Chapter 7

The sergeant--who answered to the incredible name of Topase--wanted to know what was the sense of worriting about the fortifications at this hour of the day: and, if his language verged on insubordination, his wife's was frankly mutinous. Captain Pond heard her from her bed exhorting her husband to close the window and not let in the draught upon her for the sake of any little Volunteer whipper-snapper in creation. "What next?" she should like to know, and "Tell the pestering man there's a bed of spring bulbs planted close under the wall, an' if he goes stampin' upon my li'l crocuges I'll have the law of him."

Captain Pond's authority, however, was not to be disobeyed, and a quarter of an hour later he found himself, with Sergeant Topase beside him, on the platform of the eighteen-pounder battery, watching the first rosy streaks of dawn as they spread and travelled across the misty sea at his feet. The hour was chilly, but it held the promise of a fine day; and in another twenty minutes, when the golden sunlight touched the walls of the old fortress and ran up the flagstaff above it in a needle of flame, he gazed around him on his temporary home, on the magnificent harbour, on the town of Falmouth climbing tier upon tier above the waterside, on the scintillating swell of the Channel without, and felt his chest expand with legitimate pride.

By this time the Doctor and Lieutenant Clogg had joined him, and their faces too wore a hopefuller, more contented look. Life at Pendennis might not prove so irksome after all, with plenty of professional occupation to relieve it. Captain Pond slipped an arm within the Doctor's, and together the three officers made a slow tour of the outer walls, plying Sergeant Topase with questions and disregarding his sulky hints that he, for his part, would be thankful to get a bite of breakfast.

"But what have we here?" asked Captain Pond suddenly, coming to a halt.

Their circuit had brought them round to the landward side of the fortress, to a point bearing south by east of the town, when through a breach--yes, a clean breach!--in the wall they gazed out across the fosse and along a high turfy ridge that roughly followed the curve of the cliffs and of the seabeach below. Within the wall, and backed by it,--save where the gap had been broken,--stood a group of roofless and half-dismantled outbuildings which our three officers studied in sheer amazement.

"What on earth is the meaning of this?"

"Married quarters," answered Sergeant Topase curtly. "You won't want 'em."

"Married quarters?"

"Leastways, that's what they was until three days ago. The workmen be pullin' 'em down to put up new ones."

"And in pulling them down they have actually pulled down twelve feet of the wall protecting the fortress?"

"Certainly: a bit of old wall and as rotten as touch. Never you fret: the Frenchies won't be comin' along whilst _you're_ here!"--thus Sergeant Topase in tones of fine sarcasm.

"By whose orders has this breach been made?" Captain Pond demanded sternly.

"Nobody's. I believe, if you ask me, 'twas just a little notion of the contractor's, for convenience of getting in his material and carting away the rubbish. He'll fix up the wall again as soon as the job's over, and the place will be stronger than ever."

"Monstrous!" exclaimed Captain Pond. "Monstrous! And you tell us he has done this without orders and no one has interfered!"

"I don't see what there is to fret about, savin' your presence," the old sergeant persisted. "And, any way, 'twon't take the man three days at the outside to cart off the old buildings. Allow another four for getting in the new material--"

"Seven days! seven days! And Great Britain engaged at this moment in the greatest war of its history! Oh, Doctor, Doctor--these professionals!"

Sergeant Topase shrugged his shoulders, and, concluding that his duties as a cicerone were at an end, edged away to the gatehouse for his breakfast.

"Oh, these professionals!" ingeminated Captain Pond again, eyeing the breach and the dismantled married quarters. "A whole seven days! And for that period we are to rest exposed not only to direct attack, but to the gaze of the curious public--nay, perchance even (who knows?) to the paid spies of the Corsican! Doctor, we must post a guard here at once! Incredible that even this precaution should have been neglected! Nay,"-- with a sudden happy inspiration he clapped the Doctor on the shoulder,-- "did he say 'twould take three days to level this sorry heap?"

"He did."

"It shall not take us an hour! By George, sir, before daylight to-morrow we'll run up a nine-pounder, and have this rubbish down in five minutes! Yes, yes--and I'd do it to-day, if it weren't the Sabbath."

