Chapter 9

"And why didn't you stop in the town and have a bite on your way here?"

"I promised my father to come straight on to the docks, sir, and report for duty. I said I wouldn't stop until I got here."

"So nothing could have kept you back, eh? Well, you've reported for duty now, as I'm your superior officer. I don't have to be on board ship for half an hour, so my first order to you is that you come with me to a cook-shop and have some of the roast beef of old England before you set out to sea."

Nothing loath, now that his promise was kept, Nelson went with the lieutenant into one of the small, winding Chatham streets, and entered an inn much frequented by sailors. Here the officer ordered a hot supper, and sat by the boy while the latter ate it. Nelson was nearly famished; it was a delight to the lieutenant to watch the satisfying of such an appetite.

A little later the officer and the boy were rowed out to the frigate, and Nelson duly delivered by his new friend into the care of the ship's commander. His uncle looked at the boy askance; he seemed very pale and delicate and undersized, even for a boy of thirteen, but the uncle had promised to take him on trial as midshipman, and so, though with much misgiving, he found him his berth.

He little knew what the sight of that Channel Fleet and the smell of the salt water meant to the new midshipman.

The boy's uncle, Captain Suckling by name, who was in command of this sixty-four gun man-o'-war, had been trained in the principles of the old English navy, which were that hardship was good for a sailor, and that the more a man was battered about in time of peace the better he would fight in time of war.

Everything above decks was spick and span, and young Horatio gazed with wondering admiration at the neatness of the white decks continually scraped and holystoned until they fairly glistened in the sun, at the imposing size and length of the long lines of black cannon, the special pride of every officer, and at the symmetry and the wonderful height of spars and sails and rigging, forming a very network in the sky.

He had loved boats since the days when he had pumped water into the horse-trough before his father's house in order that he might sail paper boats in it, and now it seemed almost impossible to believe that he stood on the deck of a ship of his Majesty's service and was to have a hand in caring for all this cannon and rigging. He looked wonderingly at the sailors, a bronzed, hardy lot, in their white jackets and trousers that flared widely at the bottom, wearing their hair according to the custom of the day in long pig-tails down their backs.

But when he went below decks he found the picture very different. Everything there was dirt and gloom, foul odors and general misery. The cat-o'-nine-tails was the favorite punishment for sailors. Many a back was deeply scored with the lash, and, worse yet, many a man had been forced into the service against his will, seized at night by the press-gang, cudgeled into insensibility and carried on board to wake up later and find himself destined to serve at sea. The food was chiefly salt beef, and in most respects the men were treated little better than so many cattle. As a result they might be hardy, but they were also as surly and vicious a lot as could be found anywhere.

The poor boy had a hard time growing accustomed to such companionship. He had longed for the glory of the sailor's life without knowing anything about its wretchedness, and now he saw all these horrors spread before his eyes. His uncle, believing that the best way to bring him up was to let him entirely alone to fight his own battles, paid little or no attention to him, and the boy, brought up in the country home of a clergyman in Norfolk, was very homesick, and often longed for the people and the comforts he had left; but he had a stout heart, and before a great while had conquered this homesickness and set about to see what work he could find to do.

At first both officers and men regarded Horatio as simply a sickly boy and totally unfit for life at sea, but it was not long before he managed, in a quiet way peculiarly his own, to make a name and place for himself on board the _Raisonnable_.

The story got around that when he was a small boy he had one day escaped from his nurse and run off into some dense woods near his father's house. He had lost his way and finally, coming to a brook too wide for him to cross, had sat down on a stone on one bank and waited. It was some time after dark when his distracted family found him.

"I should think you'd have been frightened to death," his grandmother was reported to have said.

"What's that?" asked the boy.

"Why, fear at being alone, and the dark coming on."

"Fear," said he, "I don't know what you mean by that. I've never seen it."

His uncle told the story one day to another officer, and within a week young Nelson had been christened "Dreadnaught."

When he was still a very new midshipman he went for a cruise in the polar seas. One afternoon some of the men were allowed on the arctic shore, and Nelson started on a little expedition of his own. The first any one else knew of it was when another midshipman happened to glance across the field of ice, and caught sight of the huge white body of a polar bear within a few yards of Nelson.

He called to his mates and pointed to the boy. They were too far off to help. They saw Nelson level his musket and saw the wicked head of the bear raised in front of him. They held their breath waiting for the shot. In the still air they caught the click of the hammer, but heard no report. For some reason the gun had not gone off. With a shout they scrambled over the ice to help him, knowing he was now at the wild beast's mercy.

