’round about, I’d ha’ been nabbed long ago; and Cap’n Forrester couldn’t say as how I’d broke my word when I was took by force aboard a American ship and made to jine.”

“Well,” persisted Dicky, “would you be glad or sorry if there was a press gang and you was took?”

“Boy,” said Jack sorrowfully, “you’re axin’ me a mighty foolish question. In course I’d be glad. I’d run the risk of bein’ swung up if we was captured and I was found out—but there ain’t no chance at all. I’ve give my word to Cap’n Forrester, an’ I can’t break it; and it ain’t likely that I’ll be lucky enough to be took by force.”

Dicky said no more, but an idea had evidently taken possession of his mind. His eyes began to sparkle, he whispered to himself as he sat in the chimney corner, and his mother saw that something was up. Jack Bell saw nothing, but sat and smoked gloomily. The widow gave Dicky a good supper, and a basket of apples to take on board with him; and about eight o’clock he started to leave. He motioned to his mother to come outside with him when he left.

“Mammy,” said he, “don’t you be scared if a gang from the Raleigh busts in on you some night. I won’t tell you what it’s for, but you needn’t think I’ve been in any harm; so just don’t you be scared about me;” and without another word Dicky dashed down the rocky path to where he was to meet the boat.

Next day, after the men had had their morning exercise, Dicky went and stood by the mast as he had seen men do who wished to speak to the officer of the deck. The officer, Lieutenant Dobell, advanced to speak with him. Dicky had rehearsed exactly what he meant to say to the lieutenant, but when he was actually to say it, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. At last, though with much stammering and stuttering, he managed to get out that “Mr. Bell could be took.” At first Mr. Dobell could not make head or tail of Dicky’s meaning, but in a little while it was cleared up. Mr. Dobell, too, had heard of Jack Bell, and the idea of having such a steady, reliable man-o’-war’s-man on board was very agreeable to him. He merely told Dicky, though, to say nothing of what he had told, and he would think over the matter.

CHAPTER X.
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER.

About a week after this Dicky was told by his friend Jenkins, the boatswain’s mate, that he would be needed that night to pilot the way to his mother’s cottage. Dicky grinned with delight and could hardly wait until night came. At last, after the longest day he ever spent, eight o’clock arrived. Jenkins called him and, in company with eight sailors and Mr. Dobell, they dropped into one of the ship’s boats alongside; and, pulling with a steady man-’o-war’s stroke, soon reached a lonely spot on the shore near the Widow Stubbs’ cottage and silently took their march up the rocky path, Dicky leading to show them the way.

Arrived at the cottage they peered through the window and saw Jack Bell sitting alone and dismally before the fire, smoking as usual. The Widow Stubbs was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Dobell, noticing Jack’s brawny figure and hale and hearty countenance, was more than ever in favor of having him among the Raleigh’s crew. He directed Dicky to knock at the door, and Jack opened it, whereupon Mr. Dobell and Dicky walked in, leaving the eight sailors to watch outside.

Jack Bell recognized Dicky at once by the light of the spluttering pine logs, and after a moment of hesitation rose and saluted Mr. Dobell.

“Do you want to know what we came for? Well, I’ll tell you. We know that you are a first-class sailor and a good man, and we want just such brave fellows on the Raleigh; and, as I hear you promised Captain Forrester not to enlist in the American navy, we concluded we’d get you by other means. So come along quietly with me, or I’ll call in eight men I have outside and take you.”

For a minute Jack Bell’s face was a study. He saw the whole scheme, and the struggle between his delight and his sense of duty to his promise was plain. After a moment he spoke, saluting again as he did so.

“Sir,” said he, “I’m a uneddicated man, and maybe that’s why it is I don’t always know what my duty is—but I want to do it if I can find it out. Now, I don’t go for to say as I don’t want to be took—God knows I do—but I hadn’t oughter give in without a fight—and if you’ll jist let me square off and make a fight agin them eight chaps ’twould make me easy in my mind.”

