Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.I am “Cut down in my Prime.”After dinner, which, by the way, my friend Mick Donovan appeared to enjoy mightily, not having had a decent meal for more than a month past, as he confessed to me afterwards, the bugle loudly sounded the ‘assembly,’ when all the boys below came rushing up the hatchway near us, trooping onwards by the ladder above to the upper deck. They jostled and shoved past each other, I thought, as if Old Nick were after them, none wishing to occupy the unenviable position of last man, or rather boy.There wore eight other new boys in addition to us three, the latest of the novices, who had joined the ship that morning; and, although we all rose up from the mess-table, where we had very satisfactorily polished off our dinners in company, the lot of us hung together about the spot, not knowing what to do, or where we should go.We were, besides, pretty well confused with all the bustle and hurry, and scurry catch-me-who-can business, going on around us.It seemed, indeed, to bewilder even ‘Ugly,’ free and easy chap as he appeared to be.Our friend the master-at-arms, however, solved the difficulty for us before we were many minutes older, as you will see.“Ha, my lads!” said he, advancing towards us from the office with the glass windows, through which he could overhaul all that was going on on deck, and where he probably had been enjoying his own meal on the quiet; “got through your dinners, eh?”“Yes, sir,” we shouted in chorus, Mick Donovan adding a very appropriate grace, which most of us had forgotten. “Thanks be to God, yer ’anner!”“Ah, I needn’t have asked the question,” said the ‘Jaunty’ to this, glancing meaningly at the empty plates that littered the table, not a scrap or a crumb being left by any of us. “But now, my lads, you must set to work to pay for your grub. Here, look sharp and clear up! We always have things shipshape aboard here, and the sooner you learn your duties the better.”The same first-class boy who had previously got our dinners for us from the cook’s galley, and who, you may remember, had tried a ‘barney’ on me when he brought them, happening to be passing by at the time again, the master-at-arms hailed him.“Where are you going, my joker?” said he. “You seem to be having a good time of it!”“Jist goin’ a message fur the bosun,” stammered he. “He sent me to ax the gunner, sir, fur a copy o’ the mornin’ paper.”“That’s a bouncer,” rejoined the ‘Jaunty,’ who, no doubt, was up to such tricks. “Why, you’re going away from the gunner’s cabin and not towards it, as you very well know. You just stop here and show these new boys how to clean up the mess-table.”“Yes, sir,” replied the boy very humbly; and then a grin came over his face as he looked at the empty plates, like as the master-at-arms had done previously, asking demurely, “Shall I show ’em where to chuck the scraps, sir?”“Yes, if you can find them,” answered the ‘Jaunty’ shortly. “It strikes me, Larrikins, you’ll soon be on short allowance yourself if you don’t keep a better hold on your tongue! Let me see these mess-tables all cleared up before I come back from the wardroom, or you’ll smell powder before Six Bells, I promise you, and shan’t go ashore to-day.”This threat had the effect of sobering down our lively friend, who then put us in the way of what we were to do; and, all of us lending willing hands, we soon had the place as trim as it was before we had sat down to our dinners.After this, taking the dirty plates back to the galley, we washed all of them up in a bucket of water and restored them to their proper racks, returning to the entry-port just as the master-at-arms came sauntering back along the deck from the officers’ quarters aft.“Ha, done that job all right, I see,” said he in an approving tone. “Now, let me see what we can find for you, to keep your hands out of mischief. Corporal, have they told off any hands yet to clear the bilge?”“Yes, sir,” replied one of the ship’s corporals who had just come up the forward hatchway from the lower deck. “I jest heered the bosun givin’ orders for a gang to go down on the orlop deck.”“Then, take th’s lot of new boys with you and show them the way down. They’re almost enough to man the pumps all by themselves!”“Aye, aye, sir,” responded the corporal, turning to retrace his steps down the hatchway which he had just ascended. “Come along, my lads, follow me!”Down we all trooped accordingly, on to the lower deck, where we saw a number of the boys, who had been dismissed from quarters, busy at their various instruction drills; which we, unhappy ‘unclothed’ ones, could not participate in till we had been clad in uniform and become part and parcel of the ship’s company.Giving these the go-by, and also passing the schoolroom, leaving that astern on our starboard hand, we descended yet lower to the orlop deck, the lowest in the ship, being just above the hold where lies the ballast, and the water-tanks are stowed, as well as spare gear.Here, some twenty other boys, under the superintendence of one of the petty officers, were working away at the cranks of the Downton pumps with the energy of so many convicts on the treadmill; clink-clanking at such a rate, that one could hear the suck of the pumps and the rush of the water through the pipes, ending with a sort of gurgle at the end of the stroke!In the ‘dim religious light’ produced by a couple of ship’s lanterns hung at the head of the hatchways, widely apart, not very much could be seen of the interior, save the broad substantial deck beams and curved knees at the sides; but I noticed that the faces of two or three of the boys nearest one of these lights were streaming with perspiration, which showed that the work was “taking it out of them.”“Tail on here!” shouted out the petty officer, who seemed a rather grumpy individual, on our coming down to join the gang. “We don’t want no idlers here!”With that, Mick Donovan and I gripped the handle of one of the cranks, two others of the new boys facing us; and we soon all found our places, clink-clanking away like the rest had done before we joined in. Indeed, we couldn’t stop once we had started, but had to ‘sling on’ whether we liked it or not, the handles of the pumps keeping up their up and down motion through the action of the others; so that if we had let go, we should have got either a tidy crack under the chin, or else been tumbled over on the deck.After half-an-hour’s experience of this exhilarating labour, the petty officer sang out, “Spell ho!” and we left off the job, the pumps having sucked dry, and the bilge being thus clear for the day.We then returned up the two hatchways to the middle deck above, the boy messenger Larrikins being sent down by the direction of the master-at-arms to fetch us to be measured for our uniforms, the tailor having come aboard.The ‘snip’ did not take long over his business; for he and his assistant, after putting their tapes round us, and punching ‘Ugly,’ who would stoop, to make him really stand upright, promised that we should all have our new clothes by the following Saturday.“Hurrah!” said one of the novices near me. “I’ll then be able to go home and see mother again!”“G–a–a, cry babby!” jeered ‘Ugly.’ “Yer oughter ’a bin tied to yer mother’s aprun string!”“Begorrah!” interposed Mick Donovan, “that’s more’n ye could be afther! I doesn’t think ye’re afther havin’ a moother at all. Faith, ye’re too ugly fur inny one to own ye, save the divvle; an’ he’d be a born fool fur his pains if he did.”A laugh went round amongst us, which was only quenched by the master-at-arms singing out “Silence there!” and then; the lot of us were taken by Larrikins to the ship’s steward, who served out to each of us a hammock and a pair of blankets, part of the outfit to which all second-class boys are entitled on joining the Navy, when a grateful country makes them a present of six guineas to furnish themselves with a rig-out!Mind you, though, this sum is not allowed to be spent at the sucking seaman’s own discretion, but is laid out for him in a wardrobe of the most approved nautical type, suited alike to his wants and the requirements of the service.The afternoon, through these means, passed away so quickly, that though I was once or twice near the entry-port on the starboard side, close by to which the tailor had measured us, I declare I never once thought of looking out over the waterway to see what had become of father and his wherry; albeit, from the tide having ebbed, my outlook was now much more circumscribed than when I had come afloat in the morning, it seeming but a stone’s throw to Point; while on the port side of the ship one could almost have walked ashore, the mud flats of Haslar Creek being out in all their glory, and stretching up almost to the oldSaint Vincent’srudder-post!On account of its being Thursday, a lot of the boys were allowed ashore; and in the quiet that generally reigned, the majority of the others being occupied drilling below, the middle and upper decks were comparatively deserted, and things apparently at a standstill.At Eight Bells, however, all this was altered, the boys scuttling about to their respective messes to supper, or what we call ‘tea’ time ashore.This meal was as fairly nourishing as the dinner that was served out, each boy having ten ounces of bread, an ounce of sugar, and one-eighth of an ounce of tea, to his own cheek.Tea, you must know, is styled ‘plew’ on board, in the slang of the training-ship; possibly, through some association with the ‘sky blue’ known in the boarding-schools of shore folk.Larrikins was put by the master-at-arms to ‘show us the ropes’ in getting our supplies from the galley for this supper, as previously; and amused himself considerably at our expense, chaffing some of the new chaps about their not having “smelt such a thing as tea before,” so he hinted.“I s’pose now,” he said to Mick Donovan, whose queer description of himself had already got wind through the ship. I’m afraid from the corporal who took us to the sick-bay having ‘split’ upon him, “in your country you’d eat them tea leaves, instead o’ wettin’ on ’em, stooed in ile, same as the I-talians cook everything I’m told, hey?”“Faith, if I had ye in the ould counthry,” answered back Mick, not for a moment nonplussed, “I’d soon show ye how an Oitalian of the raal sort, loike me fayther, sor, lives! Bedad, it’s praties an’ crame we hev fur tay, sure, ivvery day in the wake!”This created a good deal of noisy merriment as we sat round the mess-table near the entry-port, causing the sharp-eared, lynx-eyed ‘Jaunty’ to spot the offender from his convenient post of observation hard by.“Be quiet there, Paddy!” he sang out, poking his head above the window-sill. “Do you think you’re in your own mud cabin in the wilds of Connemara? As for you, Larrikins, I have warned you before, and you had better keep your weather eye open, my joker!”We were all as quiet as lambs in an instant, not a sound being heard above the clatter of the cups and saucers, and the gulps made by ‘Ugly’ in swallowing his tea, that individual being as piggish in his habits as he was in his appearance; and, presently, this clatter was increased by our collecting the mess-traps after finishing our meal, when the same process of cleaning up was effected as before, everything being left as tidy in and around the vicinity of Mess Number 52 as we had found it when first installed there.From Six to Eight Bells, in the second dog-watch, the boys, I found, were allowed to skylark about the upper deck and aloft, playing ‘follow my leader’ up and down the rigging, without any interference or interruption from the officers and instructors, save when it seemed to them the larking might degenerate into horseplay.Then, it was put a slop to, so far as the particular incident was concerned, in a twinkle.Not being in uniform, I kept aloof from these mad pranks, sticking close to Mick Donovan, who I saw was ashamed of his ragged clothes, being afraid of the boys jeering him, like Larrikins.That worthy soon picked us out, though; aye, in spite of our sheltering under the lee of the bridge, and being almost concealed in the evening gloom.“S’pose yer afeerd o’ clim’in’ riggin’?”“Divvle a bit!” replied Mick in a moment. “Oi’d cloimb in a jiffey; ounly the jintleman downstairs, faith, tould us all we wasn’t.”This allusion to the ‘Jaunty’ silenced the incorrigible Larrikins for the nonce; though he sniggered at Mick saying ‘downstairs’ instead of below, as most landsmen do when new to board-ship life.The next moment, however, Master Larrikins was at it again, trying to ‘take a rise out of me,’ Mick having thus discouraged his advances in that direction.“You’ll be havin’ orful times when yer goes aloft,” he said, in a sort of awesome tone meant to frighten me. “I’ve bin up theer on the main crosstrees when yer jist couldn’t ’old yer ’air on yer ’ead, let alone ’oldin’ on with one ’and fur yerself and t’other for the Navy.”“Stow that,” said I, laughing in his face. “Why, I’ve been up to the main truck of a line-o’-battle ship before to-day and am not afraid of climbing! I’m not strange to the sea, my smart chap, let me tell you. My father, though he’s a waterman now, is an old sailor, and has taught me pretty well all he learnt.”“Aye, aye, that’s right enuff; but ’earin of it an’ a-seein’ it’s two different things. You jist wait till yer gets to sea and ain’t a-plying bark’ards and forruds in Porchmouth ’arbour. My stars, won’t yer be flummuxed then.”“Don’t you believe it,” I retorted. “I’ve been to sea, I tell you, before to-day.”“Oh aye, that’s right enuff; but there’s goin’ to sea, an’ goin’ to sea. Lor! Yer ’aven’t ever bin out in theMartinbrig, have yer, now?”“No, of course not,” I replied. “I’ve only just joined the service, I tell you.”“Ah, you jist wait then,” said he, taking this observation of mine for a fresh lead. “I wer’ out once, I tells yer, in the brig when the sea wos mountings ’igh, an’ the wind—Lor’! Yer shood ’a ’errd it blow! It took the mizzen to’s’le right clean out of ’er; an’ there wos four on us at the wheel, ay, ’sides old Jellybelly.”“Why,” I exclaimed, “who is he?”“The quarter-master, in course,” rejoined Larrikins indignantly. “Where wos yer raised not fur to know that afore? He allers goes by that name aboard ship, as everybody knows.”He was proceeding to tell me some thrilling and highly adventurous experiences he had had in the Channel and off the Isle of Wight, out on the autumn cruise in the training-brig, when the bugle sounded, and the boys all mustered at quarters before turning in for the night.Staying on the upper deck for a time, Mick Donovan and I witnessed the mad race which presently took place on the order being given to sling hammocks; each boy scurrying to the nettings and hurrying below, hammock under arm, to rig up the same in the billet allotted to him on the lower deck.Ere long, the idea struck both Mick and myself, almost simultaneously, that it was high time for us to think of our sleeping accommodation for the night; and so, we hurried down at the tail end of the crowd of other fellows, to seek the aid of our old friend the master-at-arms, the ‘Deus ex machina’ of our hopes and fears.Our new hammocks had been left in the police office of the ship under his immediate eye; so, on ascertaining the doubt that harassed our minds anent the night-lodging question, the ‘Jaunty,’ as heretofore, solved the difficulty at once by saying that we were to sling our hammocks on the middle deck, adjacent to the mess-place where we had dined and supped so sumptuously. Just then, as luck would have it, Larrikins, our old cicerone, came up abreast of where we were standing.“Hi there!” sang out the master-at-arms. “Come and show these boys how to sling their hammocks.”“Yes, sir,” replied Larrikins, with a scrape and a touch of his cap. “Werry good, sir.”So saying, he set about knotting the lanyard of Irish Mick’s hammock; and, after slinging it from the hooks in the deck beams, over the mess-table where the famished lad had enjoyed such a rare ‘tuck out’ that day, Larrikins went on to explain how the blankets should be ‘tucked in’ to the frail structure and wrapped round the occupant, so as to prevent him from tumbling out, which Larrikins declared, almost with tears in his eyes, he should deeply regret were such a catastrophe to occur.“Lor’,” he asseverated, “I’d never forgive myself—strike me silly if I would!”“Faith an’ sure, is it ai’ther expectin’ me now for to schlape in that thare outlandish consarn yez are?” exclaimed Mick, to whom a hammock was an entire novelty. “It’s jokin’, faith, ye are entirely, sure!”However, after, like ‘vaulting ambition,’ overleaping himself when trying to jump into his unaccustomed bed-place, falling, equally unceremoniously, ‘on t’other side,’ Mick succeeded in ensconcing himself very comfortably in his hammock.Now came my turn, my friend Larrikins being even more obsequious in his aid to me than to Mick.The result amply justified his solicitude, for, although I managed to jump in all right, and even to go to sleep presently soundly enough, wearied out with all the excitement of the day, I was in the midst of a terrible dream, in which I thought I was at sea in theMartinbrig, in a fearful tempest, with the waters overwhelming us, and the vessel on the point of foundering, when I was awakened by a crash that seemed to resound through the ship, and then I’m sure I saw more stars than were ever seen by mortal in the bright blue firmament of heaven!I had been ‘cut down,’ as the nautical phrase goes.

