'Twas in Trafalgar's Bay, and other stories

Front matter

etc. LONDON I PRINTED EV SPOTTISWOODE AND COv, NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET AND OTHER STORIES BY WALTER BESANT & JAMES RICE AUTHORS OF READY-MONEY MORTIBOY ' 'THE MONKS OF THELEMA* 'THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY* 'BY CELIA'S ARBOUR' 'THIS SON OF VULCAN* ' MY LITTLE GIRL ' 'THE CASE OF MR LUCRAFT ' *WITH HARP AND CROWN* ETC. etc. bonbon CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1879 [The right of translation is reserved] CONTENTS. 'TWAS IN TRAFALGAR'S BAY. chapter page I. in rousdon bay 3 II. LOVE THE UNCONQUERED 12 III. A LUCKY RUN 24 IV. THE KING'S CLEMENCY 38 V. FEMINA FURENS 52 VI. LADY CAMPION 69 VII. 'TWAS IN TRAFALGAR'S BAY 82 VIII. OUT OF THE GOLDEN MIST 90 SHEPHERDS ALL AND MAIDENS FAIR. I. CLEAR SKY LAND 101 II. GREAT ST. SIMON APOSTLE 114 III. LARGE DEDUCTIONS I27 IV. THE IDLE APPRENTICE I36 V. A DRAMATIC SITUATION- 143 VI.

IS IT A DREAM ? 154 VII. ASSAULT AND BATTERY 160 VIII. THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL 168 IX. FATHER AND SON 180 CONCLUSION.— ' SHEPHERDS ALL AND MAIDENS FAIR' . . vi CONTENTS. SUCH A GOOD MAN. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE CITY DINNER . . . . . . , 199 II. GLORY AND CREATNESS 207 III. IN THE CITY 229 IV. THE NEW PARTNER 245 V. THE AWAKING 259 VI. THE NEW LOVER 268 VII. THE NEW LOVE 285 VIII. SO GREAT AS WELL AS GOOD 299 LE CHIEN D'OR ■ ■ ■ • 3'7 'TWAS IN TRAFALGAR'S BAY

Chapter I. In Rousdon Eay

There are not in England many places more beautiful than Lyme Regis, whe: e my childhood was spent. You have long hill-slopes, covered with orchards and hanging woods ; you have broad valleys, in which are peaceful hamlets and yellow cornfields ; you have open spaces on windy hill-tops, where tall thistles are crowned with winged balls of feathered spray, ready to be blown to the four corners of the earth by the carrier winds; you have chalk downs with bare turf, and here and there a bright trout stream, where you may see the quick-eyed water rat, or even catch a glimpse of an otter; you have straight and sturdy cliffs, looking out upon the waste of waters; you have here and there a little port with its little town; and you have, as the towering glory and splendour of the whole, the Undercliff, with its bracken fields and grassy knolls heaped one above the other, backed by the crags and faced by the seaj telling of fallen rocks and undermining waves.

My name, when I was a child and ran wild among these wonders, learning every day to feel their beauty more, was Pleasance Noel. There are plenty of Noels in Dorsetshire, but none of my kin in Lyme. I don't know how I came to be born there, nor do I know anything about my mother, who died when I was born ; nor much about my father, who was a ship-carpenter. I was born, I believe, in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven. I never had a birthday, be cause no one cared to remember such an insignificant circumstance as the birth of a sailor's child. My father went down in 'eighty-nine, on board the Invincible, which foundered in a heavy gale off Jamaica, with all hands except two or three. Dan Gulliver came to my help, being always the most kind-hearted of men, and, besides, a friend of my father's. He D lived at Rousdon, which is three miles and a half from Lyme, and was at that time a widower with two boys living, 'two or three years older than myself.