“You won’t stand much of a show, my man,” replied Mr. Dobell, laughing at Jack’s simplicity but respecting it, “so you might as well give in.”

“One moment, sir,” asked Jack. “I don’t like to have no fightin’ in a respectable widder woman’s house like this ’ere”—

“Can’t help that,” said Mr. Dobell, still laughing; and stepping to the door he motioned to the men outside and eight stalwart sailors marched in.

“Boys,” said Jack, “I ain’t sayin’ you won’t git me, but I think it’s my duty to give you all the trouble I can, so I’ll just take this poker”—

Jack reached forward and was about to seize the poker, when Dicky, as active as a cat, whisked it out of the way. The next weapon at hand was a stool, but before Jack could get hold of it Mr. Dobell gave it a kick which sent it flying. The sailors closed in with a rush, but Jack, with his stout arms swinging around like a Dutch windmill, laid more than one of them low before he was overpowered. The struggle was short and sharp, and in a minute or two Jack’s arms were pinioned by a couple of grinning sailors, while two that he had floored were scrambling to their feet.

“Sir,” said Jack to Mr. Dobell, “I calls you to witness that I made a fight for my promise, and I axes you to give me your word in writin’ as how I was took by force.”

“I will,” answered Mr. Dobell, “and I think you have barked the shins and blacked the eyes of two of my men, so come along. You, boy, remain here until your mother comes to explain affairs to her.”

Jack was carried on board the Raleigh and in due course of time was offered his choice by Captain Thompson of enlisting or being put in irons.

“If you please, sir,” said Jack respectfully, “now as you’ve took me I’ve got to sarve, but I’d ruther not be on the ship’s books.”

“Of course,” answered Captain Thompson, “I would enlist you under another name.”

“’Tain’t that, sir,” said Jack. “I’m willin’ to sarve for my vittles and does, but I don’t want no pay and no prize money, because I want to let Cap’n Forrester know some day as I didn’t break my word and I didn’t make nothin’ out of bein’ took, and I ax you to make a note in writin’ and give it to me.”

This the captain agreed to do, and Jack, with his testimony from Mr. Dobell and that from the captain stored away in his ditty box, took his place among the ship’s crew with a goodwill and the happiest heart in the world. Captain Thompson, moreover, to ease Jack’s mind still further, gave orders that he was to be watched and on no account to be given liberty to go ashore, so that even had he wished to run away he would have found it impossible; and within a week the Raleigh had tripped her anchor and was off for a cruise along the southern coast. Never were there two happier human beings than Jack Bell and Dicky Stubbs. Dicky, it is true, occasionally felt down-hearted when he thought how lonely his mother must be, but he chose rather to think of the joy of meeting her again, and determined to try meanwhile and lead the life his mother would wish him to lead. Jack kept a sharp eye on him and if he showed any slight inclination to do what was not perfectly correct, or to shirk his work, Jack would bring him up with a round turn. So, what with a naturally good disposition and a wholesome restraint and discipline Dicky was both a good and a useful boy. His singing made him universally popular on board, and he was often sent for in the long evenings to sing to the officers in the ward room and even to the captain in the cabin. As for the fok’sle, Dicky could easily have got all of his work done in exchange for his singing, which was a great diversion, particularly when one of the petty officers taught him to scrape a little on the violin. But Jack Bell was always at hand to make him do his full share and more of all there was to do—in which Jack proved himself to be Dicky’s best friend. The story of the song about General Prescott had got abroad in the ship and Dicky was incessantly chaffed about it.

Jack had been a signal man for many years in the British navy and amused his leisure time while cruising by making a tolerably complete set of signal flags to use in an emergency. Dicky, who would much rather have been singing and fiddling than sewing, was nevertheless made to help Jack, and the two passed many hours sitting together on the gun deck stitching away industriously.

“I wonder what mammy’ll say when she finds I can play the fiddle,” Dicky would ask with boyish conceit.

“Dunno,” Jack would answer, slyly chaffing Dicky, “but I reckon she’ll be mightily pleased when she finds you can sew up a pair o’ breeches as good as any tailor man as ever set cross-legged.”

