The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea

The Sea! the Sea! Our own home-land, the Sea! 'Tis, as it always was, and still, please God, will be, When we are gone, Our own, Possessing it for Thee, Ours, ours, and ours alo...

He came over the crest of the Downs at a lurching gallop; down the ragged rut-worn lane, the dusty convolvuluses glimmering up at him in the dusk; past the squat-spired Church i...

A boat had just put off from the bank, a tall lad steering. The great red horseman, strangely active for so huge a man, flung himself clear of his horse, snatched a pistol from...

Before the riding-officer had dropped into the dinghy, the _Tremendous_ began to slap the water, shaking out ragged topsails as she slid out of the harbour, a misty rain shroudi...

"Quiberon Bay was our first. Fifty-nine that were. I was powder-monkey on the _Royal George_; he was Hawke's orderly midshipman. St. Vincent our last. And a God's plenty in betw...

The feel of the ship, alive beneath his feet; the lift, the plunge, the swaying rhythm of the bows; the roll of the masts against a patch of stars--there was music in them all;...

"That's the _Kite_, sir," answered Reuben. "Know her luff anywheres. Foots it like a witch, and handles like a lady. A boy could sail her; and she'll carry farty at a pinch."

There was a scamper of feet along the deck; and up the shrouds a scurry of dark figures. Above was ordered bustle; from the deck a sounding voice ruled all, as God rules the world.

"Say! was there a tall chap on a blood chestnut aboard?" asked a slushy voice. "Andshomish feller--might be own brother to me. If so, pass him up the side, there's a good biy. T...

Yesterday he had waked in the blue room at the White Cellar, the sparrows chirping under the eaves, the smiling chamber-maid at the door saying, "Half-past seven, sir," and the...

About each gun clustered her crew, naked to the waist, black handkerchieves bound about their foreheads. All had solemn puckers about the brows; some were silent, some ghastly-j...

Then Kit understood the ruse of that wary old fighter, his Commander. Old Ding-dong had placed the _Cocotte_ as a bulwark between him and her consort. As he had foreseen, the wi...

As Kit turned, he heard the rip of the first boat under the counter of the sloop and a sharp command in French, sounding strange and terrible in his ears.

They sprawled about in all attitudes--on their faces, on their backs, in each other's arms, as though snoozing. And the snoring noise that came from one or two of them enhanced...

The mainmast had gone by the board. The quarterdeck carronades, loosed from their moorings, sprawled in the wash of the water, a dead man floating amongst them. The deck was a t...

The old man's head, still forward on his breast, did not move; he did not seem to breathe. All of him was dead save that little eye, cocking up at the lad from under the tilted...

"Ah, that's better," sighed the old man comfortably. "No fear I shall break adrift o my moorings." He slipped the scent-bottle into his breast-pocket and patted it. "She'll lay...

Things hit him outside. He was aware of them; but they did not hurt. His body was wood, dull to sensation. He himself was within somewhere, snug and safe. He had heard the parso...

To Kit, kneeling at his side, it seemed that only the old man's slow blinking eyelids were alive. The horror of it thrilled the boy, and woke the woman in him. He was not repell...

Scenes near, scenes far, drifted across his fading mind. Now he was a tiny lad babbling in broadest dialect to his mother at the washing-tub; now he was a pit boy yelling at Sus...

All night he had slept like a child far from the world and its terrible distresses. The weary body had brought peace to the worn mind. The two had merged in sleep, neither deman...

Beneath the chalk boulders that strewed the bottom of the cliff, weird in the white gloom, a band of shingle ran like a road before him. He took it, the shingle crunching beneat...

In the mist Kit thought at first that he was paddling with a child. Then he saw his mistake. The scarecrow was holding a bare arm by the hand. That arm thrust up horribly from t...

There could be no question as to the identity of these kites. They were the Gap Gang, and in desperate plight. Their lugger was gone, and their leader dead. At sixes and sevens...

Already the boy began to have that sense which distinguishes the great man from the herd, swinging him over obstacles to others insurmountable, the sense that God is with him, a...

There was something so desolate about the grief of man, perched up there between sea and sky, nobody near but a floating sea-gull, that Kit almost wept to hear him.

But it was no dead woman the Gentleman was standing over now; it was a chestnut mare, the sun glistening on a coat that shone like a girl's hair. She lay along the turf with lan...

On the top of the cliff, they were by no means on the top of the Downs. A great dun wave of earth, patched with gorse, surged up into the sky before him.

True, the boy's dirk still flashed in the other's hand; but the lad had his jack-knife; and his eyes dwelt on the place where he could plant it home and home in that black back-...

On the top, he hunted the landscape with anxious eyes. There was nothing to be seen; no round but the zig-a-zig of the heartless grasshoppers, merry all about him, and the thund...

