Frank Mildmay; Or, The Naval Officer

"That would be the Dog Star," said the doctor, with extreme gaiety.

"Thank you, Doctor," said the captain; "not bad; I owe you one."

We laughed; the doctor kept his countenance; and the captain looked very grave; but he continued his lies, and dragged in as usual the name of Sir Sydney Smith to support his assertions. "If you doubt me, only ask Sir Sydney Smith; he'll talk to you about Acre for thirty-six hours on a stretch, without taking breath; his cockswain at last got so tired of it, that he nick-named him 'Long Acre.'"

The poor doctor did not come off scot free; the next day, he discovered that the deck leaked over his cabin, and the water ran into his bed. He began, with a hammer and some nails, to fasten up a piece of painted canvas, by way of shelter. The captain heard the noise of the hammer, and finding it was the doctor, desired him to desist. The doctor replied, that he was only endeavouring to stop some leaks over his bed: the captain said they should not be stopped; for that a bed of leeks was a very good bed for a Welshman.

"There, Doctor; now we are quits: that's for your Dog Star. I suppose you think nobody can make a pun or a pill, in the ship, but yourself?"

"If my pills were no better than your puns," muttered the doctor, "we should all be in a bad way."

The captain then directed the carpenter not to allow any nails to the doctor, or the use of any of his tools; he even told the poor surgeon that he did not know how to make a pill, and that "he was as useless as the Navy Board." He accused him of ignorance in other parts of his profession; and, ordering all the sick men on deck, rope-ended them to increase their circulation, and put a little life into them.

Many a poor sick creature have I seen receive a most unmerciful beating. My wonder was that the men did not throw him overboard; and I do really believe that if it had not been for respect and love to the officers, they would have done so. No sooner had we got into blue water, as he called it—that is, out of soundings—than he began his pranks, which never ceased till we reached Carlisle Bay. Officers and men were all treated alike, and there was no redress, for no one among us dared to bring him to a court-martial. His constant maxim was—"Keep sailors at work, and you keep the devil out of their minds—all hands all day-watch, and watch all night."

"No man," said Jacky (the name we gave him) "eats the bread of idleness on board of my ship: work keeps the scurvy out of their bones, the lazy rascals."

The officers and men, for the first three weeks, never had a watch below during the day. They were harassed and worn to death, and the most mutinous and discontented spirit prevailed throughout the ship. One of the best seamen said, in the captain's hearing, that, "since the ship had been at sea, he had only had three watches below."

"And if I had known it," said the captain, "you should not have had that;" and turning the hands up, he gave him four dozen.

Whenever he flogged the men, which he was constantly doing, he never failed to upbraid them with ingratitude, and the indulgences which they received from him.

"By G–d, there is no man-of-war in the service that has so much indulgence. All you have to do, is to keep the ship clean, square the yards; hoist in your provisions, eat them; hoist your grog in, drink it, and strike the empty casks over the side; but Heaven itself would not please such a set of d–d fat, lazy, discontented rascals."

His language to the officers was beyond any thing I ever could have supposed would have proceeded from the mouth of a human being. The master, one day, incurred his displeasure, and he very flippantly told the poor man to go to h–.

"I hope, Sir," said the master, "I have as good a chance of going to Heaven as yourself."

"You go to Heaven!" said the captain, "you go to Heaven! Let me catch you there, and I will come and kick you out."

This was, indeed, shewing how far he would have carried his tyranny if he could. But our feelings are relieved from any violent shock at this apparent blasphemy, when we recollect that the poor man was an atheist; and that his idea of Heaven was that of a little parlour at the Star and Garter, with a good fire, plenty of grog, and pipes of tobacco.

He kept no table, nor did he ever drink any wine, except when he dined with us; but got drunk every night, more or less, on the ship's spirits, in his own cabin. He was always most violent in the evening. Our only revenge was laughing at his monstrous lies on Sunday, when he dined with us. One night, his servant came and told the midshipman of the watch, that the captain was lying dead drunk on the deck, in his cabin. This was communicated to me, and I determined to make the best use of it. I ran down to the cabin taking with me the midshipman of the watch, the quarter-master, and two other steady men; and having laid the water-drinker in his bed, I noted down the date, with all the particulars, together with the names of the witnesses, to be used as soon as we fell in with the admiral.