“But I ain’t a-goin’ to do no sewin’ when I’m ashore,” cried Dicky, his dignity much wounded. “I only do it now because I’m obliged to, and mammy won’t ask or expect me to sew up my own breeches at home.”

They had cruised now for some weeks and had captured several small merchant ships, but Captain Thompson was looking for a warship to engage. On a bright September evening they sighted a large fleet of merchantmen which they hoped might be convoyed by a ship of war.

There was a good breeze, and the Raleigh being an excellent sailer both on and off the wind laid her head for the fleet. To divert suspicion and to appear like a merchantman, Captain Thompson hoisted the British ensign, lowered his ports, and had his guns on deck covered with tarpaulins. He sent the men below with instructions at the first tap of the drum to go to quarters, and Dicky as drummer boy was ordered to bring his drum on deck, where he hid it behind a gun and covered it with his jacket.

It was late in the afternoon before the ships had been seen and it was near sunset when the Raleigh, flying British colors, sailed boldly in among the fleet. There were sixteen or seventeen vessels, somewhat widely separated, and one large ship, considerably to windward, whose squareness of rig and generally fine appearance induced Captain Thompson to think she might be a heavy British frigate. But if so her commander had disguised her so effectually that her real character could not be known until the Raleigh got considerably closer than she was then.

When the Raleigh got within signaling distance of the fleet, Captain Thompson sent for Jack Bell, who, with Dicky Stubbs to help him, spread out his signal flags. All of the officers were on deck except Mr. Dobell, the first lieutenant, who was ill in his berth, just recovering from a sharp attack of rheumatism. The second lieutenant, therefore, was to superintend the signaling. The large ship was plainly visible on the horizon when the sun was sinking in a blaze of glory. As soon as Jack Bell caught sight of her he said to the lieutenant very respectfully:—

“Axin’ your parding, sir, but that ’ere ship is a seventy-four. I sarved forty year in the British navy, and I can tell one o’ them ships as fur as I can see ’em.”

“I think you are mistaken, Bell,” answered the young officer, who did not know as much about the run and rig of a seventy-four as Jack Bell. “No doubt there is a warship somewhere about convoying the fleet, but it is not that large ship off the quarter; but I will speak to the captain.”

Captain Thompson agreed with his second lieutenant that the ship was not a seventy-four. Jack said no more, and the twilight coming on, the ship, although she grew larger as they approached her, also grew less distinct in her character and outlines.

Captain Thompson then sailed boldly into the fleet of merchantmen and signaled, “Where is your convoy?”

The signal was evidently understood, as the nearest vessel promptly hung out several signal flags in reply. But in the dusky evening, it was impossible to read them. However, the American captain thought it prudent to act as if he had read them, and signaled back, “We have orders to find your convoy.”

The impudence of this tickled the Americans, and the officers with difficulty suppressed a cheer from the men. Dicky Stubbs laughed so loud that Jack Bell gave him a whack in good earnest, which caused Dicky to be perfectly quiet afterward.

Meanwhile the big ship was evidently edging off, which made the sanguine Americans certain that she was a merchant ship.

“Maybe she is—and maybe she’s waitin’ until we gits under her broadside,” mumbled Jack Bell to himself.

“She’s shy, my men,” cried Captain Thompson, who was young and brave and rash, pointing to the ship, which continued to edge off. “We will signal her and see what account she will give of herself,” continued the captain.

The little Raleigh had now lessened the distance nearly one half between herself and the big ship, which showed not a single porthole and seemed to be keeping off most determinedly. Accordingly the Raleigh signaled, “Where is your convoy?”

A faint moon showed its shimmering disk over the horizon, and those on the Raleigh could plainly read the stranger’s answer:—

By that time the Raleigh had gained on the big ship, which still showed a disposition to get away. Nevertheless it signaled back: “We think you are mistaken.”