After dinner, which, by the way, my friend Mick Donovan appeared to enjoy mightily, not having had a decent meal for more than a month past, as he confessed to me afterwards, the bugle loudly sounded the ‘assembly,’ when all the boys below came rushing up the hatchway near us, trooping onwards by the ladder above to the upper deck. They jostled and shoved past each other, I thought, as if Old Nick were after them, none wishing to occupy the unenviable position of last man, or rather boy.

There wore eight other new boys in addition to us three, the latest of the novices, who had joined the ship that morning; and, although we all rose up from the mess-table, where we had very satisfactorily polished off our dinners in company, the lot of us hung together about the spot, not knowing what to do, or where we should go.

We were, besides, pretty well confused with all the bustle and hurry, and scurry catch-me-who-can business, going on around us.

It seemed, indeed, to bewilder even ‘Ugly,’ free and easy chap as he appeared to be.

Our friend the master-at-arms, however, solved the difficulty for us before we were many minutes older, as you will see.

“Ha, my lads!” said he, advancing towards us from the office with the glass windows, through which he could overhaul all that was going on on deck, and where he probably had been enjoying his own meal on the quiet; “got through your dinners, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” we shouted in chorus, Mick Donovan adding a very appropriate grace, which most of us had forgotten. “Thanks be to God, yer ’anner!”

“Ah, I needn’t have asked the question,” said the ‘Jaunty’ to this, glancing meaningly at the empty plates that littered the table, not a scrap or a crumb being left by any of us. “But now, my lads, you must set to work to pay for your grub. Here, look sharp and clear up! We always have things shipshape aboard here, and the sooner you learn your duties the better.”

The same first-class boy who had previously got our dinners for us from the cook’s galley, and who, you may remember, had tried a ‘barney’ on me when he brought them, happening to be passing by at the time again, the master-at-arms hailed him.

“Where are you going, my joker?” said he. “You seem to be having a good time of it!”

“Jist goin’ a message fur the bosun,” stammered he. “He sent me to ax the gunner, sir, fur a copy o’ the mornin’ paper.”

“That’s a bouncer,” rejoined the ‘Jaunty,’ who, no doubt, was up to such tricks. “Why, you’re going away from the gunner’s cabin and not towards it, as you very well know. You just stop here and show these new boys how to clean up the mess-table.”

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy very humbly; and then a grin came over his face as he looked at the empty plates, like as the master-at-arms had done previously, asking demurely, “Shall I show ’em where to chuck the scraps, sir?”

“Yes, if you can find them,” answered the ‘Jaunty’ shortly. “It strikes me, Larrikins, you’ll soon be on short allowance yourself if you don’t keep a better hold on your tongue! Let me see these mess-tables all cleared up before I come back from the wardroom, or you’ll smell powder before Six Bells, I promise you, and shan’t go ashore to-day.”

This threat had the effect of sobering down our lively friend, who then put us in the way of what we were to do; and, all of us lending willing hands, we soon had the place as trim as it was before we had sat down to our dinners.

After this, taking the dirty plates back to the galley, we washed all of them up in a bucket of water and restored them to their proper racks, returning to the entry-port just as the master-at-arms came sauntering back along the deck from the officers’ quarters aft.

“Ha, done that job all right, I see,” said he in an approving tone. “Now, let me see what we can find for you, to keep your hands out of mischief. Corporal, have they told off any hands yet to clear the bilge?”

“Yes, sir,” replied one of the ship’s corporals who had just come up the forward hatchway from the lower deck. “I jest heered the bosun givin’ orders for a gang to go down on the orlop deck.”

“Then, take th’s lot of new boys with you and show them the way down. They’re almost enough to man the pumps all by themselves!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” responded the corporal, turning to retrace his steps down the hatchway which he had just ascended. “Come along, my lads, follow me!”

Down we all trooped accordingly, on to the lower deck, where we saw a number of the boys, who had been dismissed from quarters, busy at their various instruction drills; which we, unhappy ‘unclothed’ ones, could not participate in till we had been clad in uniform and become part and parcel of the ship’s company.

Giving these the go-by, and also passing the schoolroom, leaving that astern on our starboard hand, we descended yet lower to the orlop deck, the lowest in the ship, being just above the hold where lies the ballast, and the water-tanks are stowed, as well as spare gear.

Here, some twenty other boys, under the superintendence of one of the petty officers, were working away at the cranks of the Downton pumps with the energy of so many convicts on the treadmill; clink-clanking at such a rate, that one could hear the suck of the pumps and the rush of the water through the pipes, ending with a sort of gurgle at the end of the stroke!

In the ‘dim religious light’ produced by a couple of ship’s lanterns hung at the head of the hatchways, widely apart, not very much could be seen of the interior, save the broad substantial deck beams and curved knees at the sides; but I noticed that the faces of two or three of the boys nearest one of these lights were streaming with perspiration, which showed that the work was “taking it out of them.”

“Tail on here!” shouted out the petty officer, who seemed a rather grumpy individual, on our coming down to join the gang. “We don’t want no idlers here!”

With that, Mick Donovan and I gripped the handle of one of the cranks, two others of the new boys facing us; and we soon all found our places, clink-clanking away like the rest had done before we joined in. Indeed, we couldn’t stop once we had started, but had to ‘sling on’ whether we liked it or not, the handles of the pumps keeping up their up and down motion through the action of the others; so that if we had let go, we should have got either a tidy crack under the chin, or else been tumbled over on the deck.

After half-an-hour’s experience of this exhilarating labour, the petty officer sang out, “Spell ho!” and we left off the job, the pumps having sucked dry, and the bilge being thus clear for the day.

We then returned up the two hatchways to the middle deck above, the boy messenger Larrikins being sent down by the direction of the master-at-arms to fetch us to be measured for our uniforms, the tailor having come aboard.

The ‘snip’ did not take long over his business; for he and his assistant, after putting their tapes round us, and punching ‘Ugly,’ who would stoop, to make him really stand upright, promised that we should all have our new clothes by the following Saturday.

“Hurrah!” said one of the novices near me. “I’ll then be able to go home and see mother again!”

“G–a–a, cry babby!” jeered ‘Ugly.’ “Yer oughter ’a bin tied to yer mother’s aprun string!”

“Begorrah!” interposed Mick Donovan, “that’s more’n ye could be afther! I doesn’t think ye’re afther havin’ a moother at all. Faith, ye’re too ugly fur inny one to own ye, save the divvle; an’ he’d be a born fool fur his pains if he did.”

A laugh went round amongst us, which was only quenched by the master-at-arms singing out “Silence there!” and then; the lot of us were taken by Larrikins to the ship’s steward, who served out to each of us a hammock and a pair of blankets, part of the outfit to which all second-class boys are entitled on joining the Navy, when a grateful country makes them a present of six guineas to furnish themselves with a rig-out!

