George Cruikshank's Omnibus. George Cruikshank
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The lieutenant raised the drooping head of his wife, earnestly gazed on her expressive countenance, kissed away her tears, and then exclaimed, "How is this, Emily? what! giving way to the indulgence of sorrow at a moment when prosperity is again extending the right hand of good-fellowship? We have experienced adverse gales, my love, but we have safely weathered them; and now that we have the promise of favourable breezes and smooth sailing, the prospect of renewed joy should gladden your heart."
"But are you not soon to leave me, Frank?" returned Mrs. Heartwell, as she strove to subdue the feelings which agitated her, "and who have I now in the wide world but you?"
The lieutenant fervently and fondly pressed her to his heart, whilst with a mingled look of gentle reproach and ardent affection he laid his disengaged hand on the head of his boy, who raising his tear-suffused eyes to the countenance of his mother, as he endeavoured to smile, uttered, "Do not be afraid mama, I will protect you till papa comes back!"
The silent appeal of her husband and the language of her child promptly recalled the wife and the parent to a sense of her marital and maternal duties—she instantly assumed a degree of cheerfulness; and the lieutenant engaging to be home as early as practicable, took his departure to visit his professional adviser.
The only male attendant (and he was looked upon more in the character of a humble friend than as a servant) on the lieutenant's establishment was an attached and faithful seaman, of some five-and-thirty years of age, who had undeviatingly adhered to the fortunes of his officer from the first moment of his entering into the naval service. He had served under Rodney from boyhood, first in the Prince George ninety-eight—then in the Dublin seventy-four; and, subsequently, when the admiral hoisted his flag, he accompanied him in his career of glory, and was present in those memorable engagements which ultimately raised the British ensign to its proud supremacy on the ocean.
Possessed of a lively and contented turn of mind, Ben Brailsford was always cheerful and gay—his temper and his disposition coincided—there was, at all times, a pleasant smile upon his cheek and a kind word upon his tongue, and, in point of fact, his only faults were an occasional indulgence to excess in his favourite beverage—grog, and his still more excessive loquacity when spinning a tough yarn about his favourite commander, Rodney, though it not unfrequently happened that one helped on the other.
I have already remarked that young Frank—for he was named after his father—was by his mother's side, and questioning her upon the subject of Philip Quarll's monkeys—but though desirous of imparting instruction to her son, yet her spirit was too much bowed down even to attend to him; besides, this was a matter of natural history with which she was but little acquainted, and, therefore, he was referred to honest Ben, as the best authority to answer his inquiries. Ben was accordingly summoned, and smoothing down his hair over his forehead with his hard horny hand as he entered the room, he "hoped as madam was well and master Frank all ship-shape."
"I am thinking of your master's departure, Ben," returned the lady, "and therefore cannot be very easy in my mind, when I consider the risks to which he will be exposed on the turbulent ocean, both in the storm and in the battle."
"Bless you, my lady," returned the seaman, "what's the vally of a bit of a breeze, where there's skill and judgment to read the face of the heavens, and good practical seamanship to ease her with the helm, when the wild seas break over us—and as for a fight, why its pretty sharp work whilst it lasts, but when it's over and the grog abroach—not, my lady, as I ever gives way to more than does me good—but as I was a saying, when the action's ended and the grog sarved out"—and here he cast his eyes towards a well-replenished liquor-case that stood in the corner, and from which he had often been supplied—"why we shares it along with our prisoners, and drinks to the mortal memory of them as is gone."
"But it must be a dreadful spectacle, Ben, to witness the dead and the dying mingled together," said the lady, with a shudder, "the slain and the wounded in one promiscuous heap."
"Bless you, my lady, that comes o' not knowing the jometry of the thing," returned Brailsford, in a tone and expression that evidenced experience; "they aren't by no manner o' means in one permiskus heap, for as soon as we find an onfortinate shipmate has let go the life-lines—and its easy diskivered by pressing the hand over the heart and feeling for the pallypitation—just for all the world Master Frank, as you'd listen for the ticking of a watch in a noisy place—and if so be as you don't find that there's not never no wibration, but all is motionless, from the main-spring having been carried away, so that the wheels have run down, why we knows well enough that the doctor's knife and all his medicine chest wouldn't get him to lend a hand to run out another gun, or rouse aboard the main-tack—so we launches him out at the port as expended stores, and we turns-to with a hearty good will to avenge his death."
"But do they serve the officers so?" inquired Mrs. Heartwell, whose cheeks had become blanched during the plain recital of the seaman; "surely there is some funeral ceremony, some—" and she paused.
"Bless you, my lady, what's the odds so as you're happy," responded Ben, scratching his head, whilst a good-humoured smile mantled over his face; "but the real truth of the thing is, that the officers being a sort of privileged class, expect a cast of the chaplin's wadee mecum—that's the parson's Latin for prayer-book, Master Frank; but to my thinking a poor dev—that is, I means an onfortinate as sticks his spoon in the beckets for a full-due and loses the number of his mess, whilst sarving his country heart and soul—has rubbed out a multitude of sins whilst sponging his gun in the regard of dooty."
"I dearly love my country, Ben; I should be unworthy the name of Englishwoman if I did not," returned the lady with fervour, as in the course of conversation she endeavoured to overcome her depression; "but why fight at all?"
This query to one of Rodney's tars would have been quite sufficient, had the law been administered then as it is in the present day, to have subjected the questioner to a commission of lunacy; and Ben gave his mistress an earnest look, shading his eyes with his hand that he might not be deceived by the glare of the lights. At first he thought she was in joke, but finding from the unchangeableness of her countenance that she was serious, he replied—
"Well, my lady, in regard o' the upshot of fighting, it isn't for an onedecated tar like myself to dilute upon the religion of the thing; but, bless you, my lady, suppose as you had the English ensign hoisted on the staff, or, for the matter o' that, at the gaff-end, and an enemy was to dare to presume to be so onveterate bould as to fire a shot at it;" he warmed as he proceeded, "why wouldn't you, my lady, open your ports and run out your guns for the honour of ould England's glory? And when your guns are run out, why what's the use on 'em if you don't clap a match to the touch-holes and pour in a reg'lar broadside?"
"Oh, it must be horrible work, Ben," said Mrs. Heartwell, as the picture of her husband, mangled and dying, was visibly presented to her view; "you throw the supposed dead overboard without being certain that life is extinct—"
"Avast, my lady, avast; we never does that—no, no; a shipmate or a messmate aren't so easily expended," returned Ben, with a solemn shake of the head. "But there's a sort of nat'ral inkstink amongst us tars—a kind of cable-splice with each other, so that we knows at once as well as any doctor as ever sarved his time at pill-building when the strands are drawn, and the craft has slipped from its moorings; that is, my lady, jist as this here, we can tell in a moment when a shipmate or messmate has broke adrift and got beyond hail; bless you, they're all distinct afore we gives 'em a launch, and as for the wounded, why they're carried below to the cockpit to get dressed, or to have their precious limbs lopped off like old junk, condemned as onsarviceable. But what's the odds, my lady, so as you're happy?"
One of Ben's peculiarities, and which long habit had rendered perfectly familiar to him, was the general use of the expression "What's the odds so as you're happy?" and as he mostly contrived to lug it in whatever the course of conversation might be, it often happened that it found utterance on very inappropriate occasions. The idea of happiness connected with the amputating of a limb would never have entered the mind of any other person than Ben; but his mistress was too much accustomed to the humane and generous disposition of the worthy seaman to suppose that he was