By that time both ships were running free on the same tack, under a good working breeze. Suddenly the stranger luffed short around; her whole starboard side seemed to fly open; a double row of heavy guns were run out, as if by magic, and the whole broadside of a seventy-four roared out and raked the American from stem to stern. Fortunately the men had been kept below, in the effort to disguise the Raleigh, and by extreme good fortune, although several of the few officers and men on deck were wounded and all were thrown to the deck, none were killed. But the destruction on the ship was frightful. Many of her guns were dismounted, her masts and spars were so wounded that she became for the time unmanageable, and it was plain that she could not survive another such broadside.

Captain Thompson, with blood streaming down his face, soon regained his feet—but one glance showed him the state of affairs. The Raleigh had lost her leeway and swung around with her head to the wind, perfectly helpless under the guns of her huge antagonist. The seventy-four meanwhile, shortening sail with the utmost quickness and precision, was in a few minutes ready to repeat her performance.

“We will give her one round for the honor of the flag, if we go to the bottom for it,” cried Captain Thompson. “Sound your drum, boy, as loud as you can!”

Dicky at this began a tremendous tattoo, at the first sound of which the men rushed from below, and running to their quarters every gun on the Raleigh’s port side, which lay toward the seventy-four, thundered out—and, immediately after, the American ensign was hauled down, as resistance was useless. In another moment a boat was lowered from the seventy-four and pulled toward the Raleigh. The officers, with Captain Thompson at their head, stood at the port gangway to receive the boarding officer.

It had passed so quickly that Dicky was stunned by it all. He saw as in a dream the British officer come aboard, Captain Thompson offer his sword, which was courteously declined—and he, with the other officers, taken off to the British ship, which turned out to be the Ajax, one of the finest seventy-fours in the British navy. Not a murmur was heard against Captain Thompson, whose rashness had brought the Raleigh’s company to that evil pass. He had made a frightful mistake, but it was the mistake of a brave man, duped by a skilful enemy.

CHAPTER XI.
THE ENEMY OUTWITTED.

A prize crew was immediately thrown on board the Raleigh, but with the contempt for the American navy which the British naturally felt at the time, it was thought enough to send a young lieutenant, a midshipman, and twenty men to take charge of the American ship. The crew were all on deck, about to be mustered by their captors, when Jack Bell, finding Dicky Stubbs, pale and awed, standing next him, whispered very softly:—

“No,” answered Dicky just as softly, “he ain’t able to move hardly yet.”

“You slip below, then,” Jack continued hurriedly but impressively, “and tell him there ain’t but twenty men and two officers aboard—and they thinks they has got all the officers—and if he kin manage to git into the men’s quarters and git a suit of sailor’s clo’es on him, they won’t never suspect we has a officer among us; but if we has an officer, we can git the ship back before they knows it. Now, can you remember that, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Dicky—and in the confusion he easily managed to get below. With his heart in his mouth he ran to Mr. Dobell’s room. The lieutenant, much disabled by rheumatism, had yet managed to crawl as far as his door. He surmised only too well the state of affairs above, and when Dicky in an agitated whisper gave Jack Bell’s message, Dobell saw at once what was meant. Only twenty men and two young officers! He balanced rapidly in his own mind the chances he took, not forgetting the parole that he might expect as an officer, and the imprisonment he might suffer if he assumed the character of an ordinary seaman—but he saw the opportunity opening before him, and he also knew how level-headed and experienced Jack Bell was in spite of his humble position and want of school education. Nor did Mr. Dobell forget that although in the excitement of the moment he might have been overlooked for a little while, that very soon he would be inquired after and searched for—but a plan instantly suggested itself to him on that point. Picking up his cap he hobbled, with Dicky’s assistance, down to the men’s quarters. Nearly all the lights had been put out by the shock of the Ajax’s broadside, but by Mr. Dobell’s instructions Dicky put out every one in their wake that remained. He then told the boy as they passed the carpenters’ quarters to look around for a grindstone that he could lift. Dicky got hold of one that he could lift very handily, as he was a strong boy.

