The King's Own. Фредерик Марриет

was, however, dismissed by the entrance of a servant, who presented to the admiral, upon a large and massive salver, a letter, brought, as he stated, by a seafaring man. The admiral lifted up his glasses to examine the superscription. “From my worthless vagabond of a son!” exclaimed he, and he jerked the letter into the fire without breaking the seal.

      “Surely, sir,” rejoined the vicar, “it would be but justice to hear what he has to offer in extenuation of a fault, too severely punished already. He is your only son, sir, and why not forgive one rash act? Recollect, sir, that he is the heir to this property, which, being entailed, must of necessity devolve upon him.”

      “Curses on the bare thought,” answered the admiral, with vehemence. “I hope to starve him first.”

      “May the Almighty show more mercy to you, sir, when you are called to your account, than you have shown to an imprudent and hasty child. We are told that we are to forgive, if we hope to be forgiven. Admiral De Courcy, it is my duty to ask you, do you expect (and if so, upon what grounds), to be forgiven yourself?”

      The admiral looked towards the window, and made no reply.

      The letter, which had been thrown into the grate, was not yet consumed. It had lit upon a mass of not yet ignited coal, and lay there blackening in the smoke. The vicar perceived it, and, walking to the fireplace, recovered the letter from its perilous situation.

      “If you do not choose to read it yourself, admiral—if you refuse to listen to the solicitations of an only child, have you any objection that I should open the letter, and be acquainted with the present condition of a young man who, as you know, was always dear to me?”

      “None, none,” replied the admiral, sarcastically. “You may read it, and keep it too, if you please.”

      The vicar, without any answer to this remark, opened the letter, which, as the reader may probably imagine, was the one written by Edward Peters on the morning of his execution.

      “Merciful Heaven!” exclaimed the man of religion, as he sat down to recover from the shock he had received.—“Unfortunate boy!”

      The admiral turned round, astonished at the demeanour of the clergyman, and (it would appear) as if his conscience had pressed him hard, and that he was fearful that his cruel wish, expressed but a few minutes before, had been realised. He turned pale, but asked no questions. After a short time the vicar rose, and, with a countenance of more indignation than the admiral or others had ever seen, thus addressed him:—

      “The time may come, sir—nay, I prophesy that it will come, when the contents of this letter will cause you bitterly to repent your cruel and unnatural conduct to your son. The letter itself, sir, I cannot intrust you with. In justice to others, it must not be put into your hands; and after your attempt to commit it to the flames, and your observation that I might read and keep it too, I feel justified in retaining it. A copy of it, if you please, I will send you, sir.”

      “I want neither copy nor original, nor shall I read them if you send them, good sir,” answered the admiral, pale with anger.

      “Fare you well, then, sir. May God turn your heart!”

      So saying, the vicar left the room with a determination not to enter it again. His first inquiry was for the person who had brought the letter, and he was informed that he still waited in the hall. It was old Adams, who had obtained leave of absence for a few days, that he might fulfil the last request of Peters. The clergyman here received a second shock, from the news of the death of poor Ellen, and listened with the deepest interest to Adams’s straightforward account of the whole catastrophe.

      The first plan that occurred to the vicar was to send for the child, and take charge of him himself; but this was negatived, not only by Peters’s letter, but also by old Adams, who stated his determination to retain the child until claimed by legal authority. After mature deliberation, he considered that the child would be as much under an Allseeing Eye on the water as on the land, and that, at so early an age, he was probably as well under the charge of a trustworthy old man like Adams, as he would be elsewhere. He therefore requested Adams to let him have constant accounts of the boy’s welfare, and to apply to him for any funds that he might require for his maintenance; and, wishing the old man farewell he set off for the vicarage, communing with himself as to the propriety of keeping the circumstance of the boy’s birth a secret, or divulging it to his grandfather, in the hopes of eventually inducing him to acknowledge and to protect him.

Chapter Seven.

       Table of Contents

      To the seas presentlye went our lord admiral,

       With knights couragious and captains full good;

       The brave Earl of Essex, a prosperous general,

       With him prepared to pass the salt flood.

       At Plymouth speedilye took they ship valiantlye,

       Braver ships never were seen under sayle,

       With their fair colours spread, and streamers o’er their head:

       Now, bragging foemen, take heed of your tayle.

       Old Ballad, 1596.

      Many and various were the questions that were put by our little hero to Adams and others, relative to the fate of his parents. That they were both dead was all the information that he could obtain; for, to the honour of human nature, there was not one man in a ship’s company composed of several hundred, who had the cruelty to tell the child that his father had been hanged. It may, at first, appear strange to the reader, that the child himself was not aware of the fact, from what he had witnessed on the morning of execution; but it must be recollected that he had never seen an execution before, and had therefore nothing from which to draw such an inference. All he knew was, that his father was on the quarter-deck, with a night-cap on, and that he told him that he was going to sleep. The death of his mother, whose body he was not permitted to see, was quite as unintelligible, and the mystery which enveloped the whole transaction added no little to the bereavement of the child, who, as I have before stated, from his natural talent and peculiar education was far more reflective and advanced than children usually are.

      Adams returned to his little charge with pleasure: he had now a right to adopt the child, and consider him as his own. In the ship, the boy was such an object of general sympathy, that not only many of the men, but some of the officers, would gladly have taken him, and have brought him up. The name of his father was, by general consent, never mentioned, especially as Adams informed the officers and men that Peters had been a “purser’s name,” adopted by the child’s father, and that, although the clergyman had stated this, he had not intrusted him with the real name that the child was entitled to bear. As, therefore, our little hero was not only without parents, but without name, he was re-christened by Adams by the cognomen of the “King’s Own,” and by that title, or his Christian name, Willy, was ever afterwards addressed, both by officers and men.

      There is an elasticity supplied to the human mind by unerring Wisdom, that enables us, however broken down by the pressure of misfortune, to recover our cheerfulness after a while, and resign ourselves to the decrees of Heaven. It consoles the widow—it supports the bereaved lover, who had long dwelt upon anticipated bliss—it almost reconciles to her lot the fond and forsaken girl, whose heart is breaking.

      Unusually oppressed as Willy was, with the loss of those to whom he had so fondly clung from his birth, in a few months he recovered his wonted spirits, and his cheeks again played with dimples, as his flashing eye beamed from under his long eyelashes. He attached himself to the old quarter-master, and seldom quitted him—he slept in his hammock, he stood by his side when he was on deck, at his duty, steering the ship, and he listened to the stories of the good old man, who soon taught him to read and write. For three years thus passed his life; at the end of which period he had arrived at the age of nine years.

      After a long monotony of blockade service, the