"I don't see that the Sabbath ought to count against what we may fairly call the dictates of national urgency," said the Doctor. "_ Salus patriae suprema lex_."

"What's that?"

"Latin. It means that when the State is endangered all lesser considerations should properly go to the wall. To me your proposal seems a brilliant one; just the happy inspiration that would never occur to the hidebound professional mind in a month of Sundays. And in your place I wouldn't allow the Sabbath or anything else--"

A yell interrupted him--a yell, followed by the sound of a scuffle and, after a moment's interval, by a shout of triumph. These noises came from the roofless married quarters, and the voice of triumph was Lieutenant Clogg's, who had stepped inside the building while his seniors stood conversing, and now emerged dragging a little man by the collar, while with his disengaged hand he flourished a paper excitedly.

"A spy! A spy!" he panted.

"Hey?"

"I caught him in the act!" Mr. Clogg thrust the paper into his Captain's hands and, turning upon his captive, shook him first as one shakes a fractious child, and then planted him vigorously on his feet and demanded what he had to say for himself.

The captive could achieve no more than a stutter. He was an extremely little man, dressed in the Sunday garb of a civilian--fustian breeches, moleskin waistcoat, and a frock of blue broadcloth, very shiny at the seams. His hat had fallen off in the struggle, and his eyes, timorous as a hare's, seemed to plead for mercy while he stammered for speech.

"Good Lord!" cried Captain Pond, gazing at the paper. "Look, Doctor--a plan!"

"A sketch plan!"

"A plan of our defences!"

"Damme, a plan of the whole Castle, and drawn to scale! Search him, Clogg; search the villain!"

"Wha-wha-_what_," stuttered the little man, "WHAT'S the m-m-meaning of this? S-some-body shall p-pay, as sure as I--I--I--"

"Pay, sir?" thundered Captain Pond as Mr. Clogg dragged forth yet another bundle of plans from the poor creature's pocket. "You have seen the last penny you'll ever draw in your vile trade."

"Wha-_what_ have I--I--I DONE?"

"Heaven knows, sir--Heaven, which has interposed at this hour to thwart this treacherous design--alone can draw the full indictment against your past. Clogg, march him off to the guard-room: and you, Doctor, tell Pengelly to post a guard outside the door. In an hour's time I may feel myself sufficiently composed to examine him, and we will hold a full inquiry to-morrow. Good Lord!"--Captain Pond removed his hat and wiped his brow. "Good Lord! what an escape!"

"I'll--I'll have the l-l-law on you for t-th-this!" stammered the prisoner sulkily an hour later when Captain Pond entered his cell.

No other answer would he give to the Captain's closest interrogatory. Only he demanded that a constable should be fetched. He was told that in England a constable had no power of interference with military justice.

"Y-you are a s-s-silly fool!" answered the prisoner, and turned away to his bench.

Captain Fond, emerging from the cell, gave orders to supply him with a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. Down in Falmouth the bells were ringing for church. In the Castle a Sabbath stillness reigned. Sergeant Topase, napping and reading his Bible by turns before the gatehouse fire, remarked to his wife that on the whole these silly amachoors were giving less trouble than he had expected.

At 7.45 next morning Gunner Israel Spettigew, having relieved guard with Gunner Oke at the breach, and advised him to exhibit a dose of black-currant wine before turning in (as a specific against a chill in the extremities), was proceeding leisurably to cut himself a quid of tobacco when he became aware of two workmen--carpenters they appeared to be in the dim light--approaching the entry.

"Who goes there?" he challenged. "'Tis no use my asking you for the countersign, because I've forgotten it myself: but there's No Admittance except on Business."

"That's what we've come upon," said one of the workmen. "By the looks of 'ee you must be one of the new Artillerymen from Looe that can't die however hard they want to. But didn' Jackson tell you to look out for us?"

"Who's Jackson?"

"Why, our Clerk of the Works. He's somewhere inside surely? He usually turns up half an hour ahead of anyone else, his heart's so set on this job."

"I haven't seen 'en go by, to my knowledge," said Uncle Issy.

