The Story of the “Orient”

’Twas a pleasant Sunday morning while the spring was in itsglory,English spring of gentle glory; smoking by his cottage door,Florid-faced, the man-o’-war’s-man told his white-head boy thestory,Noble story of Aboukir told a hundred times before.

“Here, the Theseus--here, the Vanguard;” as he spoke each namesonorous,--Minotaur, Defence, Majestic, stanch old comrades of the brine,That against the ships of Brueys made their broadsides roar inchorus,--Ranging daisies on his doorstone, deft he mapped the battle-line.

Mapped the curve of tall three-deckers, deft as might a manleft-handed,Who had given an arm to England later on at Trafalgar.While he poured the praise of Nelson to the child with eyesexpanded,Bright athwart his honest forehead blushed the scarlet cutlass-scar.

For he served aboard the Vanguard, saw the Admiral blind andbleedingBorne below by silent sailors, borne to die as then they deemed.Every stout heart sick but stubborn, fought the sea-dogs onunheeding,Guns were cleared and manned and cleared, the battle thundered,flashed, and screamed.

Till a cry swelled loud and louder,--towered on fire the Orientstately,Brueys’ flag-ship, she that carried guns a hundred and a score;Then came groping up the hatchway he they counted dead but lately,Came the little one-armed Admiral to guide the fight once more.

“‘Lower the boats!’ was Nelson’s order,”--But the listening boybeside him,Who had followed all his motions with an eager wide blue eye,Nursed upon the name of Nelson till he half had deified him,Here, with childhood’s crude consistence, broke the tale toquestion “Why?”

For by children facts go streaming in a throng that never pauses,Noted not, till, of a sudden, thought, a sunbeam, gilds the motes.All at once the known words quicken, and the child would deal withcauses.Since to kill the French was righteous, why bade Nelson lower theboats?

Quick the man put by the question. “But the Orient, none couldsave her;We could see the ships, the ensigns, clear as day-light by theflare;And a many leaped and left her; but, God rest ’em! some were braver;Some held by her, firing steady till she blew to God knows where.”

At the shock, he said, the Vanguard shook through all her timbersoaken;It was like the shock of Doomsday,--not a tar but shuddered hard.All was hushed for one strange moment; then that awful calm wasbrokenBy the heavy plash that answered the descent of mast and yard.

So, her cannon still defying, and her colours flaming, flying,In her pit her wounded helpless, on her deck her Admiral dead,Soared the Orient into darkness with her living and her dying:“Yet our lads made shift to rescue three-score souls,” the seamansaid.

Long the boy with knit brows wondered o’er that friending of thefoeman;Long the man with shut lips pondered; powerless he to tell the causeWhy the brother in his bosom that desired the death of no man,In the crash of battle wakened, snapped the bonds of hate likestraws.

While he mused, his toddling maiden drew the daisies to a posy;Mild the bells of Sunday morning rang across the churchyard sod;And helped on by tender hands, with sturdy feet all bare and rosy,Climbed his babe to mother’s breast, as climbs the slow world up toGod.