Mind you, though, this sum is not allowed to be spent at the sucking seaman’s own discretion, but is laid out for him in a wardrobe of the most approved nautical type, suited alike to his wants and the requirements of the service.

The afternoon, through these means, passed away so quickly, that though I was once or twice near the entry-port on the starboard side, close by to which the tailor had measured us, I declare I never once thought of looking out over the waterway to see what had become of father and his wherry; albeit, from the tide having ebbed, my outlook was now much more circumscribed than when I had come afloat in the morning, it seeming but a stone’s throw to Point; while on the port side of the ship one could almost have walked ashore, the mud flats of Haslar Creek being out in all their glory, and stretching up almost to the oldSaint Vincent’srudder-post!

On account of its being Thursday, a lot of the boys were allowed ashore; and in the quiet that generally reigned, the majority of the others being occupied drilling below, the middle and upper decks were comparatively deserted, and things apparently at a standstill.

At Eight Bells, however, all this was altered, the boys scuttling about to their respective messes to supper, or what we call ‘tea’ time ashore.

This meal was as fairly nourishing as the dinner that was served out, each boy having ten ounces of bread, an ounce of sugar, and one-eighth of an ounce of tea, to his own cheek.

Tea, you must know, is styled ‘plew’ on board, in the slang of the training-ship; possibly, through some association with the ‘sky blue’ known in the boarding-schools of shore folk.

Larrikins was put by the master-at-arms to ‘show us the ropes’ in getting our supplies from the galley for this supper, as previously; and amused himself considerably at our expense, chaffing some of the new chaps about their not having “smelt such a thing as tea before,” so he hinted.

“I s’pose now,” he said to Mick Donovan, whose queer description of himself had already got wind through the ship. I’m afraid from the corporal who took us to the sick-bay having ‘split’ upon him, “in your country you’d eat them tea leaves, instead o’ wettin’ on ’em, stooed in ile, same as the I-talians cook everything I’m told, hey?”

“Faith, if I had ye in the ould counthry,” answered back Mick, not for a moment nonplussed, “I’d soon show ye how an Oitalian of the raal sort, loike me fayther, sor, lives! Bedad, it’s praties an’ crame we hev fur tay, sure, ivvery day in the wake!”

This created a good deal of noisy merriment as we sat round the mess-table near the entry-port, causing the sharp-eared, lynx-eyed ‘Jaunty’ to spot the offender from his convenient post of observation hard by.

“Be quiet there, Paddy!” he sang out, poking his head above the window-sill. “Do you think you’re in your own mud cabin in the wilds of Connemara? As for you, Larrikins, I have warned you before, and you had better keep your weather eye open, my joker!”

We were all as quiet as lambs in an instant, not a sound being heard above the clatter of the cups and saucers, and the gulps made by ‘Ugly’ in swallowing his tea, that individual being as piggish in his habits as he was in his appearance; and, presently, this clatter was increased by our collecting the mess-traps after finishing our meal, when the same process of cleaning up was effected as before, everything being left as tidy in and around the vicinity of Mess Number 52 as we had found it when first installed there.

From Six to Eight Bells, in the second dog-watch, the boys, I found, were allowed to skylark about the upper deck and aloft, playing ‘follow my leader’ up and down the rigging, without any interference or interruption from the officers and instructors, save when it seemed to them the larking might degenerate into horseplay.

Then, it was put a slop to, so far as the particular incident was concerned, in a twinkle.

Not being in uniform, I kept aloof from these mad pranks, sticking close to Mick Donovan, who I saw was ashamed of his ragged clothes, being afraid of the boys jeering him, like Larrikins.

That worthy soon picked us out, though; aye, in spite of our sheltering under the lee of the bridge, and being almost concealed in the evening gloom.

“S’pose yer afeerd o’ clim’in’ riggin’?”

“Divvle a bit!” replied Mick in a moment. “Oi’d cloimb in a jiffey; ounly the jintleman downstairs, faith, tould us all we wasn’t.”

This allusion to the ‘Jaunty’ silenced the incorrigible Larrikins for the nonce; though he sniggered at Mick saying ‘downstairs’ instead of below, as most landsmen do when new to board-ship life.

The next moment, however, Master Larrikins was at it again, trying to ‘take a rise out of me,’ Mick having thus discouraged his advances in that direction.

“You’ll be havin’ orful times when yer goes aloft,” he said, in a sort of awesome tone meant to frighten me. “I’ve bin up theer on the main crosstrees when yer jist couldn’t ’old yer ’air on yer ’ead, let alone ’oldin’ on with one ’and fur yerself and t’other for the Navy.”

“Stow that,” said I, laughing in his face. “Why, I’ve been up to the main truck of a line-o’-battle ship before to-day and am not afraid of climbing! I’m not strange to the sea, my smart chap, let me tell you. My father, though he’s a waterman now, is an old sailor, and has taught me pretty well all he learnt.”

“Aye, aye, that’s right enuff; but ’earin of it an’ a-seein’ it’s two different things. You jist wait till yer gets to sea and ain’t a-plying bark’ards and forruds in Porchmouth ’arbour. My stars, won’t yer be flummuxed then.”

“Don’t you believe it,” I retorted. “I’ve been to sea, I tell you, before to-day.”

“Oh aye, that’s right enuff; but there’s goin’ to sea, an’ goin’ to sea. Lor! Yer ’aven’t ever bin out in theMartinbrig, have yer, now?”

“No, of course not,” I replied. “I’ve only just joined the service, I tell you.”

“Ah, you jist wait then,” said he, taking this observation of mine for a fresh lead. “I wer’ out once, I tells yer, in the brig when the sea wos mountings ’igh, an’ the wind—Lor’! Yer shood ’a ’errd it blow! It took the mizzen to’s’le right clean out of ’er; an’ there wos four on us at the wheel, ay, ’sides old Jellybelly.”

“Why,” I exclaimed, “who is he?”

“The quarter-master, in course,” rejoined Larrikins indignantly. “Where wos yer raised not fur to know that afore? He allers goes by that name aboard ship, as everybody knows.”

He was proceeding to tell me some thrilling and highly adventurous experiences he had had in the Channel and off the Isle of Wight, out on the autumn cruise in the training-brig, when the bugle sounded, and the boys all mustered at quarters before turning in for the night.

Staying on the upper deck for a time, Mick Donovan and I witnessed the mad race which presently took place on the order being given to sling hammocks; each boy scurrying to the nettings and hurrying below, hammock under arm, to rig up the same in the billet allotted to him on the lower deck.

Ere long, the idea struck both Mick and myself, almost simultaneously, that it was high time for us to think of our sleeping accommodation for the night; and so, we hurried down at the tail end of the crowd of other fellows, to seek the aid of our old friend the master-at-arms, the ‘Deus ex machina’ of our hopes and fears.

Our new hammocks had been left in the police office of the ship under his immediate eye; so, on ascertaining the doubt that harassed our minds anent the night-lodging question, the ‘Jaunty,’ as heretofore, solved the difficulty at once by saying that we were to sling our hammocks on the middle deck, adjacent to the mess-place where we had dined and supped so sumptuously. Just then, as luck would have it, Larrikins, our old cicerone, came up abreast of where we were standing.

“Hi there!” sang out the master-at-arms. “Come and show these boys how to sling their hammocks.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Larrikins, with a scrape and a touch of his cap. “Werry good, sir.”

So saying, he set about knotting the lanyard of Irish Mick’s hammock; and, after slinging it from the hooks in the deck beams, over the mess-table where the famished lad had enjoyed such a rare ‘tuck out’ that day, Larrikins went on to explain how the blankets should be ‘tucked in’ to the frail structure and wrapped round the occupant, so as to prevent him from tumbling out, which Larrikins declared, almost with tears in his eyes, he should deeply regret were such a catastrophe to occur.

“Lor’,” he asseverated, “I’d never forgive myself—strike me silly if I would!”

“Faith an’ sure, is it ai’ther expectin’ me now for to schlape in that thare outlandish consarn yez are?” exclaimed Mick, to whom a hammock was an entire novelty. “It’s jokin’, faith, ye are entirely, sure!”

However, after, like ‘vaulting ambition,’ overleaping himself when trying to jump into his unaccustomed bed-place, falling, equally unceremoniously, ‘on t’other side,’ Mick succeeded in ensconcing himself very comfortably in his hammock.

Now came my turn, my friend Larrikins being even more obsequious in his aid to me than to Mick.

The result amply justified his solicitude, for, although I managed to jump in all right, and even to go to sleep presently soundly enough, wearied out with all the excitement of the day, I was in the midst of a terrible dream, in which I thought I was at sea in theMartinbrig, in a fearful tempest, with the waters overwhelming us, and the vessel on the point of foundering, when I was awakened by a crash that seemed to resound through the ship, and then I’m sure I saw more stars than were ever seen by mortal in the bright blue firmament of heaven!

I had been ‘cut down,’ as the nautical phrase goes.