The two men looked at one another. "Not turned up? Then there must be something the matter with 'en this morning: taken poorly with over-work, I reckon. Oh, you can't miss Jackson when once you've set eyes on him--a little chap with a face like a rabbit and a 'pediment in his speech."

"Hey?" said Uncle Issy sharply. "What? A stammerin' little slip of a chap in a moleskin waistcoat?"

"That's the man. Leastways I never see'd him wear a moleskin waistcoat, 'xcept on Sundays."

"But it _was_ Sunday!"

"Hey?"

"Oh, tell me--tell me, that's dear souls! Makes a whistly noise in his speech--do he?--like a slit bellows?"

"That's Jackson, to a hair. But--but--then you _hev_ seen 'en?"

"Seen 'en?" cried Uncle Issy. "A nice miss I ha'n't helped to bury 'en, by this time! Oh yes . . . if you want Jackson he's inside: an' what's more, he's a long way inside. But you can't want him half so much as he'll be wantin' you."

HIS EXCELLENCY'S PRIZE-FIGHT.

My grand-uncle pushed the decanter of brown sherry: a stout old-fashioned decanter, with shoulders almost as square as his own, and a silver chain about them bearing a silver label--not unlike the badge and collar which he himself wore on full ceremonial occasions.

"Three times round the world," he said, "and as yet only twice around the table. You must do it justice, gentlemen."

"A great wine, Admiral!" said the Rector, filling and sipping, with half-closed eyes. "They have a brown sherry at Christ Church which may challenge it, perhaps . . . The steward remembers my weakness when I go up to preach my afternoon sermon at St. Mary's. There was talk in Congregation, the other day, of abolishing afternoon sermons, on the ground that nobody attended them; but this, as one speaker feelingly observed, would deprive the country clergy of a dear privilege. . . ." The Rector took another sip. "An heroic contest, between two such wines!"

"Talking of heroic contests, mine came to me by means of a prize-fight," said my grand-uncle, with a glance down the table at us two youngsters who were sipping and looking wise, as became connoisseurs fresh from the small beer of a public school. At the word 'prize-fight,' Dick and I pricked up our ears. To us the Admiral was at once a prodigiously fine fellow and a prodigiously old one--though he dated after Nelson's day, to us he reached well back to it, and in fact he had been a midshipman in the last two years of the Great War. Certainly he belonged to the old school rather than to the new. He had fought under Codrington at Navarino. He had talked with mighty men of the ring--Tom Cribb, Jem Mace, Belcher, Sayers.

"What is more," said he, "though paid late, the wine you're drinking is the first prize-money I ever took; in my first ship, lads, and within forty-eight hours of joining her. . . . Youth, youth!"--as the decanter came around to him he refilled his glass.--"And to think that I was a good two years younger than either of you!"

"A prize-fight? You'll tell us about it, sir?" ventured Dick eagerly.

"The Rector has heard the yarn before, I doubt?" said the old man, with a glance which told that he only needed pressing.

"That objection," the Rector answered tactfully, "has been lodged against certain of my sermons. I never let it deter me."

"There's a moral in it, too," said my grand-uncle, visibly reassured.

Well, as for the moral, I cannot say that I have ever found it, to swear by. But here is my grand-uncle's story.

If you want a seaman, they say, you must catch him young, and I will add that the first hour for him is the best. Eh? Young men have talked to me of the day when they first entered Oxford or Cambridge--of the moment, we'll say, when the London coach topped the Shotover rise in the early morning, and they saw all the towers and spires at their feet. I am willing to believe it good. And the first kiss,--when you and she are young fools and over head and ears in love,--you'll know what I mean, you boys, when you grow to it, and I am not denying that it brings heaven down to earth and knocks their heads together. But for bliss--sheer undiluted bliss--match me the day when a boy runs upstairs and sees his midshipman's outfit laid out on the bed--blue jacket, brass buttons, dirk, yes, and in my sea time a kind of top-hat that fined away towards the top, with a cockade. I tell you I spent an hour looking at myself in my poor mother's cheval-glass, and then walked out across the common to show myself to my aunts,--rest their souls!--who inhabited a cottage about a mile from ours, and had been used hitherto, when entertaining me, to ask one another in French if the offer of a glass of beer would, considering my age, be permissible. I drank sherry with them that afternoon, and left them (I make no doubt) with a kind of tacit assurance that, come what might, they were henceforward secure of protection.

