Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Eighteen.“Reef Topsails!”“A ring! A ring! Form a ring, all you Actives!” shouted out Mr Jones the signalman, who had come ashore with us, wishing to see the battle between our representative and the darkey conducted in regular shipshape fashion, in accordance with the rules observed in polite pugilistic circles at home. “Form a ring, my lads, and let ’em fight it out fair. If any of them blooming niggers tries to h’interfere, boys, you jest fetch ’em a crack on the shins with yer dancing pumps; it’s no good trying to hit ’em on their nobs, as they’re made of the same stuff of the cocoa-nuts, and you might hit at ’em till doomsday without ever their feelin’ on it, jist the same as if ye were hammerin’ at the watertight bulkhead forrud!”No sooner said than done.With the help of the other bluejackets who had come ashore with us in the second cutter, the ring which the signalman suggested was at once formed, our chaps artfully manoeuvring so as to shut out all the black and coloured gentry who instantly flocked to the scene of action, the news of the fight having got abroad in some mysterious way or other.Before this had been done, however, Mick Donovan received and repulsed the mulatto’s first onslaught in a highly satisfactory manner for our side.Lifting his left knee suddenly as the infuriated beggar rushed in upon him in catapult fashion, with his body doubled and his head bent low, Mick at the same time, with all the force of his good right arm, struck downwards at the darkey’s exposed ear, which was about the size of a small plate, catching him thus between his knee and fist like a piece of iron a blacksmith might be at work on at the forge beaten flat between hammer and anvil.Result—down dropped the mulatto as if he were a felled ox!“Hooray!” yelled out all the Actives; while there was a groan and a rush from the surrounding compatriots of Mick’s opponent to pick up their champion. “Give the bloomin’ nigger fits, me boy! You’ve pretty nearly done for him already.”But, the mulatto was not by any means settled yet.Encouraged by his sympathising backers, of whom we allowed some five or six to enter the ring, wishing to play fair and not to have it all to ourselves, the mulatto shook himself as if he had just come out of the water; and, standing up in a proper manner now, he faced Mick, who smilingly beckoned him to come on.“Hit ’im in de eyeball, Bim!” cried one of the dark ladies, who indeed was the cause of the fray, as generally is the case, I have been told, when menfolk fall out. “Yah, yah! Mash um face fo’ um, de imperent man-o’-war buckra!”“Go it, Mick!” cried we. “Land him one in his bloomin’ bread-basket!”A very pretty bit of sparring now ensued, the two being well matched; for, though the mulatto was the taller and had the longer reach of arm, Mick had a better guard, holding his right well out across his chest, and dodging in his left every now and then, keeping moving about on his pins as lightly as an opera-dancer.Once ‘Mr Bim’ got in a roundabout blow that landed on Mick’s left cheek, which drew blood, and sent him all of a stagger into the corner where the signalman and I stood officiating as bottle-holders.This raised a wild yell of excited enthusiasm from all the assembled darkeys, both ladies and gentlemen alike.“Golly, dat fetch um, Bim!” they shouted. “Gib um goss, Bim! ’Badian too brabe; um beat all de buckra sailor trash in de whole world, you bet!”“Stow that, you ugly black devil!” interposed one of our men, fetching the mulatto’s partisan a crack on the shins with the cutter’s boathook, which he held in his hand, he being bowman and left in charge of the boat. “You just keep out o’ the ring if ye know what’s good for you!”“By gosh!” cried the poor nigger, hopping about on one leg and rubbing his shin, writhing with pain at being thus assaulted on his tenderest point; grabbing up some missile or other from the roadway, whither he retreated, “I’se crack yo’ tam skull wid um rockstone, fo’ suah!”Mick did not ‘come up smiling’ as he advanced to meet his foe after the knock-down blow he had received; but, from the look on his face, with his lips tight set and his eyes fixed on the mulatto, I could see he ‘meant business.’He did.Parrying another wild whirl of ‘Mr Bim’s’ arms, which he swung out right and left, Mick dropped his; and with a step forward he grasped the mulatto round the waist, when, going down on one knee, he sent him flying over his shoulder completely outside the ring.Fortunately for the poor beggar, his head went plump into one of the baskets of fruit, squashing its contents together into the semblance of jam, which probably saved the mulatto’s life; for, had he fallen headlong on the stone jetty, his cranium would most likely have resembled the bananas and ripe melons in the black lady’s basket that he had spoilt, and his neck, as likely as not, broken. As it was, ‘Mr Bim’ had enough of it, coming up quite dazed when he recovered his senses; then retiring from the combat without a single further word, either of apology or of defiance.His compatriots bore no malice to Mick or ourselves, as might have been expected from their champion having got the worst of it.On the contrary, they raised a cheer when we turned to leave the scene of action, accompanying us into the town, and dancing round us in their amusing way, and making quite a triumphal procession of our progress up Roebuck Street.“Golly, Sambo!” one of them shouted out to another of their number, who evidently was the local poet of the party. “You makee singsong ob de lilly buckra sailor!”Thereupon, the poet, who was clearly a man of vivid imagination and spontaneous genius, at once struck up a doggerel rhyme; all of them taking up the chorus as they marched along on either side of us:—“Man ob war buckra, man ob war buckra,Jus’ come ashore, jus’ come ashore,Jus’ come ashore!“’Badian gen’leman, ’Badian gen’leman,He make um roar, he make um roar,He make um roar!“Man ob war buckra an’ ’Badian gen’leman,Dey hab a shindy, dey hab a shindy,Dey hab a shindy!“’Badian gen’leman, he mash um mout’;Man ob war buckra, um bash um snout;Golly, yah, yah,Um bash um snout!”“Begorrah!” exclaimed Mick, none the worse for the fray, beyond a slight cut on his port cheek, which had been caused by the scrape of the mulatto’s long nails and not by his fist, as he burst into a roar of laughter on the darkeys bringing out this impromptu musical account of the recent fight—in which all hands joined, making most of the passers-by we met on our route to one of the hotels recommended by Mr Jones, who had been to Bridgetown before, look round to see what was the matter—“it bates Bannagher an’ Donnybrook Fair all rowled into one, sure!”It need hardly be said after this, that, on our presently reaching the favourite hostelry of our guide, the signalman, we stood treat to all the darkeys; and then, having had enough of their somewhat too marked attentions, we parted company, with the most friendly feelings on both sides.The people altogether received us very kindly, all sorts of festivities being held in our honour, officers and men alike having balls and dinners and picnics and cricket-matches all got up especially for their pleasure; so that our fortnight’s stay at Barbados was one long holiday from the first day to the last, for, if we did not happen to be ashore, parties of ladies and gentlemen used to come off to see the ship and be entertained in their turn.We sailed from our anchorage, near the lighthouse at Needham Point to the north-east of the bay, somewhere in the second week of January, making first for Tobago, which lies more to the southward of the Windward Islands. After this we visited Trinidad and most of the other colonies, calling also at the French possessions of Guadaloupe and Martinique, before returning for a final look in at Barbados on our way home again to England.After leaving Carlisle Bay for the second time, the squadron made for Bermuda, the commodore hoping to pick up the light westerly winds which are to be met with at this season of the year hereabouts; but, when to the south of the thirtieth parallel, we encountered a terrific gale from the north-west, which was as child’s play in comparison to the one we experienced in the Bay of Biscay.Up to then we had experienced very fair weather, being able to carry all our upper sail and stun’sails as well; but, all at once, without any warning, save that the heavens suddenly darkened overhead, obscuring the sun, and the barometer began to fall, as I heard the navigating officer say to the commodore, whom he passed on his way on deck from the wardroom below, a storm broke over us!The next moment, the whistles of the boatswain’s mates were ringing through the ship, with the customary hoarse hail down the hatchways—“Watch, shorten sail!”Then, as we tumbled up to our stations, it became a case of let go and clew up.“Topmen, aloft!” sang out the commodore from the break of the poop, in sharp, piercing accents that rose above the whistle of the wind through the rigging and the dull roar of the sea, which had assumed now a leaden appearance, instead of the bright blue which it boasted the moment before, while its surface began to work into short choppy waves that tossed their crests like horses champing the bit. “Take in the to’gallants and royals!”Up we all raced aloft; but no sooner had these sails been furled and we reached the deck than the commodore was at us again.“Watch, reef tops’ls!” he shouted even louder than before. “Away aloft—take in one reef!”Mick and I scrambled up, almost out of breath, into the mizzen-top; which we hardly reached before we heard the commodore give the next order necessary to enable us to take in the reef—“Weather tops’l braces, round in! Lower the tops’ls!”Next followed our own especial order—“Trice up and lay out!”In obedience to this, we made our way out on the foot-ropes, Mick securing the weather earring, when we began knotting the points and reefing in earnest; after which, the topsail halliards were manned below and the yards run up again.The wind now shifted from the northward to the north-east, coming on to blow pretty hard; so the courses were clewed up and furled and the jib hauled down, the ship presently running under her close-reefed topsails and fore-topmast staysail.By Six Bells, however, the storm had increased to such an extent, that, after trying what treble-reefing would do, we had to take in our topsails altogether, laying-to under storm staysails and easy steam, the engine-fires had been lit and the screw lowered on the first break of the storm, so as to keep the ship-head to wind and provide for any eventuality that might come.The sea at this time was a terrible sight, the big billows racing madly past us and jostling each other, tossing their spray and spent water right over the main-yard; while, anon, the corvette would be lifted bodily up on top of what seemed a high mountain, from whence we viewed the wide stretch of broken waves extending as far as the eye could reach; anon, plunging us down into a deep dark watery abyss, as if she were going to founder!We rolled so, that preventer stays were rigged to make sure of our masts and the guns were secured with double lashings round the breech; while lifelines were rove fore and aft to assist us in keeping our footing along the deck.So far, we had been all alone; the other ships of the squadron having parted company early in the afternoon, each making shift as best she could for herself.Not a sail was in sight anywhere on the horizon.But, presently, careering onwards before the heavy storm clouds ahead, out of which she emerged all in a moment like some spirit of the deep, a large full-rigged ship appeared, bearing down upon us at the rate of twenty knots an hour, I should think, judging by the way she rapidly rose out of the water. It looked as if she were going to run us down.“Sail ahead!” roared out the lookout-man forwards, his voice borne back inboard by the wind and seeming all the louder in consequence. “She’s a-coming down end on to us, sir!”The commodore aft, however, had seen our peril, even before the lookout-man spoke; and almost at the same instant that his words of warning reached our ears—the while the hands on deck stared with horror at the surging ship, nearing us now closer and closer as we looked at her—the gallant, ready-witted sailor had taken effective measures to avoid the imminent danger threatening us.

“A ring! A ring! Form a ring, all you Actives!” shouted out Mr Jones the signalman, who had come ashore with us, wishing to see the battle between our representative and the darkey conducted in regular shipshape fashion, in accordance with the rules observed in polite pugilistic circles at home. “Form a ring, my lads, and let ’em fight it out fair. If any of them blooming niggers tries to h’interfere, boys, you jest fetch ’em a crack on the shins with yer dancing pumps; it’s no good trying to hit ’em on their nobs, as they’re made of the same stuff of the cocoa-nuts, and you might hit at ’em till doomsday without ever their feelin’ on it, jist the same as if ye were hammerin’ at the watertight bulkhead forrud!”

No sooner said than done.

With the help of the other bluejackets who had come ashore with us in the second cutter, the ring which the signalman suggested was at once formed, our chaps artfully manoeuvring so as to shut out all the black and coloured gentry who instantly flocked to the scene of action, the news of the fight having got abroad in some mysterious way or other.

Before this had been done, however, Mick Donovan received and repulsed the mulatto’s first onslaught in a highly satisfactory manner for our side.

Lifting his left knee suddenly as the infuriated beggar rushed in upon him in catapult fashion, with his body doubled and his head bent low, Mick at the same time, with all the force of his good right arm, struck downwards at the darkey’s exposed ear, which was about the size of a small plate, catching him thus between his knee and fist like a piece of iron a blacksmith might be at work on at the forge beaten flat between hammer and anvil.

Result—down dropped the mulatto as if he were a felled ox!

“Hooray!” yelled out all the Actives; while there was a groan and a rush from the surrounding compatriots of Mick’s opponent to pick up their champion. “Give the bloomin’ nigger fits, me boy! You’ve pretty nearly done for him already.”

But, the mulatto was not by any means settled yet.

Encouraged by his sympathising backers, of whom we allowed some five or six to enter the ring, wishing to play fair and not to have it all to ourselves, the mulatto shook himself as if he had just come out of the water; and, standing up in a proper manner now, he faced Mick, who smilingly beckoned him to come on.

“Hit ’im in de eyeball, Bim!” cried one of the dark ladies, who indeed was the cause of the fray, as generally is the case, I have been told, when menfolk fall out. “Yah, yah! Mash um face fo’ um, de imperent man-o’-war buckra!”

