The squadron continued to hover on the French coast, with a view of alarming the enemy, and of making a more fortunate attempt, if opportunity occurred. Early in the morning of the fourth day after Willy had been promoted to the quarter-deck, a large convoy of chasse-marées (small coasting vessels, lugger-rigged) were discovered rounding a low point, not three miles from the squadron. A general signal to chase was immediately thrown out, and in half an hour the English men-of-war were in the midst of them, pouring broadside after broadside upon the devoted vessels, whose sails were lowered in every direction, in token of submission. The English men-of-war reminded you of so many hawks, pouncing upon a flight of small birds; and the vessels, with their lowered sails just flapping with the breeze, seemed like so many victims of their rapacity, who lay fluttering on the ground, disabled, or paralysed with terror. Many escaped into shoal water, others ran ashore, some were sunk, and about twenty taken possession of by the ships of the squadron. They proved to be part of a convoy, laden with wine, and bound to the Garonne.
One of the chasse-marées, being a larger vessel than the rest, and laden with wine of a better quality, was directed by the commodore to be sent to England; the casks of wine on board of the others were hoisted into the different ships, and distributed occasionally to the crews. Captain M — thought that the departure of the prize to England would be a favourable opportunity to send our hero to receive his outfit, as he could not well appear on the quarter-deck as an officer without his uniform. He therefore directed the master’s mate, to whose charge the prize was about to be confided, to take William with him, and wrote to his friends at Portsmouth, whither the vessel was directed to proceed, to fit him out with the requisite articles, and send him back by the first ship that was directed to join the squadron. The prize was victualled, the officer received his written orders, was put on board with our hero and three men, and parted company with the squadron.
The master’s-mate, who was directed to take the vessel to Portsmouth, was the spurious progeny of the first-lieutenant of a line-of-battle ship, and a young woman who attended the bum-boat, which supplied the ship’s company with necessaries and luxuries, if they could afford to pay for them. The class of people who obtain their livelihood by these means, and who are entirely dependent upon the navy for their subsistence, are naturally anxious to secure the good-will of the commanding officers of the ships, and usually contrive to have on their establishment a pretty-looking girl, who, although very reserved to the junior officers of the ship, is all smiles to the first-lieutenant, and will not stand upon trifles for the benefit of her employer. Beauty for men — gold for women! Such are the glittering baits employed, in this world, to entice either sex from the paths of duty or discretion.
The service was indebted to this species of bribery for the officer in question. The interest of his supposed father was sufficient to put him on the quarter-deck; and the profits of his mother, who, having duly served her apprenticeship, had arrived to the dignity of bumboat woman herself, and was a fat, comely matron of about forty years of age, were more than sufficient to support him in his inferior rank. His education and natural abilities were not, however, of that class to procure him either friends or advancement; and he remained in the capacity of master’s-mate, and was likely long to continue so, unless some such event as a general action should include him in a promotion which would be regulated by seniority. He was a mean-looking, vulgar little man, with a sharp face and nose — the latter very red, from the constant potations of not only his own allowance, but of that of every youngster in the ship whom he could bully or cajole.
His greatest pride and his constant study was “slang,” in which he was no mean proficient. He always carried in his pocket a colt (i.e. a foot and a half of rope, knotted at one end, and whipped at the other), for the benefit of the youngsters, to whom he was a most inordinate tyrant. He could judge a day’s work, which he sent in with the rest of the midshipmen, and which proofs of theoretical knowledge of their profession were in those days little attended to; but he was very ignorant, and quite unfit to take charge of any vessel. Captain M — , who, as we before stated, had joined the ship as acting captain, and had not had time to ascertain the merits or demerits of the officers, had given the prize to his charge because he was the senior mate of the ship.
The prize had scarcely trimmed her sails and shaped her course, when Mr Bullock, the master’s-mate, called our hero to him, and addressed him in the following elegant phraseology: —
“Now, you rebellious spawn — touch your hat, you young whelp,” — (knocking off poor Willy’s only hat, which flew to leeward, and went overboard) — “mind what I say, for I mean to be as good as a father to you. You’re not an officer yet — and if you were, it would be all the same — so no capers, no airs. You see I’ve only three men in the vessel besides myself; they are in three watches; so your duty will be to attend to me in the cabin. You’ll mull my claret — I always drinks a noggin every half-hour to keep the wind out, and if it an’t ready and an’t good — do you see this?” — (taking the colt out of his pocket.)
“Stop, you’d better feel it at once, and then, when you knows what the taste of it is, you’ll take care how you’re slack in stays.” So saying, he administered three or four hearty cuts on the back and shoulders of our hero, who had been sufficiently drilled into the manners and customs of a man-of-war, to know the value of the proverb, “The least said, the soonest mended.”
A spigot had been already inserted into one of the casks of claret which were lashed on deck; and, as the small vessel was very uneasy in the heavy swell of the Bay of Biscay, our hero had sufficient employment in watching the pot of claret, and preventing it from being upset by the motion of the vessel, as it was constantly heating on the stove in the cabin. This potation was regularly presented by Willy every half-hour, as directed, to his commanding officer, who, if it was too sweet, or not sweet enough, or if he could not drink the whole, invariably, and much to the annoyance of our hero, threw the remainder into his face, telling him that was his share of it.
This arrangement continued in full force for three days and three nights — for Willy was roused up five or six times every night to administer the doses of mulled claret which Mr Bullock had prescribed for himself, who seemed, thin and meagre as he was, to be somewhat like a bamboo in his structure (i.e. hollow from top to bottom), as if to enable him to carry the quantity of fluid that he poured down his throat during the twenty-four hours. As for intoxicating him, that appeared to be impossible: from long habit, he seemed to be like a stiff ship that careened to her bearings, and would sooner part company with her masts than heel any further.
On the fourth day, a strong gale sprang up from the north-west, and the sea ran very high. The chasse-marée, never intended to encounter the huge waves of the Bay of Biscay, but to crawl along the coast and seek protection from them on the first indication of their fury, — labouring with a heavy cargo, not only stowed below, but on the decks, — was not sufficiently buoyant to rise on the summits of the waves, which made a clean breach over her, and the men became exhausted with the wet and the inclemency of the season. On the third day of the gale, and seventh since they had parted company with the fleet, a squall brought the mainmast by the board; the foresail was lowered to close-reef, when a heavy sea struck the vessel, and pouring a torrent over her decks, swept overboard the three men who were forward reefing the sail. Mr Bullock, the master’s mate, was at the helm — Willy, as usual, down below, attending the mulled claret, which had been more than ever in request since the bad weather had come on.
The mate quitted the helm, and ran forward to throw a rope to the seamen who were struggling in the water with the wreck to leeward. He threw one, which was seized by two of them (the other had sunk); and as soon as they had hold of it and it became taut from their holding on, he perceived to his dismay that he had stood in the remaining part of the coil, and that it had encircled itself several times round his body, so that the men were hauling him overboard. “Let go, let go, or I’m overboard!” was a useless exclamation to drowning men; they held on, and the mate too held on by the rigging for his life, — the efforts of the drowning men dragging him at last from off his legs, and keeping his body in a horizontal position, as they hauled at his feet, and he clung in desperation to the lee-shrouds. “Willy, Willy, a knife — quick, quick!” roared the mate in his agony. Willy, who, hearing his name called, and followed up by the “quick,