There are a good many Gullivers in Dorsetshire, as well as Noels. AVhen I first read Gulliver's Travels, it was the more real to me, because I was sure that the honest captain must have come from my part of the country, and I was equally sure that in appearance he greatly resembled Dan. Nobody, except his sons, ever called him anything else but Dan. Not Mr. Gulliver, or Daniel Gulliver, but plain Dan. As early as I can remember him he had grey hair. He was a man of middle height and strong build, with immense hands ; he had a face covered all over with crowsfoot wrinkles, and it had the kindliest and gentlest expression that can dwell upon human countenance ; his light-blue eyes rested upon one when he spoke, as if he loved to look upon his friend ; he was as incapable of thinking or speaking evil as of doing it He was everybody's friend.

I suppose he knew very little of evil, living as he did upon his seaboard farm, as remote from the world and as little suspicious of danger as did those poor men of Laish, who dwelt ' after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure.' His estate consisted of a patrimonial ten-acre slip, lying chiefly along the cliff. It was a poor piece of land, which grew scanty crops, hardly worth the trouble of cultivation, but it gave occupation to the two boys, Job and Jephthah, and to the one farm-labourer whom we employed, Isaac Agus. Dan himself looked after the boats, of course. If the land was poor, the farmhouse and yards showed every sign of prosperity. There were pigs which grunted in the sties or roamed about the yard, grubbing among roots with philanthropic resolve to waste no time in becoming good pork ; fowls which laid eggs and chuckled over them ; ducks which drove broods of little soft yellow balls, which might have been cocoons had they not been live things, into the pond ; geese, on the waste land, which cackled to each other encouragement to get fat come Michael mas; and there were the most generous of cows in the matter of milk.

The dairy, where Mrs. Agus and I made butter, was always full of cream and milk. The twin boys, Job and Jephthah, were, like their father, of middle height, with broad shoulders and big hands ; they were as exactly like each other as a pair of Chinamen, but 'TjVAS IN TRAFALGAR'S BAY. 5 when you came to live in the house, you learned gradually to distinguish certain little differences not apparent to strangers. Outside the farm no one knew Jephthah from Job, and ad dressed either at random as Job or Jephthah. They had blue eyes, like their father, light-brown hair, and a gentle way, which they inherited. But they exaggerated the paternal character istics. His gentleness became, with them, slowness ; his taciturnity became absolute dumbness. The most frequent visitor was Joshua Meech, Dan's nephew.

He was a miller at Up Lyme. AVhen I was sixteen he must have been about six-and-twenty — some seven years older than the boys. He, too, was strongly built and well-pro portioned, but he had the other Dorsetshire face — not that of the Gullivers. Everybody knows that there are two faces in Dorsetshire — that with blue eyes, brown hair, and a round face ; and that with dark hair, and dark eyes, and an oval face ; sometimes very beautiful, but sometimes forbidding and harsh. Joshua's face had the latter character. His eyes were too close together ; his expression was threatening ; his chin too long and square ; his manner was imperative. He was a master ful man, a man who always got what he wanted ; if he desired a thing, he said he should have it, and he got it. The history that follows, however, is that of a thing which he desired vehe mently, and did not get.

Another visitor, and the only other friend of the family, was the rector of Rousdon, the Reverend Benjamin Burden. Rousdon parish contained a population of eleven souls, six of whom came from Rousdon Farm. Its yearly value was thirty five pounds. There was also a house with a bit of glebe land. The house was a cottage ; the glebe-land was a garden cultivated by the rector himself. He had an orchard, the apples of which he sold for cider ; a fruit and vegetable garden; two or three pigs ; some fowls ; and sometimes, the gift of his churchwarden, some ducks. He was a bachelor, and lived entirely alone in his cottage. His church was a barn with a thatched roof, kept from falling down by Dan and the boys. The old pews were worm-eaten ; the pulpit was tottering ; the broken windows were repaired with oiled paper ; the covers were dropping off the church-Bible and Prayer-book ; his sur plice was in rags ; there was no church-plate ; and the one weekly service was a duet between himself and Dan, who was at once his clerk and his churchwarden.