The boy, however, had turned his musket and raised the butt end in defense when a gun on the ship boomed out the signal for all hands to go aboard. The signal woke the echoes and thundered over the field of ice, and the bear, frightened, turned tail and ran off as fast as his short legs could carry him. Nelson, his musket still raised, ran after the animal, but by this time the rescue party had come up with him.

"What do you mean by hunting polar bears all alone, Dreadnaught?" asked the other midshipman. "Didn't you see him coming?"

"Yes," said the boy, "but I wanted his skin to take back home to my father. I might have had him if that gun hadn't sent him away. Now he's lost forever."

"Well, I vow," said the other. "I don't believe there's another chap in the navy with half your pluck."

Such incidents as these showed the young sailor's courage, and he had continual chances to show how rapidly he was learning seamanship.

By the time he was fifteen he was practically possessed of all the knowledge of an able seaman, and was sent on board the ship _Sea Horse_ to the East Indies. His position at first was little better than that of a foremast hand, but it was not long before the captain noticed the lad's smartness and keen attention to his duties, and very soon he called him to the quarterdeck and made him fore-midshipman.

The captain advised the first lieutenant to keep an eye on the boy and occasionally to let him have charge of manoeuvering the vessel. This the lieutenant did, and to his great surprise found that Nelson was quite as well able to handle the ship as he was himself.

The sea life was doing him good, too. He was no longer the thin, sickly lad who had wandered through the streets of Chatham, but a fine, well-built, sun-tanned youth, well beloved on deck and popular with all his mates.

Fine as the sea life was for him, life in the East Indies was very trying. The climate brought fever with it, and Horatio had been in the East but a short time before he fell very ill and had to be taken from his ship and sent home on board the _Dolphin_. The ship doctors gave up hope of saving him, but the captain was so much interested in the boy that he spent hours nursing him, and finally he grew better.

The voyage from India to England was the most trying time in Nelson's life. He felt that he was not built for the life of a sailor, although his whole mind and heart were set upon rising in that profession. He had no money, no influential friends; he had staked everything on winning his way in the navy. Now it seemed as though he must give up his career and settle down to some small place on shore.

But his talks with the captain gradually stirred new hopes. He was seized with patriotic zeal and determined at every risk to serve his country on the seas, no matter what suffering it might bring to him. He wanted to act, to do something, and this resolution became suddenly the motive power of his life. From the time of that voyage home on the _Dolphin_, Nelson used to say, dated his passion to win fame in the defense of England.

When he reached home he was given a position on a new ship, and a little later took his examination for the rank of lieutenant. His uncle, Captain Suckling, who had commanded the _Raissonnable_, was at the head of the board of examiners before whom Horatio appeared. The boy was very nervous when he entered the room, but answered the questions almost as rapidly as they were put to him, and every answer was full and correct. He passed the examinations triumphantly, and then his uncle introduced him to the other members of the Board.

One of them said, "Why didn't you tell us he was your own nephew?"

"Because," said the old sailor, "I didn't want him to be favored in any way. I was sure he would pass a fine examination, and as you see I haven't been disappointed."

Nelson was given the rank of lieutenant and assigned to the _Lowestoffe_. The vessel cruised to the Barbadoes, in the West Indies, and there the young lieutenant had his first chance to make his mark. The ship fell in with an American letter-of-marque, and the first lieutenant was ordered to board the American ship. A terrific gale was blowing, and the sea ran so high that in spite of the efforts of the lieutenant he was unable to reach the American boat and was forced to return to his own frigate.

The captain, very much disturbed at this failure to land the prize, called the officers to him and asked warmly whether there was not one of them who was able to take possession of the other boat. The lieutenant who had already tried and failed offered to try again, but Nelson pushed his way forward and exclaimed, "No, it's my turn now. If I come back it will be time for you then." With a few sailors he jumped into the small boat and ploughed through the seas.

It was a hard tussle to reach the American, and when they did reach her the sea was so high, and the prize lay so deep in the trough of the waves, that Nelson's boat was swept over the deck of the other vessel, and he had to come back from the other side and fight his way against the high sea before he could finally succeed in climbing on board.

He now had a high reputation for courage and daring at sea fit to equal the name he had won as a skilful mariner. It did not take the captain of the _Lowestoffe_ long to realize that the alertness and enthusiasm of his young lieutenant bespoke a future of the greatest brilliance in his country's service.

In those days England was really at peace, although her eyes were constantly turned across the Channel and wise men were preparing her for war with France. Nelson was sent into all parts of the world, and no matter what were his orders he always carried them out with such skill that rapid promotion followed every return home. Time and again he fell ill, but he was never despondent, because he was determined to continue in his course and serve his country at any cost to himself. He also saw the war clouds gathering, and realized that it would not be long before he would have the chance to command a squadron against France.

