The Voyage of the Aurora

INTRODUCES LUCY WALFORD.

Those who have ever had occasion to reside for any length of time in Gosport are sure to be more or less acquainted with the little village of Alverstoke; because it lies near at hand, and the road leading thereto forms one of the most pleasant walks in the neighbourhood.

But it may be that there are those, into whose hands this book will fall, who have never so much as heard the name of the place. For their benefit, then, it may be worth while to state that Alverstoke is pleasantly situated at a distance of about one mile from the above-mentioned town of Gosport, and within half a mile of the waters of the Solent.

It is a very unimportant little place at the present day: it was even more so in the year 17--, the year in which this veracious history opens. It was unimportant, that is to say, in a general sense; the public knew very little about it, and cared still less; but in a particular sense, and to the officers of His Majesty's Customs, it was a very important place indeed, inasmuch as the inhabitants, animated by a spirit of enterprise and a love of adventure not to be satisfied by such very ordinary and humdrum pursuits as those of fishing and market-gardening, had, almost to a man--to say nothing of the women and children--added thereto the illegal but lucrative and exciting occupation of smuggling; to the great loss and damage of the king's revenues.

The village consisted, at that time, of a single short, narrow street with a bend in the middle of it. Nearly one half of the north side of this street was occupied by the churchyard and church; the remaining portion, as well as the opposite side of the way, being composed of small low, two-story cottages with thatched roofs (and most of them having little projecting dormer-windows), a couple of public-houses, and a small grocery establishment.

This constituted the village proper; but a little aloof from it--being in it but not of it, as it were--there were in all perhaps half a dozen residences of a somewhat more pretentious kind. There was the rectory, for instance, on the opposite side of the road, eastward of the church, built in the very centre of its extensive garden, and snugly surrounded on all sides by high stone walls. Then there was Stoke House, near the rectory, standing well back from the road, embowered in trees, and with a carriage-drive running straight up through its beautiful rose-garden to the front door. Nearer the beach, and on the opposite side of the valley, was "Verbena Cottage," the abode of Lieutenant Bobus, in command of the coast-guard; and still nearer the beach, some ten or a dozen yards back from the road, enclosed within a neat paling, sheltered by lofty trees, with a lovely flower-garden in front and an extensive fruit and kitchen-garden in the rear, stood "Sea View," a small but well-built house, in which resided the relict and daughter of the late "Cap'n" Walford.

The late "Cap'n" Walford had been a wonderfully popular man in his day; and his memory was greatly esteemed and revered by the villagers. Manifesting, at an early age, a love of enterprise and excitement quite extraordinary even in an Alverstoke man, he had seized the first opportunity which offered to become the owner of a very fine fast-sailing lugger, in which, during his thirty years of devotion to maritime pursuits, he, by a rare combination of prudence and audacity, gradually acquired the reputation of being a most successful smuggler-- and the snug little fortune of some ten thousand pounds. The latter and more desirable portion of his acquirements he carefully invested, as it dribbled in bit by bit, in house-property in the neighbourhood; so that, when this estimable man's career was cut short at the comparatively early age of sixty years, by an unlucky cannon-shot fired from a revenue cutter, his disconsolate relict found herself the possessor of a comfortable income amounting to some five hundred pounds per annum, together with "Sea View" and--last, but by no means least--a daughter, fourteen years of age. This melancholy event occurred four years before the date at which this history opens; Lucy Walford was therefore about eighteen years old when the first of that train of events happened which it is herein proposed to record.

Mrs Walford was wont to assert, just about this time, that Lucy was the very living picture of what she herself used to be when a girl. If this was indeed true, it was at once an evidence of that remarkable good taste which the late "cap'n" was said to have possessed, and of the extraordinary changes effected by the hand of Time, for no one could ever have suspected such a resemblance without Mrs Walford's assurance. The old lady was a sad and subdued personage, thin and angular of figure and face, with prominent cheek-bones, eye-brows, and chin, dark eyes, deeply sunk in their sockets, a broad forehead, ploughed with innumerable wrinkles, a long sharp aquiline nose, a large thin-lipped mouth, and a querulous temper.

Lucy, on the other hand, was of medium height, slight, graceful figure, abounding in delicate curves, with small hands and feet, an exquisite complexion, a face, the sweet piquant loveliness of which set all the youth of Alverstoke--and Gosport too, for that matter--by the ears, a wealth of long silky golden hair, which persisted in twisting itself into a most distracting conglomeration of wavy curls, and a temper which nothing--not even her mother's querulousness--could ruffle.