The old rector wore a wig on Sundays ; on other days he tied up his head in a handkerchief; he never forgot his cloth, or went without a cassock, though that garment was in rags ; he had the dignity of his profession, though he had forgotten all his learning ; had ceased to take any delight in books, and was nothing but a gardener, a rustic, and a peasant-priest. Our house, at the back of which lay the farmyard, was a good-sized six-roomed house, witha thatched roof. The windows in the front looked out upon Rousdon Bay, which lay about eighty feet below us. They opened on hinges, and the small panes, many of which were bull's-eyed, were set in heavy leaden frames. There was a great porch, beside which flourished the finest fuchsia-tree — ten feet high and ten feet across — that ever was seen.

There was a sloping garden in front, where I grew beans, peas, and cabbages, with all kinds of simple flowers. We were quite rich people. AVhen the distress was deep all over the country we felt none. We lived comfortably ; there was no pinching, no talk of economies. I was well-dressed and well cared for; the boys had all they wanted. To be sure, in those days, the ideas of a farmer as to plenty were simple. AVe never had any holiday or any change. The boys got a little teaching, as I did, from the rector. We had no newspapers and very few books ; few country-people could read ; there were ho conveniences for travel ; things were rough ; men were rough ; fighting was common ; we were inconceivably ignorant ; we did not look or hope for any change — except for peace. That was what we wanted.

I suppose the people of that generation ought to have been unhappy, feeling themselves so greatly at a disadvantage com pared with their grandchildren, who would certainly have gas, railways, chloroform, electric light, cheap newspapers, all sorts of things. But somehow they were not unhappy. They were just as happy, in fact, as people are now, except for the wicked ness of war, the ambition of kings, and the injustice of man. And these are things which seemed destined ever to plague, vex, and trouble the world. Now, the most remarkable thing concerning Dan, his two sons, and Joshua Meech his nephew, was that their hands were always brown with tar. There was, besides, a smell of things connected with boats always lingering about the house; and though fishing-nets were constantly spread over the garden or on the beach, there was very little fishing done.

Dan, farmer though he was, dressed habitually as a boatman. On Sundays, in the summer, he wore white ducks, a blue jacket with brass buttons, and a straw hat, just as if he were a navy man. On other days he wore great boots, a simple blue shirt, and a tarpaulin. Down in the bay there were three boats. One of these was a safe, heavy-built fishing-smack. Dan called her the Chace Mary. It was a good many years before I learned to recognise in this name the French chasse-maree. Dan picked her up one night abandoned in the Channel — his experience decided her origin and her name. The boys and Joshua used now and then to go out fishing in her, bringing home in the morning a rich cargo of bright and beautiful fish. AA'e kept the best for ourselves, and the rector never failed to come for his tithe of John Dory, bass, hake, pilchards, or mackerel.

The rest went to Lyme to be sold. The boat which lay beside the Chace Mary was of very different build. She would be called now, though her lines would no longer find favour, a fifteen-ton yacht, sloop-rigged. I do not know where Dan bought her ; she was long and narrow ; she was decked ; she carried any amount of canvas ; and she was, as Dan often boasted, the very fastest boat in the Channel. She was called the Dancing Polly. Hauled up on the beach was a little dingy, gay with bright paint, and provided with a neat lugsail and a spritsail and a pair of sculls. She belonged to me, but was, of course, always at the service of the Firm. For, not to delay any longer a confession which must sooner or later be made, we were all of us smugglers by trade, and fanners by pretence. The ten acres of barren cliff land could never have kept us all during those hard times, even in a pool way.

We were a gang of smugglers. Dan was the head of the firm by hereditary succession. His two boys were partners by the same right. Joshua Meech was a partner by grace and free gift of Dan. I, Pleasance Noel, was an accomplice, aider, and abettor. In the reign of George the Third it was as impossible to make people believe that smuggling was wrong as to make a rustic believe in the wickedness of knocking over a hare in a field. To evade the duty was meritorious. Then there was the romance about the trade : perils surrounded it on every side ; across the water you might be caught by the French authorities, and kept in prison, or even shot as a spy ; or you might be picked up by a French privateer • or you might be cut out by a revenue cutter ; or you might be attested while landing your cargo.