“Go it, Mick!” cried we. “Land him one in his bloomin’ bread-basket!”

A very pretty bit of sparring now ensued, the two being well matched; for, though the mulatto was the taller and had the longer reach of arm, Mick had a better guard, holding his right well out across his chest, and dodging in his left every now and then, keeping moving about on his pins as lightly as an opera-dancer.

Once ‘Mr Bim’ got in a roundabout blow that landed on Mick’s left cheek, which drew blood, and sent him all of a stagger into the corner where the signalman and I stood officiating as bottle-holders.

This raised a wild yell of excited enthusiasm from all the assembled darkeys, both ladies and gentlemen alike.

“Golly, dat fetch um, Bim!” they shouted. “Gib um goss, Bim! ’Badian too brabe; um beat all de buckra sailor trash in de whole world, you bet!”

“Stow that, you ugly black devil!” interposed one of our men, fetching the mulatto’s partisan a crack on the shins with the cutter’s boathook, which he held in his hand, he being bowman and left in charge of the boat. “You just keep out o’ the ring if ye know what’s good for you!”

“By gosh!” cried the poor nigger, hopping about on one leg and rubbing his shin, writhing with pain at being thus assaulted on his tenderest point; grabbing up some missile or other from the roadway, whither he retreated, “I’se crack yo’ tam skull wid um rockstone, fo’ suah!”

Mick did not ‘come up smiling’ as he advanced to meet his foe after the knock-down blow he had received; but, from the look on his face, with his lips tight set and his eyes fixed on the mulatto, I could see he ‘meant business.’

He did.

Parrying another wild whirl of ‘Mr Bim’s’ arms, which he swung out right and left, Mick dropped his; and with a step forward he grasped the mulatto round the waist, when, going down on one knee, he sent him flying over his shoulder completely outside the ring.

Fortunately for the poor beggar, his head went plump into one of the baskets of fruit, squashing its contents together into the semblance of jam, which probably saved the mulatto’s life; for, had he fallen headlong on the stone jetty, his cranium would most likely have resembled the bananas and ripe melons in the black lady’s basket that he had spoilt, and his neck, as likely as not, broken. As it was, ‘Mr Bim’ had enough of it, coming up quite dazed when he recovered his senses; then retiring from the combat without a single further word, either of apology or of defiance.

His compatriots bore no malice to Mick or ourselves, as might have been expected from their champion having got the worst of it.

On the contrary, they raised a cheer when we turned to leave the scene of action, accompanying us into the town, and dancing round us in their amusing way, and making quite a triumphal procession of our progress up Roebuck Street.

“Golly, Sambo!” one of them shouted out to another of their number, who evidently was the local poet of the party. “You makee singsong ob de lilly buckra sailor!”

Thereupon, the poet, who was clearly a man of vivid imagination and spontaneous genius, at once struck up a doggerel rhyme; all of them taking up the chorus as they marched along on either side of us:—

“Man ob war buckra, man ob war buckra,Jus’ come ashore, jus’ come ashore,Jus’ come ashore!“’Badian gen’leman, ’Badian gen’leman,He make um roar, he make um roar,He make um roar!“Man ob war buckra an’ ’Badian gen’leman,Dey hab a shindy, dey hab a shindy,Dey hab a shindy!“’Badian gen’leman, he mash um mout’;Man ob war buckra, um bash um snout;Golly, yah, yah,Um bash um snout!”

“Man ob war buckra, man ob war buckra,Jus’ come ashore, jus’ come ashore,Jus’ come ashore!“’Badian gen’leman, ’Badian gen’leman,He make um roar, he make um roar,He make um roar!“Man ob war buckra an’ ’Badian gen’leman,Dey hab a shindy, dey hab a shindy,Dey hab a shindy!“’Badian gen’leman, he mash um mout’;Man ob war buckra, um bash um snout;Golly, yah, yah,Um bash um snout!”

“Begorrah!” exclaimed Mick, none the worse for the fray, beyond a slight cut on his port cheek, which had been caused by the scrape of the mulatto’s long nails and not by his fist, as he burst into a roar of laughter on the darkeys bringing out this impromptu musical account of the recent fight—in which all hands joined, making most of the passers-by we met on our route to one of the hotels recommended by Mr Jones, who had been to Bridgetown before, look round to see what was the matter—“it bates Bannagher an’ Donnybrook Fair all rowled into one, sure!”

It need hardly be said after this, that, on our presently reaching the favourite hostelry of our guide, the signalman, we stood treat to all the darkeys; and then, having had enough of their somewhat too marked attentions, we parted company, with the most friendly feelings on both sides.

The people altogether received us very kindly, all sorts of festivities being held in our honour, officers and men alike having balls and dinners and picnics and cricket-matches all got up especially for their pleasure; so that our fortnight’s stay at Barbados was one long holiday from the first day to the last, for, if we did not happen to be ashore, parties of ladies and gentlemen used to come off to see the ship and be entertained in their turn.

We sailed from our anchorage, near the lighthouse at Needham Point to the north-east of the bay, somewhere in the second week of January, making first for Tobago, which lies more to the southward of the Windward Islands. After this we visited Trinidad and most of the other colonies, calling also at the French possessions of Guadaloupe and Martinique, before returning for a final look in at Barbados on our way home again to England.

After leaving Carlisle Bay for the second time, the squadron made for Bermuda, the commodore hoping to pick up the light westerly winds which are to be met with at this season of the year hereabouts; but, when to the south of the thirtieth parallel, we encountered a terrific gale from the north-west, which was as child’s play in comparison to the one we experienced in the Bay of Biscay.

Up to then we had experienced very fair weather, being able to carry all our upper sail and stun’sails as well; but, all at once, without any warning, save that the heavens suddenly darkened overhead, obscuring the sun, and the barometer began to fall, as I heard the navigating officer say to the commodore, whom he passed on his way on deck from the wardroom below, a storm broke over us!

The next moment, the whistles of the boatswain’s mates were ringing through the ship, with the customary hoarse hail down the hatchways—

“Watch, shorten sail!”

Then, as we tumbled up to our stations, it became a case of let go and clew up.

“Topmen, aloft!” sang out the commodore from the break of the poop, in sharp, piercing accents that rose above the whistle of the wind through the rigging and the dull roar of the sea, which had assumed now a leaden appearance, instead of the bright blue which it boasted the moment before, while its surface began to work into short choppy waves that tossed their crests like horses champing the bit. “Take in the to’gallants and royals!”

Up we all raced aloft; but no sooner had these sails been furled and we reached the deck than the commodore was at us again.

“Watch, reef tops’ls!” he shouted even louder than before. “Away aloft—take in one reef!”

Mick and I scrambled up, almost out of breath, into the mizzen-top; which we hardly reached before we heard the commodore give the next order necessary to enable us to take in the reef—

“Weather tops’l braces, round in! Lower the tops’ls!”

Next followed our own especial order—

“Trice up and lay out!”

In obedience to this, we made our way out on the foot-ropes, Mick securing the weather earring, when we began knotting the points and reefing in earnest; after which, the topsail halliards were manned below and the yards run up again.

The wind now shifted from the northward to the north-east, coming on to blow pretty hard; so the courses were clewed up and furled and the jib hauled down, the ship presently running under her close-reefed topsails and fore-topmast staysail.

By Six Bells, however, the storm had increased to such an extent, that, after trying what treble-reefing would do, we had to take in our topsails altogether, laying-to under storm staysails and easy steam, the engine-fires had been lit and the screw lowered on the first break of the storm, so as to keep the ship-head to wind and provide for any eventuality that might come.

The sea at this time was a terrible sight, the big billows racing madly past us and jostling each other, tossing their spray and spent water right over the main-yard; while, anon, the corvette would be lifted bodily up on top of what seemed a high mountain, from whence we viewed the wide stretch of broken waves extending as far as the eye could reach; anon, plunging us down into a deep dark watery abyss, as if she were going to founder!

We rolled so, that preventer stays were rigged to make sure of our masts and the guns were secured with double lashings round the breech; while lifelines were rove fore and aft to assist us in keeping our footing along the deck.

So far, we had been all alone; the other ships of the squadron having parted company early in the afternoon, each making shift as best she could for herself.

Not a sail was in sight anywhere on the horizon.

But, presently, careering onwards before the heavy storm clouds ahead, out of which she emerged all in a moment like some spirit of the deep, a large full-rigged ship appeared, bearing down upon us at the rate of twenty knots an hour, I should think, judging by the way she rapidly rose out of the water. It looked as if she were going to run us down.

“Sail ahead!” roared out the lookout-man forwards, his voice borne back inboard by the wind and seeming all the louder in consequence. “She’s a-coming down end on to us, sir!”

The commodore aft, however, had seen our peril, even before the lookout-man spoke; and almost at the same instant that his words of warning reached our ears—the while the hands on deck stared with horror at the surging ship, nearing us now closer and closer as we looked at her—the gallant, ready-witted sailor had taken effective measures to avoid the imminent danger threatening us.

