He had seen,
too, the ghastly corpse floating upright, when Nelson and the
enchantress met their victim, returned from the sea-depths to stare
at them, as Banquo's ghost upon Macbeth. But she was 'a mortal fine
woman, was Lady Hamilton, though she was a queer one, and cruel kind
to the sailors; and many a man she saved from flogging; and one from
hanging, too; that was a marine that got a-stealing; for Nelson,
though he was kind enough, yet it was a word and a blow with him; and
quite right he, sir; for there be such rascals on board ship, that if
you ain't as sharp with them as with wild beastesses, no man's life,
nor the ship's neither, would be worth a day's purchase.'
So he, with his simple straightforward notions of right and wrong
worth, much maudlin unmerciful indulgence which we hear in these
days: and yet not going to the bottom of the matter either, as we
shall see in the next war. But, rambling on, he told me how he had
come home, war-worn and crippled, to marry a wife and get tall sons,
and lay his bones in his native village; till which time (for death
to the aged poor man is a Sabbath, of which he talks freely, calmly,
even joyously) 'he just got his bread, by the squire's kindness,
patching and mending at the stone deer-fences.
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