The men who had scoffed at him when he first appeared, a puny boy, at Chatham, found themselves gradually trusting more and more to his advice, and his uncle, who had at first predicted that three months' service would send Horatio back to shore, was now the first to predict that England would have good cause to be proud of this slightly-built but marvelously active-minded youth.

A boy somewhat younger than Nelson was growing up in Corsica, in France, who was soon to win great battles for the latter country and whose overweaning ambition was finally to plunge his land into a life-and-death struggle with England. That boy was named Napoleon Bonaparte, and when he became supreme in France he realized that it was England who chiefly blocked his schemes at world-wide empire.

He planned to invade England, and to carry his troops across the Channel while the great English war-ships were engaged with his own vessels; but by the time that Napoleon led the troops of France, Horatio Nelson was in command of a British squadron. The French might be all-conquering on land, but the English had yet to be defeated on the seas.

Before the great decisive battle of Trafalgar Nelson sent his famous message to all the men under him: "England expects every man to do his duty!" When the battle was over, the little English admiral had won the greatest naval victory in his country's history. The same indomitable pluck that had carried him through so many dangers won that great day. He would not be downed, no matter what the odds against him.

The same qualities which had sent the delicate boy of thirteen hurrying through the rain to Chatham, intent only on reaching his goal, brought about the great sea victories of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson.

XII

Robert Fulton

The Boy of the Conestoga: 1765-1815

It was mid-afternoon on July 3d, 1778. A group of a dozen boys sat in the long grass that grew close down to the banks of the narrow, twisting Conestoga River, in eastern Pennsylvania. All of the boys were hard at work engaged in a mysterious occupation. By the side of one of them lay a great pile of narrow pasteboard tubes, each about two feet long, and in front of this same small boy stood a keg filled with what looked like black sand.

Each of the group was busy working with one of the pasteboard tubes, stopping one end tightly with paper, and then pouring in handfuls of the "sand" from the keg, and from time to time dropping small colored balls into the tubes at various layers of the sand. These balls came from a box that was guarded by the same boy who had charge of the tubes and the keg, and he dealt them out to the others with continual words of caution.

"Be careful of that one, George," he said, handing him one of the colored balls; "those red ones were very hard to make, and I haven't many of them, but they'll burn splendidly, and make a great show when they go off."

"How do you stop the candle when all the balls and powder are in, Rob?" asked another boy.

"See, this way," said the young instructor, and he slipped a short fuse into the tube and fastened the end with paper and a piece of twine.

"There's something'll let folks know to-morrow's the Fourth of July," he added proudly, as he laid the rocket beside the keg of powder.

"What made you think of them, Rob?" asked one of the boys, looking admiringly at the lad of fourteen who had just spoken.

"I knew something had to be done," said Robert, "as soon as I heard they weren't going to let us burn any candles to-morrow night 'cause candles are so scarce. I knew we had to do something to show how proud we are that they signed the Declaration of Independence two years ago, and so I thought things over last night and worked out a way of making these rockets. They'll be much grander than last year's candle parade. They wouldn't let us light the streets, so we'll light the skies."

"I wish the Britishers could see them!" said one of the group; and another added: "I wish General Washington could be in Lancaster to-morrow night!"

Just before the warm sun dropped behind the tops of the walnut-grove beyond the river the work was done, and a great pile of rockets lay on the grass. Then, as though moved by one impulse, all the boys stripped off their clothes and plunged into the cool pool of the river where it made a great circle under the maples. They had all been born and brought up near the winding Conestoga, and had fished in it and swam in it ever since they could remember.

The next evening the boys of Lancaster sprang a surprise on that quiet but patriotic town. The authorities had forbidden the burning of candles on account of the scarcity caused by the War of Independence, and every one expected that second Fourth of July to pass off as quietly as any other day. But at dusk all the boys gathered at Rob Fulton's house, just outside town, and as soon as it was really dark proceeded to the town square, their arms full of mysterious packages.

It took only a few minutes to gather enough wood in the centre of the square for a gigantic bonfire, and when all the people of Lancaster were drawn into the square by the blaze, the boys started their display of fireworks. The astonished people heard one dull thudding report after another, saw a ball of colored fire flaming high in the air, then a burst of myriad sparks and a rain of stars. They were not used to seeing sky-rockets, most of them had never heard that there were such things, but they were delighted with them, and hurrahed and cheered at each fresh burst. This was indeed a great surprise.

"What are they? Where did they come from? How did the boys get them?" were the questions that went through the watching crowds, and it was not long before the answer traveled from mouth to mouth: "It's one of Rob Fulton's inventions. He read about making them in some book."