Chapter Nineteen.“Sail Ho!”“Stand by, the watch forrud!” he sang out, in a voice of thunder, putting his hands to his mouth so as to form a speaking-trumpet, as he leant against the poop rail, and pitching his key so high that his order triumphed over the noise of both wind and sea. “Man the jib halliards! Hoist away!”In the meantime the engine-room bell had been rung and rapid directions given to go astern full speed, our screw being down and steam got up long since, as I have already mentioned, so as to be prepared for a similar emergency.“Hard up with the helm!” now shouted the commodore, who seemed to have taken the management of the ship for the moment entirely in his own hands; and then, looking forwards, he roared again to us on the forecastle, “Haul taut your jib sheet!”The sail served its turn, with the backing of the screw, to make the corvette’s head pay off as we wore ship; but the strength of the nor’-east gale was such, that hardly had we made the sheet fast, ere the jib blew clean away from its lacing, with the sound of a gun going off, while a big wave came over our weather side at the same time, and nearly washed every man-jack off the forecastle, beside flooding the waist, the sea rushing down in a torrent below through the after-hatchway which had not been battened down as yet.It was a ticklish operation wearing with such a wind and sea on, and might have been attended with even worse peril than happened; for, if caught in the trough of some wave, broadside on, we might have capsized, instead of merely taking a hundred tons of water or so on board, which we could have very well dispensed with.However, it was our only chance of getting out of the way of the approaching vessel—at least so our old commodore deemed, and he ought to have been, and was too, the best judge.And the ship!None of us for a second or two thought of looking for her, the men all rushing to their stations, and the port watch having been called on deck, as well as us chaps belonging to the starboard division, who were already there, in case of our broaching-to and our masts going by the board—which everybody believed, I think, barring the commodore, would have occurred.Now, therefore, on our succeeding in paying off so handsomely without any serious mishap, theActivescudding and running before the wind like a racehorse under her bare poles, so to speak, the scraps of storm staysails we carried being not worth taking into account, the eyes of every one were turned at once to windward to see what had become of the stranger vessel.She had completely disappeared!Whether she had luffed up too suddenly on seeing the danger of a collision between us, or had gone down all standing as she careered onward, no one will ever know; for, though lookouts were sent aloft and the horizon scanned in every direction, not a single trace of her was to be seen anywhere in sight, albeit the billowy surface of the tempest-tossed sea was so white with foam that any dark object would at once have been distinguished on its tumid bosom.Not a trace was to be seen of the fine ship, which a moment ago was riding the waters like a thing of life, even if impelled to run before the fury of the gale—either astern of us, or ahead; or on our starboard beam, as she should have been by rights if matters had turned out differently; nor yet to port.No, not a trace of her anywhere!All of us seemed, really, to feel as if we had lost somebody or something; and when, presently, the watch was piped down, we all went below with saddened hearts.“Oi wondther now,” said Mick, when we were having our supper at our messing-place aft on the lower deck a little later on, “if thet theer vissil wor a raal ship, Tom, or a banshee?”A man at the mess-table next ours heard his remark and burst out laughing.“I’ve heard tell o’ the Flying Dutchman being seen in stormy weather when going round the Cape,” he said, speaking across the table in our direction; “but I can’t say as how I ever heard before of a banshee adrift on the wide Atlantic Ocean!”“Bedad, Oi say no rayson agin it,” replied Mick, standing up for the superstitions of his country like a man. “Faith, a banshee can go ony whare he loikes.”“Ay?” said the other interrogatively. “What is a banshee, my lad?”“Begorrah,” answered Mick, crossing himself, “thet’s more’n ony one knows, may the saints presairve us fur mintionin’ on ’em! They’ll be sperrits, Oi thinks, if Oi don’t misremimber, ez can take ony shape they plaizes!”“Oh, spirits?” exclaimed the other man chaffingly, thinking he was going to pull Mick’s leg a bit. “What sort o’ spirits, my lad—is it rum, or gin, or whisky, now, you mean?”Mick did not reflect a bit, but came out pat with his answer.“Faith!” said he drily, setting the table in a roar as he winked from one to the other of the mess opposite, though this wink of his was hardly necessary, the habits and character of his questioner being very well known throughout the ship, “it’s a rum tasthe ye’d foind thim sperrits, Oi’m afther thinkin’, Misther Sharp! Bedad, yer gin wud be ez hot ez ginger; an’ it’s preshus little toime ye’d hev fur tournin’ down the whisky, ez ye did, faith, the t’other day, whin ye wor brought up ’fore Noomber One on the quarther-deck, sure, fur goin’ to shlape on the watch! Begorrah, if ye don’t look out sharp, Misther Sharp, ye’ll hev the divvle whiskin’ ye off wid his tail, sure, fur thet same whisky ye’re talkin’ of!”“Well, well, my joker,” said Sharp good-humouredly, joining in the laugh of the rest of the chaps, though it was against himself; “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings about that Irish banshee of yours!”This turned the merriment of the mess towards Mick again; but he came up to the scratch as ‘smilingly’ as he did in his fight with the mulatto at Barbados.“Bedad,” said he unflinchingly, “the banshees, sure, the saints presairve the good people from harmin’ us! Can take virry good care ov thimselves; but, faith, if ye’d ivver sane wun, ye’d spake more rispictfully ov thim, sure!”“Tell us,” inquired Joblins, the ‘green hand,’ you may recollect, who went on deck to fetch his second lot of grog with a spud-net and who, though he had been made a bit sharper since then by the chaff and jokes of his messmates, was still not by any means bright, “did yer ever see one o’ them ghostesses?”“Hev Oi ivver sane wun?” repeated Mick, in a tone of intense scorn. “Begorrah, Oi hev sane hoondreds!”“Lor’!” exclaimed the simpleton, evidently impressed by this bold assertion of my chum, “tell us, mate, wot they’s like.”This was enough for Mick.“Ye won’t be froightened, sure,” he began, in a very solemn tone, the more to impress the anxious listener, “if Oi’m afther tillin’ ye the whole thruth, now?”“Frightened! No,” replied Joblins defiantly, but looking nervous all the same. “I ain’t so soon frightened as that, Mick!”“All roight, me joker,” said Mick. “Oi ownly thort ez how Oi’d not take ye onywheres, ye know; but, faith, ez Oi say ye’re so brave a chap, Oi’ll now carry on an’ till ye all about a raal banshee Oi saw t’other noight.”Joblins moved uneasily on his seat.“What!” he cried. “Yer doan’t mean aboard this yere ship?”“Ay, faith,” said Mick coolly; “it wor aboord this virry ship, begorrah!”“Lor’!” stammered out ‘greeny,’ whose face we could see was quite pale from the light of the ship’s lantern near, it having got dark now on the lower deck through the closing in of the evening early, we being still in tropical latitudes. “I thort them things only came on land.”“That’s where you’re wrong, Joblins,” put in Harris, his old tormentor, backing up Mick most effectively in his attempt at taking a rise out of the yokel. “Spirits aboard ship is pertic’lerly partial to water, as every one knows!”Passing by this ironical allusion of Harris to the current belief of all hands anent the watering of the men’s grog by the steward, which was received with much favour by those standing round, Mick went on as gravely as a judge.“Yis, sor, it wor aboord this viry ship thet Oi sayd me last spirrit, sure,” said he. “Lit me say—it moost hev bin a wake, ay, or mebbe t’wor longer agone than thet. Oi wor a-coomin’ oop the forepake afther dark, jist ez it mebbe now. Ye knows the forepake, Joblins?”“Ye–e–es,” stuttered out ‘greeny,’ his jaw dropping with fright, and his mouth open as big as a teacup. “I—I—I knows the forepeak, mate.”“Will, thin,” continued Mick, “ez Oi came out on dick oop the fore-hatchway, be the powers, I says, sure, a tirrible big black thing roight foreninst me, wid its long arrums stritched oot on ayther soide; an’ whin Oi looked oop fur to say if the onairthly craychur hed ony hid on him—”“Lor’!” cried Joblins, interrupting him at this thrilling point, all agog with excitement; “what did you see, mate?”“Faith,” replied my chum, with a grin, “the poor craychur hed no hid at all, at all, sure! Begorrah, all he hed, sure, wor a spud-net, same as ye titched yer sicond ’lowance ov grog t’other day wid, Misther Joblins; an’ this wor stuck atop ov wun ov the min’s oilskins thet he’d hoong oot fur to dhry in the fore rigging. Thet wor the spirrit I sayd.”The roar of the boatswain’s mate calling ‘all hands’ to make sail, at this juncture drowned the general laugh that went round the mess at poor Joblins’ expense; and, exchanging the warm atmosphere of the lower deck for the boisterous weather above, we were soon engaged in the more arduous task of pulling ropes than other people’s legs!We had run some distance scudding before the gale; and, as the navigating officer thought that we were now pretty well beyond the risk of experiencing any further ill effects from the stormy nor’-easter, the commodore made up his mind to utilise it and proceed on our voyage home.So setting our topsails double-reefed again and bracing round the yards on a bowline, we shaped a course for the Azores or Western Islands; and getting into calmer latitudes ere morning, were able to make all plain sail again.On the second day after this we had an awful thunderstorm, in which the lightning flashed from all points of the compass, and heaven’s artillery pealed as if the sky was bursting asunder.This was followed by a deluge of rain, which washed our decks cleaner than they had been since we left our home port, though the first lieutenant was pretty sharp about seeing them scrubbed and washed down daily.The same afternoon, when it had cleared up again, the sun coming out and the waves calming down, our lookout-man aloft in the foretop sighted something in the distance.“Sail ho!” he cried, “on our lee bow.”Every eye was cocked as we peered over the bulwarks, and every ear strained to catch what followed.“Where away?” hailed the commodore, who was walking up and down aft, taking a constitutional after his lunch, I suppose. “What do you make it out to be?”“A boat adrift, sir, I think,” replied the lookout-man, stopping to have another good look at the object. “It’s well away on our lee bow, sir, and we’re passing it abeam now.”“Very good, my man,” said the commodore; and, turning to the officer of the watch, he added, “Square the yards, Mr Osborne, and we’ll run down and see what it is.”This order was soon carried out; when, with our sticks braced round to the brisk breeze, which had shifted to the westward since the thunder-storm, we were soon bowling down before it, our sails bellied out to their utmost in the direction indicated by the lookout-man in the foretop, who was now aided by the eyes of half a dozen midshipmen or more, all eagerly scanning the horizon ahead with all sorts of telescopes and binoculars.“Lookout-man!” hailed the commodore after a bit, “how does the boat bear now?”“Dead on the weather bow, sir,” returned the man the next instant. “We’re about a couple o’ mile off her, sir.”The commodore then addressed the quarter-master aft.“Luff up!” he cried—“half a point will do; and, Mr Osborne, take a pull at your lee braces. That will do—steady!”The ship having good way upon her, we soon overhauled the drifting boat, which we could make out presently quite clearly from the deck.Nearer and nearer we approached it, until we could look down right into it and see a number of figures, all of whom, however, were motionless.“Begorrah!” cried Mick, who stood near me in the fore-chains, ready with a rope to chuck down into the little craft as we surged alongside it, as indeed were several others also, like prepared, forwards; “they’ve bin havin’ a divvle ov a row, or foightin’, or somethin’, sure; fur Tom, look thare, me bhoy—can’t ye say some soords or a pair of cutlashes or somethin’ like ’em oonder the afther-thwart theer?”

“Stand by, the watch forrud!” he sang out, in a voice of thunder, putting his hands to his mouth so as to form a speaking-trumpet, as he leant against the poop rail, and pitching his key so high that his order triumphed over the noise of both wind and sea. “Man the jib halliards! Hoist away!”

In the meantime the engine-room bell had been rung and rapid directions given to go astern full speed, our screw being down and steam got up long since, as I have already mentioned, so as to be prepared for a similar emergency.

“Hard up with the helm!” now shouted the commodore, who seemed to have taken the management of the ship for the moment entirely in his own hands; and then, looking forwards, he roared again to us on the forecastle, “Haul taut your jib sheet!”

The sail served its turn, with the backing of the screw, to make the corvette’s head pay off as we wore ship; but the strength of the nor’-east gale was such, that hardly had we made the sheet fast, ere the jib blew clean away from its lacing, with the sound of a gun going off, while a big wave came over our weather side at the same time, and nearly washed every man-jack off the forecastle, beside flooding the waist, the sea rushing down in a torrent below through the after-hatchway which had not been battened down as yet.

It was a ticklish operation wearing with such a wind and sea on, and might have been attended with even worse peril than happened; for, if caught in the trough of some wave, broadside on, we might have capsized, instead of merely taking a hundred tons of water or so on board, which we could have very well dispensed with.

However, it was our only chance of getting out of the way of the approaching vessel—at least so our old commodore deemed, and he ought to have been, and was too, the best judge.

And the ship!

None of us for a second or two thought of looking for her, the men all rushing to their stations, and the port watch having been called on deck, as well as us chaps belonging to the starboard division, who were already there, in case of our broaching-to and our masts going by the board—which everybody believed, I think, barring the commodore, would have occurred.

Now, therefore, on our succeeding in paying off so handsomely without any serious mishap, theActivescudding and running before the wind like a racehorse under her bare poles, so to speak, the scraps of storm staysails we carried being not worth taking into account, the eyes of every one were turned at once to windward to see what had become of the stranger vessel.

She had completely disappeared!

Whether she had luffed up too suddenly on seeing the danger of a collision between us, or had gone down all standing as she careered onward, no one will ever know; for, though lookouts were sent aloft and the horizon scanned in every direction, not a single trace of her was to be seen anywhere in sight, albeit the billowy surface of the tempest-tossed sea was so white with foam that any dark object would at once have been distinguished on its tumid bosom.

Not a trace was to be seen of the fine ship, which a moment ago was riding the waters like a thing of life, even if impelled to run before the fury of the gale—either astern of us, or ahead; or on our starboard beam, as she should have been by rights if matters had turned out differently; nor yet to port.

No, not a trace of her anywhere!

All of us seemed, really, to feel as if we had lost somebody or something; and when, presently, the watch was piped down, we all went below with saddened hearts.

“Oi wondther now,” said Mick, when we were having our supper at our messing-place aft on the lower deck a little later on, “if thet theer vissil wor a raal ship, Tom, or a banshee?”

A man at the mess-table next ours heard his remark and burst out laughing.

“I’ve heard tell o’ the Flying Dutchman being seen in stormy weather when going round the Cape,” he said, speaking across the table in our direction; “but I can’t say as how I ever heard before of a banshee adrift on the wide Atlantic Ocean!”

“Bedad, Oi say no rayson agin it,” replied Mick, standing up for the superstitions of his country like a man. “Faith, a banshee can go ony whare he loikes.”

“Ay?” said the other interrogatively. “What is a banshee, my lad?”

“Begorrah,” answered Mick, crossing himself, “thet’s more’n ony one knows, may the saints presairve us fur mintionin’ on ’em! They’ll be sperrits, Oi thinks, if Oi don’t misremimber, ez can take ony shape they plaizes!”

“Oh, spirits?” exclaimed the other man chaffingly, thinking he was going to pull Mick’s leg a bit. “What sort o’ spirits, my lad—is it rum, or gin, or whisky, now, you mean?”

Mick did not reflect a bit, but came out pat with his answer.

“Faith!” said he drily, setting the table in a roar as he winked from one to the other of the mess opposite, though this wink of his was hardly necessary, the habits and character of his questioner being very well known throughout the ship, “it’s a rum tasthe ye’d foind thim sperrits, Oi’m afther thinkin’, Misther Sharp! Bedad, yer gin wud be ez hot ez ginger; an’ it’s preshus little toime ye’d hev fur tournin’ down the whisky, ez ye did, faith, the t’other day, whin ye wor brought up ’fore Noomber One on the quarther-deck, sure, fur goin’ to shlape on the watch! Begorrah, if ye don’t look out sharp, Misther Sharp, ye’ll hev the divvle whiskin’ ye off wid his tail, sure, fur thet same whisky ye’re talkin’ of!”

“Well, well, my joker,” said Sharp good-humouredly, joining in the laugh of the rest of the chaps, though it was against himself; “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings about that Irish banshee of yours!”

This turned the merriment of the mess towards Mick again; but he came up to the scratch as ‘smilingly’ as he did in his fight with the mulatto at Barbados.

“Bedad,” said he unflinchingly, “the banshees, sure, the saints presairve the good people from harmin’ us! Can take virry good care ov thimselves; but, faith, if ye’d ivver sane wun, ye’d spake more rispictfully ov thim, sure!”

