Part 8 (2/2)
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 s.h.i.+p's corporals, or 'crushers,' as Larrikins facetiously called them.
Not only this; through that wily individual's artful manoeuvring and pathetic appeal to the G.o.ds 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 in _Saint Vincent_ slang.
”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 s.h.i.+p'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 b.o.o.by 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 p.r.o.nunciation, ”Re--eeks, zur.”
”Oh!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed s.h.i.+p'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 fas.h.i.+on, ”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' circ.u.mbendibus 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 s.h.i.+p corporal's word, whether jocular or not, being as good as an order and regarded as law on board the training-s.h.i.+p.
Nothing was said, though, to either of us regarding our recent fight, nor any embarra.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+p'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.
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