Chapter Five.Boxing the Compass.Sudden as had been my downfall, I was sufficiently awake, after the first momentary giddiness caused by the sharp crack with which my head came against the deck had passed away, to have a shrewd idea as to who had brought about my sad calamity; the giggling and whispering, that went on around, in the semi-darkness, telling me, had I needed any such assurance, that my fall was due to no accident.“Hullo, my joker!” I sang out, recognising the voice of Larrikins as I fumbled about amongst the blankets and loose hammock cloth, feeling very much as if I were tightly tied up in a sack, part of the lanyard having taken a round turn round my neck. “I say, you first-class boy, there! You with the mug on you like a vegetable marrow! Wait till to-morrow morning and I’ll serve you out for this—see if I don’t!”“Lor’, yer doesn’t mean fur to say as how ye’ve gone a downer?” cried my tormentor, in a tone of great commiseration, lending a hand to extricate me from the folds of the blankets. “I never seed a chap go down so suddink. Lor’! Yer must hev made a slippery hitch when yer fastened up the end on yer lanyard to the hook. Lor’, I am that orful sorry!”“Oh yes,” said I, shaking myself free from the last of my encumbrances and standing up erect, “you can just tell that to the marines!”I was not, however, at all out of temper, having learnt long since from my father, even were I not fond of a bit of practical-joking myself, not to take umbrage at the skylarking of any of my comrades on board ship where no malice was really intended. As he told me, the more a fellow shows he’s ‘riled,’ the more his shipmates ever will tease him.“If you want to have a happy life at sea, Tom,” said he, “you must always bear everything good-humouredly—everything; aye, should you tumble from aloft and risk losing the number of your mess into the bargain!”Hearing the row and the sound of our talking after ‘lights out!’ had been called, one of the ship’s corporals came up with a lantern to see what was the matter; and he at once spotted Master Larrikins.“Hi, young feller!” said he to that arch-conspirator; “what are you doing here? How’s it you haven’t turned in on the lower deck, in your proper billet?”“The master-at-arms told me, sir, as how I wer fur to see as these novices wos slung their hammicks propingly,” replied Larrikins glibly. “An’ I wer jist a-seein’ to do it, sir.”“Aye, and a precious fine way you have done it, too!” rejoined the ship’s corporal, whose face I could clearly see by the light of his own lantern had a broad and beaming grin on it, as he proceeded to inspect the lashings now of my hammock, the foot-end of which was still attached to its hook in the deck beam. “Why, you’ve been and activally gone and triced the poor beggar up with a bit of spunyarn. No wonder he come down all standing on his cocoanut!”The other fellows near me had wakened up by this, and there was a good snigger all round; until the ship’s corporal, having rigged up my hammock again in the way it should have been rightly done at first, with a double turn of the lanyard round the hook, shoved me in and kindly tucked my blankets round me, before going off to complete his rounds; telling us, as he disappeared forwards in the darkness, that if we did not “keep quiet for the rest of the night we’d each get ‘four dozen’ on the quarter-deck next day, besides being spread-eagled in the weather rigging as a caution to all novices about to join the ship!”This warning, uttered in a deep, sepulchral voice, no doubt awed most of the new boys, but it only made me laugh to myself, as I was pretty well up to such ‘barney’; and, with little dread of any penalties in store—though for that matter there was not much that could be said against me, for I certainly had not tried the strength or the softness of the ship’s planks of my own free-will—I cuddled into my hammock and went to sleep as soundly as if I were in my own old bed at home, in spite of the snoring and choking noises made in his dreams by that ugly chap Moses Reeks, who occupied the next hammock to mine.“Whe-e-e-e-e! Who-e-o-e-o! Whe-eep!”So the boatswain’s whistle rang out through the ship with a shrill iteration that pierced my ears in the fresh and chilly air next morning, awaking me, if possible, in even yet more startling fashion than Larrikins’ successful trick of the previous evening.“Whee-e-ah! Whee-e-ah!”There it was again; and, should this not be sufficient to disturb the slumbers of heavy sleepers, the sharp boatswain’s pipe was supplemented by the hoarse shouts of his ‘mates’ up and down the hatchways far and near, a very legion of voices!“Rouse out! Rouse out! Rouse out! Show a leg.”I really thought the nor’-east wind had brought up a great haul with the flood-tide, and that innumerable costers were calling out some strange fish in the streets round Bonfire Corner; while our white cockatoo, ‘Ally Sloper,’ was having a bit of fun with himself and mother by imitating the cry!Presently, though, a rough shake of my hammock and the hail of one of the boatswain’s mates close by me told a different tale.“Here, out of this, my lad!” said he, giving a twist to the swinging concern that landed me on the deck in a twinkling. “You can’t stop there snoozing any longer! Don’t you see the sun is scorching your eyes out?”He had a good deal of imagination, had that man; for it would have puzzled the ‘Philadelphia lawyer,’ whom father was so fond of quoting, to have discovered the ghost of a ray of sunlight this cold, foggy, February morning at Four Bells!The rest of the novices—there being, as you know, ten other ‘unclothed’ boys besides myself—had been roughly aroused in like fashion; and to a by-stander all of us must have looked a forlorn lot of shivering creatures, adrift there on the cheerless deck in the half light of early day, not knowing what to do with ourselves until somebody told us what to do and bearing, I fancy, a strikingly strong resemblance to a flock of lambs in some strange pasture deserted by their dams!I make a mistake there, however, for the muttered growling exclamations I heard uttered by one of the warrant-officers, who came past where we stood clustered together, certainly sounded uncommonly like the name of the lambs’ mothers I have just mentioned, showing that its ‘eidolon’ remained.The observation made by this officer, who, to my surprise, I subsequently found was the boatswain, brought our old police friend, the master-at-arms, on the scene.“Here, boys,” said he to us, “you must bestir yourselves, and not stand star-gazing there, like so many country bumpkins at a fair! Tom Bowling, if you’re the son of your father, you ought to know that you’ve got to unsling your hammock when the ‘lash up and stow’ is sounded! And you, too, my Irish-Italian friend over there, roll up your hammock, my lad!”“Sure, an’ is it manin’ me yez afther?” inquired Mick Donovan, unhitching the lanyard of his hammock from the hook above in a brace of shakes. “Faith, it’s makin’ a rowly-powly puddin’ of it I will, sor, entirely!”The ‘Jaunty’ grinned at Mick’s naïve remark, but soon mastered the difficulty of teaching us by passing the job on to other hands.“Ah, perhaps you’d better ‘go through the ropes,’ my lads, properly, and begin at once at your ‘bag and hammock drill,’ as all new boys should; though sometimes, they wait till they get uniforms first,” said he, hailing, as he spoke, one of the first-class boys standing by the police office, detailed to act as messengers, like our friend Larrikins. “Boy, there! See if you can find one of the instructors handy, and tell him, with my compliments, I should like to see him for a minute!”“Yes, sir,” replied this chap, saluting. “I seed Mister Saunders by the fore-hatchway jist now.”“He’ll do,” said the master-at-arms. “Carry on, my lad. Look sharp!”The next instant, back came the boy with one of the instructors in his wake, a stalwart seaman, dressed in the usual bluejacket rig, with a petty officer’s badge.“These boys here, Mr Saunders,” said the master-at-arms, pointing us out with a collective sweep of his long brawny arm, “are all novices, who came aboard yesterday, and don’t know what to do with themselves till they join the ship’s company. Hadn’t they better pass their ‘bag and hammock’ while waiting for their rig, instead of loafing about here? Mr Gadgett, the bo’sun, was complaining just now of their taking up all the fairway of the deck, and told me I must get rid of them from here somehow or the other!”“All right,” responded the seaman-instructor to this suggestion of the master-at-arms; and, turning to us, he said, “Take up your hammocks, my lads, and follow me down to the lower deck. You’ll have a practical lesson in seeing how your shipmates do it, lads. We’re just in time!”We were, barely so; for, as we passed down the hatchway from the middle deck to the lower region he had previously indicated, it was hard work for us to shove by the surging crowd of boys who were hurrying up, each with his hammock neatly made up and lashed in the regulation form, to be stowed in the nettings on top of the bulwarks amidships the upper deck, according to nautical routine.Some, however, were slower at the work, and, taking stock of these, in obedience to the instructor’s orders, I got a very fair notion of how the thing was done; the more especially, as father had shown me the way he used to lash up his hammock in the old days when he was at sea, by the aid of a biscuit bag and a piece of string.But our instructor was not satisfied by our now having mere ocular demonstration and doing nothing further; not he. On the contrary, he took us up to make another requisition on the ship’s steward for our regular kit, which was promptly served out to us; and all the morning, after a good breakfast, which made Mick Donovan open his eyes wider than ordinarily and stare like a stockfish, consisting as it did of cold salt pork and bread, with some splendid hot cocoa, that was more like chocolate, and such as he had never tasted before, we were kept hard at it till the ‘assembly’ was bugled out before dinner—going through the details of ‘bag and hammock drill’ seriatim, from the initiatory stage of plaiting the ends of the ‘nettles’ to lashing it up with the specified number of turns.We new boys returned to Number 52 Mess on the middle deck for dinner, when ‘cooks to their messes’ was sounded.Our meal this day, it being a Friday, was of a different kind, though quite as substantial as we had experienced on the previous day; a well-piled plate of beef and potatoes being allotted to each of us by the presiding genius of the galley, the sight of which viands made our mouths water.“Lor’, it ain’t much to holler about!” exclaimed the fastidious Larrikins, on Mick rubbing his hands at seeing those appetising viands; while ‘Ugly’ cried out joyously, on noticing his mealy mass of potatoes, “Them’s the raal jockeys fur I,” thus paraphrasing the remark of a once celebrated millionaire possessed of much lucre but boasting of little conversational power, when at a state banquet, “Why, we only calls this aboard ‘two spuds and a Jonah!’”“I can see the ‘spuds’ all right,” said I; “but where’s the Jonah?”“That be the bone, silly!”With which withering rejoinder, Larrikins left us to enjoy ourselves with the food he contemned; though he probably went away to make a hearty dinner off the same at his own mess on the deck below, where his division “hung out.”Nothing further of any note occurred during the afternoon to mar the harmony or vary the monotony of our ‘bag and hammock drill,’ at which we were religiously kept up to the time to leave off work; when we enjoyed again our tea-supper, and skylarked afterwards till it was time to ‘turn in,’ which we managed to do now more comfortably as well as expeditiously than on the night before; while, I may add, my dreams happily were not disturbed by any storms and thunder-claps of that imp Larrikins’ contrivance.The next day, Saturday, it was a case of ‘wash and scrub decks,’ and wash and scrub everything, I think, from early morning till dewy eve.A very ‘dewy’ eve it was, too, if dampness made it so; but if one did feel wet and miserable, as I confess I was, the remembrance it brought back to my mind of my mother’s house-cleaning at home being almost too vivid to be pleasant, still, everybody on board had the satisfaction of knowing that the ship was as smart as holystone and sand could make her, from upper deck to keelson, I verily believe!I was none the less miserable, either, the following morning, when all the boys were rigged out in their best and inspected by the captain; for the tailor, true to the character of all ‘snips’ since the days when Adam started in that line with his fig-leaf costume, never sent on board, as he promised, the uniforms of us unfortunate novices, so we could neither make a decent appearance with the rest of our comrades, nor have permission to go ashore—‘unclothed’ scarecrows, as some of us were, would have seemed queer fish to come from a well-ordered ship.On Monday, however, all things were made right in this respect; and, having satisfactorily passed ‘bag and hammock drill,’ the test of our novitiate, I and my fellow-unfortunates became not only clad like our fellows, but were enrolled amongst the rest of the second-class boys, and appointed to our proper place in the ship.My number being 2799, through some occult system of nautical numeration, I was detailed to the ‘Third,’ or second starboard, division of the ship’s company; so I joined mess Number 38, which was on the port side on the lower deck, the first one aft of the schoolroom.I also proceeded a day or two after, being thenceforth regarded as a neophyte no longer, to take part in all the regular drills of the ship, and one morning, subsequent to breakfast, underwent that rudimentary stage of seamanship styled ‘boxing the compass’—though I might have really told the painstaking instructor, who painfully and ploddingly laboured to instil the cardinal points into my head as if I were an ignoramus, that I not only knew the ‘lubber’s point’ probably as well as he did, but could, on a pinch, have conned the ship in and out of Portsmouth Harbour!This ‘boxing the compass’ business, though, brought me to loggerheads with that brute ‘Ugly’ somehow or other, strangely enough.I don’t know how it was, but from the moment, I believe, I first cast eyes on his singularly unprepossessing face, Moses Reeks had been my special antipathy!It was not so much that he said anything to me or of me, as from the fact of his always ‘putting it on’ poor Mick Donovan, for whom I entertained as great a liking as I disliked the other.‘Ugly’ was always snarling at my chum, and ever giving him a chance kick or blow, should he be able to do so unobserved and without being directly taxed with it; though, of course, he would deny it if observed by any of the other boys, being an unmitigated liar, in addition to having a sour and vindictive disposition.That very morning I noticed him deliberately stamp on poor Mick’s bare toes with all the weight of his big heavy foot, as we were coming down the hatchway from early ‘divisions’; and when I spoke to him about it he said coldly he “hadn’t done nuthin’ of the sort!”I knew this was an untruth; but I bided my time, judiciously watching for an opportunity to pay him out.This came sooner than I expected; for during our compass lesson I managed to get him into a fog about the points which the instructor was explaining, drawing down on my joker the wrath and outspoken opprobrium of that officer.‘Ugly’ noted this, and in his turn bided his time.The watch was dismissed, and the ‘stand by’ had been bugled before quarters, preparatory to our being dispersed for dinner; when ‘Ugly’ nudged me as we passed up the hatchway together, coming much closer to me than I liked, the very touch of the unclean brute being obnoxious to me.“Wot d’yer mean by comin’ the barney over me and a-makin’ that codger of a kinstructor bullyrag me afore all the t’other chaps fur?”“What do you mean, Reeks?” said I, in reply to this, returning his nudge with a good dig from the bony knob of my elbow in his ribs, and knocking the wind pretty well-nigh out of him. “You jumped on poor Mick Donovan’s bare foot this morning, and now you try to shove me!”“Oh!” he exclaimed, as we emerged on the upper deck, where our division had by now already partly assembled on the starboard side, forward; “that be it, mister?”“Yes,” said I, as I slipped into my place near Mick, “that’s it!”After ‘divisions,’ when the other boys were rushing down below to their messes to dinner, the bugle-call for which was braying out its cheerful sounds, I stopped behind on the upper deck, as did “Ugly.”“Sure an’ what are ye stoppin’ fur, Tom, mabouchal?” said Mick to me in surprise. “Begorrah, I can smill the mate alriddy, an’, faith, the praties, too! I can say their smilin’ faces bickonin’ to me an’ sayin’, ‘Coom an’ ate me!’”“I’m not coming yet,” I replied, in a more serious tone than Mick evidently expected. “I’ve got some business with this chap here.”‘Ugly’ overheard me, as I intended he should.“Hay,” said he, “did yer speak to Oi?”“Hay is meant for horses and asses,” I answered drily, with a grin; “and if you be one of them latter, as I think, and so does Mick here I know, why, I did refer to you!”“Want ter fight?”“Yes,” I said, launching out my fist straight towards his bullet head and giving him a cropper on the mouth that sent him tumbling backwards on the deck, all of a heap; “I do.”‘Ugly’ rose slowly to his feet, his face streaming with blood; and he was just about making a rush at me like a mad bull at a gate, while I put myself in a posture of defence in proper pugilistic fashion, when an interruption, though but of a temporary character, came to these proceedings.The ubiquitous Larrikins was the intervener.“Lor’, you be green ’uns!” he cried, sinking his voice to a cautious pitch. “Don’t you fight here; why, the ‘crushers’ will nab yer afore yer can strike a blow comfortably! If fight yer must, coom up here on the fo’c’s’le, and then you can fight away theer to yer ’art’s content, without nobody not a-hinterfeerin’ with yer!”