“Tell us,” inquired Joblins, the ‘green hand,’ you may recollect, who went on deck to fetch his second lot of grog with a spud-net and who, though he had been made a bit sharper since then by the chaff and jokes of his messmates, was still not by any means bright, “did yer ever see one o’ them ghostesses?”

“Hev Oi ivver sane wun?” repeated Mick, in a tone of intense scorn. “Begorrah, Oi hev sane hoondreds!”

“Lor’!” exclaimed the simpleton, evidently impressed by this bold assertion of my chum, “tell us, mate, wot they’s like.”

This was enough for Mick.

“Ye won’t be froightened, sure,” he began, in a very solemn tone, the more to impress the anxious listener, “if Oi’m afther tillin’ ye the whole thruth, now?”

“Frightened! No,” replied Joblins defiantly, but looking nervous all the same. “I ain’t so soon frightened as that, Mick!”

“All roight, me joker,” said Mick. “Oi ownly thort ez how Oi’d not take ye onywheres, ye know; but, faith, ez Oi say ye’re so brave a chap, Oi’ll now carry on an’ till ye all about a raal banshee Oi saw t’other noight.”

Joblins moved uneasily on his seat.

“What!” he cried. “Yer doan’t mean aboard this yere ship?”

“Ay, faith,” said Mick coolly; “it wor aboord this virry ship, begorrah!”

“Lor’!” stammered out ‘greeny,’ whose face we could see was quite pale from the light of the ship’s lantern near, it having got dark now on the lower deck through the closing in of the evening early, we being still in tropical latitudes. “I thort them things only came on land.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Joblins,” put in Harris, his old tormentor, backing up Mick most effectively in his attempt at taking a rise out of the yokel. “Spirits aboard ship is pertic’lerly partial to water, as every one knows!”

Passing by this ironical allusion of Harris to the current belief of all hands anent the watering of the men’s grog by the steward, which was received with much favour by those standing round, Mick went on as gravely as a judge.

“Yis, sor, it wor aboord this viry ship thet Oi sayd me last spirrit, sure,” said he. “Lit me say—it moost hev bin a wake, ay, or mebbe t’wor longer agone than thet. Oi wor a-coomin’ oop the forepake afther dark, jist ez it mebbe now. Ye knows the forepake, Joblins?”

“Ye–e–es,” stuttered out ‘greeny,’ his jaw dropping with fright, and his mouth open as big as a teacup. “I—I—I knows the forepeak, mate.”

“Will, thin,” continued Mick, “ez Oi came out on dick oop the fore-hatchway, be the powers, I says, sure, a tirrible big black thing roight foreninst me, wid its long arrums stritched oot on ayther soide; an’ whin Oi looked oop fur to say if the onairthly craychur hed ony hid on him—”

“Lor’!” cried Joblins, interrupting him at this thrilling point, all agog with excitement; “what did you see, mate?”

“Faith,” replied my chum, with a grin, “the poor craychur hed no hid at all, at all, sure! Begorrah, all he hed, sure, wor a spud-net, same as ye titched yer sicond ’lowance ov grog t’other day wid, Misther Joblins; an’ this wor stuck atop ov wun ov the min’s oilskins thet he’d hoong oot fur to dhry in the fore rigging. Thet wor the spirrit I sayd.”

The roar of the boatswain’s mate calling ‘all hands’ to make sail, at this juncture drowned the general laugh that went round the mess at poor Joblins’ expense; and, exchanging the warm atmosphere of the lower deck for the boisterous weather above, we were soon engaged in the more arduous task of pulling ropes than other people’s legs!

We had run some distance scudding before the gale; and, as the navigating officer thought that we were now pretty well beyond the risk of experiencing any further ill effects from the stormy nor’-easter, the commodore made up his mind to utilise it and proceed on our voyage home.

So setting our topsails double-reefed again and bracing round the yards on a bowline, we shaped a course for the Azores or Western Islands; and getting into calmer latitudes ere morning, were able to make all plain sail again.

On the second day after this we had an awful thunderstorm, in which the lightning flashed from all points of the compass, and heaven’s artillery pealed as if the sky was bursting asunder.

This was followed by a deluge of rain, which washed our decks cleaner than they had been since we left our home port, though the first lieutenant was pretty sharp about seeing them scrubbed and washed down daily.

The same afternoon, when it had cleared up again, the sun coming out and the waves calming down, our lookout-man aloft in the foretop sighted something in the distance.

“Sail ho!” he cried, “on our lee bow.”

Every eye was cocked as we peered over the bulwarks, and every ear strained to catch what followed.

“Where away?” hailed the commodore, who was walking up and down aft, taking a constitutional after his lunch, I suppose. “What do you make it out to be?”

“A boat adrift, sir, I think,” replied the lookout-man, stopping to have another good look at the object. “It’s well away on our lee bow, sir, and we’re passing it abeam now.”

“Very good, my man,” said the commodore; and, turning to the officer of the watch, he added, “Square the yards, Mr Osborne, and we’ll run down and see what it is.”

This order was soon carried out; when, with our sticks braced round to the brisk breeze, which had shifted to the westward since the thunder-storm, we were soon bowling down before it, our sails bellied out to their utmost in the direction indicated by the lookout-man in the foretop, who was now aided by the eyes of half a dozen midshipmen or more, all eagerly scanning the horizon ahead with all sorts of telescopes and binoculars.

“Lookout-man!” hailed the commodore after a bit, “how does the boat bear now?”

“Dead on the weather bow, sir,” returned the man the next instant. “We’re about a couple o’ mile off her, sir.”

The commodore then addressed the quarter-master aft.

“Luff up!” he cried—“half a point will do; and, Mr Osborne, take a pull at your lee braces. That will do—steady!”

The ship having good way upon her, we soon overhauled the drifting boat, which we could make out presently quite clearly from the deck.

Nearer and nearer we approached it, until we could look down right into it and see a number of figures, all of whom, however, were motionless.

“Begorrah!” cried Mick, who stood near me in the fore-chains, ready with a rope to chuck down into the little craft as we surged alongside it, as indeed were several others also, like prepared, forwards; “they’ve bin havin’ a divvle ov a row, or foightin’, or somethin’, sure; fur Tom, look thare, me bhoy—can’t ye say some soords or a pair of cutlashes or somethin’ like ’em oonder the afther-thwart theer?”