These things were considered and went to make a daring smuggler a sort of hero. Lastly, all the country-side stood in with him. It was he who brought over the best French brandy, packages of lace, boxes of gloves or of perfumes ; he was the provider of otherwise unattainable luxuries; he was a public benefactor. In no country inn could you get such spirits as came out of the illicit kegs ; when a landlord had any he would whisper its recommendation to a guest ; the squires bought it, the magistrates bought it, the very revenue officers bought it, the clergy bought it : no one was too good, too highly placed, too scrupulous to buy it. A fine and flattering perfume of universal gratitude perpetually soothed the soul of Dan Gulliver ; the sense of an heroic reputation added dignity to a life which, if spent only on the farm, would have been certainly monotonous, and probably ignoble.

Gratitude among the people naturally took the shape of complicity. It sometimes happened that Dan's carts— those innocent carts laden with poultry, vegetables, or fish, which Job or Jephthah drove into Lyme — were stopped and searched. One would think that Dan was regularly warned, because nothing was ever found in them. If the revenue cutter chanced to look in at Rousdon Bay, the Dancing Polly was lying at anchor, without the least sign of an intended run, and Dan would be caulking the Chace Mary, or mending fishing-nets, or painting the dingy, with grave face and a twinkle in his eye. With a fast boat like the Dancing Polly, with four such handy boatmen as the crew who manned her, the chief danger was that of landing the cargo. It was desirable to know, before the run, where the revenue cutter was ; this information was got by myself, or by one of the boys, from the boatmen of the Cove at Lyme, or from the fishermen of Beer.

She might have been heard of at AVeymouth, or she might be lying in Bridport. Once, when we thought she was away up the Solent, she came out of Luhvorth Cove, and chased Dan for three long days, so that he only got away, without throwing his cargo overboard, by the swiftness of his heels and the providential interposition of a fog. We had to get news from AVeymouth, from Swanage, Poole, Lymington, and Yarmouth, in the west ; as from Beer, Sidmouth, Ladram Bay, and Dartmouth. The revenue cutter once ascertained to be out of the way, there was little or no danger of interference from any ofthe shore-going folk. AA'hen all seemed safe as regards the excise, and a run was resolved on, it was brave to see the little craft, with Dan at the ' helium,' Job and Jephthah in the bows, and Joshua 'midships, beating her way out of the little narrow bay, straight out into the blackness beyond — for Dan never started except at night, and when there was a moonless sky.

I would stand on the beach, the wind blowing my hair about and the spray flying into my face, to get the last sight of the gallant boat. Then I would p;o home and stay there, quite alone, till they returned, in a couple of days or so, laden with the brandy in kegs. I never had any fear for them. Dan knew every inch of the French and English coasts ; he could steer blindfold ; he could find Rousdon Bay in the blackest night ; he was not afraid, in his tight little craft, of any reasonable weather, provided only that when he landed there were no revenue men waiting to capture the hero of a hundred runs. Dan was always a sailor, in manner and dress. Job and Jephthah played two parts. AA7hen they wore corduroys and a smock they were farm-labourers, and slouched in their gait, lifting their feet heavily and swinging their shoulders, as those do who go much upon clay ; when they were on board they were dressed like boatmen and they rolled like sailors.

Joshua, on the other hand, played three parts. As a miller he had the reputation of being grasping and greedy of gain, but honest in his dealings. In this capacity he was always floury, like his men, and had it not been for the tar upon his fingers, you would say he had never smelt saltwater. As a sailor he was as daring as Dan, and almost as skilful. But he had a third character, which he reserved for Saturday evening and Sunday. Then he dressed himself in a black coat, and became a Primitive Me thody : one of a certain very small body so styled by themselves, who met in a chapel about twelve feet square, and took turns to preach and pray. His methodism has nothing to do with my story, except to show the masterful character of the man. He would be a leader ; he wanted people to think as he told them, and he could only do this in a dissenting chapel.

