Yet French as she was, and as any Jack13 Tar14 would have informed you in a moment had you not known--after he had run a fierce eye along her shape and marked other things about her as well--there flew above her no flag proclaiming that she was owned by Louis le Bien-aimé (Bien-aimé by countless women, perhaps, but never, surely, by the subjects whom he taxed and ground to the soil they sweated over). For instead, streaming out from her mainmast there flew, because it was war-time and she lay in the King's chief river, the Royal Standard of England; from her foremast, the Anchor of Hope, the flag of the Lord High Admiral; and from her mizzen, the white flag, with the red St. George's cross; also she flew the same flag from her jack-staff.
French though she may have been, none who saw those noble ensigns could doubt what she was now.
In fact, she was a capture, taken by an English ship, which in her turn had once been French--Le Duc d'Acquitaine--and she lay, on this wild, tempestuous15 March day, off Blackwall and the historic Bugsby's Hole, under the temporary command of Captain Sir Geoffrey Barry. There are ironies16 in the life of other things besides human beings--in ships, perhaps, more especially than amongst other inanimate creatures--and the Mignonne was an example that such was the case. In her thirty years of existence she had been fighting fiercely on behalf of France against her hereditary17 foe--England; now she lay in the Thames, serving as a vessel18 into which were brought scores of impressed men, as well as scores of others who were burning to fight as willing sailors against her former owners.
For at this time there was a hot press wherever men could be found; all along and around the coast of England it was going on; every vessel of war was being stuffed full of Englishmen who, willingly or unwillingly19, had to take part in the deeds that were doing and that still had to be done.
Were not privateers and merchantmen being taken daily? Was not Boscawen raging the seas like a devouring20 lion; Sir Edward Hawke hurling21 insults at the French fleet in an attempt to bring them to action; Rodney bombarding their coast? Were not those French also swearing that, ere long, their invasion of England should take place, and should be final, decisive, and triumphant22?
No wonder, therefore, that sailors were wanted--and found! No wonder that husbands were torn from their wives, and fathers from their children; that men disappeared from their homes and were never more heard of, since, often not more than a month later, they were lying at the bottom of the sea, after having been sunk with their ships in some great naval23 fight, or, having been slain24 on board those ships, had next been flung over their sides--legless, armless, headless.
Geoffrey Barry was not alone in the Mignonne. With him, as sharer of that old after-cabin, with its deep stern walk, whereon she sat sometimes for hours regarding all the traffic of the great and busy river, was his wife, sweet Ariadne, who (until the Mignonne's anchor should have been catted and fished, and her canvas sheeted home as she set out on her voyage round England, to distribute the men she had gathered to the various great ships of war in need of them) would remain ever by his side. For she could not tear herself away from him to whom she was but newly wedded25; she could not look with aught but tearful apprehension26 to the moment, the hour that must inevitably27 come, when, for the last time, she would feel his arms about her and his lips pressed to hers. The hour when he would go forth28 to distribute those men, and would then, after putting his own ship into fighting trim, join either Rodney, Boscawen, or Hawke, as their Lordships might see fit to direct.
"Oh, Geoff! oh, Geoff!" she cried, as now on this afternoon she sat by his side, their dinner and their dish of tea both over, "oh, Geoff! who that did not love him fondly, madly, would be a sailor's wife? But three months married are we, and the time has come, is close at hand, for us to part. What will become of me?"
"Heart up, sweet one," her husband said in answer, even as, while he spoke8, he glanced through the quaint29 square ports, across which were pulled back the prettily30 flowered dimity curtains that had adorned31 the windows of the Mignonne when a French captain had sat in the selfsame cabin, with, perhaps, his own wife by his side. "Heart up, mine own. 'Tis glory, my flag, I go to win. Glory for thee and me. What! shall my Lady Barry give precedence to any in our old Hampshire, where for many a long day the Barrys have ruled the roast. You must be an admiral's wife, sweet; an admiral's wife."
"Alas32! 'tis you I want, not rank nor precedence. My poor father died a sailor, and--and--it broke my mother's heart later, I think. So, too, will mine break if now husband follows father."
"Tush, dearest, tush! Your father was a gallant33 seaman34, your mother should have lived long to love his memory. A sailor's wife must be brave. Why! look, now, at Mrs. Pottle. She, too, lost her husband, yet she hath not succumbed35. And," discontinuing his bluff36 heartiness--assumed only to solace37 his girl-wife, and not truly felt--"I will not be slain. Fortune is not my foe--I know it, feel it--I shall not follow Henry Thorne nor Ezra Pottle. Be cheered, my dear."
