The Gentleman | Page 2

once were dear Beneath man's
tawdry touch to disappear; Always the same, the Sea, Th'
unstable-steadfast Sea. 'Tis, as it always was, and still, please God, will
be, When we are gone, Our own, Vice-regents under Thee, Ours, ours,
and ours alone, The Anglo-Saxon Sea.
The mighty-furrowed, moody-minded Sea.
New suns and moons arise; Perish old dynasties; For ever rise and die
the centuries; Only remains the Sea, Our right of way, the Sea. 'Tis, as
it always was, and still, phase God, will be, When we are gone, Our
own, Our heritage from Thee, Ours, ours, and ours alone, The
Anglo-Saxon Sea.
Our good, grey, faithful, Saxon-loving Sea._

JULY 1805
"Succeed, and you command the Irish Expedition," said the squat
fellow.

"My Emperor!" replied the tall cavalry-man, saluted, and clanked away
in the gloom.
* * * * *
A sweet evening, very fresh, the tide crashing at the foot of the cliff.
In the twilight, above Boulogne, a man was standing, hands behind
him.
The moon lay on the water, making a broad white road that led from
his feet across the flowing darkness West.
The dusk was falling. About him the earth grew dark; above him all
was purity and pale stars.
Only the tumble of the tide, white-lipped on the beach beneath, stirred
the silence; while one little dodging ship, black in the wake of the
moon, told of some dare-devil British sloop, bluffing the batteries upon
the cliff.
The rustle of the water beneath, its crashing rhythm and hiss as of
breath intaken swiftly, soothed him. He fell into a waking dream.
It seemed to his wide eyes that the sea rose, heavenward as a wall; its
foot set in foam, its summit on a level with his face. Against it a silver
ladder leaned. He had but to mount that ladder to pluck the island-jewel,
the desire of his heart these many years.
He reached a hand into the night as though to realise his wish; and even
as he did so, the sloop barked.
A mortar hard by boomed; the sea splashed; the sloop scudded seaward,
laughing; and the dreamer awoke.
Behind him, hutted on the cliffs, lay the Army of England: [Footnote:
The Army of England was Napoleon's name for the Army of Invasion.]
such a sword, now two years a-tempering, as even he, the Great
Swordsman, had never wielded.
Beneath him in the dimming basin huddled 3000 gun-vessels, waiting
their call.
Before him, across the moon-white waste, under the North star, lay that
stubborn little land of Bibles and evening bells, of smoky cities, and
hedge-rows fragrant with dog-rose and honeysuckle, of apple-cheeked
children, greedy fighting-men, and still-eyed women who became the
mothers of indomitable seamen--that storm-beaten land which for so
long now, turn he where he would, had risen before him, Angel of the
Flaming Sword, and waved him back.

Between him and it ran a narrow lane of sea, the moon-road white
across it: so narrow he could almost leap it; so broad that now after
years of trying he was baffled still.
Could his Admirals only stop the Westward end of that narrow lane for
six hours, that he and his two-hundred-thousand might take the
moon-road unmolested, he was Master of the World.
But--they could not.
In his hand, fiercely crumpled, lay the despatch that told him
Villeneuve was back in Vigo, shepherded home again.
And by whom?
That little one-eyed one-armed seaman, who for ten years now had
stood between him and his destiny.
One man, the man of Aboukir Bay. [Footnote: On August 1, 1798,
Nelson destroyed the French fleet in Aboukir Bay at the Battle of the
Nile.]

BOOK I
THE LITTLE TREMENDOUS

I
THE DEATH OF BLACK DIAMOND

CHAPTER I
THE MAN ON THE GREY
The man on the grey was in a hurry.
The stab of his backward heels; the shake and swirl of his bridle-hand;
the flog of his arm in time with the horse's stride, told their own tale.
A huge fellow, his face was red and round as a November sun. Hat and
wig were gone; and his once white neck-cloth was soaked with blood.
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 in the high Churchyard among
the sycamores; down the rough and twisted Highstreet of Newhaven in
the chill of that August evening, as no man had ever come before.
A bevy of smoke-dimmed men in the bar of the Bridge, discussing in
awed whispers last night's affair of the Revenue cutter off Darby's Hole,
hushed suddenly at the clatter and rushed out as he stormed past. He
paid no heed. Those staring eyes