Crown and Anchor Part 2

"No, by George, no, youngster, that answer shows me, my boy, that you are your father's son!" cried the Admiral heartily, clapping me on the back as if I were a man, and making me sneeze with the loose snuff which he shook off from his coat as he did so. "I said you were a chip of the old block the moment I first clapped eyes on you, and now I'm certain of it! Vernon, you shall have a nomination for the youngster. I think I've got sufficient interest at the Admiralty left to promise you that, at all events!"

"Oh, thank you, Admiral," replied Dad, while I looked my grat.i.tude, not being able to speak, "thank you for your great kindness to me and the boy."

"Pooh, pooh, stuff and nonsense, my lad! It's little enough to do for an old shipmate and brother officer," muttered the good-hearted old fellow, quite overcome with confusion at our thanks, as Dad wrung one of his hands and I caught hold of the other. "I've got an appointment to meet the First Lord this very afternoon, as luck would have it, so I'll mention the matter to him, and I've no doubt the youngster'll get his nomination in a day or two, at the outside. By-the-bye where are you stopping in London? You haven't told me that yet."

My father, thereupon, gave him our address.

"All right, Vernon," said the veteran, shoving Dad's card along with the snuff in his waistcoat pocket, "I'll see to the matter without fail.

Good-bye, now, Vernon, good-bye, young shaver, I hope you'll make as good a sailor and smart an officer as your father before you!"

With these parting words and a kindly nod to me the old Admiral toddled off across Waterloo Place to the Senior United Service Club opposite, to which, I presume, he intended transferring his patronage now that the Reform had given him the cold shoulder, while Dad and I returned to our temporary lodgings in Piccadilly to tell mother of our unexpected meeting and its happy result. I may here add that I was never fortunate enough to see the gallant old veteran again, though I heard of him often afterwards from my father, who told me he always asked how I was getting on. Circ.u.mstances prevented my meeting him when I was yet in England, and I was out in China when he died, some four years subsequently to my making his acquaintance in Pall Mall that morning.

Strange to say, however, the other day, when engaged planning out this very yarn of my adventures afloat, I chanced to see an advertis.e.m.e.nt in one of the Portsmouth papers of an auction about to be held at Merchiston Hall, near Horndean, where I was informed the Admiral had resided for many years, and where he spent most of his time farming when not at sea, before he got mixed up in politics and Parliamentary matters, as he was in his later days after he was "put on the shelf,"

and hauled down his flag for ay!

Here, the very bed was pointed out to me in which the gallant old sailor died; a plain, old-fashioned piece of furniture, without any gilding or meretricious adornment, and honest and substantial like himself.

The house, too, was similarly unpretentious, being a low, one-storied, verandah--fronted structure, with plenty of room about it, but little "style" or ornament. It was, though, picturesquely situated in the centre of a well-timbered little park and homestead and snugly sheltered by tall fir trees and a thick shrubbery from all north'ard and easterly winds, amid the prettiest scenery of Hampshire--wooded heights and pleasant dales, with coppice and hedgerow, and here and there a red-roofed old farmhouse peeping out from the greenery forming its immediate surroundings.

"Poor old Charley Napier!" as he was affectionately ent.i.tled by those who served under his flag--officers and men alike, the latter especially almost idolising him for he was ever a good friend to them.

He now sleeps his last sleep in the churchyard of Catherington, where he lies safe at anchor, hard by the dwelling where he lived when in the flesh.

Here his tomb may be seen by the curious under the shelter of the early Norman church, dedicated to Saint Catherine, from which circ.u.mstance the village takes its name.

It is a fine old building, this church, dating back to the time of the Crusades, when heroes as gallant as Admiral Sir Charles Napier besieged Sidon and captured Acre--like as he himself did some eight centuries later, long prior to his unsuccessful mission to the Baltic, the somewhat inglorious termination of which, unfortunately, clouded his naval reputation and ended his career afloat!

CHAPTER THREE.

I GET NOMINATED FOR A NAVAL CADETSHIP.