But still Ariadne could not be cheered, knowing that he was going from her side, though she made strenuous38 efforts and smiled wanly39 through her tears; while she said she would behave as became a seaman's wife. Yet, all the same, she could not refrain from asking him timorously40, though hoping all the time that his answer would be in the negative, whether he had yet found all the seamen41 necessary for the ships he was told off to provision with them.
"Why, see now, Ariadne!" he exclaimed, as he took from an inner cabin his boat-cloak, holding it over his arm as he talked, "they do not come in fast. In honest truth, I do think I have drained all this fair neighbourhood of its men. Down there," and he nodded his head forward, towards the forecastle, "I have a hundred and a half of old sea-dogs who will fight till the flesh is hacked43 from off their bones."
Here Ariadne shuddered44, while he continued, "God knows, in many cases they have not much left to hack42, most of 'em having fought a hundred fights under Lestock, Martin and Knowles, and two even under Vernon. But for others I know not what to do. Drunken swabs are brought to me by the crimps; young boys from citizens' offices offer themselves--ofttimes they have robbed their masters and hope thus to evade45 the gallows46; husbands who are sick of their wives; or, better still, men who would make houses for the women they love. But all of the right sort do not come my way as fast as the King and I would wish."
"Thereby," said Ariadne, "you cannot yet sail. Not yet. Ah!" And beneath her breath she said, "Thank God."
"Thereby," he replied with a smile, understanding well enough her mind, "I cannot yet sail. But, dear heart, it must be soon, whether I have gotten all I want or not. At least, I have some. Yes, it must be, for De la Clue is about, and Conflans broods ever on a descent. We must check them. We must. We must!"
"What do you go to seek now?" Ariadne asked, as, approaching the cabin stairs he summoned his coxswain and bade him call the gig away. "What? More citizens' boys, or--or--" and she laughed a little at the words and blushed, "drunken swabs, as you term them?"
"Not," he answered, "if I can get others, though even those can use a match-tub if their hands shake not too much, and can put their puny47 weight on to a halyard. But there are others. There is a fellow hard by, ashore48, in Jamaica Court, who, I do hear, can find what is wanted. Likewise--and this is better if it can but be accomplished--lying further down the river is a schooner49 a-filling up with indented50 servants for our American colonies. There should be pickings there, and they will cost the King nothing. Not a groat."
"Why?" asked Ariadne, open-eyed, "why? Can the King get men without paying the two pounds press-money that you say he gives?"
"He can get these," Geoffrey replied, with a laugh, "if I take them. I, or any other of his officers. Because, you see, these are hocus-pocussed men; fellows who have been made, or found, drunk by the crimps, and sold on board to the master. He has paid for them, and 'tis illegal. Wherefore the King--represented in my person--will set 'em free to serve him. God bless him! His service is better than that in the plantations51."
"Is it honest to do this, Geoff?" Ariadne asked, a look of doubt on her young face.
"Honest, my dear! Why, child, there is no spot of honesty in't at all. Honest, i'faith! Is it honest to buy men's bodies as one buys dogs and cattle? honest to drench52 and drug men with gin, and then fling them aboard as one would fling a side of beef aboard? Nay53, 'tis honest to rescue such, to give them a chance of serving King and country; to have a mort of food and rum into them two and three times a day, as much 'baccy as they can smoke, and many a guinea to spend on Sal and Sukie when they get ashore. That's honest, my dear, and what the sky-pilots call 'Christian54.'"
"If they ever do get ashore to see Sal and Sukie; if the French do not kill them," said Ariadne.
"Well! come what may, I must get ashore," said Geoffrey, as now he saw his gig tossing on the turbulent waves of the windswept river; "so fare ye well, sweetheart, until to-night. You have that new-fangled novel thing to read, and Anne and her mother are with you, wherefore you will not be dull till bedtime."
Then, changing his blustering55, good-natured tone for one more serious as he stooped and kissed her; while noticing again, as he held her in his arms, as he had often noticed before, how slight and delicate a thing his child-wife was, he whispered:
"Oh! my love, my love, how I do worship thee. Sweetheart, will the hours be long till I come back?"
"As ever and always they are," she whispered too, her arms around his neck and her cheek against his. "As ever and always they are."
"You do not regard me as only a rude, rough sailor," he asked now; "one ruthless in his duty? Nor cruel?"
"Nay, nay, never; but as the man of my heart--my only love, my husband."