The next day--though it blew a short squall of tears when I took leave of my mother and climbed aboard the coach--was scarcely less glorious. I wore my uniform, and nursed my toasting-fork proudly across my knees; and the passengers one and all made much of me, in a manner which I never allowed to derogate into coddling. At The Swan with Two Necks, Cheapside, when the coach set me down, I behaved as a man should; ordered supper and a bed; and over my supper discussed the prospects of peace with an affable, middle-aged bagman who shared my box. He thought well of the prospects of peace. For me, I knitted my brows and gave him to understand that circumstances might alter cases.

From The Swan with Two Necks I took coach next morning--proceeding from the bar to the door between two lines of smiling domestics--and travelled down to the Blue Posts, the famous Blue Posts, at Portsmouth. In the Blue Posts there was a smoking-room, and across the end of it ran a sofa on which (tradition said) you might count on finding a midshipman asleep. I was not then aware of the tradition; but sure enough a midshipman reclined there when I entered the room. He was not asleep, but engaged in perusing something which he promptly, even hastily, stowed away in the breast of his tunic--a locket, I make no doubt. He sat up and regarded me; and I stared back at him, how long I will not say, but long enough for me to perceive that his jacket buttons were as glossy as my own. I noted this; but it conveyed little to me, for my imagination clothed in equal splendour everyone in his Majesty's service.

He appeared to be young, even delicately youthful; but I felt it necessary to assert my manhood before him, and rang for the waiter.

"A glass of beer, if you please," said I.

The waiter lifted his eyebrows and looked from me to the sofa.

"_One_ glass of beer, sir?" he asked.

"I hardly like to offer--" I began lamely, following his glance.

"It is more usual, sir. _In_ the Service. Between two young gentlemen as, by the addresses on their chestes, is both for the _Melpomeny_: and newly joined."

"Hulloa!" said I, turning round to the sofa, "are you in the same fix as myself?"

Reading in his face that it was so, I corrected my order, and waved the waiter to the door with creditable self-possession. As soon as he had withdrawn, "My name's Rodd," said I. "What's yours?"

"Hartnoll," he said; "from Norfolk."

"I come from the West--Devonshire," said I, and with an air of being proud of it; but added, on an afterthought, "Norfolk must be a fine county, though I've never seen it. Nelson came from there, didn't he?"

"His place is only six miles from ours," said Hartnoll. "I've seen it scores of times."

And with that he stuck his hands suddenly in his pockets, turned away from me, and stared very resolutely out of the dirty bow-window.

When the waiter had brought the drinks and retired again, Hartnoll confessed to me that he had never tasted beer. "You'll come to it in time," said I encouragingly: but I fancy that the tap at the Blue Posts was of a quality to discourage a first experiment. He tasted his, made a face, and suggested that I might deal with both glasses. I had, to begin with, ordered the beer out of bravado, and one gulp warned me that bravado might be carried too far. I managed, indeed--being on my mettle--to drain my own glass, and even achieved a noise which, with Hartnoll, might pass for a smacking of the lips: but we decided to empty his out of window, for fear of the waiter's scorn. We heaved up the lower sash--the effort it cost went some way to explaining the fustiness of the room--and Hartnoll tossed out the beer.

There was an exclamation below.

While we craned out to see what had happened, the waiter's voice smote on our ears from the doorway behind us, saying that young gentlemen would be young gentlemen all the world over, but a new beaver hat couldn't be bought for ten shillings. Everything must have a beginning, of course, but the gentleman below was annoyed, and threatened to come upstairs. It wasn't perhaps exactly the thing to come to the Port Admiral's ears: but if we left it to _him_ (the waiter) he had a notion that ten shillings, with a little tact, might clear it, and no bones broken.

Hartnoll, somewhat white in the face, tendered the sum, and very pluckily declined to let me bear my share. "You'll excuse me, Rodd," said he politely, "but I must make it a point of honour." Pale though he was, I believe he would have offered to fight me had I insisted.