Dan, who accepted the authority of the Rev. Mr. Burden, and the Church, was, in his way, as religious as he was honest. There is nothing, he frequently argued, against smuggling, either in Bible or Prayer-book. It was among these people that I spent the first seventeen years of my life. Such education as I had was given me by the rector at odd moments. I could read, but had few books, and those I knew by heart. They were Bunyan's ' Pilgrim's Progress,' ' Robinson Crusoe,' and one or two more. AA'riting I learned by slow degrees : my spelling has never, I own, been correct, nor can I understand the fuss which is made about that accomplishment. If the writer's meaning is clear, why object to the omission or the addition of a letter or two ? There was little encouragement to literature in Rousdon Farm.

Job and Jephthah had learned, like myself, to read and write, but as they never practised either art, and supplemented memory only by chalk-marks on the cart, I suspect they had forgotten both. Dan regarded writing as useful for commercial purposes, and reading on the Sunday as an aid to devotion. In respect to other uses, there were instances which he had heard of where a passion for books actually led the victim, by imperceptible degrees, to the gallows. Certainly in those years there were many roads to that dismal tree. I did not read much, my duties at home were soon got through, and the rest of my time I spent upon the water, alone or with Dan, and on the Undercliff. In the evening there was sewing. But all day long, and all the year round, rain or sunshine, I was in the open air, gathering flowers in the Holmbush fields, climbing among the bracken under the Pinhay cliffs, singing all alone in the woods upon the hill-sides, out upon the sea in the dingy, or, in summer, bathing and swimming where the rocks would have hidden me from casual eyes if any had ever chanced to pass that way.

It was a lonely place, facing a lonely sea ; few ships ever sailed across that great bay save the heavy craft which brought coal from AVales, or the coasters which traded from port to port, or the fishing-craft from Lyme and Beer. I had the sea all to myself when I put out in the dingy, ran up the little sail, and sat in the stern, tiller in one hand and sheet in the other, while the boat slipped through the short crisp waves with a murmurous whish, leaving its little white track behind, while my fancy ran riot, and I had visions, such as come to the young and innocent, of a golden and im possible future, lying among figures indistinct and misty. Sometimes I went with Dan to Lyme, where one could buy things, and see the shops in the street and the ships in the Cove. On Sunday evenings, in summer, one could sometimes go to Lyme Church, which was surely the most remarkable and delightful church in the whole of England.

To begin with, it was a church built on a staircase. You climbed up some of the steps and you were in the churchyard. More steps brought you to the porch, which was long and deep ; at the end of it more steps again brought you to the line of the nave ; halfway up the nave a short flight of steps took you to a higher level under the pulpit and reading desk ; a last climb landed you on the level of the chancel. I believe there were additional steps to the altar. This gradual rising of tier above tier produced a remarkable effect, especially if, as I did, you sat in one of the galleries. AVherever they could have a gallery they had one ; here one and there one ; sticking them between pillars, so as to produce a general result, which, to the ignorant eye of a girl, was grand and delightful. One of the galleries was beautifully decorated with a death's head and bones, and an appropriate text.

And they sang hymns. They were taken very slowly, but they were sung to real tunes, which one could carry away and sing at the top of one's voice far out to sea in the little boat. The hymns were set to the music of a band consisting chiefly of stringed instruments, tuned stealthily between the different parts of the service. This was all the music, and these were all the tunes, which I heard as a child. During the whole of my childhood, and for a good many years aftenvards, the talk was all of war. For five-and-twenty years England was fighting. On the south coast the war might at any moment become more than a rumour ; there was no reason why a French privateer should not cross over, and do what mischief she could. Every day, before breakfast, we all solemnly looked out to sea — Dan with his glass — to see if an enemy was hovering over the coast, and once we saw a naval action.