Sudden as had been my downfall, I was sufficiently awake, after the first momentary giddiness caused by the sharp crack with which my head came against the deck had passed away, to have a shrewd idea as to who had brought about my sad calamity; the giggling and whispering, that went on around, in the semi-darkness, telling me, had I needed any such assurance, that my fall was due to no accident.

“Hullo, my joker!” I sang out, recognising the voice of Larrikins as I fumbled about amongst the blankets and loose hammock cloth, feeling very much as if I were tightly tied up in a sack, part of the lanyard having taken a round turn round my neck. “I say, you first-class boy, there! You with the mug on you like a vegetable marrow! Wait till to-morrow morning and I’ll serve you out for this—see if I don’t!”

“Lor’, yer doesn’t mean fur to say as how ye’ve gone a downer?” cried my tormentor, in a tone of great commiseration, lending a hand to extricate me from the folds of the blankets. “I never seed a chap go down so suddink. Lor’! Yer must hev made a slippery hitch when yer fastened up the end on yer lanyard to the hook. Lor’, I am that orful sorry!”

“Oh yes,” said I, shaking myself free from the last of my encumbrances and standing up erect, “you can just tell that to the marines!”

I was not, however, at all out of temper, having learnt long since from my father, even were I not fond of a bit of practical-joking myself, not to take umbrage at the skylarking of any of my comrades on board ship where no malice was really intended. As he told me, the more a fellow shows he’s ‘riled,’ the more his shipmates ever will tease him.

“If you want to have a happy life at sea, Tom,” said he, “you must always bear everything good-humouredly—everything; aye, should you tumble from aloft and risk losing the number of your mess into the bargain!”

Hearing the row and the sound of our talking after ‘lights out!’ had been called, one of the ship’s corporals came up with a lantern to see what was the matter; and he at once spotted Master Larrikins.

“Hi, young feller!” said he to that arch-conspirator; “what are you doing here? How’s it you haven’t turned in on the lower deck, in your proper billet?”

“The master-at-arms told me, sir, as how I wer fur to see as these novices wos slung their hammicks propingly,” replied Larrikins glibly. “An’ I wer jist a-seein’ to do it, sir.”

“Aye, and a precious fine way you have done it, too!” rejoined the ship’s corporal, whose face I could clearly see by the light of his own lantern had a broad and beaming grin on it, as he proceeded to inspect the lashings now of my hammock, the foot-end of which was still attached to its hook in the deck beam. “Why, you’ve been and activally gone and triced the poor beggar up with a bit of spunyarn. No wonder he come down all standing on his cocoanut!”

The other fellows near me had wakened up by this, and there was a good snigger all round; until the ship’s corporal, having rigged up my hammock again in the way it should have been rightly done at first, with a double turn of the lanyard round the hook, shoved me in and kindly tucked my blankets round me, before going off to complete his rounds; telling us, as he disappeared forwards in the darkness, that if we did not “keep quiet for the rest of the night we’d each get ‘four dozen’ on the quarter-deck next day, besides being spread-eagled in the weather rigging as a caution to all novices about to join the ship!”

This warning, uttered in a deep, sepulchral voice, no doubt awed most of the new boys, but it only made me laugh to myself, as I was pretty well up to such ‘barney’; and, with little dread of any penalties in store—though for that matter there was not much that could be said against me, for I certainly had not tried the strength or the softness of the ship’s planks of my own free-will—I cuddled into my hammock and went to sleep as soundly as if I were in my own old bed at home, in spite of the snoring and choking noises made in his dreams by that ugly chap Moses Reeks, who occupied the next hammock to mine.

“Whe-e-e-e-e! Who-e-o-e-o! Whe-eep!”

So the boatswain’s whistle rang out through the ship with a shrill iteration that pierced my ears in the fresh and chilly air next morning, awaking me, if possible, in even yet more startling fashion than Larrikins’ successful trick of the previous evening.

“Whee-e-ah! Whee-e-ah!”

There it was again; and, should this not be sufficient to disturb the slumbers of heavy sleepers, the sharp boatswain’s pipe was supplemented by the hoarse shouts of his ‘mates’ up and down the hatchways far and near, a very legion of voices!

“Rouse out! Rouse out! Rouse out! Show a leg.”

I really thought the nor’-east wind had brought up a great haul with the flood-tide, and that innumerable costers were calling out some strange fish in the streets round Bonfire Corner; while our white cockatoo, ‘Ally Sloper,’ was having a bit of fun with himself and mother by imitating the cry!

Presently, though, a rough shake of my hammock and the hail of one of the boatswain’s mates close by me told a different tale.

“Here, out of this, my lad!” said he, giving a twist to the swinging concern that landed me on the deck in a twinkling. “You can’t stop there snoozing any longer! Don’t you see the sun is scorching your eyes out?”

He had a good deal of imagination, had that man; for it would have puzzled the ‘Philadelphia lawyer,’ whom father was so fond of quoting, to have discovered the ghost of a ray of sunlight this cold, foggy, February morning at Four Bells!

The rest of the novices—there being, as you know, ten other ‘unclothed’ boys besides myself—had been roughly aroused in like fashion; and to a by-stander all of us must have looked a forlorn lot of shivering creatures, adrift there on the cheerless deck in the half light of early day, not knowing what to do with ourselves until somebody told us what to do and bearing, I fancy, a strikingly strong resemblance to a flock of lambs in some strange pasture deserted by their dams!

I make a mistake there, however, for the muttered growling exclamations I heard uttered by one of the warrant-officers, who came past where we stood clustered together, certainly sounded uncommonly like the name of the lambs’ mothers I have just mentioned, showing that its ‘eidolon’ remained.

The observation made by this officer, who, to my surprise, I subsequently found was the boatswain, brought our old police friend, the master-at-arms, on the scene.

“Here, boys,” said he to us, “you must bestir yourselves, and not stand star-gazing there, like so many country bumpkins at a fair! Tom Bowling, if you’re the son of your father, you ought to know that you’ve got to unsling your hammock when the ‘lash up and stow’ is sounded! And you, too, my Irish-Italian friend over there, roll up your hammock, my lad!”

“Sure, an’ is it manin’ me yez afther?” inquired Mick Donovan, unhitching the lanyard of his hammock from the hook above in a brace of shakes. “Faith, it’s makin’ a rowly-powly puddin’ of it I will, sor, entirely!”

The ‘Jaunty’ grinned at Mick’s naïve remark, but soon mastered the difficulty of teaching us by passing the job on to other hands.

“Ah, perhaps you’d better ‘go through the ropes,’ my lads, properly, and begin at once at your ‘bag and hammock drill,’ as all new boys should; though sometimes, they wait till they get uniforms first,” said he, hailing, as he spoke, one of the first-class boys standing by the police office, detailed to act as messengers, like our friend Larrikins. “Boy, there! See if you can find one of the instructors handy, and tell him, with my compliments, I should like to see him for a minute!”

“Yes, sir,” replied this chap, saluting. “I seed Mister Saunders by the fore-hatchway jist now.”

“He’ll do,” said the master-at-arms. “Carry on, my lad. Look sharp!”

The next instant, back came the boy with one of the instructors in his wake, a stalwart seaman, dressed in the usual bluejacket rig, with a petty officer’s badge.

“These boys here, Mr Saunders,” said the master-at-arms, pointing us out with a collective sweep of his long brawny arm, “are all novices, who came aboard yesterday, and don’t know what to do with themselves till they join the ship’s company. Hadn’t they better pass their ‘bag and hammock’ while waiting for their rig, instead of loafing about here? Mr Gadgett, the bo’sun, was complaining just now of their taking up all the fairway of the deck, and told me I must get rid of them from here somehow or the other!”

“All right,” responded the seaman-instructor to this suggestion of the master-at-arms; and, turning to us, he said, “Take up your hammocks, my lads, and follow me down to the lower deck. You’ll have a practical lesson in seeing how your shipmates do it, lads. We’re just in time!”

We were, barely so; for, as we passed down the hatchway from the middle deck to the lower region he had previously indicated, it was hard work for us to shove by the surging crowd of boys who were hurrying up, each with his hammock neatly made up and lashed in the regulation form, to be stowed in the nettings on top of the bulwarks amidships the upper deck, according to nautical routine.

Some, however, were slower at the work, and, taking stock of these, in obedience to the instructor’s orders, I got a very fair notion of how the thing was done; the more especially, as father had shown me the way he used to lash up his hammock in the old days when he was at sea, by the aid of a biscuit bag and a piece of string.