“Now,” said Mr. Dobell hurriedly, “get some sailor togs on me; then put my officer’s clothes up in a bundle and hide them until I can get a chance to throw them overboard; and next throw the grindstone overboard, with my cap after it, and rush up shouting, ‘Man overboard!’ and they will think it is I—but tell Bell privately that I am here.”

By that time they were in the sickbay, where there were two or three men ill, and in a minute or two Mr. Dobell was in a hammock, looking as ill as any of them. Dicky ran back and by almost superhuman efforts managed to get the heavy grindstone overboard and threw Mr. Dobell’s cap after it. A loud splash was heard, and Dicky rushed up on deck shouting, “Man overboard!”

This added to the commotion prevailing on deck. The boarding boat was at the gangway, and the young midshipman jumping in, the boat’s crew pulled toward the bow of the boat, where the splash had been heard. They saw an officer’s cap floating near by and it was picked up, and for half an hour they pulled back and forth over the place where the grindstone had gone down, upon the chance of saving the supposed unfortunate officer.

On deck Jack Bell, by some occult means, had passed the word around among the Americans that something was up and they must be on their guard. When the boat returned with the officer’s cap, it was at once identified as Mr. Dobell’s by the initials in it, and on looking into his room it was found empty. The British lieutenant thought he had conclusive proof that the first lieutenant had either fallen or jumped overboard; and Jack Bell propounded a plausible theory that Mr. Dobell, being unable to get on deck, had managed to lean out of the cabin window so far, in his effort to see what was happening above, that he lost his balance and fell overboard. “And he were a good officer, were Mr. Dobell,” said Jack with much feeling; “and he must ha’ felt awful bad when he knowed he couldn’t lift his hand to help the poor Raleigh.”

Jack’s theory was shared by the British officers, and when they found two or three sailors in the sickbay it did not occur to them that the one who appeared the most ill was the first lieutenant of the ship.

In a little while the ship was completely under the control of her captors and nearly a hundred American prisoners were sent below the hatches, while the damages to the ship were repaired as far as possible. This was not finished until morning, when the Ajax and her prize parted company, the Raleigh being directed to report at Philadelphia, which had then fallen in the power of the British.

The melancholy news of Mr. Dobell’s supposed loss had been conveyed to his old shipmates on the Ajax, and added to the distress they suffered. The American prisoners on the Raleigh, although closely guarded, were perfectly free to communicate with each other. A plan was formed to seize the ship as soon as Mr. Dobell was able to move about, which would be shortly, as he was mending fast. A sentry, fully armed, always stood at the hatchway, but if once he could be disarmed or thrown off his guard, the Americans rushing up could get possession of the deck, and the rest would be easy. Mr. Dobell had the management of the whole scheme, and it was desired to carry it into effect before they reached Northern waters which swarmed with British cruisers. Jack Bell was Mr. Dobell’s righthand man; and after two or three days, when the lieutenant was able to get about his cramped quarters fairly well, Jack took Dicky aside and whispered to him: “When the officer comes down to inspect to-morrow morning, do you be singing the prettiest song you have, and fiddling, too, and maybe he’ll notice you; and then I’ll tell you what to do.”

Next morning, therefore, when the officer came below, Dicky was singing away like a thrush “When the Wind at Night Whistles Over the Deep,” and playing his accompaniment on the violin. He stopped, as if caught by the officer; but apparently the young British lieutenant had no ear for music and passed on without noticing him. The British sailors, though, had heard him, and as music was highly prized on board ship to break the monotony, Dicky was soon asked for, to sing and play to the men in the fok’sle during their leisure hours. Thus, he was often allowed on deck for an hour at a time, and never failed to use his eyes very sharply and to carry down the news to Mr. Dobell, whose character as an officer was not in the least suspected by his captors. They had experienced contrary winds, and although ten days had passed since the Raleigh’s capture, they had not yet passed the capes of North Carolina.