Chapter Twenty.“Jocko.”“I believe I do, Mick,” I said, squinting down as eagerly as himself into the boat, near to which the ship was gradually sidling up, her way having been checked by her being brought up to the wind and the maintop-sail backed. “They are very quiet, poor chaps. I wonder if they are all dead?”The same thought seemed to have occurred to the old commodore; for, as I said this, in pursuance of some order he must have given to that effect—for nobody does a thing on board a man-o’-war without the previous command of his superior officer—the boatswain hailed the little craft.“Boat ahoy!” he shouted, with his lungs of brass and voice of a bull. “Ahoy! Ahoy-oy!”No answer came, nor was there any movement amongst the boat’s occupants, who were lying pell-mell along the thwarts and on the bottom boards in her sternsheets.“Poor fellows, they must be all dead!” exclaimed the commodore, almost in my own words. “Mr Osborne, get a boat ready to send off and overhaul her!”The officer of the watch, however, had already made preparations to this end, the first cutter’s crew having been piped and the men standing ready by the davits to lower her into the water, with the gripes cast off and the falls cleared.“All ready there, coxsun, eh?” he cried; and then, without waiting for any answer, he sang out, “Lower away!”Down glided the cutter into the water as the hands inboard eased off the falls; and, her crew having dropped their oars, the next minute she was pulling out towards the boat, which was now only some twenty yards or so off the ship, abreast of our mizzen-chains.Of course, we could see from the ship all that went on as the cutter sheered up to the derelict craft. The bowman was standing up with his boathook ready to hook on when he got near enough, and Mr Osborne, the ‘first luff,’ standing up likewise astern to inspect the better the boat and its motionless occupants, he himself having gone away in the cutter, seeing how anxious the commodore seemed in the matter, instead of sending a young midshipman as usual.Something strange must have happened, for, as our boat touched the other, we could hear a startled cry from Mr Osborne, followed by a sort of suppressed groan from the cutter’s crew.This reached the commodore’s ear. “Cutter, ahoy!” he hailed. “Any one alive?”“No, sir,” came back the reply from Mr Osborne, in a sad tone. “All are dead—and a fearful death too!”“Why,” called out the commodore eagerly, as curious as all of us were, “what’s the matter?”“Struck by lightning, I think, sir,” answered Mr Osborne, who held his handkerchief to his face and spoke in a stifled voice, after bending down and looking over into the sternsheets of the derelict. “Can’t say exactly, sir. They’re in an awful state!”“Ho, bad job!” muttered the commodore aft, on the poop, as if talking to himself; and then in a louder key he sang out, “You’d better bring the boat alongside and let the doctor see them!”Thereupon the bowman hitching the cutter’s painter to the stem of the other boat which projected above the gunwale, and letting out the slack of the rope so as the boat should not come too close, Mr Osborne giving some order to that effect, they took her in tow, and in a few strokes were alongside the ship again.When they came up, there was no reason for any one to ask why the first lieutenant had held his handkerchief to his face.The stench was abominable!The doctor, who was ready and waiting at the ship’s side, at once went down by the commodore’s orders and examined the dead men, who we now saw were five in number, though they smelt like five hundred.“Bedad, Tom,” said Mick to me, as we looked down over the side, holding our noses—as, indeed, everybody on board was doing, every man-jack in the ship, I think, being on deck, from the old commodore down to the youngest middy and ship’s boy—“Oi nivver smilt a shmell loike thet since me faither an’ Oi wor at Clontarf whin they opened the graveyard theer, and toorned the owld coffins out wid the bones rattlin’ aboot in thim jist loike pays in a pannikin, sure, whin we’re goin’ fur to make pay-soup, or pay doo, ez we used fur to call it aboard the owldSaint Vincent!”Mr Osborne meanwhile had come up the side; and from where Mick and I were standing, by the mizzen-chains, I could hear distinctly every word he said, though I missed the first part, from Mick Donovan speaking to me at the moment, and he was in the middle of a sentence when I began to take in his words.”—Must have been a terrible scrimmage, sir. One of the cutlasses seems covered with dry blood right up to the hilt; while the two dead chaps between the thwarts are cut about and carved in all directions. The lot of them, no doubt, were at it hammer and tongs when the flash came.”“Begorrah,” whispered Mick in my ear, in comment on this statement, “it wor jist loike the two Kilkenny cats, sure, who fought till thaire wor ownly theer tails lift, sure!”The commodore, however, took a graver view of the matter.“It must have been awfully sudden, Mr Osborne,” he said; “and you think they were runaways or mutineers?”“I’m sure of it,” replied ‘Number One’ significantly. “There are a lot of gold coins and dollars scattered about in the bottom of the boat, besides an open bundle containing a collection of watches and other jewellery; and, from the greasy pack of cards lying alongside these, I fancy they must have been playing for the plunder and quarrelled about the division of it!”“Then the lightning came and settled the thing for good and all,” said the commodore solemnly, sinking his voice to an impressive tone. “It was the judgment of God!”The doctor, after a very brief stay in the boat, came up the side again and made his report to our chief.“All of them must have been killed instanter by the one flash of lightning, which seems to have gone all over the boat, zigzagging in a most curious manner,” said he. “The electric fluid, sir, has actually fused the blade of one of the cutlasses, and melted down the dollars and doubloons, which the poor devils must have been gambling with, all into a solid mass in the bottom of the boat!”“Indeed!”“Yes, sir,” affirmed the doctor, in answer to this exclamation from the commodore. “But the lightning, sir, has done something more wonderful than that, which I would not have believed unless I had seen it myself. I pulled open the shirt of one of the dead men, and there, on his breast, was a perfect photograph, as if done in Indian ink, of a ship in full sail, like the one which nearly collided with us the other day and afterwards foundered!”“Pooh!” cried the commodore incredulously. “It is probably a tattoo mark, the same as all sailors like to deface their bodies with.”“Oh no, sir,” persisted Doctor Mopson. “It’s a real photograph printed by the flash of lightning. I’ve seen too many tattoo marks in my time while examining fellows in the sick-bay not to recognise them. This is plainly done by the electric fluid—you can see it for yourself, sir!”“Thanks,” said the commodore drily, walking to the other side of the deck and putting his silk handkerchief to his face, a very unpleasant whiff from the boat, which was still alongside, coming inboard. “I’ll take your word for it, doctor, as you say it is so. I wonder if those fellows really belonged to that unfortunate ship?”“Not unlikely, sir,” said Mr Osborne, thinking the commodore, who had soliloquised aloud, according to his habit, had addressed the question to him. “The vessel did not seem to have a man on board her as far as I could see. Perhaps these dead beggars here plundered her and abandoned her after murdering their captain and officers!”“Perhaps so,” agreed our chief; “but, in any case, whether they have met with their just deserts or not—and for my part I am inclined to believe the former—we must give them Christian burial. I think, Mr Osborne, you had better let their boat be their coffin.”“By far the best plan, sir,” put in the doctor, on the commodore looking towards him. “The lightning has so decomposed the corpses that it would be impossible to handle them, and it would be detrimental to the health of those touching them, too.”This decided the commodore, who thereupon gave orders that some pigs of ballast should be put within the boat, and that it should be afterwards boarded over with a few rough planks.This, Mr Chips the carpenter, with the aid of his mates, quickly accomplished; and then the boat, with its ghastly contents now happily concealed from view, was drawn up half out of the water, suspended from one of the davits, and holes bored in the bottom.When all was ready, the ‘assembly’ was sounded, and we all stood bareheaded along the deck, drawn up as at ‘divisions,’ while the chaplain read a brief funeral service; and, on the conclusion of this, the painter that held up the boat being severed, the coffin-craft sank slowly below the surface to the fathomless abysses of one of the deepest parts of the Atlantic—for I heard the navigating officer tell Mr Osborne that soundings had been got here showing a depth of over four miles.The funeral finished, the hands were piped down; and then, our yards being squared again, we bore away once more for the Azores, reaching Saint Michael’s a few days later, in company with the rest of the squadron.This island, like the majority of the Azores, is of volcanic origin; and, looking at it from the sea, even when near in, it is not a very picturesque object, the conical hills and extinct craters giving it a monotonous, if mountainous, aspect.We anchored off Ponta Delgado, about three-quarters of a mile off shore, in twenty-five fathom water, and, as we stopped there a couple of days, we were allowed short leave, each watch in turn, to land and see the sights.These, beyond the flowers, which were beautiful from the effects of the volcanic soil, did not amount to much; and as the inhabitants are all Portuguese, whom we did not tackle to much, the ladies all wearing long cloaks with cowl-like hoods, the same as monks, which prevented us from seeing their faces, I can’t say we enjoyed our visit to the town as greatly as we thought we would when we put off from the ship.We obtained one acquisition here to our company however, which pleased all hands.This was a little black wiry monkey that originally came from the Spanish Main, I believe, being landed at Ponta Delgado by some passing ship; and which Doctor Mopson brought on board, from “motives of humanity,” as he said, having seen its Portugee owner ill-treating it, and, besides, on account of his being “long desirous of dissecting this specimen of the simian family,” as I heard him tell that brute Lieutenant Robinson, who I saw enjoyed the prospect of seeing the poor little thing cut up.The doctor, though, had only spoken in joke, he being a most good-hearted chap who would not have hurt a fly, except inadvertently, should he happen to have to treat the animal professionally; so, instead of being dissected, ‘Jocko,’ as he was christened, was made free of the ship, and presently became a prime favourite with all on board.He was certainly a clever little chap, performing all sorts of tricks, and being up to all sorts of mischief.“Begorrah,” as Mick said, “he can do ivv’rythin’ save spake; an’ thet the artful joker won’t do, faith, bekase he thinks, sure, we’ll make him wurrk!”One day on our passage home to England, ‘Jocko’ got into as great disgrace as I did that time when I was ‘caught in the act,’ smoking, on board theSaint Vincent.Master monkey, if you please, managed to get into the chaplain’s cabin through the scuttle, the door being locked on purpose to prevent his intrusion.It was on a Saturday when this occurred, a day the Reverend Mr Tibbits devoted to composing his usual Sunday sermon, which lay on his desk neatly written out on the usual official foolscap; the worthy gentleman having just completed his task of attending to our spiritual needs on the morrow, and being then engaged in recruiting his own inner man, after his arduous labours, with lunch in the wardroom mess.Hence, the chaplain’s temporal necessity was Jocko’s opportunity.Seeing the fine field open for the exercise of his ingenious imagination, Jocko set to work as speedily as possible, to see what havoc he could make in the short time the sagacious animal knew he had at his disposal; and he seized hold in some way or other of a big quart bottle of ink which the chaplain kept for a reserve stock on top of the bookcase at the side—at least so it was thought afterwards, no one, of course, having seen him do it.This, with an artistic idea of effect, the monkey poured liberally, not only over the sermon and other papers that lay on the table, but on the reverend gentleman’s sheets as well, Jocko probably thinking a black colour would be more suitable and in keeping with the clerical garments that hung from some clothes-pegs adjacent.Next, Mr Jocko appropriated the chaplain’s Bible, and ‘diligently searched the Scriptures’ for some time, with great care tearing out those leaves, and there were many, containing passages which particularly struck his fancy.A large prayer-book, whose type or binding offended him in some way or other, he took up with his paws and very carefully dropped through the scuttle, to refresh the souls of the fishes below.What mischief he might have done further, no one knows; for at that moment the chaplain opened the door and interrupted Jocko at his devotional exercises.From the yell he gave out, as the wardroom steward subsequently detailed, the Reverend Mr Tibbits must have believed His Satanic Majesty was in possession of his cabin; and, on his realising the character of his visitor properly, ere he could clutch hold of Jocko, who was then chattering away in high glee and making hideous faces, his invariable habit when he expected punishment after some evil deed as now, the agile monkey, gripping a portion of the ink-sodden sermon in one paw, and the chaplain’s black velvet skull-cap in the other, vanished through the open scuttle by which he had obtained admittance, proceeding up the side as nimbly as one of the foretopmen to the crosstrees aloft, where he put on the skull-cap and very possibly pondered over all that he had done.He had reason to; for a fiat of banishment from the wardroom and its approaches was the sequel to his escapade, in addition to a severe thrashing after he was caught, which it took the watch the whole afternoon to effect, Jocko playing a fine game of ‘follow my leader’ up the shrouds and down the stays, from one end of the ship to the other, until, tired out at last, he surrendered and took his flogging, like a monkey if not like a man.Exiled from aft the main-hatchway, Mr Jocko took up his quarters with the boatswain, who offered to assume charge of him when Doctor Mopson gave him up as a bad job and the other officers repudiated him; and, being now able to associate with us forward more freely, he quickly learnt all manner of new tricks, using a glass, for instance, as well as a signalman, and another sort of glass, especially if it contained grog, as expertly as Joblins did, when he had the chance.On our voyage home from the Azores he afforded rare fun to all of us, the men dressing him up in regular sailor rig, and the carpenter’s mate carving a rifle and sword-bayonet for him out of a bit of wood that was handy.With this, Jocko used to take his place with the starboard watch when we beat to quarters, and the men would come hurrying up on deck hastily with their weapons each to his station.You should only have seen him sight his rifle and pretend to aim at an imaginary enemy; while at the order to ‘repel boarders’ he would drop down in a half-sitting posture, looking as comical as possible, holding his sword-bayonet at the charge.On these occasions he would always range himself by the side of Mick, whom he selected in preference to all the rest of the ship’s company as his chosen associate.The boatswain noticed this; and one day in the early part of April, as we were coming up Channel on our return from our cruise and nearing Spithead, being just abreast of the projecting headland of Dunose on the south side of the Isle of Wight, Mr Blockley comes up to Mick as he and I and Jocko were standing on the forecastle.

“I believe I do, Mick,” I said, squinting down as eagerly as himself into the boat, near to which the ship was gradually sidling up, her way having been checked by her being brought up to the wind and the maintop-sail backed. “They are very quiet, poor chaps. I wonder if they are all dead?”

The same thought seemed to have occurred to the old commodore; for, as I said this, in pursuance of some order he must have given to that effect—for nobody does a thing on board a man-o’-war without the previous command of his superior officer—the boatswain hailed the little craft.

“Boat ahoy!” he shouted, with his lungs of brass and voice of a bull. “Ahoy! Ahoy-oy!”

No answer came, nor was there any movement amongst the boat’s occupants, who were lying pell-mell along the thwarts and on the bottom boards in her sternsheets.

“Poor fellows, they must be all dead!” exclaimed the commodore, almost in my own words. “Mr Osborne, get a boat ready to send off and overhaul her!”

The officer of the watch, however, had already made preparations to this end, the first cutter’s crew having been piped and the men standing ready by the davits to lower her into the water, with the gripes cast off and the falls cleared.

“All ready there, coxsun, eh?” he cried; and then, without waiting for any answer, he sang out, “Lower away!”

Down glided the cutter into the water as the hands inboard eased off the falls; and, her crew having dropped their oars, the next minute she was pulling out towards the boat, which was now only some twenty yards or so off the ship, abreast of our mizzen-chains.

Of course, we could see from the ship all that went on as the cutter sheered up to the derelict craft. The bowman was standing up with his boathook ready to hook on when he got near enough, and Mr Osborne, the ‘first luff,’ standing up likewise astern to inspect the better the boat and its motionless occupants, he himself having gone away in the cutter, seeing how anxious the commodore seemed in the matter, instead of sending a young midshipman as usual.

Something strange must have happened, for, as our boat touched the other, we could hear a startled cry from Mr Osborne, followed by a sort of suppressed groan from the cutter’s crew.

This reached the commodore’s ear. “Cutter, ahoy!” he hailed. “Any one alive?”

“No, sir,” came back the reply from Mr Osborne, in a sad tone. “All are dead—and a fearful death too!”

“Why,” called out the commodore eagerly, as curious as all of us were, “what’s the matter?”

“Struck by lightning, I think, sir,” answered Mr Osborne, who held his handkerchief to his face and spoke in a stifled voice, after bending down and looking over into the sternsheets of the derelict. “Can’t say exactly, sir. They’re in an awful state!”

“Ho, bad job!” muttered the commodore aft, on the poop, as if talking to himself; and then in a louder key he sang out, “You’d better bring the boat alongside and let the doctor see them!”

Thereupon the bowman hitching the cutter’s painter to the stem of the other boat which projected above the gunwale, and letting out the slack of the rope so as the boat should not come too close, Mr Osborne giving some order to that effect, they took her in tow, and in a few strokes were alongside the ship again.

When they came up, there was no reason for any one to ask why the first lieutenant had held his handkerchief to his face.

The stench was abominable!

The doctor, who was ready and waiting at the ship’s side, at once went down by the commodore’s orders and examined the dead men, who we now saw were five in number, though they smelt like five hundred.

“Bedad, Tom,” said Mick to me, as we looked down over the side, holding our noses—as, indeed, everybody on board was doing, every man-jack in the ship, I think, being on deck, from the old commodore down to the youngest middy and ship’s boy—“Oi nivver smilt a shmell loike thet since me faither an’ Oi wor at Clontarf whin they opened the graveyard theer, and toorned the owld coffins out wid the bones rattlin’ aboot in thim jist loike pays in a pannikin, sure, whin we’re goin’ fur to make pay-soup, or pay doo, ez we used fur to call it aboard the owldSaint Vincent!”

Mr Osborne meanwhile had come up the side; and from where Mick and I were standing, by the mizzen-chains, I could hear distinctly every word he said, though I missed the first part, from Mick Donovan speaking to me at the moment, and he was in the middle of a sentence when I began to take in his words.

”—Must have been a terrible scrimmage, sir. One of the cutlasses seems covered with dry blood right up to the hilt; while the two dead chaps between the thwarts are cut about and carved in all directions. The lot of them, no doubt, were at it hammer and tongs when the flash came.”

“Begorrah,” whispered Mick in my ear, in comment on this statement, “it wor jist loike the two Kilkenny cats, sure, who fought till thaire wor ownly theer tails lift, sure!”

The commodore, however, took a graver view of the matter.

“It must have been awfully sudden, Mr Osborne,” he said; “and you think they were runaways or mutineers?”

“I’m sure of it,” replied ‘Number One’ significantly. “There are a lot of gold coins and dollars scattered about in the bottom of the boat, besides an open bundle containing a collection of watches and other jewellery; and, from the greasy pack of cards lying alongside these, I fancy they must have been playing for the plunder and quarrelled about the division of it!”

“Then the lightning came and settled the thing for good and all,” said the commodore solemnly, sinking his voice to an impressive tone. “It was the judgment of God!”

The doctor, after a very brief stay in the boat, came up the side again and made his report to our chief.

“All of them must have been killed instanter by the one flash of lightning, which seems to have gone all over the boat, zigzagging in a most curious manner,” said he. “The electric fluid, sir, has actually fused the blade of one of the cutlasses, and melted down the dollars and doubloons, which the poor devils must have been gambling with, all into a solid mass in the bottom of the boat!”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, sir,” affirmed the doctor, in answer to this exclamation from the commodore. “But the lightning, sir, has done something more wonderful than that, which I would not have believed unless I had seen it myself. I pulled open the shirt of one of the dead men, and there, on his breast, was a perfect photograph, as if done in Indian ink, of a ship in full sail, like the one which nearly collided with us the other day and afterwards foundered!”