Our instructions, it turned out, were identical. We were to be called for at the Blue Posts, and a boat would fetch us off to the _Melpomene_ frigate. Her captain, it appeared, was a kind of second cousin of Hartnoll's: for me, I had been recommended to him by a cousin of my father's, a member of the Board of Admiralty. Captain the Hon. John Suckling treated us, nearly or remotely as we might be connected with him, with impartiality that night. No boat came off for us. We learned that the _Melpomene_ was lying at Spithead, waiting (so the waiter told us) to carry out a new Governor with his suite to Barbados; which possibly accounted for her captain's neglect of such small fry as two midshipmen. The waiter, however, advised us not to trouble ourselves. He would make it all right in the morning.

So Hartnoll and I supped together in the empty coffee-room; compared notes; drank a pint of port apiece; and under its influence became boastful. Insensibly the adventure of the beaver hat came to wear the aspect of a dashing practical joke. It encouraged us to exchange confidences of earlier deeds of derring-do, of bird-nesting, of rook-shooting, of angling for trout, of encounters with poachers. I remember crossing my knees, holding up my glass to the light, and remarking sagely that some poachers were not at all bad fellows. Hartnoll agreed that it depended how you took 'em. We lauded Norfolk and Devon as sporting counties, and somehow it was understood that they respectively owed much of their reputation to the families of Hartnoll and Rodd. Hartnoll even hinted at a love-affair: but here I discouraged him with a frown, which implied that as seamen we saw that weakness in its proper light. I have wondered, since then, to what extent we imposed upon one another: in fact, I daresay, very little; but in spirit we gave and took fire. We were two ardent boys, and we meant well.

"Here's to the Service!" said I, holding up my glass.

"To the Service!" echoed Hartnoll; drained his, set it down, and looked across at me with a flushed face.

"With quick promotion and a plenty of prize-money!" said a voice in the doorway. It was that diabolical waiter again, entering to remove the cloth: and for a moment I felt my ears redden. Recovering myself, I told him pretty strongly not to intrude again upon the conversation of gentlemen; but added that since he had presumed to take part in the toast, he might fetch himself a tankard of beer and drink to it. Whereupon he thanked me, begged my pardon for having taken the liberty, and immediately took another, telling me that anyone having _his_ experience of young gentlemen could see with half an eye that I was born to command.

"Tell you what," said I to Hartnoll when the waiter had left us, "that fellow has given me a notion, with his talk about prize-money. I don't half like owing you my share of that ten shillings, you know."

"I thought we were agreed not to mention it again," said Hartnoll, firing up.

Said I, "But there's my view of it to be considered. Suppose now we put it on to our first prize-money--whoever makes the first haul to pay the whole ten shillings, and if we make it together, then each to pay five?"

"That won't do," said Hartnoll. "My head don't seem able to follow you very clearly, but if we make our first haul together, the matter remains where it is."

"Very well," I yielded. "Then I must get ahead of you, to get quits."

"You won't, though," said Hartnoll, pushing back his chair, and so dismissing the subject.

Now the evening being young, I proposed that we should sally forth together and view the town--in other words (though I avoided them) that we should flaunt our uniforms in the streets of Portsmouth. Hartnoll demurred: the boat (said he) might arrive in our absence. I rang for the waiter again, and took counsel with him. The waiter began by answering that the Blue Posts, though open day and night, would take it as a favour if gentlemen patronising the house would make it convenient to knock-in before midnight, and, if possible, retire to their rooms before that hour. He understood our desire to see the town; "it was, in fact, the usual thing, under the circumstances." If I would not take it as what he might call (and did) call a libbaty, there was a good many bad characters knocking about Portsmouth, pickpockets included, and especially at fair-time.

"Fair-time?" I asked.

"At the back of the town--Kingston way--you will find it," said he, with a jerk of the thumb.

"But," said I, "the frigate might send off a boat for us."

"Not a chance of it to-night, sir," said the waiter. "The southerly breeze has been bringing up a fog these two hours past, and the inside of the harbour is thick as soup. More by token, I've already sent word to the chambermaid to fill a couple of warming-pans. You're booked with us, gentlemen, till to-morrow morning."