The Gentleman | Page 2

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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 saw nothing but the brown street sliding under him, a pair of sweating ears, a flapping mane, and before him a tumble of old roofs; while beyond in the harbour, the spars of a sloop of war pricked the evening.
Clear of the little town huddling on the hillside, he drove along the bank of the slow green river, flogging still.
One thing was clear: the grey was dead-beat.
He was roaring like a furnace, and straight as a rail from tail to muzzle. Black and white with sweat, he jerked along at a terrible toppling stagger. Only those vice-like legs and hands plucking, plucking, kept body and soul together.
Where the river widened, and the sea gleamed misty across the harbour-mouth, as though he knew his mission was fulfilled, up went his head, and he fell in thundering ruin.
Where he fell he lay, lank-necked.
The tail twitched once; the body trembled; the great heart broke.

CHAPTER II
THE GALLOPING GENT
I
A boat had just put off from the bank, a tall lad steering. The great red horseman,