The father of one of Robert's friends nodded his head when he heard this news, and said to his wife: "I might have known it was young Rob; I've never known such a boy for making things. His schoolmaster told me the other day that when he was only ten he made his own lead pencils, picking up any bits of sheet lead which happened to come his way, and hammering the lead out of them and making pencils that were as good as any in the school."

The fireworks were a great success; for the better part of an hour they held the attention of Lancaster, and when the last rocket had shot out its stars every boy there felt that the Fourth of July had been splendidly kept. For a day or two Rob Fulton was an important personage, then he dropped back into the ranks with his schoolmates.

It was not long after, however, that Robert set himself to work out another problem. The Fultons lived near the Conestoga, and Robert and his younger brothers were very fond of fishing. All they had to fish from was a light raft which they had built the summer before, and this cumbersome craft they had to pole from place to place. When they wanted to fish some distance down from their farmhouse, they had to spend most of the afternoon poling, and this heavy labor robbed the sport of half its charm. So, a week or two after the Fourth of July, Robert told a couple of boy friends that he was going to make a boat of his own, and got them to help him collect the materials he needed.

He liked mystery, and told them to tell no one of his plans. As soon as school was over the three conspirators would steal away to the riverside, and there hammer and saw and plane to their hearts' content. Gradually the boat took shape under their hands, and after about ten days' work a small, light skiff, with two paddle-wheels joined by a bar and crank, was ready to be launched.

The idea was that a boy standing in the middle of the skiff could make both wheels revolve by turning the crank, and it needed only another boy holding an oar in a crotch at the stern to steer the craft wherever he wanted it to go. Yet, even when the boat was finished, the two other boys were very doubtful whether such a strange-looking object would really work, Robert himself had no doubts upon that score; he had worked the whole plan out before he had chosen the first plank.

The miniature side-paddle river-boat was christened the _George Washington_, and launched in a still reach of the Conestoga. It was an exciting moment when Robert laid hands on the crank and started the two wheels. They turned easily, and the boat pulled steadily out from shore, and at a twist from the steering-oar headed down-stream. It was a proud moment for the young inventor. As they went down the river and passed people on the banks, he could not help laughing as he saw the surprise on their faces.

Fishing became better sport than ever when one had a boat of this sort to take one up-or down-stream. Very little effort sent the paddles a long way, and there were always boys who were eager to take a turn at the crank.

The Lancaster schoolmaster heard of the boat, and said to a friend: "Take my word for it, the world's going to hear from Rob Fulton some of these days. He can't help turning old goods to new uses. And he doesn't know what it means to be discouraged. I met him the afternoon of the third of July and he told me that he was going to make some rockets, and I said I thought he would find such a task impossible. 'No, sir,' says Robert to me, 'I don't think so. I don't think anything's impossible if you make up your mind to do it.' That's the sort of boy he is!"

A large number of Hessian troops were quartered near the Conestoga, and the Lancaster boys thought a great deal about the War for Independence, as was natural when the fathers and brothers of most of them were fighting in it. Such thoughts soon turned Rob Fulton's mind to making firearms, and as soon as his boat had proved itself successful, he planned a new type of gun, and supplied some Lancaster gunsmiths with complete drawings for the whole,--stock, lock, and barrel,--and made estimates of range that proved correct when the gun was finished.

But Rob Fulton had remarkable talents in more lines than one. His playmates had nicknamed him "Quicksilver Bob" because he was so fond of buying that glittering metal and using it in various ways. The name suited him well, for he could turn from one occupation to another, and appeared to be equally good in each. Usually, however, when he was not inventing he was learning how to paint, and he had a number of teachers, one of whom was the famous Major André.

The little town of Lancaster was an important place during the Revolution. In 1777 the Continental Congress had held its sessions in the old court-house there, and during the whole time of the war the town was famous as the depot of supplies for the army. A great deal of powder was stored in the town, and rifles, blankets, and clothing were manufactured there in large quantities.

In the autumn of 1775 Major André, who had been captured while on his way to Quebec, was brought to Lancaster for safe keeping. He was allowed certain liberty on parole, and lived in the house of a near neighbor of the Fultons, named Caleb Cope. Major André was very fond of sketching, and spent much of his time in the fields painting pictures of the picturesque little village. No sooner had Rob Fulton heard of the English major's skill with colors than he hunted him up and asked for a few lessons. André was a very amiable young man, and took a great liking to the boy. He gave him many lessons in drawing, and also in the use of colors, and young Fulton learned rapidly under his tutoring. André was also in the habit of playing marbles and other games with Rob and his young friends, and the boys found him delightful company.