The next day, I think he had some suspicion of what I had done, and it had nearly been fatal to me. It was blowing a fresh trade wind, and the vessel rolling very deep, when he ordered the booms to be cast loose and re-stowed. This was nothing short of murder and madness: but in spite of every remonstrance, he persisted, and the consequences were terrible. The lashings were no sooner cast off, than a spare top-mast fell and killed one of the men. This was enough to have completed our mischief for the day; but the devil had not done with us yet. The booms were secured, and the men were ordered to rattle the rigging down, which, as the vessel continued to roll heavily, was still more dangerous, and, if possible, more useless than the former operation. He was warned of it, but in vain; and the men had not been aloft more than ten minutes, when one of them fell overboard. Why I should again have put my life in jeopardy, particularly after the warning of the last voyage, I know not. I was perhaps vain of what I could do in the water. I knew my powers; and with the hope of saving this unfortunate victim to the folly and cruelty of the captain, I plunged after him into the sea, feeling at the same time, that I was almost committing an act of suicide. I caught hold of him, and for a time supported him; and, had the commonest diligence and seamanship been shewn, I should have saved him. But the captain, it appeared, when he found I was overboard, was resolved to get rid of me, in order to save himself: he made use of every difficulty to prevent the boat coming to me. The poor man was exhausted: I kept myself disengaged from him, when swimming round him; supported him occasionally whenever he was sinking; but, finding at last that he was irrecoverably gone—for though I had a firm hold of him, he was going lower and lower—and, looking up, perceiving I was so deep that the water was dark over my head, I clapped my knees on his shoulders, and, giving myself a little impetus from the resistance, rose to the surface. So much was I exhausted, that I could not have floated half a minute more, when the boat came and picked me up.

The delay in heaving the ship to, I attributed to the scene I had witnessed the night before; and in this, I was confirmed by the testimony of the officers. Having lost two men by his unseamanlike conduct, he would have added deliberate murder of a third, to save himself from the punishment which he knew awaited him. He continued the same tyrannical conduct, and I had resolved that the moment we fell in with the admiral to write for a court-martial on this man, let the consequences be what they might: I thought I should serve my country and the navy by ridding it of such a monster.

Several of the officers were under arrest, and notwithstanding the heat of their cabins in that warm climate, were kept constantly confined to them with a sentinel at the door. In consequence of this cruel treatment, one of the officers became deranged. We made Barbadoes, and running round Needham's Point into Carlisle Bay, we saw to our mortification, that neither the admiral nor any ship of war was there, consequently our captain was commanding officer in the port. Upon this, he became remarkably amiable, supposing if the evil day was put off, it would be dispensed with altogether; he treated me with particular attention, hoped we should have some fun ashore; as the admiral was not come in, we should wait for him; tired of kicking about at sea, he should take all his duds, with him, and bring himself to an anchor on shore, and not come afloat again till we saluted his flag.

Neither the first lieutenant nor myself believed one word of this; indeed, we always acted upon the exact reverse of what he said; and it was well we did so in this instance. After we had anchored, he went ashore, and in about an hour returned, and stated that the admiral was not expected till next month; that he should, therefore, go and take up his quarters at Jemmy Cavan's, and not trouble the ship any more until the admiral arrived; he then left us, taking his trunk and all his dirty linen, dirty enough it was.

Some of the officers unfortunately believed that we were to remain, and followed the captain's example by sending their linen on shore to be washed. Skysail was firm, and so was I; the lieutenant cocked his eye, and said, "Messmate, depend on it there is something in the wind. I have sent one shirt on shore to be washed; and when that comes off, I will send another; if I lose that it is no great matter."