“Pooh!” cried the commodore incredulously. “It is probably a tattoo mark, the same as all sailors like to deface their bodies with.”

“Oh no, sir,” persisted Doctor Mopson. “It’s a real photograph printed by the flash of lightning. I’ve seen too many tattoo marks in my time while examining fellows in the sick-bay not to recognise them. This is plainly done by the electric fluid—you can see it for yourself, sir!”

“Thanks,” said the commodore drily, walking to the other side of the deck and putting his silk handkerchief to his face, a very unpleasant whiff from the boat, which was still alongside, coming inboard. “I’ll take your word for it, doctor, as you say it is so. I wonder if those fellows really belonged to that unfortunate ship?”

“Not unlikely, sir,” said Mr Osborne, thinking the commodore, who had soliloquised aloud, according to his habit, had addressed the question to him. “The vessel did not seem to have a man on board her as far as I could see. Perhaps these dead beggars here plundered her and abandoned her after murdering their captain and officers!”

“Perhaps so,” agreed our chief; “but, in any case, whether they have met with their just deserts or not—and for my part I am inclined to believe the former—we must give them Christian burial. I think, Mr Osborne, you had better let their boat be their coffin.”

“By far the best plan, sir,” put in the doctor, on the commodore looking towards him. “The lightning has so decomposed the corpses that it would be impossible to handle them, and it would be detrimental to the health of those touching them, too.”

This decided the commodore, who thereupon gave orders that some pigs of ballast should be put within the boat, and that it should be afterwards boarded over with a few rough planks.

This, Mr Chips the carpenter, with the aid of his mates, quickly accomplished; and then the boat, with its ghastly contents now happily concealed from view, was drawn up half out of the water, suspended from one of the davits, and holes bored in the bottom.

When all was ready, the ‘assembly’ was sounded, and we all stood bareheaded along the deck, drawn up as at ‘divisions,’ while the chaplain read a brief funeral service; and, on the conclusion of this, the painter that held up the boat being severed, the coffin-craft sank slowly below the surface to the fathomless abysses of one of the deepest parts of the Atlantic—for I heard the navigating officer tell Mr Osborne that soundings had been got here showing a depth of over four miles.

The funeral finished, the hands were piped down; and then, our yards being squared again, we bore away once more for the Azores, reaching Saint Michael’s a few days later, in company with the rest of the squadron.

This island, like the majority of the Azores, is of volcanic origin; and, looking at it from the sea, even when near in, it is not a very picturesque object, the conical hills and extinct craters giving it a monotonous, if mountainous, aspect.

We anchored off Ponta Delgado, about three-quarters of a mile off shore, in twenty-five fathom water, and, as we stopped there a couple of days, we were allowed short leave, each watch in turn, to land and see the sights.

These, beyond the flowers, which were beautiful from the effects of the volcanic soil, did not amount to much; and as the inhabitants are all Portuguese, whom we did not tackle to much, the ladies all wearing long cloaks with cowl-like hoods, the same as monks, which prevented us from seeing their faces, I can’t say we enjoyed our visit to the town as greatly as we thought we would when we put off from the ship.

We obtained one acquisition here to our company however, which pleased all hands.

This was a little black wiry monkey that originally came from the Spanish Main, I believe, being landed at Ponta Delgado by some passing ship; and which Doctor Mopson brought on board, from “motives of humanity,” as he said, having seen its Portugee owner ill-treating it, and, besides, on account of his being “long desirous of dissecting this specimen of the simian family,” as I heard him tell that brute Lieutenant Robinson, who I saw enjoyed the prospect of seeing the poor little thing cut up.

The doctor, though, had only spoken in joke, he being a most good-hearted chap who would not have hurt a fly, except inadvertently, should he happen to have to treat the animal professionally; so, instead of being dissected, ‘Jocko,’ as he was christened, was made free of the ship, and presently became a prime favourite with all on board.

He was certainly a clever little chap, performing all sorts of tricks, and being up to all sorts of mischief.

“Begorrah,” as Mick said, “he can do ivv’rythin’ save spake; an’ thet the artful joker won’t do, faith, bekase he thinks, sure, we’ll make him wurrk!”

One day on our passage home to England, ‘Jocko’ got into as great disgrace as I did that time when I was ‘caught in the act,’ smoking, on board theSaint Vincent.

Master monkey, if you please, managed to get into the chaplain’s cabin through the scuttle, the door being locked on purpose to prevent his intrusion.

It was on a Saturday when this occurred, a day the Reverend Mr Tibbits devoted to composing his usual Sunday sermon, which lay on his desk neatly written out on the usual official foolscap; the worthy gentleman having just completed his task of attending to our spiritual needs on the morrow, and being then engaged in recruiting his own inner man, after his arduous labours, with lunch in the wardroom mess.

Hence, the chaplain’s temporal necessity was Jocko’s opportunity.

Seeing the fine field open for the exercise of his ingenious imagination, Jocko set to work as speedily as possible, to see what havoc he could make in the short time the sagacious animal knew he had at his disposal; and he seized hold in some way or other of a big quart bottle of ink which the chaplain kept for a reserve stock on top of the bookcase at the side—at least so it was thought afterwards, no one, of course, having seen him do it.

This, with an artistic idea of effect, the monkey poured liberally, not only over the sermon and other papers that lay on the table, but on the reverend gentleman’s sheets as well, Jocko probably thinking a black colour would be more suitable and in keeping with the clerical garments that hung from some clothes-pegs adjacent.

Next, Mr Jocko appropriated the chaplain’s Bible, and ‘diligently searched the Scriptures’ for some time, with great care tearing out those leaves, and there were many, containing passages which particularly struck his fancy.

A large prayer-book, whose type or binding offended him in some way or other, he took up with his paws and very carefully dropped through the scuttle, to refresh the souls of the fishes below.

What mischief he might have done further, no one knows; for at that moment the chaplain opened the door and interrupted Jocko at his devotional exercises.

From the yell he gave out, as the wardroom steward subsequently detailed, the Reverend Mr Tibbits must have believed His Satanic Majesty was in possession of his cabin; and, on his realising the character of his visitor properly, ere he could clutch hold of Jocko, who was then chattering away in high glee and making hideous faces, his invariable habit when he expected punishment after some evil deed as now, the agile monkey, gripping a portion of the ink-sodden sermon in one paw, and the chaplain’s black velvet skull-cap in the other, vanished through the open scuttle by which he had obtained admittance, proceeding up the side as nimbly as one of the foretopmen to the crosstrees aloft, where he put on the skull-cap and very possibly pondered over all that he had done.

He had reason to; for a fiat of banishment from the wardroom and its approaches was the sequel to his escapade, in addition to a severe thrashing after he was caught, which it took the watch the whole afternoon to effect, Jocko playing a fine game of ‘follow my leader’ up the shrouds and down the stays, from one end of the ship to the other, until, tired out at last, he surrendered and took his flogging, like a monkey if not like a man.

Exiled from aft the main-hatchway, Mr Jocko took up his quarters with the boatswain, who offered to assume charge of him when Doctor Mopson gave him up as a bad job and the other officers repudiated him; and, being now able to associate with us forward more freely, he quickly learnt all manner of new tricks, using a glass, for instance, as well as a signalman, and another sort of glass, especially if it contained grog, as expertly as Joblins did, when he had the chance.

On our voyage home from the Azores he afforded rare fun to all of us, the men dressing him up in regular sailor rig, and the carpenter’s mate carving a rifle and sword-bayonet for him out of a bit of wood that was handy.

With this, Jocko used to take his place with the starboard watch when we beat to quarters, and the men would come hurrying up on deck hastily with their weapons each to his station.

You should only have seen him sight his rifle and pretend to aim at an imaginary enemy; while at the order to ‘repel boarders’ he would drop down in a half-sitting posture, looking as comical as possible, holding his sword-bayonet at the charge.

On these occasions he would always range himself by the side of Mick, whom he selected in preference to all the rest of the ship’s company as his chosen associate.

The boatswain noticed this; and one day in the early part of April, as we were coming up Channel on our return from our cruise and nearing Spithead, being just abreast of the projecting headland of Dunose on the south side of the Isle of Wight, Mr Blockley comes up to Mick as he and I and Jocko were standing on the forecastle.