On a certain day though, when Mr. Dobell was able to walk about with comfort, Dicky had got his instructions, and with a beating heart but an undaunted courage he went above, when he was called for. It was Sunday, and the few sailors that could be spared were sitting around the fok’sle smoking and spinning yarns. Dinner had been served to them and directly afterward the hatches would be opened to send the prisoners’ dinner down to them. Dicky was permitted to go as far as the main hatchway. It had just been opened and two cooks descended, followed by two sailors armed with pistols and cutlasses. As they disappeared below a slight noise, as of scuffling bare feet, was heard. The sentry, with his piece at his shoulder, advanced, and at the same moment Dicky, rushing at him from behind, pulled his legs from under him and he fell sprawling down the hatchway. In another minute the Americans came rushing up on deck headed by Mr. Dobell who, although unable to take any active part, yet commanded with skill and coolness. They had the pistols and cutlasses of the two sailors they had disarmed below, and they had seized the musket and pistols of the sentry. In another moment the sailors sitting around the fok’sle were overpowered before they had a chance to make any resistance, and Mr. Dobell, directing pistols to be leveled at the heads of the lookouts, they came down with alacrity. All this was done with surprisingly little noise, as the Americans had been ordered to act as quietly as possible and had left their shoes below.

Fifteen out of the twenty men had been captured, and it was now determined to bag the two officers. Mr. Dobell, who had become wonderfully active under the influence of excitement and success, quickly and noiselessly descended the cabin hatchway. The cabin door was open, and the lieutenant, with his back to it, sat at the table calmly enjoying his dinner; while the young midshipman, leaning on the transom, craned his neck far out of a porthole to see what caused the faint but strange noises on deck.

Mr. Dobell signaled to two brawny young Americans who walked abreast with him, and the next instant a stout arm encircled the lieutenant’s head, across his eyes, and a pair of equally stout arms pinioned him behind. The lieutenant uttered a loud yell, but the midshipman with his head out of the port did not hear it. He felt, though, someone dragging him backward, and the next thing he knew he was gracefully seated on the floor and the cabin was full of Americans. By that time the five remaining British sailors had been overpowered and the ship was in the hands of the Americans.

The sailor who had covered the officer’s eyes took his arm away. The young lieutenant gave one quick glance around and became perfectly quiet.

“Sir,” said Mr. Dobell, “this ship is in possession of the Americans, and to show you that it is, you shall be freed from personal restraint.”

“At all events,” he said coolly, “there is no commissioned officer among you, and it is not likely that any of you foremast people can navigate a ship.”

“I beg your pardon,” answered Mr. Dobell politely, “but I am Lieutenant Dobell of the Continental navy, and I feel altogether capable of taking this ship anywhere I wish. It was not I, but a grindstone, that fell overboard the night of the capture. I felt that with an officer to direct them our men could get the ship back, and for that reason I chose to spend my time below the hatches. Now, however, I promise myself the pleasure of your company in the cabin.”

The lieutenant, not to be outdone in politeness, answered with admirable self-possession: “When you have made your dispositions on the ship I should be pleased to have your company at dinner, for I conceive myself the host at this one meal at least.”

“Thank you,” responded Mr. Dobell. “I will not keep you longer than I can possibly help, for I acknowledge that the fare and table service under the hatches has not been altogether to my liking.”

Mr. Dobell then went on deck, and directing the prisoners to be mustered, they were marched below and occupied the late quarters of the Americans. No bad blood was shown on either side, but a philosophic acceptance of a change of conditions. Mr. Dobell had his plans so well made and easily carried out that within half an hour he rejoined the lieutenant in the cabin and ate the first good meal he had enjoyed for ten days; while the Raleigh, once more an American ship, bounded along under a freshening breeze to the music of three thundering cheers, given by the Americans as soon as they had leisure to celebrate their adventure.

Dicky Stubbs was the happiest little soul imaginable. He had been the only one among all the Americans allowed on deck, and the news he had carried below, and his achievements in pulling the sentry’s legs from under him, made Dicky a considerable hero in his own eyes. But Mr. Dobell, after seeing the boy every day in the time of their imprisonment, had concluded that he was a remarkably brave, sensible, and reliable boy, and had determined to interest himself in Dicky’s future welfare.

