Hearts of Oak: A Story of Nelson and the Navy
Gordon Stables
9781465500748
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I wonder what makes Tom so late? said Uncle Bob to himself, as he opened his eyes and looked around him. "Why," he added, "it is precious nearly three bells in the second dog-watch, as sure as I'm a living sailor. Living! Well, there isn't a deal of life about me, for the matter of that; but I'm right about the time. The shadow of yonder poplar tree just touches my toes at four bells, and it doesn't want a yard of doing so now. I must have been dozing a bit, too. It is a drowsy kind of an evening anyhow. But it was that blackbird in the cherry-tree that set me off, and maybe the hum o' the bees round their hives yonder, and the whispering of the wind in the old cedar must have helped a bit. Heigho!" Poor Uncle Bob yawned a little, then listened. "Made sure I heard Tom singing just then," continued the invalid half aloud, "but I dare say it was the sea-gulls. They're coming inland to-night, and I'm no seaman if it doesn't blow big guns before morning." Uncle Bob talked to himself for the best of reasons: there was no one else to talk to. For little Ruth, his niece, was helping her mother in the house, and Daniel, his brother, had gone to the Hall with a boat. No chance of Dan being home early to-night, for the boat required the heaviest cart for its conveyance, and the mare had gone a bit lame lately. To have looked at Uncle Bob's face as he lay there in his cot, which had been wheeled out under the shade of the trees on the daisied grass, no one would have taken him for an invalid. His rather handsome face, with its short brown beard and well-chiselled features was placid and contented, nay, even happy and hopeful-looking. O, yes, Uncle Bob had not ceased to hope. For seven long years and over, day after day, whenever the sun shone, or it was dry weather, that cot upon wheels had been hauled out of doors, where it is now in this sweet May evening, by the sturdy and kindly hands of Brother Dan. Yet if the boat-shed close by had taken fire, poor Uncle Bob could not have lifted hand or foot to save himself from destruction. The paralysis from which this seaman suffered had been accidental. It was this, probably, that gave him hopefulness and made his sad life in a measure bearable. And in certain states of the weather, strange to say, Uncle Bob could move his fingers. Dr. Downs used to call as he passed by to talk with him for a few minutes, and never failed to tell Uncle Bob that as he wasn't an old man by any means, time might work wonders. Mr. Curtiss, the curate, a kindly-hearted young fellow from Yorkshire, often dropped round, and would sit and talk to the invalid for a whole hour at a time. Nor did he ever leave without some words of consolation that, to say the least, were well-meant. Bob had very much to be thankful for, the curate would say; he wasn't in pain of any sort; he had his appetite and the use of his eyes and ears, and everybody loved him and was good to him. Uncle Bob being a sailor, the curate thought it was his duty to always introduce an allegorical ship of some kind in his conversation with the stricken mariner. Besides, wasn't Mr. Curtiss himself somewhat of an authority on nautical matters? Hadn't he been down to the sea in ships—well no, not quite that, but he had made one long and dangerous voyage from Great Yarmouth to London in a herring yawl, which enabled him to talk with some degree of confidence about "green seas," "contrary winds," "luff tackle, main sheets and shrouds," and all the rest of it. Mr. Curtiss meant well therefore, and he never left the invalid without leaving him something nice to think about, without, in fact, leaving him better in mind, if not in body, than he had found him. But after all said and done it isn't everyone who could have lain in a cot all these years so peacefully as Uncle Bob had done.