True, Ding-dong had ordered him with his last breath to steer clear of human habitation--"They're all in it," the old man had said. But then he possessed the scent-bottle. Now h...

The sea of turf ran right up to the wall, and broke against it. The windows, seen close, were less windows than loop-holes, barred across. On the sill of one was a pot of musk,...

"I remember a Kit Caryll by name in the Mediterranean in the nineties. And I ought to know the King's uniform, seeing I was a King's officer myself before I took orders."

"That was Fighting Fitz of Green Brigade fame," said the Parson, mopping his forehead. "We knew him as the Boy Sabreur in Egypt. Even then it was said that no woman could resist...

It was more like a guard-room than a parlour. Clearly no woman reigned here. All was wood, or stone, or steel, clean as a ship, and as comfortless. Arms on the wall; iron-barred...

"Believe the boy!" cried the Parson fiercely. "Why, I _saw_ the fight. I was dancing mad at the foot of the cliff. Great heavens, sir!--didn't you hear me holloa? I should have...

Then for the first time Kit saw that in the bed lay a man. A shaven head, pert and pug-like, and a face shining with sweat protruded. All the rest was lost beneath that mountain...

The greensward ran smoothly away to a shingle bank that rose, long- backed and brown, some three hundred yards away. The bank crossed the horizon like a low breast-work, sweepin...

"This is the Wish," explained the Parson, climbing; "the Wash really, because the sea washed round it in old days. It's gone back along these parts. Old Piper says, when he was...

"I make out about a score of em," he said. "The boat's beached, and a man over it. I can catch the glint on his gun-barrel. We can't get at em except along the shore, hang it! T...

"It's a little better'n two o'clock, sir; you've had a tidy sleep. The tide's pretty near down, and the moon's a-nigh off the water. By than you get alongside there'll likely be...

No! a figure was leaning over the side, his back to Kit. No sailor, obviously. He was wearing a great bearskin, and Kit caught the glimmer of a bayonet. A sentinel, and not asle...

Bugle-calls split the air; drums rolled furiously; a carronade went off with a shattering roar; there was a rush of feet and tumult of voices. Above the confusion could be heard...

"Shall I charge em, sir?" his little brown eyes bursting with desire-- "me and the boy. Down the ill and into em plippety-plumpety-plop! O for God's sake, sir!" whimpering, danc...

The cottage was fast as a fortress. Stout planks were nailed across either door. Heavy shutters darkened the windows. Through a loop-hole a stream of light poured in on Nelson's...

"The privateer barking good-bye, sir," came old Piper's voice from across the room. "She's stood in with the tide, and had a slap with her bow-chaser. Now she's going about."

"Knapp brought no men. He got as far as the Lamb in Eastbourne on the hill yonder, and there he got playing the fool, and sneaked back here about twenty minutes after you were g...

"It contains," he continued in the still voice of the man so moved that he dare hardly trust himself, "a list of all those gentlemen of Kent and Sussex who are _à nous_, as the...

"Who saved you from the _Tremendous_?" he whispered. "Who handed you up a cliff a goat couldn't climb?--who brought you to this house? --who put the flag-idea into your head, an...

The gravity of the enterprise, its certain perils, the issues at stake, oppressed the room. Death was there already; as yet indeed only a ghost at each man's elbow, in a few mom...

"Knapp, stop tinkering those bolts about, and stand back till I give the word! Now, Blob, listen here!--Knapp and I are going through this door down the drain. You'll stand here...

_"That's im!--bangs you up in the firin line, then sticks you if you look at him. If it's storm, we got to do it. If it's sally, we got to meet it. If it's neether, we got to se...

Now heaven opened its far door. He crawled towards the light. It was no longer a star; it was an eye, the eye of a soul, the Soul of Souls. And it was loving him.

The Gentleman was winded, and nothing more. The opening of the drain was discovered. No matter. It had done its work, or would have when once it had seen him home.

Those long shots from the rear had ceased half an hour ago. A tall Grenadier drooped across the wall. How should he have known there was one in the cottage could reach out a fat...

"That's right," said Fat George in sleek, caressing voice. "Give the genelman your and, my dear. He'll elp you out. There you are! There's no call for _you_ to be scared. _You'r...

That dead mask of wood stared at Kit blankly. Had it no eyes? no soul? no understanding? was it not English, heart of oak, its life sucked these centuries from the breast of the...

Then he saw that Blob had by the collar the Grenadier he had killed, and with groanings and pantings and strange animal noises, was hauling his victim towards the dark mouth of...

A great Sussex wain, top-heavy with hay, was drawing out of a farmyard among trees, a quarter of a mile away. A white horse was in the shafts, and a black in the lead. Two Grena...

