Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/99

 sake. He's been wanting badly to get across. I told you about his father, didn't I?"

"Yes. Too bad. Thinks he's still living, you said. Not much chance, I'd say. Still"

Nelson's heart thumped wildly. It had come at last! He wondered where they were sending him and would have given a good deal to have been able to ask just then. But it wouldn't do. He must wait until morning. He was going across; the ensign had said as much; and that was the main thing! It didn't matter a bit what the ship was so long as it sailed for France or England. He felt sorry for the others then: Lanky, whose one ambition was to serve a fourteen-inch gun; Ensign Stowell, too, and Billy, and all the rest. They would still be kicking their heels aboard the Wanderer back home while he, Nelson, was in the thick of it. Then he wondered if he had heard aright. Perhaps, after all, he had been mistaken. He listened as the officers paced back toward him, but now they were talking of other things. After awhile he went below and laid down in his bunk and was alternately happy and depressed until he finally fell into what was to prove his last sleep aboard the Wanderer.