That night, at ten o'clock, Captain Jacky came on board, bringing his trunk and dirty linen, turned the hands up, up anchor, and ran out of Carlisle Bay and went to sea, leaving most of the officers' linen on shore. This was one of his tricks. He had received his orders when he landed in the morning; they were waiting for him, and his coming on board for his things, was only a run to throw us off our guard, and I suppose compel us, by the loss of our clothes, to be as dirty in appearance as he was himself, "but he always liked to make his officers comfortable."

We arrived at Nassau, in New Providence, without any remarkable incident, although the service continued to be carried on in the same disagreeable manner as ever. I continued, however, to get leave to go on shore; and finding no prospect of bringing the captain to justice, determined to quit the ship, if possible. This was effected by accident, otherwise I should have been much puzzled to have got clear of her. I fell between the boat and the wharf as I landed, and by the sudden jerk ruptured a small bloodvessel in my chest; it was of no great importance in itself, but in that climate required care, and I made the most of it. They would have carried me on board again, but I begged to be taken to the hotel. The surgeon of the regiment doing duty there attended me, and I requested him to make my case as bad as possible. The captain came to see me—I appeared very ill—his compassion was like that of the Inquisitor of the Holy Office, who cures his victim in order to enable him to go through further torments. His time of sailing arrived, and I was reported to be too ill to be removed. Determined to have me, he prolonged his stay. I got better; the surgeon's report was more favourable; but I was still unwilling to go on board. The captain sent me an affectionate message, to say that if I did not come, he would send a file of marines to bring me: he even came himself and threatened me; when, finding there were no witnesses in the room, I plainly told him that if he persisted in having me on board, it would be to his own destruction, for that I was fully determined to bring him to a court-martial for drunkenness and unofficerlike conduct, the moment we joined the admiral. I told him of the state in which I had found him. I recapitulated his blasphemies, and his lubberly conduct in losing the two men; he stared and endeavoured to explain; I was peremptory, and he whined and gave in, seeing he was in my power.

"Well then, my dear fellow," said Jacky, "since you are so very ill—sorry as I shall be to lose you—I must consent to your staying behind. I shall find it difficult to replace you; but as the comfort and happiness of my officers is my first object on all occasions, I will prefer annoying myself to annoying you." So saying, he held out his hand to me, which I shook with a hearty good-will, sincerely hoping that we might never meet again, either in this world or the next.

He was afterwards brought to a court-martial, for repeated acts of drunkenness and cruelty, and was finally dismissed the service.

In giving this detail of Captain G–'s peculiarities, let it not be imagined, that even at that period such characters were common in the service. I have already said, that he was an unique. Impressment and the want of officers at the early part of the war, gave him an opportunity of becoming a lieutenant; he took the weak side of the admiral to obtain his next step, and obtained the command of a sloop, from repeated solicitation at the Admiralty, and by urging his claims of long servitude. The service had received serious injury by admitting men on the quarter-deck from before the mast; it occasioned there being two classes of officers in the navy—namely, those who had rank and connections, and those who had entered by the "hawse-holes," as they were described. The first were favoured when young, and did not acquire a competent knowledge of their duty; the second, with few exceptions, as they advanced in their grades, proved, from want of education, more and more unfit for their stations. These defects have now been remedied; and as all young men who enter the service must have a regular education, and consequently be the sons of gentlemen, a level has been produced, which to a certain degree precludes favouritism, and perfectly bars the entrance to such men as Captain G–.

After the battle of Trafalgar, when England and Europe were indebted for their safety to the British fleet, the navy became popular, and the aristocracy crowded into it. This forwarded still more the melioration of the service, and under the succeeding naval administration, silent, certain, and gradual improvements, both in men, officers, and ships, took place. Subsequently, the navy has been still more fortunate, in having an officer called to its councils, whose active and constant employment at sea, previous to the peace of Paris, had given him a thorough insight into its wants and abuses. Unconnected with party, and unawed by power, he has dared to do his duty; and it is highly to the credit of the first lord, who has so long presided at the board, that the suggestions of this officer have met with due consideration; I can therefore assure my reader, that as long as his advice is attended to, he need be afraid of meeting with no more Captain G–'s.

Chapter XVIII

There she goes, brimful of anger and jealousy. Mercy on the poor man!

