第 五 章 · 第5章

The outbreak at the Nore was put down. But not every grievance was

redressed. If the contractors, for example, were no longer permitted to

ply some practices peculiar to their tribe everywhere, such as providing

shoddy cloth, rations not sound, or false in the measure; not the less

impressment, for one thing, went on. By custom sanctioned for centuries,

and judicially maintained by a Lord Chancellor as late as Mansfield,

that mode of manning the fleet, a mode now fallen into a sort of

abeyance but never formally renounced, it was not practicable to give up

in those years. Its abrogation would have crippled the indispensable

fleet, one wholly under canvas, no steam-power, its innumerable sails

and thousands of cannon, everything in short, worked by muscle alone; a

fleet the more insatiate in demand for men, because then multiplying its

ships of all grades against contingencies present and to come of the

convulsed Continent.

Discontent foreran the Two Mutinies, and more or less it lurkingly

survived them. Hence it was not unreasonable to apprehend some return of

trouble sporadic or general. One instance of such apprehensions: In the

same year with this story, Nelson, then Vice-Admiral Sir Horatio, being

with the fleet off the Spanish coast, was directed by the admiral in

command to shift his pennant from the _Captain_ to the _Theseus_; and

for this reason: that the latter ship having newly arrived in the

station from home where it had taken part in the Great Mutiny, danger

was apprehended from the temper of the men; and it was thought that an

officer like Nelson was the one, not indeed to terrorise the crew into

base subjection, but to win them by force of his mere presence back to

an allegiance, if not as enthusiastic as his own, yet as true. So it

was, that for a time on more than one quarter-deck anxiety did exist. At

sea precautionary vigilance was strained against relapse. At short

notice an engagement might come on. When it did, the lieutenants

assigned to batteries felt it incumbent on them in some instances to

stand with drawn swords behind the men working the guns.

But on board the seventy-four in which Billy now swung his hammock very

little in the manner of the men and nothing obvious in the demeanour of

the officers would have suggested to an ordinary observer that the Great

Mutiny was a recent event. In their general bearing and conduct the

commissioned officers of a warship naturally take their tone from the

commander, that is if he have that ascendency of character that ought to

be his.

Captain the Honourable Edward Fairfax Vere, to give his full title, was

a bachelor of forty or thereabouts, a sailor of distinction, even in a

time prolific of renowned seamen. Though allied to the higher nobility,

his advancement had not been altogether owing to influences connected

with that circumstance. He had seen much service, been in various

engagements, always acquitting himself as an officer mindful of the

welfare of his men, but never tolerating an infraction of discipline;

thoroughly versed in the science of his profession, and intrepid to the

verge of temerity, though never injudiciously so. For his gallantry in

the West Indian waters as flag-lieutenant under Rodney in that admiral’s

crowning victory over De Grasse, he was made a post-captain.

Ashore in the garb of a civilian, scarce anyone would have taken him for

a sailor, more especially that he never garnished unprofessional talk

with nautical terms, and grave in his bearing, evinced little

appreciation of mere humour. It was not out of keeping with these traits

that on a passage when nothing demanded his paramount action, he was the

most undemonstrative of men. Any landsman observing this gentleman, not

conspicuous by his stature and wearing no pronounced insignia, emerging

from his retreat to the open deck, and noting the silent deference of

the officers retiring to leeward, might have taken him for the King’s

guest, a civilian aboard the King’s ship, some highly honourable

discreet envoy on his way to an important post. But, in fact, this

unobtrusiveness of demeanour may have proceeded from a certain

unaffected modesty of manhood sometimes accompanying a resolute nature,

a modesty evinced at all times not calling for pronounced action, and

which shown in any rank of life suggests a virtue aristocratic in kind.

As with some others engaged in various departments of the world’s more

heroic activities, Captain Vere, though practical enough upon occasion,

would at times betray a certain dreaminess of mood. Standing alone on

the weather-side of the greater deck, one hand holding by the rigging,

he would absently gaze off at the black sea. At the presentation to him

then of some minor matter interrupting the current of his thoughts, he

would show more or less irascibility; but instantly he would control it.

In the Navy he was popularly known by the appellation--Starry Vere. How

such a designation happened to fall upon one who, whatever his sturdy

qualities, was without any brilliant ones, was in this wise: a favourite

kinsman, Lord Denton, a free-handed fellow, had been the first to meet

and congratulate him upon his return to England from the West Indian

cruise; and but the day previous turning over a copy of Andrew Marvell’s

poems had lighted, not for the first time however, upon the lines

entitled ‘Appelton House,’ the name of one of the seats of their common

ancestor, a hero in the German wars of the seventeenth century, in which

poem occur the lines,

‘This ’tis to have been from the first

In a domestic heaven nursed,

Under the discipline severe

Of Fairfax and the starry Vere.’

And so, upon embracing his cousin fresh from Rodney’s victory, wherein

he had played so gallant a part, brimming over with just family pride in

the sailor of their house, he exuberantly exclaimed, ‘Give ye joy, Ed;

give ye joy, my starry Vere!’ This got currency, and the novel prefix

serving in familiar parlance readily to distinguish the _Indomitable’s_

captain from another Vere, his senior, a distant relative, an officer of

like rank in the Navy, it remained permanently attached to the surname.

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