The Frenchman was a privateer ; the Englishman a brig-of-war carrying twelve guns. They ran side by side for a while, firing incessantly, the Englishman gradually reducing the distance. At last they came to close quarters, and our men boarded her. Oh what a sight ! It was too far oft for us to see the horrors of battle, the dead and wounded ; but we could make out, when the smoke cleared away, that the Union Jack was run up where the French flag had been flying, and Dan solemnly, with tears in his eyes, thanked the God of Victory. It was a brave and gallant action ; they made the commander of the brig a first-lieutenant for it ; then they sent him out to Jamaica, where they forgot him altogether, although he did plenty cf other things quite as good. This was the way they often treated our brave sailors.

Thirty years afterwards he came home, still a first-lieutenant, and bald, by reason of the many men who had climbed up over his head. Heavens ! how brave our men were, and what fights they fought ! They cut out French ships under the guns of their own batteries. They engaged vessels double their own weight ; whenever they saw an enemy's ship they attacked her. The papers were full of naval actions, which were always victories. I never saw the papers, but 1 heard the news whenever Dan came back from Lyme. Buonaparte was going to invade Eng land, and made enormous preparations ; the whole country took up arms, young and old ; the war-fever possessed the British bull-dog. There was no fear in our hearts, nor any hesitation. Looking back upon that time, I can only feel that surely none other than the hand of God was upon us ; how else could we, fighting against such odds as never any other nation encoun tered, have fought so bravely, and finished the struggle with so much honour ?

Chapter II. Love The Unconquered

I have always kept as a holyday the 14th of August in every year since the year 1803. It is sacred to me for two memories — the first being that on this day I first saw my own gallant and true-hearted AVill. It was about half past four in the afternoon. I was running down the crags by a way known only to myself, breast-high in bracken, jumping from stone to stone, singing at the top of my voice, with flying hair and outstretched arms, when I suddenly came upon Dan Gulliver and a stranger. ' I saw,' said Will afterwards, when he became my sweetheart — ' I saw a tall girl of sixteen, who might have been twenty, with blue eyes and the sweetest face in the world. She carried a sun-bonnet in her hand, and she wore a tight-fitting frock.' . ' If I had known who was coming,' I said, ' I should have put on my Sunday frock.' ' Your Sunday frock ! ' he cried, in his foolish way ; ' why, what could be more lovely than my woodland nymph, flying to meet us, up to her arms in the fern, bare-headed, her hands filled with flowers, her eyes with smiles, and her pretty mouth with a song.

Sunday frock ! Leave Sunday frocks to city girls. See miss and madam lay their snares, Painted faces, Studied graces, All for catching unawares Flights of gamesome lovers, But this talk came afterwards. AVhen I met them in the path, as I finished my run down the slope, I stopped short, shame-faced, being unused to the sight of strangers. ' Pleasance,' said Dan, ' this young gentleman is coming to stay awhile at the farm ; can you help to amuse him, think you? ' ' I assure Miss Gulliver,' said the gentleman, taking off his hat to me, ' that I shall give as little trouble as possible.' ' The boys,' said Dan, ' can sleep at the cottage. Do'ee now, Pleasance.' This was the old man's way. I was tc seem the mistress, who ought to have been the servant. I turned, and led the way to the house in silence.

Truth to say, I was not best pleased with the prospect of a strange man in the house. Like all wild things, I loved solitude. Dan carried a valise, and the young man carried a wooden case. It was not till after we got home, and I had brushed my hair, and put on another frock, and come downstairs again, that I saw what manner of man our guest was. No one must think that I was so presumptuous as to fall in love with him. AVhat did I know about love? My heart leaped up, however, because I looked upon the most handsome and splendid man I had ever seen. To be sure I had seen but few. The gentlemen of Lyme Regis were mostly advanced in life, and had, more or less, bottle-noses, by reason of much rum. This young gentleman was about twenty-two years of age. He was tall and rather slight in figure ; his eyes were brown, and from the very first I saw that they were frank honest eyes ; his hair was brown and curly ; his cheeks were burned by the sun ; his fingers, I noticed, were long and thin ; they were, in fact, the fingers of a musician. 'TWAS LN TRAFALGAR'S BAY. 14 His wooden case was lying on the table.