    "Jealous Wife."

The dreadful fish that hath deserved the name
Of Death.

    SPENSER.

As the brig moved out of the harbour of Nassau, I moved out of bed; and as she set her royals and made sail, I put on my hat and walked out. The officers of the regiment quartered there, kindly invited me to join their mess; and the colonel enhanced the value of the offer by assigning for me good apartments in the barracks. I was instantly removed to cleanly and comfortable lodgings. I soon regained my strength, and was able to sit at the table, where I found thirty-five young officers, living for the day, careless of the morrow; and, beyond that never bestowing a thought. It is a singular fact, that where life is most precarious, men are most indifferent about its preservation; and, where death is constantly before our eyes, as in this country, eternity is seldom in our thoughts: but so it is; and the rule extends still further in despotic countries. Where the union between the head and shoulders may be dissolved in a moment by the sword of a tyrant, life is not so valued, and death loses its terrors; hence the apathy and indifference with which men view their executioners in that state of society. It seems as if existence, like estates, was valuable in proportion to the validity of the title-deeds by which they are held.

To digress no more. Although I was far from being even commonly virtuous, which is about tantamount to absolute wickedness, I was no longer the thoughtless mortal I had ever been since I left school. The society of Emily, and her image graven on my heart; the close confinement to the brig, and the narrow escape from death in the second attempt to save the poor sailor's life, had altogether contributed their share to a kind of temporary reformation, if not to a disgust to the coarser descriptions of vice. The lecture I had received from Emily on deceit, and the detestable conduct of my last captain, had, as I thought, almost completed my reformation. Hitherto I felt I had acted wrong, without having the power to act right. I forgot that I had never made the experiment. The declaration of Captain G.'s atheism was so far from converting me, that from that moment I thought more seriously than ever of religion. So great was my contempt for his character, that I knew whatever he said must be wrong, and, like the Spartan drunken slave, he gave me the greatest horror of vice.

Such was my reasoning, and such my sentiments, previous to any relapse into sin or folly. I knew its heinousness. I transgressed and repented; habit was all-powerful in me; and the only firm support I could have looked to for assistance was, unfortunately, very superficially attended to. Religion, for any good purposes, was scarcely in my thoughts. My system was a sort of Socratic heathen philosophy—a moral code, calculated to take a man tolerably safe through a quiet world, but not to extricate him from a labyrinth of long-practised iniquity.

The thoughtless and vicious conduct of my companions became to me a source of serious reflection. Far from following their example, I felt myself some degrees better than they were; and in the pride of my heart thanked God that I was not like these publicans. My pharisaical arrogance concealed from me the mortifying fact that I was much worse, and with very slight hopes of amendment. Humility had not yet entered my mind; but it was the only basis on which any religious improvement could be created—the only chance of being saved. I rather became refined in vice, without quitting it. Gross and sensual gratification, so easily obtained in the West Indies, was disgusting to me; yet I scrupled not to attempt the seduction of innocence, rather more gratified in the pursuit than in the enjoyment, which soon palled, and drove me after other objects.

I had, however, little occasion to exert my tact in this art in the Bahama Islands, where, as in all the other islands of the West Indies, there is a class of women, born of white fathers and mustee or mulatto women, nearly approaching in complexion to the European; many of them are brunettes, with long black hair, very pretty, good eyes, and often elegant figures. These ladies are too proud of the European blood in their veins to form an alliance with any male who has a suspicion of black in his genealogical table; consequently they seldom are married unless from interested motives, when, having acquired large property by will, they are sought in wedlock by the white settlers.

So circumstanced, these girls prefer an intercourse with the object of their choice to a legal marriage with a person of inferior birth; and, having once made their selection, an act of infidelity is of rare occurrence among them. Their affection and constancy will stand the test of time and of long separation; generous to prodigality, but jealous, and irritable in their jealousy, even to the use of the dagger and poison.

