The Gentleman A Romance of the Sea by Ollivant, Alfred, 1874-1927

The song ceased.

There was an age-long silence.

Then out of the darkness from millions of miles away a whisper,

"Kiss me, Little Chap."

CHAPTER LXXXIX

THE LAST POST

The Parson bore the dead man down the hill beneath the stars, Kit still holding the cold hand.

Here yesterday this same limp and lolling figure had chased Knapp with rousing limbs. Now not all the trumpets of his own Brigade could stir his little finger.

Over the greensward the Parson bore his burthen, past the hushed sycamores, into the kitchen.

They entered the Sanctuary.

One candle there showed a Union Jack shrouding a still something on the dresser.

Beside it the Parson laid his dead.

Knapp, bloody-bandaged, crept through the curtain and joined them, Blob at his heels.

So they gathered in the half-light: the garrison who had held the Fort, and the man who had stormed it.

It was but the kitchen of a cottage; yet no soul there but felt that he was standing upon hallowed ground.

Kit bent above the dead.

Beautiful as he had been in life, the Gentleman was yet lovelier in death.

Reverently Kit crossed the dead man's hands and laid his sword beside him.

As he raised his head, one standing at the foot of the dresser bent. It was Blob. Kit shot out a hand, fearing some irreverence. Then he saw and stayed.

Something in the spirit of the occasion, the stillness, the hallowed light, had waked in the boy some inherited memory of noble death-beds, brave as they were beautiful.

The soul of the past, quickening the dull present, stirred him to lovely action.

He kissed the dead man's feet, and withdrew weeping.

Across the dresser Knapp was blubbering.

"E were a genelman," he repeated over and over again. "E were a genelman."

From the head of the table the Parson echoed him.

"He was a soldier and a gentleman; and he lies beside the bravest man and truest Christian who ever trod a deck."

He paused and they could hear the flutter of his breath.

"And now I am going to honour him as never foreigner was honoured yet."

He flung back the flag that shrouded the old fore-top-man, and spread it over both.

"In death we are all friends," he said, arranging it with tender fingers. "Let us pray."

And in the dusk the living knelt beside the dead.

It was high noon.

The _Victory's_ barge lay on Southsea Beach.

A midshipman, with keen long face and anxious eyes, was standing by it, a curly-haired parson at his side.

"Listen here, Kit," the latter was saying, "this is the _Times_ of a week ago:--

"_The intelligence which we announced yesterday, respecting the breaking up of the camp at Boulogne, has been confirmed by the crew of a gun-boat, which was captured on its way from that port to Havre_."

He laid his hand on the boy's arm.

"Nap's given it up," he said. "And we know why."

"Hark!" cried Kit. "Here comes Nelson."

And come he did, the man for whom they had fought and conquered.

They could see nothing for the swell of the beach; but they could hear.

And what they heard was the Voice of England marching shorewards to see her hero off.