"'Sharp's the word and quick the motion,' eh, Jack?" said my father, using his favourite phrase, when the post next morning brought him a letter from the Admiralty in an oblong blue envelope, inscribed "On Her Majesty's Service," in big letters, stating that I had been nominated to a cadetship in the Royal Navy. "I knew old Charley would be as good as his word!"

"Hurrah!" I shouted, throwing my cap in the air, and forgetting all about a long-promised visit to the Zoological Gardens for which we were just starting, "Now I shall be able to go to sea at last!"

Dad seemed to share my enthusiasm; but my mother, I recollect well, ay, as if it had occurred but yesterday, put her arms round me and cried as if her heart would break.

Presently, when she had somewhat regained her composure, Dad, comforting her with the a.s.surance that she was not going to lose me all at once, it not being probable that I would be drowned or slain or otherwise immolated on the altar of my country immediately on entering the navy, which appeared to be her first conviction, we all began talking the matter over; and then Dad proceeded to read over again the official communication he had received, commenting on the same as he went over it.

"Hullo, Jack!" he observed, on reaching the end of the formal doc.u.ment, "those red-tape chaps a' Whitehall haven't given you much time to prepare for your examination!"

The mention of this damped my ardour a bit, I can tell you!

"Oh, I quite forgot that!" I exclaimed lugubriously. "When have I got to go up for exam., Dad?"

"The 'first Wednesday in August,' my boy--so says this letter at all events."

"Good gracious me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed my mother, again breaking into our conversation after a brief pause, during which she must have gone through an abstract mental calculation. "Why, that will be barely a month from now, my dear!"

"Precisely, this being the third of July," replied Dad drily. "So Master Jack will have to stir his stumps if he hopes to pa.s.s, for I'm afraid he's rather shaky in his Euclid."

"Dear, dear!" said mother, throwing up her arms in consternation, "he is very backward in his history, too! Would you believe it, he couldn't recollect when Magna Charta was signed on my asking him the date yesterday."

"Really?" cried Dad, leaning back in his chair, and bursting into a hearty laugh at my mother's serious face, "I'm sure, my dear, I could not tell you the date off-hand myself at the present moment, not if I were even going to be hanged in default! Jack knows, though, I'd wager, when the glorious battle of Trafalgar was fought; and that concerns a British sailor boy more, I think, than any other event in the whole history of our plucky little island, save perhaps the defeat of the grand Armada. What say you, my boy?"

"Of course, I know the date of the battle of Trafalgar, Dad," I answered glibly enough, having heard it mentioned too often to have forgotten it in a hurry; and, besides, I knew Southey's _Life of Nelson_ almost by heart, it being one of my favourite books and ranking in my estimation next to _Robinson Crusoe_. "It was fought, Dad, on the 21st October 1805."

"There, mother, just hear that!" cried Dad, chaffingly. "Are you not proud of your boy in blue? By Jove, he'll set the Thames on fire if he goes on at that rate!"

"I _am_ proud of him; but I do not wish him to fail," replied mother, who took things generally _au serieux_; and, turning to me, she said in her earnest way,--"Dear Jack, I'm afraid you are too confident and do not attend to your lessons now as you used to do. Pray, work hard, my dear boy, for my sake!"

"I will, mother dear, I promise you that," said I, kissing her. "I won't get plucked if I can help it."

"That's right, my brave boy, you cannot say more than that," chimed in Dad, with a pat of approval on my head, as my mother drew me towards her in mute caress. "By the way, I tell you what I'll do, Jack. I was asking my old friend Captain Gifford the other day about a good naval tutor for you, and you shall have the a.s.sistance of the same 'crammer'

he had for his boys if I can get hold of him."

Prior to the year 1858, I may here explain, on a youngster being nominated to a naval cadetship he was appointed to a sea-going ship at once, going afloat there and then without any preliminary examination and the roundabout routine subsequently enjoined, wisely or not, by "My Lords" when the "compet.i.tion wallah" system came in vogue. Unwittingly I was, thus, one of the first to suffer from the change, the order for cadets having to pa.s.s in certain specified subjects on board the _Excellent_ before receiving their appointments having been issued within a comparatively recent period of my getting my nomination.