Chapter Twenty One.I Become an “Ordinary Seaman.”“Tell us, Donovan,” said he—“now, what would you do with that monkey, supposing I make him over to you?”“Faith,” replied Mick, not knowing whether the boatswain was trying to take a rise out of him or not, “Oi wudn’t ate him, sor.”“I suppose not,” said Mr Blockley, grinning, as Mick did, in sympathy. “But would you take care of him, my lad, if I give the monkey to you?”“An’ is it whither Oi’ll take care ov him ye’re afther axin’ me?” said my chum, taking hold of Jocko as he spoke. “Begorrah, ye jist coom to me arrums, ye little baiste, and show Misther Blockley how fond yez are ov me, ye divvle!”Jocko, who had been standing in front of: the pair at the time on the forecastle in the position of ‘present arms,’ holding his little wooden rifle as correctly as the smartest drilled marine, at once dropped this on the deck, and sprang, not into Mick’s arms, but on to his left shoulder, where he chattered and grimaced away, no doubt telling his chosen friend in the choicest monkey language how much he loved him.This was proof to Mr Blockley of the affection that existed between the two; so, without further demur, he made over all right and title he might possess in Jocko to Mick.“But, you’re sure, my lad, you’ll take good care of him,” he said. “I wouldn’t like any harm to come to the poor little beggar. The doctor gave him to me on the understanding that he would be well looked after, and on the same conditions I trust him now to you.”“Faith, sor, ye couldn’t do botther,” replied Mick, caressing Jocko with much satisfaction, evidently proud to be his real owner. “Sure, an’ if Oi’ve got to go to say ag’in an’ can’t look afther the baiste mesilf, it’s some ’un ilse Oi’ll be afther givin’ him to thet’ll say to him aven betther nor mesilf!”“And who’s that?” inquired the boatswain, with a laugh, noticing a flush come over Mick’s face. “You know I’m interested in the monkey and have a sort of right to ask.”Mick looked ‘nine ways for Sunday,’ to use his own favourite expression.“Bedad, sor,” he at length replied sheepishly, “it’s Jenny, sor.”“But,” persisted Mr Blockley, smelling a rat, “who’s Jenny?”“Tom’s sisther, sure.”“O-o-oh!”Not being certain exactly as to the meaning of Mr Blockley’s ejaculation, Mick went on to explain further.“Yis, sor, she’s the sisther, sure, ov me fri’nd Tom Bowlin’ here, sor,” he said, pointing me out by a punch in the ribs that nearly knocked all the breath out of me. “An’, sure, she’s moighty fond ov burrds!”Mr Blockley laughed.“From that, I suppose, Paddy,” he said, as soon as he could speak, “you put Jocko here in the same boat as the birds?”“Begorrah, Oi do, sor,” replied Mick, with a broad grin, as he cuddled the monkey up to him in his arms; Jocko taking off Mick’s cap the while, and carefully scattering its motley contents to the winds. “Oi call him, sure, a Saint Michael’s canary, faith, sor!”“You’ll do,” said Mr Blockley, laughing again as he went away to attend to his duties, in seeing the chain cables got up from below, and ranged along the lower deck in preparation for our anchoring anon. “Let alone an Irishman for having the last word!”Having a good breeze with us from the southward and westward, we soon rounded Saint Helen’s point, off the east end of the island; and making a wide reach in towards the Warner lightship, we brought up at Spithead at Four Bells, comfortably.Just before we anchored, Mr Osborne, the first lieutenant, sent for Mick and myself, the marine who passed the word forward for us, saying that ‘Number One’ wanted to see us in the wardroom.Wondering what was up, my chum and I proceeded aft, where we found Mr Osborne seated at the table, having just had lunch, as the cloth showed.‘Number One,’ who had evidently enjoyed his meal, being in a genial mood, as indeed, to give him his due, he usually was, did not keep us long in suspense.“Ha, my lads,” he said, on the sentry ushering us up to where he sat, “you’ve given in your names, I believe, to pass for ordinary seamen, eh?”The cat was out of the bag at once, and mightily we felt relieved at that.I could not help smiling as I answered Mr Osborne in the affirmative; while, as for Mick, his “Yis, sor,” was rolled out with an emphasis that made ‘Number One’ laugh outright.“I hear very good reports of both of you, my lads—of you Bowling in particular,” he said, looking at some papers before him, which he signed and handed over to the marine sentry, telling him to send them on to the ship’s office; “and, as you are now both eighteen, the proper age to be entered on the books as ‘ordinary seamen,’ and have shown your aptitude for the service during the six months you have been aboard this ship, I pass you, my lads, so you may now look upon yourselves as ‘boys’ no longer!”Thanking the lieutenant, we left the wardroom, as may be supposed, decorously enough; but we had no sooner got out on the dock without than Mick executed a wild caper, which made the sentry grin.“Bedad, Tom,” he said, loud enough for the marine to hear, “me fayther allers s’id Oi’d be a man afore me moother; an’, faith, Oi’m thet now, plaize the pigs!”It was certainly a most unexpected dénouement to the ordeal we had expected when sending in our names, both of us thinking we would have had to pass some stiff grind in seamanship and other naval acquirements, similar to the examinations we used to undergo on board the oldSaint Vincent; and as we now were rated really as seamen, with the pay of one shilling and threepence a day, instead of sevenpence, besides having all the dirty work of the ship taken off our hands, Mick and I considered ourselves in clover, as you may readily imagine!TheActiveandVolage, the two Portsmouth ships of the Training Squadron, went into harbour early the very next morning, laying alongside the dockyard as before, to refit for their summer cruise; and, later on, when we were moored in our old berth at the Pitch-House jetty and things made right on board, we got leave with the rest of the starboard watch to go ashore, Mick, of course, going home with me, and Jocko equally, of course, forming one of the company.On our reaching Bonfire Corner, Mick was in a fix about Jocko, apparently, eyeing him when we got near the door of father’s cottage, and then looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face, the monkey saving him the trouble of scratching his head, which Mick had got into the habit of doing whenever he was in a quandary, by most affectionately performing the operation for him.“Hullo, old chap,” said I, “what’s up?”“Faith, Tom, Oi’m onaisy in me moind, sure, about Jocko,” he replied. “Oi don’t want yer sisther to be afther sayin’ him at foorst. Sure, Oi want to take her be surprise, alannah.”“Well,” said I, “that needn’t trouble you, Mick. Let’s put the little beggar over the garden wall.”“But, s’posin’ onywun’s theer?”“You needn’t be afraid of that,” said I. “Mother and Jenny will be just having tea about this time, most likely, in the kitchen; and, if father’s at home and not out in his wherry, he’ll be taking a caulk in his old seat under the mulberry-tree.”“Begorrah, thin,” cried Mick, in high glee at my now giving him this information, “we’ll put the little baiste roight over the wall forninst whare he’s a-sottin’; an’, faith, if Jocko says him, he’ll rouse him oop fast enuff, an’ thin yer fayther’ll think he’s the divvle, sure, jist ez the chaplin did aboard the ship t’other day whin Jocko got into his cabin an’ carried on ‘Meg’s divarshuns’!”“The very thing,” I said, entering into the joke and anticipating father’s astonishment. “Sling him over by that apple-tree, and then nobody will be able to see how he got in.”Mick at once carried out my suggestion.The apple-tree, which had all its pretty pink and white blossoms out in full bloom, ran up close to the side of the wall, one branch indeed projecting over it, though at too great a height for the street boys to get at the fruit, having to content themselves instead with shying stones at what they were unable to reach.Clambering up the face of the rough old brick wall like a cat, Mick carefully let down Jocko on the other side at this point, telling him in a whispered word of command that he was on ‘sentry go’ and mustn’t stir till the order was given to ‘relieve guard.’Jocko evidently understood him clearly; for, although I expected he would have climbed back again on Mick’s shoulder almost as soon as he put him down, the intelligent animal remained in the garden.All things therefore working together as we wished, Mick and I now proceeded up to the front door and knocked.Unfortunately, father had seen theActivecoming in and “blown the gaff” on us; and so, instead of our taking them by surprise, we found them on the lookout and all ready to receive us.Little Jenny, who had grown considerably since I had last seen her, and was all the prettier, too, as Mick, I noticed, observed as well as myself, of course opened the door for us; and coming up the passage behind her was mother and father, with the cockatoo ‘Ally Sloper’ bringing up the roar of the procession, all of them laughing and talking, and saying, all in one breath and at the same time, how glad they were to see me and Mick again, old ‘Ally Sloper’ screaming out louder than the lot, “I’ll wring your neck! I’ll wring your neck!” We did have a tea.To look at the table, one would have thought we had been starved all the time we were afloat, and that mother wished us to make up what leeway we had lost in the grub line by stowing our holds now as full as we could possibly manage.Bless you, there was a dish of ham and eggs got ready by Jenny in a jiffy, sufficient to have served round the whole of our mess; while, as for the bread and butter, cut thin so as to make one want to eat the more, with marmalade and cakes and the jam, there was plenty, I think, for our whole ship’s company!Mick and I ate and ate, I pressed by mother, and he unable to resist Jenny’s hospitable solicitude, until neither of us felt inclined to rise; when, just at the end of the feast—Mick and I being only just able then to make signs showing our inability to stow any more, speech having failed us—a most terrible bobbery broke out in the back garden, the cockatoo yelling like mad, and every other bird, I believe, in the shop joining in a demoniac chorus and lending emphasis to his screams.“Ship my rullocks!” cried father, jumping up from his seat and making for the scullery door, with mother and Jenny after him. “It’s that dratted old tom-cat of Bill Squeers come prowling arter the birds again, I knows. I’ve sworn I’ll pison him some day; and, by the Lord, too, I will, if he’s bin and gone and meddled with ‘Ally Sloper’!”“Aye, Thomas Bowling, just you stick to that,” said mother, spurring him on to instant vengeance, fearing that father’s loudly expressed animosity to our namesake the cat would evaporate, as it invariably did, after the cause of the commotion had made off. “The nasty beast nearly frightened one of Jenny’s canaries to death the other day; but I gave him one with my broom-handle which made him scoot, I can tell you, the brute not having come back into the garden again, as I knows of, till to-day!”So saying, mother disappeared, with her potent broomstick, behind the hedge of evergreens that shut off the backyard from our garden, in the wake of father and Jenny, who, being more speedy in their movements, were already out of sight.Mick looked at me, and I looked at Mick; and then the two of us burst into a roar of laughter as we followed up the chase to see the end of it.We arrived just in time.Jocko, who, as may be supposed, was the originator of all the row, had got up into the mulberry-tree, the cockatoo’s own especial domain, and, chattering and making faces at the bird, had clutched hold of one of his legs in his hand-like paw, trying to pull him from his perch.This ‘Ally Sloper’ resisted with all his might and main, hanging from a branch of the tree with the claw that was free, while he pecked and bit the monkey with his nut-cracker beak, making Jocko wince and snarl and pull all the harder to get him into his clutches, the cockatoo screaming like mad, as I have said, all the while!“Lor’!” exclaimed mother, holding up her hands at this sight, just as we came up, “it ain’t Squeers’s cat after all! How ever did that there monkey get here?”“It must have broken loose from some place near,” said Jenny. “The milkman told me this morning that Smith, the fancier, had one the other day which crammed a lot of cinders down the baby’s throat and nearly killed it, and that Mr Smith was obliged to get rid of it.”“Then, this can’t be that chap,” said father, sitting down in his old armchair under the tree and looking up at Jocko, who had released ‘Ally Sloper’ on our approach and gone up aloft in one of the topmost branches. “I’d bet ’arf-a-crown now, Sarah, as how them two youngsters here could tell us summat o’ the monkey if they likes!”He had a sharp eye, had father, and had caught Mick winking at me.So, there being now no longer any need, or indeed chance, of concealment, especially with Jenny’s eyes fixed on him, Mick thought it best to make a clean breast of it at once.“Coom down out o’ thet, ye divvle. ’Tenshin, Jocko!” cried he, patting his shoulder, to which his friend the monkey at once jumped from the tree; and then, turning to my sister, he said, with a roguish look in his black eyes, “Oi’ve brought ye a little prisint, Miss Jenny, ez Oi hopes ez how ye’ll be afther acceptin’.”Jenny smiled.“What,” said she—“a monkey?”“No, Miss Jenny,” replied Mick, grinning, while Jocko chattered in sympathetic glee. “He ain’t a monkey at all, at all. Sure, he’s what I calls a Saint Michael’s canary!”This was a settler for all of them; father leaning back in his chair and holding his sides, while mother and Jenny enjoyed the joke as much as we could both wish, ‘Ally Sloper’ adding to the merriment of us all by shrieking out at intervals alternately, “Say-rah! Say-rah!” and “Blest if I don’t have a smoke!” in father’s very own voice.On returning to theActiveafter our leave was up, Mick and I were sent to the guardship, or depot, having to leave our old ship through getting our new rating as ordinary seamen, we having been drafted to her as ‘boys’; for, being no longer held to be such, we, of course, had no ‘local habitation or name,’ according to the saying, on board her.We did not have much of a stay at home, however, all the same, Mick getting appointed within the next fortnight to the flagship on the Cape station, when he and I parted for the first time since we became chums, more than two years previously, on our joining theSaint Vincenttogether.A sailor’s life, though, is made up of partings, not only with one another, but with the old folks at home as well, and sometimes with certain persons even dearer than these; so, wringing my hand in his hearty grip and leaving a tender farewell for Jenny, whom he was unable to see before going away, she being on a visit to a cousin of ours who lived at Chichester, Mick and I said good-bye to one another. Really, I envied his luck of getting the chance of seeing active service so soon!I did not have to envy him long; for, a week later, I was turned over to theMermaid, a new second-class cruiser just commissioned to join the eastern division of the Mediterranean Fleet, to take the place for the time of one of the smaller ships belonging to the squadron, under refit at Malta, our orders being then to proceed to the Red Sea, where it was expected that Osman Digna would be making matters warm in and about Suakin later on in the year.Some three days subsequently to my going on board her, with a complete new rig-out, bag, baggage, and all, theMermaidsailed for the Straits; if sailing it can be called in a ship going by steam alone, and which had not a royal-yard to cross, or any other spars to speak of aloft for that matter, the cruiser being rigged to carry fore-and-aft sail in case of emergency should her engines break down.It might be thought from this that my early training in a sailing-ship was thrown away, there being no longer any necessity for me to display my activity in racing up the rigging and running out on a yard to reef topsails.The contrary, however, was the case; and I’ve found, even during my short experience afloat—ay, and in spite of the ridiculous assertions of some shore folk, who know about as much of life in the navy as they do to club-haul a ship off a lee shore—that the men who have learnt to hold on by the skin of their teeth in a heavy gale, from the aptitude they have gained in the old-fashioned class of ships, are the handiest and the readiest at a pinch in the new!Of course, though, I only found out this afterwards; as on first joining theMermaidthe ship was as strange to me as I, sore at parting with Mick, felt myself a complete stranger to all on board.So I thought, at least.But I was mistaken.

“Tell us, Donovan,” said he—“now, what would you do with that monkey, supposing I make him over to you?”

“Faith,” replied Mick, not knowing whether the boatswain was trying to take a rise out of him or not, “Oi wudn’t ate him, sor.”

“I suppose not,” said Mr Blockley, grinning, as Mick did, in sympathy. “But would you take care of him, my lad, if I give the monkey to you?”

“An’ is it whither Oi’ll take care ov him ye’re afther axin’ me?” said my chum, taking hold of Jocko as he spoke. “Begorrah, ye jist coom to me arrums, ye little baiste, and show Misther Blockley how fond yez are ov me, ye divvle!”

Jocko, who had been standing in front of: the pair at the time on the forecastle in the position of ‘present arms,’ holding his little wooden rifle as correctly as the smartest drilled marine, at once dropped this on the deck, and sprang, not into Mick’s arms, but on to his left shoulder, where he chattered and grimaced away, no doubt telling his chosen friend in the choicest monkey language how much he loved him.

This was proof to Mr Blockley of the affection that existed between the two; so, without further demur, he made over all right and title he might possess in Jocko to Mick.

“But, you’re sure, my lad, you’ll take good care of him,” he said. “I wouldn’t like any harm to come to the poor little beggar. The doctor gave him to me on the understanding that he would be well looked after, and on the same conditions I trust him now to you.”

“Faith, sor, ye couldn’t do botther,” replied Mick, caressing Jocko with much satisfaction, evidently proud to be his real owner. “Sure, an’ if Oi’ve got to go to say ag’in an’ can’t look afther the baiste mesilf, it’s some ’un ilse Oi’ll be afther givin’ him to thet’ll say to him aven betther nor mesilf!”

“And who’s that?” inquired the boatswain, with a laugh, noticing a flush come over Mick’s face. “You know I’m interested in the monkey and have a sort of right to ask.”

Mick looked ‘nine ways for Sunday,’ to use his own favourite expression.

“Bedad, sor,” he at length replied sheepishly, “it’s Jenny, sor.”

“But,” persisted Mr Blockley, smelling a rat, “who’s Jenny?”

“Tom’s sisther, sure.”

“O-o-oh!”

Not being certain exactly as to the meaning of Mr Blockley’s ejaculation, Mick went on to explain further.

“Yis, sor, she’s the sisther, sure, ov me fri’nd Tom Bowlin’ here, sor,” he said, pointing me out by a punch in the ribs that nearly knocked all the breath out of me. “An’, sure, she’s moighty fond ov burrds!”