But our instructor was not satisfied by our now having mere ocular demonstration and doing nothing further; not he. On the contrary, he took us up to make another requisition on the ship’s steward for our regular kit, which was promptly served out to us; and all the morning, after a good breakfast, which made Mick Donovan open his eyes wider than ordinarily and stare like a stockfish, consisting as it did of cold salt pork and bread, with some splendid hot cocoa, that was more like chocolate, and such as he had never tasted before, we were kept hard at it till the ‘assembly’ was bugled out before dinner—going through the details of ‘bag and hammock drill’ seriatim, from the initiatory stage of plaiting the ends of the ‘nettles’ to lashing it up with the specified number of turns.

We new boys returned to Number 52 Mess on the middle deck for dinner, when ‘cooks to their messes’ was sounded.

Our meal this day, it being a Friday, was of a different kind, though quite as substantial as we had experienced on the previous day; a well-piled plate of beef and potatoes being allotted to each of us by the presiding genius of the galley, the sight of which viands made our mouths water.

“Lor’, it ain’t much to holler about!” exclaimed the fastidious Larrikins, on Mick rubbing his hands at seeing those appetising viands; while ‘Ugly’ cried out joyously, on noticing his mealy mass of potatoes, “Them’s the raal jockeys fur I,” thus paraphrasing the remark of a once celebrated millionaire possessed of much lucre but boasting of little conversational power, when at a state banquet, “Why, we only calls this aboard ‘two spuds and a Jonah!’”

“I can see the ‘spuds’ all right,” said I; “but where’s the Jonah?”

“That be the bone, silly!”

With which withering rejoinder, Larrikins left us to enjoy ourselves with the food he contemned; though he probably went away to make a hearty dinner off the same at his own mess on the deck below, where his division “hung out.”

Nothing further of any note occurred during the afternoon to mar the harmony or vary the monotony of our ‘bag and hammock drill,’ at which we were religiously kept up to the time to leave off work; when we enjoyed again our tea-supper, and skylarked afterwards till it was time to ‘turn in,’ which we managed to do now more comfortably as well as expeditiously than on the night before; while, I may add, my dreams happily were not disturbed by any storms and thunder-claps of that imp Larrikins’ contrivance.

The next day, Saturday, it was a case of ‘wash and scrub decks,’ and wash and scrub everything, I think, from early morning till dewy eve.

A very ‘dewy’ eve it was, too, if dampness made it so; but if one did feel wet and miserable, as I confess I was, the remembrance it brought back to my mind of my mother’s house-cleaning at home being almost too vivid to be pleasant, still, everybody on board had the satisfaction of knowing that the ship was as smart as holystone and sand could make her, from upper deck to keelson, I verily believe!

I was none the less miserable, either, the following morning, when all the boys were rigged out in their best and inspected by the captain; for the tailor, true to the character of all ‘snips’ since the days when Adam started in that line with his fig-leaf costume, never sent on board, as he promised, the uniforms of us unfortunate novices, so we could neither make a decent appearance with the rest of our comrades, nor have permission to go ashore—‘unclothed’ scarecrows, as some of us were, would have seemed queer fish to come from a well-ordered ship.

On Monday, however, all things were made right in this respect; and, having satisfactorily passed ‘bag and hammock drill,’ the test of our novitiate, I and my fellow-unfortunates became not only clad like our fellows, but were enrolled amongst the rest of the second-class boys, and appointed to our proper place in the ship.

My number being 2799, through some occult system of nautical numeration, I was detailed to the ‘Third,’ or second starboard, division of the ship’s company; so I joined mess Number 38, which was on the port side on the lower deck, the first one aft of the schoolroom.

I also proceeded a day or two after, being thenceforth regarded as a neophyte no longer, to take part in all the regular drills of the ship, and one morning, subsequent to breakfast, underwent that rudimentary stage of seamanship styled ‘boxing the compass’—though I might have really told the painstaking instructor, who painfully and ploddingly laboured to instil the cardinal points into my head as if I were an ignoramus, that I not only knew the ‘lubber’s point’ probably as well as he did, but could, on a pinch, have conned the ship in and out of Portsmouth Harbour!

This ‘boxing the compass’ business, though, brought me to loggerheads with that brute ‘Ugly’ somehow or other, strangely enough.

I don’t know how it was, but from the moment, I believe, I first cast eyes on his singularly unprepossessing face, Moses Reeks had been my special antipathy!

It was not so much that he said anything to me or of me, as from the fact of his always ‘putting it on’ poor Mick Donovan, for whom I entertained as great a liking as I disliked the other.

‘Ugly’ was always snarling at my chum, and ever giving him a chance kick or blow, should he be able to do so unobserved and without being directly taxed with it; though, of course, he would deny it if observed by any of the other boys, being an unmitigated liar, in addition to having a sour and vindictive disposition.

That very morning I noticed him deliberately stamp on poor Mick’s bare toes with all the weight of his big heavy foot, as we were coming down the hatchway from early ‘divisions’; and when I spoke to him about it he said coldly he “hadn’t done nuthin’ of the sort!”

I knew this was an untruth; but I bided my time, judiciously watching for an opportunity to pay him out.

This came sooner than I expected; for during our compass lesson I managed to get him into a fog about the points which the instructor was explaining, drawing down on my joker the wrath and outspoken opprobrium of that officer.

‘Ugly’ noted this, and in his turn bided his time.

The watch was dismissed, and the ‘stand by’ had been bugled before quarters, preparatory to our being dispersed for dinner; when ‘Ugly’ nudged me as we passed up the hatchway together, coming much closer to me than I liked, the very touch of the unclean brute being obnoxious to me.

“Wot d’yer mean by comin’ the barney over me and a-makin’ that codger of a kinstructor bullyrag me afore all the t’other chaps fur?”

“What do you mean, Reeks?” said I, in reply to this, returning his nudge with a good dig from the bony knob of my elbow in his ribs, and knocking the wind pretty well-nigh out of him. “You jumped on poor Mick Donovan’s bare foot this morning, and now you try to shove me!”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, as we emerged on the upper deck, where our division had by now already partly assembled on the starboard side, forward; “that be it, mister?”

“Yes,” said I, as I slipped into my place near Mick, “that’s it!”

After ‘divisions,’ when the other boys were rushing down below to their messes to dinner, the bugle-call for which was braying out its cheerful sounds, I stopped behind on the upper deck, as did “Ugly.”

“Sure an’ what are ye stoppin’ fur, Tom, mabouchal?” said Mick to me in surprise. “Begorrah, I can smill the mate alriddy, an’, faith, the praties, too! I can say their smilin’ faces bickonin’ to me an’ sayin’, ‘Coom an’ ate me!’”

“I’m not coming yet,” I replied, in a more serious tone than Mick evidently expected. “I’ve got some business with this chap here.”

‘Ugly’ overheard me, as I intended he should.

“Hay,” said he, “did yer speak to Oi?”

“Hay is meant for horses and asses,” I answered drily, with a grin; “and if you be one of them latter, as I think, and so does Mick here I know, why, I did refer to you!”

“Want ter fight?”

“Yes,” I said, launching out my fist straight towards his bullet head and giving him a cropper on the mouth that sent him tumbling backwards on the deck, all of a heap; “I do.”

‘Ugly’ rose slowly to his feet, his face streaming with blood; and he was just about making a rush at me like a mad bull at a gate, while I put myself in a posture of defence in proper pugilistic fashion, when an interruption, though but of a temporary character, came to these proceedings.

The ubiquitous Larrikins was the intervener.

“Lor’, you be green ’uns!” he cried, sinking his voice to a cautious pitch. “Don’t you fight here; why, the ‘crushers’ will nab yer afore yer can strike a blow comfortably! If fight yer must, coom up here on the fo’c’s’le, and then you can fight away theer to yer ’art’s content, without nobody not a-hinterfeerin’ with yer!”