That Lucy should be fairly beset by suitors was only natural. There was not a single bold young smuggler of marriageable age in all the country round about who did not cherish in a greater or lesser degree the fond hope of one day making her his own, albeit most of them were--it is only just to say--dimly cognisant of the fact that she was much too good for the best of them. It was probably in consequence of this feeling that only one or two--the boldest of the bold of this dashing fraternity-- had, so far, mustered up the courage to approach the young lady with a distinct proposal of marriage; and these, it is hardly necessary to say, had been firmly, but as pleasantly as possible, sent to the right-about. This class of lovers gave Lucy no trouble whatever; bold as they might be in the pursuit of their lawless avocation, they were diffident to the verge of absurdity in the presence of beauty, if associated with dignity and refinement; they were painfully conscious of their uncouth bearing and manners; and Lucy had little difficulty in keeping them at a proper distance.

But if these admirers gave her no trouble, there were others--notably two--who did; quite enough, in fact, to fully compensate for the ease with which she was able to manage all the rest. One of these was a certain Lieutenant Walford, a cousin of Lucy's; the other being Captain George Leicester, of the merchant schooner Industry.

Edward Walford was the only son of a half-brother of the late Captain Walford. He was an orphan, twenty-three years of age, and held a commission in his Majesty's--foot, then quartered in Gosport. He was fairly well educated, tall, passably good-looking, of engaging manners, but--those who knew him best said--treacherous, unscrupulous, and a gamester.

George Leicester, on the other hand, whilst perhaps quite as handsome as his rival, was simply a frank, honest, sturdy seaman, carrying his heart upon his sleeve; thoroughly master of his profession, but diffident and doubtful of himself in all other matters.

The trouble with these two was, that Walford could not be made to see that his presence was distasteful to Lucy; whilst Leicester was provokingly blind to the fact that the fair girl loved him with all her pure, simple little heart. She had not given her love to him unsought, it must be understood--far from it; George Leicester had been one of the earliest, as he was one of her most constant and devoted, admirers; he was unremitting in his attentions to her whenever he was in port; but the simple fellow was so doubtful as to his prospects of success that he had never given Lucy the chance, which she would so gladly have welcomed, to say "Yes" to the momentous question which was ever hovering upon his lips, but had never yet been able to get beyond them.

It was on a certain brilliant June afternoon that Lucy, as was her frequent custom, took a book in her hand and strolled down to the beach, where, making a little nest for herself in the shingle, she sat down to read or think, as the whim might take her.

The ardent rays of the sun, streaming down out of a cloudless sky, gleamed and flashed and sparkled upon the waters of the Solent, which, ruffled by a gentle westerly breeze, shone like a sheet of liquid gold. On the further side of the strait, the Isle of Wight upreared its green and wooded slopes in fair perspective; its northern shore, from Nettlestone Point to Egypt, bounding the view. On Lucy's right lay the entrance to Southampton Water, with the further shore, about Stone Point and the mouth of the Beaulieu River, indistinctly seen through the quivering golden haze; whilst on the left, across the water, Southsea Castle stood boldly forward upon its low projecting point, a watchful sentinel over the magnificent anchorage of Spithead. Inland from the castle lay the little straggling town of Southsea; and beyond it again, still higher up the estuary, appeared the spires and roofs of Portsmouth, its harbour crowded with a perfect forest of masts. Some half a dozen men-o'-war lay at anchor at Spithead; and the waters of the Solent were dotted with the sails of craft of all sizes, from the stately frigate to the humble but enterprising bumboat.

As Lucy sat there on the beach, basking in the sun, and far too idle to read, her listless gaze became fastened upon a trim, smart-looking little schooner which, under all the canvas she could possibly spread, was creeping slowly up from the westward before the light summer breeze. The glance of indifference with which the fair girl at first regarded the little craft, gradually changed to one of the greatest interest. Lucy, it must be remembered, was a sailor's daughter; nearly all her neighbours were interested almost solely in seafaring matters; the daily conversation of those by whom she was surrounded abounded in nautical technicalities; she had even made a trip upon one occasion in her father's lugger (the only occasion, by the bye, on which the hold of the said lugger was absolutely guiltless of contraband freight); and lastly, were not the walls of her home adorned with portraits of craft of various rigs passing Flushing or the Needles? All of which circumstances had combined to give Lucy a very fair knowledge of nautical matters and "a sailor's eye." She had not only learned the distinguishing characteristics of different rigs, but had also acquired the subtle power of recognising the individuality of different craft of the same rig whenever there happened to be anything to excite her interest in such craft. So now she first recognised the fact that the approaching vessel was a schooner, and, a little later on, when the schooner had drawn somewhat nearer, she became conscious that the schooner was well known to her. Drawing a small telescope from her pocket, she focussed it and pointed it at the vessel. Yes; there could be no doubt about it, it was the Industry; every little detail of canvas and rigging proclaimed the schooner's identity; and then, as though in order that there should be no possible room for doubt, and as though George Leicester had seen and recognised the charming girlish figure standing there on the beach (as possibly he had through his powerful marine glass), a white fluttering object gleamed out over the rail and, soaring aloft, streamed from the main-truck, a burgee with the name Industry worked upon it in red letters. At the sight of this Lucy rapidly closed her little telescope and returned it to her pocket with a bright flush and a conscious, happy little laugh.