Mr. Dobell decided to make for Newport. They had favoring breezes all the way and passed many British cruisers, to all of which the Raleigh showed British colors and signaled that she had been taken from the Americans. But whenever a disposition was shown to speak her, she always made off with a swiftness that caused many an angry captain to promise himself the pleasure of reporting her to the admiral as wanting in the first principle of that courtesy which should prevail upon the seas.

The melancholy news that the Raleigh had been captured by the Ajax was brought to Newport one day by a trader from New York; and there was no sadder heart in Newport than that of the Widow Stubbs. She spent no time, however, in useless lamenting, for she had given her boy to her country cheerfully and knew what the sacrifice meant. And she consoled herself by thinking that it was after all but a temporal misfortune, not comparable to what might have been had Dicky been caught lying, stealing, or playing the rascal in any way. But she could not refrain from crying a little when, about sunset on the day the bad news came, she looked out of the window of her little house and thought that was the time that Dicky had been wont to come home jingling his pennies in his pockets with a vast air of importance before throwing them into her lap, and then demanding his supper as if he owned the earth. But—strange sight!—there lay a handsome little frigate at anchor in the harbor that looked astonishingly like the Raleigh; and—oh, happy miracle!—there was Dicky himself rushing up the path, followed by Jack Bell on a dog trot; and then the door burst open and Dicky, grown about a foot taller and broader, jumped into his mother’s arms, and Jack Bell marched in and began sawing her arm up and down. The Widow Stubbs was so amazed, astounded, and delighted that she was quite beside herself; and Dicky poured out a rigmarole, his tongue going like a millwheel, all about knocking the sentry down, and playing the fiddle, and what Mr. Dobell was going to do for him.

“What does he mean, Mr. Bell?” asked the Widow Stubbs helplessly, after having hugged and kissed Dicky twenty times over.

“The brat means, ma’am,” responded Jack as he solemnly cut a large quid of tobacco and placed it in his cheek, “as how he’s did his duty—no more and no less—but, like all brats, he’s makin’ a big hullabaloo over jest a-doin’ of his duty, like ’twas sumpin’ extryordinary. I don’t go for to say as he ain’t a smart chap—but he’s had adwantages, bein’ took young into the navy, where most of the smart men is found, ma’am—and I think he’ll live to be a credit and a comfort to you, ma’am.”

“He will, if he only does his duty just as it lies before him,” said the widow softly, and kissing Dicky’s freckled nose.

And he kept his promise very faithfully. The day came, when the war was over and America was free, that his mother saw him captain of a fine ship and able to give her a better house to live in than she had ever known in all her life. Jack Bell took possession of the little cottage, where he spent many happy years, and always pointed to the brave, bright, and successful Captain Richard Stubbs as a monument of what “bein’ ketched young and put into the navy” would do for a man.

FOOTNOTES

Transcriber’s Notes

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUARTERDECK AND FOK'SLE: STORIES OF THE SEA ***

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Quarterdeck and Fok'sle: Stories of the Sea

QUARTERDECK AND FOK’SLE
STORIES OF THE SEA

CONTENTS.

A QUARTERDECK STORY.

CHAPTER I.
THE CAPTURE OF THE FORT.

CHAPTER II.
YOUNG BRYDELL’S CHUMS.

CHAPTER III.
BRYDELL’S FIRST FAILURE.

CHAPTER IV.
BRYDELL’S SECOND FAILURE.

CHAPTER V.
STRIKING OUT FOR HIMSELF.

CHAPTER VI.
A NEW LIFE.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SUMMER CRUISE.

CHAPTER VIII.
A QUESTION OF HONOR.

CHAPTER IX.
GRUBB’S HONORABLE DISCHARGE.

CHAPTER X.
IN COMMAND OF THE SQUADRON.

CHAPTER XI.
A SAFE RETURN.