"It was the pluckiest attempt I ever saw!" he cried with the generosity of the victor. "That black filly had never known the feel of a collar, till twenty minutes since.... I wa...

"Eat and sleep--that's the whole duty of man just at present. Blob, take Piper his rations, and ask him to forgive an old soldier who's a bit short in the temper in action--and...

"O yes, sir. Ran straight away through the camp to his tent, where the flag were flyin, never bothered about no sentries nor nothin. Just as I trot up, a little bit of a butterf...

That's right. Do the thing thoroughly if you're going to do it at all. Come home yourself, and bring your fleet with you. It might get in the way of the Combined Squadron if it...

"There's his tops'ls," said he, nodding east to where far across the waters a glimmer as of an iceberg hung in the dawn. "Take the glass and have a peep at her."

"That you, Master Kit? Would you step this way, sir? There keeps on a kind of a rumbling like in the drain--a'most as though the gentlemen be running a cargo. I ca'ant justly ma...

In the sally of yesterday at least he had Knapp with him. Now he was alone. And to dare alone is to be revealed to yourself, naked as you are.

The mists were lifting, and the sun shone white upon the water. He could see the frigate, faint indeed and far, stately-pacing towards her doom; he could see the mast of the lug...

"I've been watching em too," replied the other. "And sorry I am I shan't be here to entertain em--I've a soft place for the soldiers myself. But I'm just off for a day on the wa...

"And there's another thing," he cried in terrible agony. "What about you, Piper? We shall take it in the open; but _you_, you'll have to wait for it. I _can't_ leave you to fall...

Swift as a flood, and as silent, he made for the wall, the despatch- bag flopping in the small of his back. And his silence added to the terror of his coming.

Round the corner the doomed man whirled with a grin. The cutlass swooped. The fellow sprawled over his slayer, the shock of the onset rolling the chair back. The old man shook o...

There was a fury of fighting in the distance and a dreadful smothered worry against the back door; here a tranquil sward, trees bowing, and the shingle-bank a roan breast-work a...

They might as well have tried to move a mountain. Yet even as the boy strained, a wave shot up and sluiced his feet. And how that cold clasp warmed his heart!

On his right Beachy Head, rusty of hide, waded white-footed into the deep. Before him opened the sea, a plain of palest blue, blurred with wind and patched here and there with s...

"I said nothing of the sort, my lord," replied the giant calmly. "I said I wasn't going to stop the way of your lordship's frigate to let a smuggler's brat liquor up."

His face was turned away. Kit dwelt anxiously on the keen, pale profile, the ruined eye, the lopped arm. Was his listener incredulous? He could not say, and Nelson did not speak.

Down the gangway he came pale and uplifted. He was quite calm, and about his face there was the rain-washed look the boy had seen on his mother's as she came out of the room whe...

It was the old Nelson he saw, and yet only the wraith of the old Nelson. There was a grey and ghastly darkness about him that made the Parson afraid. It was the grey of snow at...

"Kit," said Nelson, with that wonderful smile of his--"I may call you Kit? Your father was always Kit to me--will you shake the hand of a brother-officer, who's proud to call hi...

A hoary old sea-dog with unlaughing eyes was putting leading questions. The men crowded round with grins and thrusting heads. They spat; they chewed; they nudged each other. Her...

The lugger, with lolling mainsail, flowed down a path of gold. The shore was dark and still before them, and the sun poised above the Downs, blue at the back.

The merry little fighter of the morning, then cockiest of men, was now no more than a yellow shadow; dead, you would have said, but for that ghost of a voice, dribbling dreadful...

"I made shift to get on my legs, but lor bless you! I couldn't stir. It was all, 'O my God, send a thunder-bolt and put him out of his pain!'

"'Just spread your coat on that dresser, my man, will you?' he says. 'Now lift him gently. Don't wake him. He's set his course for the Old Country.... Now just lay me on the flo...

The old man's head, moon-white in the dusk, lay on a soldier's knapsack. An officer's short cloak, buttoned about his throat, was flung back from his body. The great hands, fing...

"Quite.... So kind, you English--once you've got your own way. I've been lying here, dreaming and drifting, while the flies buzzed and Sailor on the table there muttered about h...

"I ask," continued the Parson in labouring voice, "for this reason: I've no doubt you're a better man than I am. Still I'm a clergyman, though I'm not much good at it. And if yo...

The Parson, on hands and knees at the mouth of the drain, heard him and looked back. It was not quite his notion of how a dying should be conducted: still, they were both a bit...

As he raised his head, one standing at the foot of the dresser bent. It was Blob. Kit shot out a hand, fearing some irreverence. Then he saw and stayed.