Chapter Six.A Knotty Point!I led the way towards the forecastle of the old ship, where the high bulwarks, I saw, would screen us well from observation; although the place, of course, was on the open deck, and visible from aloft, had anybody been there on the look-out, anxious to take a peep at us.In the old days, indeed, had this rencontre between ‘Ugly’ and me then took place, we might have fought in an enclosed arena; for theSaint Vincent, I have been told, when she was first built, was fitted with a poop and topgallant-forecastle, and went to sea with them, but Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who was then commodore of the Channel Squadron, and hoisted his broad pennant in her, found the ship so top-heavy when under his command that he reported her to be unseaworthy on his return to Spithead with the fleet, the result of which was that she lost her poop and topgallant-forecastle; hence ‘Ugly’ and I had now to fight under the eye of the circling seagulls, always on the wing, screeching round the old training-ship in their plaintive fashion, and diving ever and anon into the tideway to pick up scraps that were chucked overboard by our comrades, more sensible than us, down below at their dinners!The deck was quite clear, the only person visible being the captain of the afterguard, who was taking a snooze on a pile of canvas and old sails that were stowed in a heap close by the main bitts; so, acting under the chaperonage of Larrikins, who officiated as bottle-holder, ‘Ugly’ and I stood up, facing each other with our fists doubled, ready for action, in a nice little open space that seemed to have been left especially for the purpose between the heel of the bowsprit and the knight-heads.One of the other first-class boys had stopped up to see the fun in addition to Larrikins, and he now offered himself as second to ‘Ugly,’ while Mick, of course, he being really the main cause of the quarrel, naturally came forward as mine.“Now, gents,” cried Larrikins, seeing my antagonist and myself were duly prepared, “yer can bergin the puffomince as soon as yer likes!”Before waiting even for this mandate, ‘Ugly’ made that mad-bull rush at me which he had contemplated in the first instance at the commencement of hostilities; but having had some considerable previous experience in the use of those weapons of attack and defence alike, with which a beneficent nature has so thoughtfully provided menfolk, from many a rough and tumble fight on Common Hard with the mudlarks and other idle scamps frequenting that place, who used to be always playing pranks with father’s wherry, trying to steal anything they could lay hold of, should we leave her for a minute alone, I had no difficulty in avoiding the onslaught of my opponent.I kept my right hand well up on guard, across my chest; and, my left fist being extended, I caught my gentleman a pretty tidy blow under the chin that floored him as quickly as before.“Bedad, Tom, ye had him there!” cried Mick, dancing round me in ecstasy, while ‘Ugly’s’ second was picking him up. “Jist giv’ him a onener in his bread-basket, me jewel, an’ ye’ll finish him!”This was not so easy a matter, however, as my chum supposed; Moses Reeks being of that bulldog nature, as his looks testified, that would not give in until thoroughly licked.“Steady there,” cautioned his second, trying his best to prevent him from continuing his foolish mode of plunging attack; but the pig-headed chap would persist in continually rushing in on my guard, and getting knocked down as regularly, time after time, without his having a chance of landing a blow at me, his fists ever whirling about aimlessly, and being easily avoided by myself. “Keep yer bloomin’ dukes out straight in front of yer, silly! ’It ’im in the heye, I tell yer! Wy, yer lettin’ ’im ’ave hit hall ’is own way!”“Blatheration!” cried Mick, my champion, quite as energetically, in counter encouragement to me. “Go for him, Tom; go straight for him agin! Faith, me jewel, you’ll lave him soon so as how his blessed own mother, bad cess to her, wouldn’t know him, sure as me name now’s Mick Donovan!”Urged on in this fashion on either side, we went at it hammer and tongs, ‘Ugly’ getting more cautious from his repeated familiarity with the deck planking, and fighting more scientifically after the first two or three rounds.The consequence of this was that he got in one or two nasty blows with his sledge-hammer fists on the side of my head, which made my ears ache, besides giving me a fine black eye on the port side.He could not manage to land me a facer, however, straight out, try all that he could; and presently, on my feeling particularly ‘riled’ by a backhanded clout he succeeded in landing on my cheek, I drew out my left, and, driving it home forwards with all my strength, let him have it straight on the nose.“Faith, ye tapped his claret for him that time, mabouchal; it’s stramin’ out all over the dick.”Hardly had my chum made this observation, so highly expressive of his unconcealed delight, ere ‘Ugly,’ wiping away the blood from his face with the sleeve of his jumper, and clutching hold of the lanyard round his neck, to the end of which his knife was attached, made a spring at me from the knee of his second, where he had sat dazed for half a moment, giving vent to a cry that was more like the howl of a wild animal than anything else.I put up my hands mechanically, though I had hardly then imagined he would have come so soon at me again; intending, however, more to guard his attack than hit him any blow, for I really thought he had received quite enough punishment already.But he beat down my guard as easily as if my arms really had been made of pipeclay, and then I felt a stinging sensation through one of these and my left side, just as if I had run foul of a jelly-fish when swimming off the ‘Hot Walls,’ as I have done sometimes when bathing.“Begorrah, the thafe’s stabbed ye!” exclaimed Mick, putting his arms round me as I fell back. “Whare now is ye hoort, Tom, alannah?”“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said with a laugh, as soon as I got back my breath, which had been knocked out of me by the rush ‘Ugly’ made, the knife having only grazed my ribs, while it had given an ugly gash to my arm; though, probably, had I not guarded the blow, the sharp weapon with which my antagonist had only been supplied, like the rest of us, that very morning, would as likely as not have ‘settled my hash,’ as father used to say. “Pray don’t make a fuss of it, Mick, or any of you fellows. It will all rub off when it’s dry!”Larrikins and the other first-class boy had meanwhile collared ‘Ugly’ and taken the knife from him, to prevent his doing any further mischief with it; and, as fighting was prohibited on board, and they might possibly have been brought up on the quarter-deck as accomplices, should the affair get wind and come to the notice of the ship’s police, the two, who no doubt were old and tried hands at the game, thought it best to take my advice and ‘keep the matter dark,’ as they said.“I doesn’t like that yere knifin’, though,” said Master Larrikins, when Mick had bound up my arm with his handkerchief, taking it off his neck for the purpose; and we had all turned to sneak below out of observation before ‘quarters’ should be sounded and the fellows come tumbling up from dinner, ‘Ugly’ concealing his battered face by dragging down his cap over his eyes, and pulling up his collar as if he had toothache, which no doubt was not very far from the truth. “Don’t yer try on that yere bloomin’ game agin, you Reeks, I tell yer, my joker, or else yer ’ad better git yer coffin ready afore yer comes aboard this ship. Lor’! W’y, if the ‘Jaunty’ or ‘Jimmy the One’ knowed it, yer’d be strung up at the yard-arm this very minnit!”The incident, however, passed off without notice from the authorities; although the news of our encounter, with its almost tragic finale, got about amongst the boys, most of the well-conducted of whom gave ‘Ugly’ a wide berth in consequence, the poor beggar being shunned thenceforth by all but the ne’er-do-wells of the ship, that is, until the circumstance became gradually buried in the past through the pressure of more prominent events.We managed, combatants and seconds alike, not forgetting the director-in-chief of the fight, Master Larrikins, to reach the sanctuary of the lower deck unseen by any of the ship’s corporals, or ‘crushers,’ as Larrikins facetiously called them.Not only this; through that wily individual’s artful manoeuvring and pathetic appeal to the gods of the cook’s galley, we also contrived to get some dinner, which, indeed, was particularly grateful to all of us after our exertions.The meal this day, being a Wednesday, consisted, for a change, of salt pork and pea-soup; ‘pea doo and bolliky,’ as it is styled inSaint Vincentslang.“Faith, it smills good,” exclaimed Mick, with a loud and prolonged sniff of enjoyment, on the friendly Larrikins anon placing a bowl of the steaming compound under his nose on the mess-table. “A’most as good as tay, begorrah!”“Ga–a!” cried our caterer. “Only a Paddy wud say that!”“Bedad, I don’t say much differ,” said Mick, after quickly gulping down the contents of his bowl with great gusto and much apparent inward satisfaction. “Pay-soup an’ tay soup—sure, they bees as loike as two pays!” This certainly seemed a very logical deduction; but, before we could argue the point out, or indeed laugh at Mick’s Irish way of putting it, the bugle sounded again for ‘divisions.’As we all scrambled up the after-hatch, the ship’s corporal, Brown, who had helped me to sling my hammock again after I had been cut down the first night I was on board, a very decent man altogether, stopped ‘Ugly,’ who was on his way up ahead of me.“Hallo!” he said. “What’s the matter with your face, boy?”“I dunno,” replied my late antagonist, trying vainly to hide the effects of my fists with the sleeve of his blue jumper. “S’pose I run agin summat a-comin’ downstairs jest now!”The sun, though, streaming down through the open hatchway, handicapped all the yokel’s attempts of concealment; and Mr Brown looked at him with a quizzical expression on his face and a comical twinkle in his eye that spoke a volume without words!“It strikes me, young man,” he said, with his broad good-humoured grin, “that theer ‘summat’ you knocked against must have been moving round you pretty smart! Bless me, if it ain’t fetched you one on your booby hatch and another on the conk, and bottled up your peepers as well! What’s your name, boy?”“Mo—ses,” drawled out ‘Ugly’ slowly, the poor beggar having a difficulty in speaking, caused by the blow I first gave him on the mouth, which accentuated his provincial pronunciation, “Re—eeks, zur.”“Oh!” ejaculated ship’s corporal Brown. “Then, Mr Moses Reeks, you’d better go to the sick-bay and see the doctor.”‘Ugly’ backed down the hatchway to comply with this order, as we were just then ascending from the middle deck; and, from his withdrawing his intervening figure, I became disclosed to view.My arm, which had swollen up, and necessitated my putting it in a sling, at once attracted the observation of the corporal.“I say, youngster,” he said, arresting my footsteps in like fashion, “why are you bandaged up? What the—ah, what does this hanky-panky mean?”“I—I—I,” I stammered, not knowing what to reply to this, as I did not like to tell him a barefaced lie in cold blood offhand— “I’ve hurt my arm, sir.”“A–ah!” breathed out Mr Brown significantly; adding, after a pause, “You’re Tom Bowling, ain’t you?”“Yes, sir,” I said; “that’s my name.”“Well, it strikes me, Thomas Bowling,” said he drily, in the chaffy sort of way he adopted sometimes when hauling any of us ‘over the coals’ for some offence, performing his duty ever of guardian of the peace as lightly as he could make it, “there’s some sort o’ circumbendibus between this here arm of yourn and the spoilt face of that there joker I’ve jist sent to the sick-bay. Thomas Bowling, Esquire, I fancy you’d better foller him there, my boy.”Of course, I obeyed this command, a ship corporal’s word, whether jocular or not, being as good as an order and regarded as law on board the training-ship.Nothing was said, though, to either of us regarding our recent fight, nor any embarrassing questions asked, when we reached the sick-bay. Trimmens, the sick-berth steward, on the contrary, never moved a muscle of his mahogany face when ‘Ugly’ said that he had knocked his head against the hatchway, and I told a ‘banger’ by volunteering the statement that I had broken a plate on the mess-table, and one of the pieces had run into my arm. The wound in my side, which was really only a scratch, I never mentioned to any one, not even to Mick, who thought, and to this day knows nothing to the contrary, I believe, that I had guarded off ‘Ugly’s’ thrust, and had been only stabbed in the arm.Our injuries not being sufficiently serious to put either of us in the sick-list, ‘Ugly’ and I were sent back, after being lotioned and ‘dressed’ by Trimmens, to rejoin our division, then at their ‘instruction drill’ on the lower deck, and engaged making what are known to those learned in the arts of the sea as ‘bends and hitches.’To explain these properly to a landsman, I would say, for the sake of easier comprehension, that the theory of a ‘bend’ is based on the good-natured truism contained in the old adage, ‘One good turn deserves another’; while a second proverb, ‘Safe bind, safe find,’ will equally justify the existence of the ‘hitch’; but if the inquirer be not satisfied with either of these definitions or explanations, whichever term he may choose to apply to them, I can only advise him to follow Captain Cuttle’s injunction and ‘overhaul his Church catechism.’To drop joking, all of us new hands were taught our work as well as sailors could teach us, which was so effectually done that what we once learnt we never forgot; this work being to treat ropes and rigging as if they were reasoning and responsible beings, and to be capable of making fast or letting loose, whensoever it so pleased us, anything under the sun, from knotting a reef point to parbuckling a cask—a dodge by which, I believe, Admiral Rodney, or Abercromby, or some other hero, during the times of the wars, contrived to drag one of his ship’s guns to the top of a lofty mountain guarding the entrance to Castries, the harbour of Saint Lucia, which was by this means captured from its French possessors, and is now numbered with the rest of our West Indian colonies.This, however, is a ‘knotty’ point.

I led the way towards the forecastle of the old ship, where the high bulwarks, I saw, would screen us well from observation; although the place, of course, was on the open deck, and visible from aloft, had anybody been there on the look-out, anxious to take a peep at us.

In the old days, indeed, had this rencontre between ‘Ugly’ and me then took place, we might have fought in an enclosed arena; for theSaint Vincent, I have been told, when she was first built, was fitted with a poop and topgallant-forecastle, and went to sea with them, but Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who was then commodore of the Channel Squadron, and hoisted his broad pennant in her, found the ship so top-heavy when under his command that he reported her to be unseaworthy on his return to Spithead with the fleet, the result of which was that she lost her poop and topgallant-forecastle; hence ‘Ugly’ and I had now to fight under the eye of the circling seagulls, always on the wing, screeching round the old training-ship in their plaintive fashion, and diving ever and anon into the tideway to pick up scraps that were chucked overboard by our comrades, more sensible than us, down below at their dinners!

The deck was quite clear, the only person visible being the captain of the afterguard, who was taking a snooze on a pile of canvas and old sails that were stowed in a heap close by the main bitts; so, acting under the chaperonage of Larrikins, who officiated as bottle-holder, ‘Ugly’ and I stood up, facing each other with our fists doubled, ready for action, in a nice little open space that seemed to have been left especially for the purpose between the heel of the bowsprit and the knight-heads.

One of the other first-class boys had stopped up to see the fun in addition to Larrikins, and he now offered himself as second to ‘Ugly,’ while Mick, of course, he being really the main cause of the quarrel, naturally came forward as mine.

“Now, gents,” cried Larrikins, seeing my antagonist and myself were duly prepared, “yer can bergin the puffomince as soon as yer likes!”