One of these young ladies found sufficient allurement in my personal charms to surrender at discretion, and we lived in that sort of familiar intercourse which, in the West Indies, is looked upon as a matter of necessity between the parties, and of indifference by every one else. I lived on in this Epicurean style for some months; until, most unfortunately, my chère amie found a rival in the daughter of an officer, high in rank, on the island. Smitten with my person, this fair one had not the prudence to conceal her partiality: my vanity was too much flattered not to take advantage of her sentiments in my favour; and, as usual, flirtation and philandering occupied most of my mornings, and sometimes my evenings, in the company of this fair American.

Scandal is a goddess who reigns paramount, not only in Great Britain, but also in all his Majesty's plantations; and her votaries very soon selected me as the target of their archery. My pretty Carlotta became jealous; she taxed me with inconstancy. I denied the charge; and as a proof of my innocence, she obtained from me a promise that I should go no more to the house of her rival; but this promise I took very good care to evade, and to break. For a whole fortnight, my domestic peace was interrupted either by tears, or by the most voluble and outrageous solos, for I never replied after the first day.

A little female slave, one morning, made me a signal to follow her to a retired part of the garden. I had shewn this poor little creature some acts of kindness, for which she amply repaid me. Sometimes I had obtained for her a holiday—sometimes saved her a whipping, and at others had given her a trifle of money; she therefore became exceedingly attached to me, and as she saw her mistress's anger daily increase, she knew what it would probably end in, and watched my safety like a little guardian sylph.

"No drinkee coffee, Massa," said she, "Missy putty obeah stuff in."

As soon as she had said this, she disappeared, and I went into the house, where I found Carlotta preparing the breakfast; she had an old woman with her, who seemed to be doing something which she was not very willing I should see. I sat down carelessly, humming a tune, with my face to a mirror, and my back to Carlotta, so that I was able to watch her motions without her perceiving it. She was standing near the fireplace, the coffee was by her, on the table, and the old woman crouched in the chimney corner, with her bleared eyes fixed on the embers. Carlotta seemed in doubt; she pressed her hands forcibly on her forehead; took up the coffee-pot to pour me out a cup, then sat it down again; the old woman muttered something in their language; Carlotta stamped with her little foot, and poured out the coffee. She brought it to me—trembled as she placed it before me—seemed unwilling to let go her hold, and her hand still grasped the cup, as if she would take it away again. The old woman growled and muttered something, in which I could only hear the name of her rival mentioned. This was enough: the eyes of Carlotta lighted up like a flame; she quitted her hold of the salver, retreated to the fireplace, sat herself down, covered her face, and left me, as she supposed, to make my last earthly repast.

"Carlotta," said I, with a sudden and vehement exclamation. She started up, and the blood rushed to her face and neck, in a profusion of blushes, which are perfectly visible through the skins of these mulattos. "Carlotta," I repeated, "I had a dream last night, and who do you think came to me? It was Obeah!" (She started at the name.) "He told me not to drink coffee this morning, but to make the old woman drink it." At these words the beldam sprang up. "Come here, you old hag," said I. She approached trembling, for she saw that escape from me was impossible, and that her guilt was detected. I seized a sharp knife, and taking her by her few remaining grey and woolly hairs, said, "Obeah's work must be done: I do not order it, but he commands it; drink that coffee instantly."

So powerful was the name of Obeah on the ear of the hag, that she dreaded it more than my brandished knife. She never thought of imploring mercy, for she supposed it was useless after the discovery, and that her hour was come; she therefore lifted the cup to her withered lip, and was just going to fulfil her destiny and to drink, when I dashed it out of her hand, and broke it in a thousand pieces on the floor, darting, at the same time, a fierce look at Carlotta, who threw herself at my feet, which she fervently kissed in an agony of conflicting passions.

"Kill me! kill me!" ejaculated she; "it was I that did it! Obeah is great—he has saved you. Kill me, and I shall die happy, now you are safe—do kill me!"

I listened to these frantic exclamations with perfect calmness. When she was a little more composed, I desired her to rise. She obeyed, and looked the image of despair, for she thought I should immediately quit her for the arms of her more fortunate rival, and she considered my innocence as fully established by the appearance of the deity.

"Carlotta," said I, "what would you have done if you had succeeded in killing me?"