CHAPTER XII.
BRYDELL REDEEMS HIS PROMISE.

A FOK’SLE STORY.

CHAPTER I.
ON BOARD THE DIOMEDE.

CHAPTER II.
A GALLANT RESCUE.

CHAPTER III.
DICKY’S PATRIOTISM.

CHAPTER IV.
AN IMPORTANT ERRAND.

CHAPTER V.
AN ADVENTURE WITH THE REDCOATS.

CHAPTER VI.
JACK BELL’S SECRET.

CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL PRESCOTT’S CAPTURE.

CHAPTER VIII.
DICKY’S NEW SONG.

CHAPTER IX.
DICKY ENLISTS.

CHAPTER X.
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER.

CHAPTER XI.
THE ENEMY OUTWITTED.

FOOTNOTES

Transcriber’s Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Quarterdeck and Fok'sle: Stories of the Sea

QUARTERDECK AND FOK’SLE STORIES OF THE SEA

CONTENTS.

A QUARTERDECK STORY.

CHAPTER I. THE CAPTURE OF THE FORT.

CHAPTER II. YOUNG BRYDELL’S CHUMS.

CHAPTER III. BRYDELL’S FIRST FAILURE.

CHAPTER IV. BRYDELL’S SECOND FAILURE.

CHAPTER V. STRIKING OUT FOR HIMSELF.

CHAPTER VI. A NEW LIFE.

CHAPTER VII. THE SUMMER CRUISE.

CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF HONOR.

CHAPTER IX. GRUBB’S HONORABLE DISCHARGE.

CHAPTER X. IN COMMAND OF THE SQUADRON.

CHAPTER XI. A SAFE RETURN.

CHAPTER XII. BRYDELL REDEEMS HIS PROMISE.

A FOK’SLE STORY.

CHAPTER I. ON BOARD THE DIOMEDE.

CHAPTER II. A GALLANT RESCUE.

CHAPTER III. DICKY’S PATRIOTISM.

CHAPTER IV. AN IMPORTANT ERRAND.

CHAPTER V. AN ADVENTURE WITH THE REDCOATS.

CHAPTER VI. JACK BELL’S SECRET.

CHAPTER VII. GENERAL PRESCOTT’S CAPTURE.

CHAPTER VIII. DICKY’S NEW SONG.

CHAPTER IX. DICKY ENLISTS.

CHAPTER X. AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER.

CHAPTER XI. THE ENEMY OUTWITTED.

FOOTNOTES

Transcriber’s Notes

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

QUARTERDECK AND FOK’SLE
STORIES OF THE SEA

CHAPTER I.
THE CAPTURE OF THE FORT.

CHAPTER II.
YOUNG BRYDELL’S CHUMS.

CHAPTER III.
BRYDELL’S FIRST FAILURE.

CHAPTER IV.
BRYDELL’S SECOND FAILURE.

CHAPTER V.
STRIKING OUT FOR HIMSELF.

CHAPTER VI.
A NEW LIFE.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SUMMER CRUISE.

CHAPTER VIII.
A QUESTION OF HONOR.

CHAPTER IX.
GRUBB’S HONORABLE DISCHARGE.

CHAPTER X.
IN COMMAND OF THE SQUADRON.

CHAPTER XI.
A SAFE RETURN.

CHAPTER XII.
BRYDELL REDEEMS HIS PROMISE.

CHAPTER I.
ON BOARD THE DIOMEDE.

CHAPTER II.
A GALLANT RESCUE.

CHAPTER III.
DICKY’S PATRIOTISM.

CHAPTER IV.
AN IMPORTANT ERRAND.

CHAPTER V.
AN ADVENTURE WITH THE REDCOATS.

CHAPTER VI.
JACK BELL’S SECRET.

CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL PRESCOTT’S CAPTURE.

CHAPTER VIII.
DICKY’S NEW SONG.

CHAPTER IX.
DICKY ENLISTS.

CHAPTER X.
AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER.

CHAPTER XI.
THE ENEMY OUTWITTED.