This proviso, too, I may add, was saddled with the condition that all cadets in future would have to go through a probationary period of three months' instruction in seamanship in a training-ship, which was set apart for the purpose ere they were supposed to have officially joined "the service," and become liable to be sent to sea.

These regulations, to make an end of my explanations, continue in force to the present day with very little alteration, the only difference, so far as I can learn, being that youngsters now have to pa.s.s a slightly "stiffer" examination than I did on entry, and that they have to remain for two years on probation aboard the _Britannia_ instead of the three months period which was esteemed sufficient for the "sucking Nelsons" of my time in the old _Ill.u.s.trious_. She was the predecessor of the more modern training-ship for naval cadets, which turns them out now _au fin de siecle_, all ready-made, full-blown officers, so to speak; though it is questionable whether they are any the better sailors than Nelson himself, Collingwood amongst the older sea captains, or Hornby and Tryon of a later day. None of these went through a like course of study, and yet they knew how to handle ships and manoeuvre fleets without any such "great advantages" of training!

My moral reflections, though, have little to do with my story, to which I will now return.

The date of the examination being so perilously near, and my studies having become somewhat neglected during the long holiday I had spent in sightseeing in London, my father thought the surer way to secure my pa.s.sing would be, as he had said, to procure the aid of a good tutor who might peradventure succeed in tuning me up to concert pitch in the short interval allowed me by the patent process of "cramming," which had come into fashion with the compet.i.tion craze, more speedily than by any ordinary mode of imparting instruction.

So, in accordance with his promise, Dad called on his friend Captain Gifford the same afternoon in quest of the experienced "coach" or coachman, whom that gentleman had previously recommended, warranted to possess the ability to drive knowledge into my head at a sufficient rate to ensure my "weathering," the examiners when I went before them; and, ere the close of this memorable week in which I was introduced to Admiral Sir Charles Napier and got my nomination, I was in as high a state of "cram" as any Strasbourg goose destined to contribute his quota to a _pate_ of fat livers.

"Dear, dear, my poor boy!" as mother said to me, "what a lot you have to learn, to be sure!"

My mother was right you will say when you hear all. I was "a poor boy,"

indeed, and no mistake.

Latin, French, Arithmetic and Algebra, not forgetting my old enemy Euclid and his compromising propositions, with a synopsis of English History, and the physical and political geography of the globe, besides a lot of lesser "ologies," of no interest to anyone save my coach and myself, but all of which were included in the list of subjects laid down by the Admiralty as inc.u.mbent for every would-be naval cadet to acquire, were forced into my unfortunate cranium day and night without the slightest cessation.

The only let off I had were a few hours allowed me for sleep and refreshment, my hard task-master, the aforesaid coach, an old Cambridge wrangler, never giving me a moment's respite, insisting, on the contrary, that he would give _me_ up instead altogether if I once stopped work!

For the time being I lived in a world of facts and figures, breathing nothing but dates and exuding mathematical and other data at almost every pore; so that, by the end of the month I felt myself transformed into a sort of portable human cyclopaedia, containing a heterogeneous ma.s.s of information of all kinds, as superficial as it was varied.

The knowledge I acquired in this way, however, was only skin deep, so to to speak, exemplifying the truth of the old adage "lightly come, lightly go;" for albeit this hot-bed process of imparting learning served its turn in enabling me to pa.s.s the crucial ordeal to which I was subjected, I verily believe that I could not have answered satisfactorily one t.i.the of the questions a fortnight after the dreaded examination was over that I then grappled successfully.

But this is antic.i.p.ating matters.

Hot July sweltered to its close ere my tutor was satisfied with the progress I had made under his care and declared me fit for the fray.

This was on the very last day of the month, and on the following Tuesday, the 3rd of August, I remember, for it was the very day before the fateful Wednesday fixed for examination on board the _Excellent_, my mother, in company with Dad and myself, bade adieu to the sultry metropolis, of whose stagnant air and blistering pavements, and red-baked bricks and mortar we were all three heartily tired, journeying down to Portsmouth by some out-of-the-way route, all round the south coast, past Brighton and Worthing and Sh.o.r.eham, which I never afterwards essayed.