Mr Blockley laughed.

“From that, I suppose, Paddy,” he said, as soon as he could speak, “you put Jocko here in the same boat as the birds?”

“Begorrah, Oi do, sor,” replied Mick, with a broad grin, as he cuddled the monkey up to him in his arms; Jocko taking off Mick’s cap the while, and carefully scattering its motley contents to the winds. “Oi call him, sure, a Saint Michael’s canary, faith, sor!”

“You’ll do,” said Mr Blockley, laughing again as he went away to attend to his duties, in seeing the chain cables got up from below, and ranged along the lower deck in preparation for our anchoring anon. “Let alone an Irishman for having the last word!”

Having a good breeze with us from the southward and westward, we soon rounded Saint Helen’s point, off the east end of the island; and making a wide reach in towards the Warner lightship, we brought up at Spithead at Four Bells, comfortably.

Just before we anchored, Mr Osborne, the first lieutenant, sent for Mick and myself, the marine who passed the word forward for us, saying that ‘Number One’ wanted to see us in the wardroom.

Wondering what was up, my chum and I proceeded aft, where we found Mr Osborne seated at the table, having just had lunch, as the cloth showed.

‘Number One,’ who had evidently enjoyed his meal, being in a genial mood, as indeed, to give him his due, he usually was, did not keep us long in suspense.

“Ha, my lads,” he said, on the sentry ushering us up to where he sat, “you’ve given in your names, I believe, to pass for ordinary seamen, eh?”

The cat was out of the bag at once, and mightily we felt relieved at that.

I could not help smiling as I answered Mr Osborne in the affirmative; while, as for Mick, his “Yis, sor,” was rolled out with an emphasis that made ‘Number One’ laugh outright.

“I hear very good reports of both of you, my lads—of you Bowling in particular,” he said, looking at some papers before him, which he signed and handed over to the marine sentry, telling him to send them on to the ship’s office; “and, as you are now both eighteen, the proper age to be entered on the books as ‘ordinary seamen,’ and have shown your aptitude for the service during the six months you have been aboard this ship, I pass you, my lads, so you may now look upon yourselves as ‘boys’ no longer!”

Thanking the lieutenant, we left the wardroom, as may be supposed, decorously enough; but we had no sooner got out on the dock without than Mick executed a wild caper, which made the sentry grin.

“Bedad, Tom,” he said, loud enough for the marine to hear, “me fayther allers s’id Oi’d be a man afore me moother; an’, faith, Oi’m thet now, plaize the pigs!”

It was certainly a most unexpected dénouement to the ordeal we had expected when sending in our names, both of us thinking we would have had to pass some stiff grind in seamanship and other naval acquirements, similar to the examinations we used to undergo on board the oldSaint Vincent; and as we now were rated really as seamen, with the pay of one shilling and threepence a day, instead of sevenpence, besides having all the dirty work of the ship taken off our hands, Mick and I considered ourselves in clover, as you may readily imagine!

TheActiveandVolage, the two Portsmouth ships of the Training Squadron, went into harbour early the very next morning, laying alongside the dockyard as before, to refit for their summer cruise; and, later on, when we were moored in our old berth at the Pitch-House jetty and things made right on board, we got leave with the rest of the starboard watch to go ashore, Mick, of course, going home with me, and Jocko equally, of course, forming one of the company.

On our reaching Bonfire Corner, Mick was in a fix about Jocko, apparently, eyeing him when we got near the door of father’s cottage, and then looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face, the monkey saving him the trouble of scratching his head, which Mick had got into the habit of doing whenever he was in a quandary, by most affectionately performing the operation for him.

“Hullo, old chap,” said I, “what’s up?”

“Faith, Tom, Oi’m onaisy in me moind, sure, about Jocko,” he replied. “Oi don’t want yer sisther to be afther sayin’ him at foorst. Sure, Oi want to take her be surprise, alannah.”

“Well,” said I, “that needn’t trouble you, Mick. Let’s put the little beggar over the garden wall.”

“But, s’posin’ onywun’s theer?”

“You needn’t be afraid of that,” said I. “Mother and Jenny will be just having tea about this time, most likely, in the kitchen; and, if father’s at home and not out in his wherry, he’ll be taking a caulk in his old seat under the mulberry-tree.”

“Begorrah, thin,” cried Mick, in high glee at my now giving him this information, “we’ll put the little baiste roight over the wall forninst whare he’s a-sottin’; an’, faith, if Jocko says him, he’ll rouse him oop fast enuff, an’ thin yer fayther’ll think he’s the divvle, sure, jist ez the chaplin did aboard the ship t’other day whin Jocko got into his cabin an’ carried on ‘Meg’s divarshuns’!”

“The very thing,” I said, entering into the joke and anticipating father’s astonishment. “Sling him over by that apple-tree, and then nobody will be able to see how he got in.”

Mick at once carried out my suggestion.

The apple-tree, which had all its pretty pink and white blossoms out in full bloom, ran up close to the side of the wall, one branch indeed projecting over it, though at too great a height for the street boys to get at the fruit, having to content themselves instead with shying stones at what they were unable to reach.

Clambering up the face of the rough old brick wall like a cat, Mick carefully let down Jocko on the other side at this point, telling him in a whispered word of command that he was on ‘sentry go’ and mustn’t stir till the order was given to ‘relieve guard.’

Jocko evidently understood him clearly; for, although I expected he would have climbed back again on Mick’s shoulder almost as soon as he put him down, the intelligent animal remained in the garden.

All things therefore working together as we wished, Mick and I now proceeded up to the front door and knocked.

Unfortunately, father had seen theActivecoming in and “blown the gaff” on us; and so, instead of our taking them by surprise, we found them on the lookout and all ready to receive us.

Little Jenny, who had grown considerably since I had last seen her, and was all the prettier, too, as Mick, I noticed, observed as well as myself, of course opened the door for us; and coming up the passage behind her was mother and father, with the cockatoo ‘Ally Sloper’ bringing up the roar of the procession, all of them laughing and talking, and saying, all in one breath and at the same time, how glad they were to see me and Mick again, old ‘Ally Sloper’ screaming out louder than the lot, “I’ll wring your neck! I’ll wring your neck!” We did have a tea.

To look at the table, one would have thought we had been starved all the time we were afloat, and that mother wished us to make up what leeway we had lost in the grub line by stowing our holds now as full as we could possibly manage.

Bless you, there was a dish of ham and eggs got ready by Jenny in a jiffy, sufficient to have served round the whole of our mess; while, as for the bread and butter, cut thin so as to make one want to eat the more, with marmalade and cakes and the jam, there was plenty, I think, for our whole ship’s company!

Mick and I ate and ate, I pressed by mother, and he unable to resist Jenny’s hospitable solicitude, until neither of us felt inclined to rise; when, just at the end of the feast—Mick and I being only just able then to make signs showing our inability to stow any more, speech having failed us—a most terrible bobbery broke out in the back garden, the cockatoo yelling like mad, and every other bird, I believe, in the shop joining in a demoniac chorus and lending emphasis to his screams.

“Ship my rullocks!” cried father, jumping up from his seat and making for the scullery door, with mother and Jenny after him. “It’s that dratted old tom-cat of Bill Squeers come prowling arter the birds again, I knows. I’ve sworn I’ll pison him some day; and, by the Lord, too, I will, if he’s bin and gone and meddled with ‘Ally Sloper’!”

“Aye, Thomas Bowling, just you stick to that,” said mother, spurring him on to instant vengeance, fearing that father’s loudly expressed animosity to our namesake the cat would evaporate, as it invariably did, after the cause of the commotion had made off. “The nasty beast nearly frightened one of Jenny’s canaries to death the other day; but I gave him one with my broom-handle which made him scoot, I can tell you, the brute not having come back into the garden again, as I knows of, till to-day!”

So saying, mother disappeared, with her potent broomstick, behind the hedge of evergreens that shut off the backyard from our garden, in the wake of father and Jenny, who, being more speedy in their movements, were already out of sight.

Mick looked at me, and I looked at Mick; and then the two of us burst into a roar of laughter as we followed up the chase to see the end of it.

We arrived just in time.

Jocko, who, as may be supposed, was the originator of all the row, had got up into the mulberry-tree, the cockatoo’s own especial domain, and, chattering and making faces at the bird, had clutched hold of one of his legs in his hand-like paw, trying to pull him from his perch.

This ‘Ally Sloper’ resisted with all his might and main, hanging from a branch of the tree with the claw that was free, while he pecked and bit the monkey with his nut-cracker beak, making Jocko wince and snarl and pull all the harder to get him into his clutches, the cockatoo screaming like mad, as I have said, all the while!

“Lor’!” exclaimed mother, holding up her hands at this sight, just as we came up, “it ain’t Squeers’s cat after all! How ever did that there monkey get here?”

“It must have broken loose from some place near,” said Jenny. “The milkman told me this morning that Smith, the fancier, had one the other day which crammed a lot of cinders down the baby’s throat and nearly killed it, and that Mr Smith was obliged to get rid of it.”

“Then, this can’t be that chap,” said father, sitting down in his old armchair under the tree and looking up at Jocko, who had released ‘Ally Sloper’ on our approach and gone up aloft in one of the topmost branches. “I’d bet ’arf-a-crown now, Sarah, as how them two youngsters here could tell us summat o’ the monkey if they likes!”

He had a sharp eye, had father, and had caught Mick winking at me.

So, there being now no longer any need, or indeed chance, of concealment, especially with Jenny’s eyes fixed on him, Mick thought it best to make a clean breast of it at once.

“Coom down out o’ thet, ye divvle. ’Tenshin, Jocko!” cried he, patting his shoulder, to which his friend the monkey at once jumped from the tree; and then, turning to my sister, he said, with a roguish look in his black eyes, “Oi’ve brought ye a little prisint, Miss Jenny, ez Oi hopes ez how ye’ll be afther acceptin’.”

Jenny smiled.

“What,” said she—“a monkey?”

“No, Miss Jenny,” replied Mick, grinning, while Jocko chattered in sympathetic glee. “He ain’t a monkey at all, at all. Sure, he’s what I calls a Saint Michael’s canary!”

This was a settler for all of them; father leaning back in his chair and holding his sides, while mother and Jenny enjoyed the joke as much as we could both wish, ‘Ally Sloper’ adding to the merriment of us all by shrieking out at intervals alternately, “Say-rah! Say-rah!” and “Blest if I don’t have a smoke!” in father’s very own voice.

On returning to theActiveafter our leave was up, Mick and I were sent to the guardship, or depot, having to leave our old ship through getting our new rating as ordinary seamen, we having been drafted to her as ‘boys’; for, being no longer held to be such, we, of course, had no ‘local habitation or name,’ according to the saying, on board her.

We did not have much of a stay at home, however, all the same, Mick getting appointed within the next fortnight to the flagship on the Cape station, when he and I parted for the first time since we became chums, more than two years previously, on our joining theSaint Vincenttogether.

A sailor’s life, though, is made up of partings, not only with one another, but with the old folks at home as well, and sometimes with certain persons even dearer than these; so, wringing my hand in his hearty grip and leaving a tender farewell for Jenny, whom he was unable to see before going away, she being on a visit to a cousin of ours who lived at Chichester, Mick and I said good-bye to one another. Really, I envied his luck of getting the chance of seeing active service so soon!

I did not have to envy him long; for, a week later, I was turned over to theMermaid, a new second-class cruiser just commissioned to join the eastern division of the Mediterranean Fleet, to take the place for the time of one of the smaller ships belonging to the squadron, under refit at Malta, our orders being then to proceed to the Red Sea, where it was expected that Osman Digna would be making matters warm in and about Suakin later on in the year.

Some three days subsequently to my going on board her, with a complete new rig-out, bag, baggage, and all, theMermaidsailed for the Straits; if sailing it can be called in a ship going by steam alone, and which had not a royal-yard to cross, or any other spars to speak of aloft for that matter, the cruiser being rigged to carry fore-and-aft sail in case of emergency should her engines break down.

It might be thought from this that my early training in a sailing-ship was thrown away, there being no longer any necessity for me to display my activity in racing up the rigging and running out on a yard to reef topsails.

The contrary, however, was the case; and I’ve found, even during my short experience afloat—ay, and in spite of the ridiculous assertions of some shore folk, who know about as much of life in the navy as they do to club-haul a ship off a lee shore—that the men who have learnt to hold on by the skin of their teeth in a heavy gale, from the aptitude they have gained in the old-fashioned class of ships, are the handiest and the readiest at a pinch in the new!

Of course, though, I only found out this afterwards; as on first joining theMermaidthe ship was as strange to me as I, sore at parting with Mick, felt myself a complete stranger to all on board.

So I thought, at least.

But I was mistaken.

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