Ben Burton | Page 6

away on our weather-beam, a bright light suddenly burst forth as if out of the dark ocean. We tacked and stood towards it. However, as the wind was very light, the Third-Lieutenant was sent off in the gig with an account of our success. Two hours had still to pass away before we at length got up to the frigate, and pretty well-pleased we were when the cheer which our shipmates sent forth to congratulate us on our success reached our ears." Such was the substance of my father's account, often subsequently told.
I do not know whether the anxiety which Burton felt when she saw her husband setting out on what she knew must be a dangerous expedition had any peculiar effect on her, but certain it is, that while my father was slashing away at the Frenchmen, and the bullets were flying about his head, I was born into the world.
With regard to the prize, she was carried safely into Macao, in the expectation that she would be fitted out as a cruiser, and that Mr Schank would get the command of her. Her fate I shall have hereafter to relate.
I meantime grew apace, and speedily cut out Quacko in the estimation of our shipmates. He, however, had his friends and supporters; for some months, at all events, he afforded them more amusement than I could do. They could tease him and play him tricks, which my mother and Mrs King took very good care they should not do to me. I had no lack of nurses from the first, and highly honoured were those into whose hands my mother ventured to commit me.
Mrs King had enough to do for some time after the action, in attending both to my mother and the poor fellows who had been wounded, both English and French, the latter receiving as much care from her gentle hands as did our own people. The two chief rivals for the honour of looking after me were my cousin, Pat Brady, and Toby Kiddle, boatswain's mate. Although many of my old shipmates have passed away from my memory, Toby Kiddle made an impression which was never erased. Nature had not intended him for a topman, for though wonderfully muscular, his figure was like a tun. His legs were short, and his arms were unusually long. With them tucked akimbo, he could take up two of the heaviest men in the ship, and run along the deck with them as lightly as he would have done with a couple of young children. He had a generous, kind heart, could tell a good story, and troll forth a ditty with any man; and as to his bravery, where all were brave, I need scarcely mention it, except to say that I do no not think anyone beat him at that. Boatswain's mate though he was, Toby Kiddle had a heart as gentle as a lamb's. He scarcely seemed cut out for the post, and yet there was a rough crust over it which enabled him to do his duty, and when he had to lay on with the cat, to shut his eyes, and to hit as hard as he was ordered. And yet I always have pitied a kind-hearted boatswain's mate, though he is not after all worse off than the captain and officers, who have to stand by and see men punished. However, I will not say anything about that matter just now. Time went on, and I grew bigger, and began to chew beef and bacon with the rest of the ship's company becoming more and more independent of my mother in every way. Yet I loved her, as such a mother deserved to be loved. As I grew bigger I made more and more friends. The Captain himself very frequently took notice of me, and patted my head, which was beginning to get curls upon it, and often gave me cakes and other Chinese manufactured delicacies which he had got from the shore. Captain Cobb was a short man, and since he came out to China had grown very round and stout. His face, as a boy, had been probably pink and white, but it had now been burnt into a deep red copper colour. His eyes, which were small, were bloodshot, with a ferrety expression, and altogether his outward man was not attractive. His uniforms, which had hung loosely on him when he left home, had been, by the skill of the tailor, let out and out to meet the demands of his increasing corpulency; but no art or skill could do more for them; and as he was unwilling to procure others till those were worn out, he looked, when walking the quarter-deck, very much as if he had on a straight