The Gentleman | Page 8

English gentleman; and he died like a British seaman. May I go that way when my time comes.' And he sweeps off his cocked hat as though it might ha been to the King, and--
"'God bless Kit Caryll,' says he."
The old man blew his nose in the darkness.
"Yes, sir," he continued, "that was your father and my friend," and then suddenly gruff--
"D'you mean takin a'ter him?"
"I mean to try, sir," said the boy huskily.
In the darkness a hand gripped his.

CHAPTER V
REUBEN BONIFACE'S STORY
I
Clear of the harbour, the boy's hat blew overboard.
He tasted his lips, and found them salt.
Never at sea before, yet somehow it was all strangely familiar, and strangely dear.
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; a music that stirred his heart; the music of inherited Memory.
The sea was in his blood; and his blood began to sing to it. Old voices from the Past, that Past which is still the Present, woke within him. Old memories, borne down the ages upon the dark river of race life, haunted him dimly. Old and terrible experiences--murders and mutinies; distresses on rafts; thirsts and screaming madnesses; naked men howling on hen-coops under waste skies, sea-birds wailing desolately overhead; great ships, man-forsaken, God-forgotten, wallowing blindly amid green mountains that flowed and foamed upon them--shadows in shoals, they rose, glimmered, and were gone in the twilight waters of returning consciousness.
Sea-wolves in beaked ships from the Baltic; pirate-adventurers who had sailed and sacked under the Conqueror; pioneers of new-found lands: blood of his blood, and brain of his brain, they lived again, roused from centuries of sleep by the stir and whiff and secret business of the dark waters.
The mystery of it thrilled the boy: the blind night, the moving waters, the wind in his hair, the crash of spray upon the deck--old friends all, he recognised them as such, and found them beautifully familiar.
He was flowing down the River of Eternal Life and one with it. He was: he had been: he always would be. There was no Death, no Time. Life was One and Everlasting.
His nostrils wide, renewing old impressions, he walked forward, proud and self-composed.
True son of the sea, yet he knew himself her master. She was his woman, to be loved and lorded over. He found himself brooding over her dark beauty with the stern pride of possession. Manhood was rushing in on him: its passions, its power, its splendid cruelties. He began to tingle to them.
They had not met, it seemed, to know each other, these two world-old friends, for half a generation. Now once more they came together, heart to heart, man to woman, loving faithfully as ever.
II
The wind freshened. The sloop began to feel the sea and swing to it. She was a dark and secret ship: not a light save for the glare of the binnacle-lamp; the only sound the creak of a block, the mutter of canvas, and the chatter of waters.
It was a dirty night, a wet mist blowing landward. There was no moon; only here and there a star pierced the cloud-drift.
The boy groped his way forward.
In the bows a dark lantern on the deck shone on a group of sea-boots.
"Pretty night for our work, sir," came a cheery voice. "Might ha been made for us."
"Where are we?" asked the boy.
"Yon's Seaford Head, sir," as a great white dimness thrust out of the mist towards them. "We're layin along close inshore. See that glimmer forrad on the port-bow?--Ah, it's gone again! That's the Seven Sisters. And between the last o them and Beachy Head lays Birling Gap. And somewhere there or thereabouts, we'll make our cop, if a cop it's to be."
"Who is it we're after?"
"Lugger _Kite, sir--Black Diamond's craft....
"Funny thing fortune, sir," the man continued after a pause. "Never know how it's going to take you till you're took. Little thing sims to sway it. At one day's time there warn't a smarter seaman afloat than Bert Diamond. Might ha rose to the quarter-deck--just the sort; got a way with him and that. Only one fault, sir--the sailor's failin."
"What's that?"
"Too lovin by fur....
"It's generally always his one fault capsizes a man," the seaman continued. "And so it were with poor old Bert--he warn't Black at that time o day, yo'll understand."
"What's the rights o that yarn, Reube?" grumbled a deep voice.
"I ca'ant rightly tall ye because I don't justly knaw, Abe. They said this here Mr. Lucy--Love-me Lucy they called him in the ward-room--got messin about a'ter Diamond's gal. But anyways there it were. Diamond struck him--struck his officer."
"What happened?"
"Why, sir; flogged round the Fleet."
A man spat noisily on the deck.
"Maybe you've never seen a