She remembered him as the beautiful and gentle boy who had lightened all
her tasks, and partaken in all her recreations. “At an early age John Sandal, at his own request, had been sent to sea,
and had never since visited the Castle. On the Restoration, the
remembered services of the Mortimer family, and the high fame of the
youth’s courage and ability, had procured him a distinguished situation
in the navy. John Sandal’s consequence now rose in the eyes of the
family, of whom he was at first an inmate on toleration only; and even
Mrs Ann Mortimer began to express some anxiety to hear tidings of her
valiant cousin John. When she spoke thus, the light of Elinor’s eye fell
on her aunt with as rich a glow as ever summer sun on an evening
landscape; but she felt, at the same moment, an oppression,--an
indefinable suspension of thought, of speech, almost of breath, which
was only relieved by the tears which, when retired from her aunt’s
presence, she indulged in. Soon this feeling was exchanged for one of
deeper and more agitating interest. The war with the Dutch broke out,
and Captain John Sandal’s name, in spite of his youth, appeared
conspicuous among those of the officers appointed to that memorable
service. “Mrs Ann, long accustomed to hear the names of her family uttered always
in the same breath with the stirring report of high heroic deeds, felt
the elation of spirit she had experienced in by-gone days, combined with
happier associations, and more prosperous auguries. Though far advanced
in life, and much declined in strength, it was observed, that during the
reports of the war, and while she listened to the accounts of her
kinsman’s valour and fast-advancing eminence, her step became firm and
elastic, her lofty figure dilated to its youthful height, and a colour
at times visited her cheek, with as rich and brilliant a tinge as when
the first sighs of love murmured over its young roses. The high minded
Margaret, partaking that enthusiasm which merged all personal feeling in
the glory of her family and of her country, heard of the perils to which
her cousin (whom she hardly remembered) was exposed, only with a haughty
confidence that he would meet them as she felt she would have met them
herself, had she been, like him, the last male descendant of the family
of Mortimer. Elinor trembled and wept,--and when alone she prayed
fervently. “It was observable, however, that the respectful interest with which she
had hitherto listened to the family legends so eloquently told by Mrs
Ann, was now exchanged for a restless and unappeaseable anxiety for
tales of the naval heroes who had dignified the family history. Happily
she found a willing narrator in Mrs Ann, who had little need to search
her memory, and no occasion to consult her invention, for splendid
stories of those whose home was the deep, and whose battle-field was the
wild waste ocean. Amid the gallery richly hung with family portraits,
she pointed out the likeness of many a bold adventurer, whom the report
of the riches and felicities of the new discovered world had tempted on
speculations sometimes wild and disastrous, sometimes prosperous beyond
the golden dreams of cupidity. “How precarious!--how perilous!” murmured
Elinor, shuddering. But when Mrs Ann told the tale of her uncle, the
literary speculator, the polished scholar, the brave and gentle of the
family, who had accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh on his calamitous
expedition, and years after died of grief for his calamitous death,
Elinor, with a start of horror, caught her aunt’s arm, emphatically
extended towards the portrait, and implored her to desist. The decorum
of the family was so great, that this liberty could not be taken without
an apology for indisposition;--it was duly though faintly made, and
Elinor retired to her apartment. “From February 1665,--from the first intelligence of De Ruyter’s
enterprises, till the animating period when the Duke of York was
appointed to the command of the Royal fleet,--all was eager and
anticipative excitement, and eloquent expatiations on ancient
achievements, and presageful hopes of new honours, on the part of the
heiress of Mortimer and Mrs Ann, and profound and speechless emotion on
that of Elinor. “The hour arrived, and an express was dispatched from London to Mortimer
Castle with intelligence, in which King Charles, with that splendid
courtesy which half redeemed his vices, announced himself most deeply
interested, inasmuch as it added to the honours of the loyal family,
whose services he appreciated so highly. The victory was complete,--and
Captain John Sandal, in the phrase which the King’s attachment to French
manners and language was beginning to render popular, had “covered
himself with glory.” Amid the thickest of the fight, in an open boat, he
had carried a message from Lord Sandwich to the Duke of York, under a
shower of balls, and when older officers had stoutly declined the
perilous errand; and when, on his return, Opdam the Dutch Admiral’s ship
blew up, amid the crater of the explosion John Sandal plunged into the
sea, to save the half-drowning, half-burning wretches who clung to the
fragments that scorched them, or sunk in the boiling waves; and
then,--dismissed on another fearful errand, flung himself between the
Duke of York and the ball that struck at one blow the Earl of Falmouth,
Lord Muskerry, and Mr Boyle, and when they all fell at the same moment,
wiped, with unfaultering hand, and on bended knee, their brains and
gore, with which the Duke of York was covered from head to foot. When
this was read by Mrs Ann Mortimer, with many pauses, caused by sight dim
with age, and diffused with tears,--and when at length, finishing the
long and laborious read detail, Mrs Ann exclaimed--“He is a hero!”
Elinor tremblingly whispered to herself--“He is a Christian.”

“The details of such an event forming a kind of era in a family so
sequestered, imaginative, and heroic, as that of the Mortimers, the
contents of the letter signed by the King’s own hand were read over and
over again. They formed the theme of converse at their meals, and the
subject of their study and comment when alone. Margaret dwelt much on
the gallantry of the action, and half-imagined she saw the tremendous
explosion of Opdam’s ship. Elinor repeated to herself, “And he plunged
amid the burning wave to save the lives of the men he had conquered!”
And some months elapsed before the brilliant vision of glory, and of
grateful royalty, faded from their imagination; and when it did, like
that of Micyllus, it left honey on the eye-lids of the dreamer. “From the date of the arrival of this intelligence, a change had taken
place in the habits and manners of Elinor, so striking as to become the
object of notice to all but herself. Her health, her rest, and her
imagination, became the prey of indefinable fantasies.