Before waiting even for this mandate, ‘Ugly’ made that mad-bull rush at me which he had contemplated in the first instance at the commencement of hostilities; but having had some considerable previous experience in the use of those weapons of attack and defence alike, with which a beneficent nature has so thoughtfully provided menfolk, from many a rough and tumble fight on Common Hard with the mudlarks and other idle scamps frequenting that place, who used to be always playing pranks with father’s wherry, trying to steal anything they could lay hold of, should we leave her for a minute alone, I had no difficulty in avoiding the onslaught of my opponent.

I kept my right hand well up on guard, across my chest; and, my left fist being extended, I caught my gentleman a pretty tidy blow under the chin that floored him as quickly as before.

“Bedad, Tom, ye had him there!” cried Mick, dancing round me in ecstasy, while ‘Ugly’s’ second was picking him up. “Jist giv’ him a onener in his bread-basket, me jewel, an’ ye’ll finish him!”

This was not so easy a matter, however, as my chum supposed; Moses Reeks being of that bulldog nature, as his looks testified, that would not give in until thoroughly licked.

“Steady there,” cautioned his second, trying his best to prevent him from continuing his foolish mode of plunging attack; but the pig-headed chap would persist in continually rushing in on my guard, and getting knocked down as regularly, time after time, without his having a chance of landing a blow at me, his fists ever whirling about aimlessly, and being easily avoided by myself. “Keep yer bloomin’ dukes out straight in front of yer, silly! ’It ’im in the heye, I tell yer! Wy, yer lettin’ ’im ’ave hit hall ’is own way!”

“Blatheration!” cried Mick, my champion, quite as energetically, in counter encouragement to me. “Go for him, Tom; go straight for him agin! Faith, me jewel, you’ll lave him soon so as how his blessed own mother, bad cess to her, wouldn’t know him, sure as me name now’s Mick Donovan!”

Urged on in this fashion on either side, we went at it hammer and tongs, ‘Ugly’ getting more cautious from his repeated familiarity with the deck planking, and fighting more scientifically after the first two or three rounds.

The consequence of this was that he got in one or two nasty blows with his sledge-hammer fists on the side of my head, which made my ears ache, besides giving me a fine black eye on the port side.

He could not manage to land me a facer, however, straight out, try all that he could; and presently, on my feeling particularly ‘riled’ by a backhanded clout he succeeded in landing on my cheek, I drew out my left, and, driving it home forwards with all my strength, let him have it straight on the nose.

“Faith, ye tapped his claret for him that time, mabouchal; it’s stramin’ out all over the dick.”

Hardly had my chum made this observation, so highly expressive of his unconcealed delight, ere ‘Ugly,’ wiping away the blood from his face with the sleeve of his jumper, and clutching hold of the lanyard round his neck, to the end of which his knife was attached, made a spring at me from the knee of his second, where he had sat dazed for half a moment, giving vent to a cry that was more like the howl of a wild animal than anything else.

I put up my hands mechanically, though I had hardly then imagined he would have come so soon at me again; intending, however, more to guard his attack than hit him any blow, for I really thought he had received quite enough punishment already.

But he beat down my guard as easily as if my arms really had been made of pipeclay, and then I felt a stinging sensation through one of these and my left side, just as if I had run foul of a jelly-fish when swimming off the ‘Hot Walls,’ as I have done sometimes when bathing.

“Begorrah, the thafe’s stabbed ye!” exclaimed Mick, putting his arms round me as I fell back. “Whare now is ye hoort, Tom, alannah?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said with a laugh, as soon as I got back my breath, which had been knocked out of me by the rush ‘Ugly’ made, the knife having only grazed my ribs, while it had given an ugly gash to my arm; though, probably, had I not guarded the blow, the sharp weapon with which my antagonist had only been supplied, like the rest of us, that very morning, would as likely as not have ‘settled my hash,’ as father used to say. “Pray don’t make a fuss of it, Mick, or any of you fellows. It will all rub off when it’s dry!”

Larrikins and the other first-class boy had meanwhile collared ‘Ugly’ and taken the knife from him, to prevent his doing any further mischief with it; and, as fighting was prohibited on board, and they might possibly have been brought up on the quarter-deck as accomplices, should the affair get wind and come to the notice of the ship’s police, the two, who no doubt were old and tried hands at the game, thought it best to take my advice and ‘keep the matter dark,’ as they said.

“I doesn’t like that yere knifin’, though,” said Master Larrikins, when Mick had bound up my arm with his handkerchief, taking it off his neck for the purpose; and we had all turned to sneak below out of observation before ‘quarters’ should be sounded and the fellows come tumbling up from dinner, ‘Ugly’ concealing his battered face by dragging down his cap over his eyes, and pulling up his collar as if he had toothache, which no doubt was not very far from the truth. “Don’t yer try on that yere bloomin’ game agin, you Reeks, I tell yer, my joker, or else yer ’ad better git yer coffin ready afore yer comes aboard this ship. Lor’! W’y, if the ‘Jaunty’ or ‘Jimmy the One’ knowed it, yer’d be strung up at the yard-arm this very minnit!”

The incident, however, passed off without notice from the authorities; although the news of our encounter, with its almost tragic finale, got about amongst the boys, most of the well-conducted of whom gave ‘Ugly’ a wide berth in consequence, the poor beggar being shunned thenceforth by all but the ne’er-do-wells of the ship, that is, until the circumstance became gradually buried in the past through the pressure of more prominent events.

We managed, combatants and seconds alike, not forgetting the director-in-chief of the fight, Master Larrikins, to reach the sanctuary of the lower deck unseen by any of the ship’s corporals, or ‘crushers,’ as Larrikins facetiously called them.

Not only this; through that wily individual’s artful manoeuvring and pathetic appeal to the gods of the cook’s galley, we also contrived to get some dinner, which, indeed, was particularly grateful to all of us after our exertions.

The meal this day, being a Wednesday, consisted, for a change, of salt pork and pea-soup; ‘pea doo and bolliky,’ as it is styled inSaint Vincentslang.

“Faith, it smills good,” exclaimed Mick, with a loud and prolonged sniff of enjoyment, on the friendly Larrikins anon placing a bowl of the steaming compound under his nose on the mess-table. “A’most as good as tay, begorrah!”

“Ga–a!” cried our caterer. “Only a Paddy wud say that!”

“Bedad, I don’t say much differ,” said Mick, after quickly gulping down the contents of his bowl with great gusto and much apparent inward satisfaction. “Pay-soup an’ tay soup—sure, they bees as loike as two pays!” This certainly seemed a very logical deduction; but, before we could argue the point out, or indeed laugh at Mick’s Irish way of putting it, the bugle sounded again for ‘divisions.’

As we all scrambled up the after-hatch, the ship’s corporal, Brown, who had helped me to sling my hammock again after I had been cut down the first night I was on board, a very decent man altogether, stopped ‘Ugly,’ who was on his way up ahead of me.

“Hallo!” he said. “What’s the matter with your face, boy?”

“I dunno,” replied my late antagonist, trying vainly to hide the effects of my fists with the sleeve of his blue jumper. “S’pose I run agin summat a-comin’ downstairs jest now!”

The sun, though, streaming down through the open hatchway, handicapped all the yokel’s attempts of concealment; and Mr Brown looked at him with a quizzical expression on his face and a comical twinkle in his eye that spoke a volume without words!

“It strikes me, young man,” he said, with his broad good-humoured grin, “that theer ‘summat’ you knocked against must have been moving round you pretty smart! Bless me, if it ain’t fetched you one on your booby hatch and another on the conk, and bottled up your peepers as well! What’s your name, boy?”

“Mo—ses,” drawled out ‘Ugly’ slowly, the poor beggar having a difficulty in speaking, caused by the blow I first gave him on the mouth, which accentuated his provincial pronunciation, “Re—eeks, zur.”

“Oh!” ejaculated ship’s corporal Brown. “Then, Mr Moses Reeks, you’d better go to the sick-bay and see the doctor.”

‘Ugly’ backed down the hatchway to comply with this order, as we were just then ascending from the middle deck; and, from his withdrawing his intervening figure, I became disclosed to view.

My arm, which had swollen up, and necessitated my putting it in a sling, at once attracted the observation of the corporal.

“I say, youngster,” he said, arresting my footsteps in like fashion, “why are you bandaged up? What the—ah, what does this hanky-panky mean?”

“I—I—I,” I stammered, not knowing what to reply to this, as I did not like to tell him a barefaced lie in cold blood offhand— “I’ve hurt my arm, sir.”

“A–ah!” breathed out Mr Brown significantly; adding, after a pause, “You’re Tom Bowling, ain’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” I said; “that’s my name.”

“Well, it strikes me, Thomas Bowling,” said he drily, in the chaffy sort of way he adopted sometimes when hauling any of us ‘over the coals’ for some offence, performing his duty ever of guardian of the peace as lightly as he could make it, “there’s some sort o’ circumbendibus between this here arm of yourn and the spoilt face of that there joker I’ve jist sent to the sick-bay. Thomas Bowling, Esquire, I fancy you’d better foller him there, my boy.”

Of course, I obeyed this command, a ship corporal’s word, whether jocular or not, being as good as an order and regarded as law on board the training-ship.

Nothing was said, though, to either of us regarding our recent fight, nor any embarrassing questions asked, when we reached the sick-bay. Trimmens, the sick-berth steward, on the contrary, never moved a muscle of his mahogany face when ‘Ugly’ said that he had knocked his head against the hatchway, and I told a ‘banger’ by volunteering the statement that I had broken a plate on the mess-table, and one of the pieces had run into my arm. The wound in my side, which was really only a scratch, I never mentioned to any one, not even to Mick, who thought, and to this day knows nothing to the contrary, I believe, that I had guarded off ‘Ugly’s’ thrust, and had been only stabbed in the arm.

Our injuries not being sufficiently serious to put either of us in the sick-list, ‘Ugly’ and I were sent back, after being lotioned and ‘dressed’ by Trimmens, to rejoin our division, then at their ‘instruction drill’ on the lower deck, and engaged making what are known to those learned in the arts of the sea as ‘bends and hitches.’

To explain these properly to a landsman, I would say, for the sake of easier comprehension, that the theory of a ‘bend’ is based on the good-natured truism contained in the old adage, ‘One good turn deserves another’; while a second proverb, ‘Safe bind, safe find,’ will equally justify the existence of the ‘hitch’; but if the inquirer be not satisfied with either of these definitions or explanations, whichever term he may choose to apply to them, I can only advise him to follow Captain Cuttle’s injunction and ‘overhaul his Church catechism.’

To drop joking, all of us new hands were taught our work as well as sailors could teach us, which was so effectually done that what we once learnt we never forgot; this work being to treat ropes and rigging as if they were reasoning and responsible beings, and to be capable of making fast or letting loose, whensoever it so pleased us, anything under the sun, from knotting a reef point to parbuckling a cask—a dodge by which, I believe, Admiral Rodney, or Abercromby, or some other hero, during the times of the wars, contrived to drag one of his ship’s guns to the top of a lofty mountain guarding the entrance to Castries, the harbour of Saint Lucia, which was by this means captured from its French possessors, and is now numbered with the rest of our West Indian colonies.

This, however, is a ‘knotty’ point.

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