"So! that is well. Again, farewell till to-night. Farewell, dear one," and, reaching the deck, he grasped the manropes when, entering his gig, he was rowed ashore.
Arrived at Brunswick Stairs, he sent back his boat, giving orders for the coxswain to return in two hours, "For," said he, "I need no accompaniment to-day. What I have to do I can do very well by myself." After which he set out from the river inland towards Stepney, threading, as he did so, some quaint old streets and lanes in which each floor of the houses overlapped56 the one below it, so that, at last, the top floors almost touched each other. As he progressed he noticed, as often enough he had observed before, with what disfavour he was regarded by all the idlers in the place, including slatternly-looking women leaning against doorposts; rough-looking men who shrunk away, however, directly his eye lighted on them (they, perhaps, thinking that he was appraising57 their value as "food for the Frenchmen"); and miserable58, cadaverous-looking young fellows, some of whom had no hesitation59 in instantly disappearing into the passages of houses, they being generally those in which they did not happen to live.
For all knew that this stalwart young captain, who wore the undress of the new uniform of the Royal Navy (new now for some ten years); whose sword-handle had a gold knot to it, and whose three-cornered hat had in it a gold cockade, was he who, aided by his myrmidons, tore them away from their wives and mothers to roam the seas as well as to fight, and, probably, be killed by some of Conflans' Frenchmen. They knew him well enough for the captain of the "Migniong," as they called his craft, and they hated and feared him in consequence.
"May he be blasted!" said one hideous60, blear-eyed old woman as he passed by, she taking no trouble to lower her voice; "he's got my Jenny's man in his cussed fock'sle even now. And she married to George but two months! He've got a young wife of his own--I seen her ashore with him but yesterday--a sweet young thing too. How'd she like it if som-un ravished 'im away from her!"
"Curse him!" said a man, who regarded Geoffrey from behind a blind, he being afraid to show himself, knowing well enough that the captain of the Mignonne would be as like as not to make a mental note of the house if he saw him. "Curse him and his King, too, and all the Lords and Commons. Why should we fight and die for them? They wouldn't do it for us."
And he heard much of their mutterings, knew how he was regarded, and regretted that such should be so. But, he told himself, it was duty. It must be done.
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1
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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barges
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| 驳船( barge的名词复数 ) | |
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frigates
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| n.快速军舰( frigate的名词复数 ) | |
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frigate
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| n.护航舰，大型驱逐舰 | |
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glistened
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| v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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surmounting
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| 战胜( surmount的现在分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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7
shrouds
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| n.裹尸布( shroud的名词复数 )；寿衣；遮蔽物；覆盖物v.隐瞒( shroud的第三人称单数 )；保密 | |
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8
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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9
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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12
bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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13
jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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14
tar
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| n.柏油，焦油；vt.涂或浇柏油/焦油于 | |
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tempestuous
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| adj.狂暴的 | |
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ironies
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| n.反语( irony的名词复数 )；冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事；嘲弄 | |
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hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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vessel
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| n.船舶；容器，器皿；管，导管，血管 | |
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unwillingly
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| adv.不情愿地 | |
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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hurling
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| n.爱尔兰式曲棍球v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的现在分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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wedded
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| adj.正式结婚的；渴望…的，执著于…的v.嫁，娶，（与…）结婚( wed的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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prettily
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| adv.优美地；可爱地 | |
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adorned
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| [计]被修饰的 | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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35
succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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36
bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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37
solace
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| n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和 | |
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38
strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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wanly
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| adv.虚弱地；苍白地，无血色地 | |
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timorously
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| adv.胆怯地，羞怯地 | |
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41
seamen
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| n.海员 | |
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42
hack
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| n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳 | |
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43
hacked
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| 生气 | |
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44
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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45
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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46
gallows
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| n.绞刑架，绞台 | |
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47
puny
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| adj.微不足道的，弱小的 | |
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48
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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49
schooner
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| n.纵帆船 | |
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50
indented
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| adj.锯齿状的，高低不平的；缩进排版 | |
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51
plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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52
drench
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| v.使淋透，使湿透 | |
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53
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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54
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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55
blustering
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| adj.狂风大作的，狂暴的v.外强中干的威吓( bluster的现在分词 )；咆哮；（风）呼啸；狂吹 | |
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56
overlapped
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| _adj.重叠的v.部分重叠( overlap的过去式和过去分词 )；（物体）部份重叠；交叠；（时间上）部份重叠 | |
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57
appraising
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| v.估价( appraise的现在分词 )；估计；估量；评价 | |
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58
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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59
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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