Frank Mildmay Part 19

"You may go to h.e.l.l, and be d.a.m.ned, sir!" said the captain (who hated bad language); "you are not fit to carry guts to a bear!--you are not worth your salt; and the sooner you are off, the cleaner the ship will be! Don't stand staring at me, like a bull over a gate! Down, and pack up your traps, or I'll freshen your way!" raising his foot at the same time, as if he was going to kick him.

The young officer, who was a mild, gentlemanly, and courageous youth, did as he was bidden. I was perfectly astonished: I had been accustomed to sail with gentlemen. I had heard of martinets, and disciplinarians, and foul-mouthed captains; but this outdid all I ever could have conceived, and much more than I thought ever could have been submitted to by any correct officer. Roused to indignation, and determined not to be treated in this manner, I again walked up to him, and requested leave to go on sh.o.r.e.

"You have had your answer, sir."

"Yes, I have, sir," said I, "and in language that I never before heard on His Majesty's quarter-deck. I joined this ship as an officer and a gentleman, and as such I will be treated."

"Mutiny, by G.o.d!" roared the captain. "c.o.c.k-a-hoop with your new commission, before the ink is dry."

"As you please, sir," I replied; "but I shall write a letter to the port-admiral, stating the circ.u.mstances and requesting leave of absence; and that letter I shall trouble you to forward."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I do!" said he.

"Then, sir," said I, "as you have refused to forward it, and in the presence of all the officers in the ship's company, I shall forward it without troubling you."

This last shot of mine seemed to produce the same effect upon him that the last round does upon a beaten boxer; he did not come to time, but, muttering something, dived down the companion, and went into his cabin.

The first lieutenant now came up, and congratulated me on my victory.

"You have puzzled and muzzled the bear completely," said he; "I have long wanted a coadjutor like yourself. Wilson, who is going to leave us, is the best creature that ever lived: but though brave as a lion before an enemy, he is cowed by this incarnate devil."

Our conversation was interrupted by a message from the captain, who desired to speak with me in his cabin. I went down; he received me with the benignant smile of our first acquaintance.

"Mr Mildmay," said he, "I always a.s.sume a little tartness with my officers when they first join," ("and when they quit you too," thought I), "not only to prove to them that I am, and will be, the captain of my own ship, but also as an example to the men, who, when they see what the officers are forced to put up with, feel themselves more contented with their lot, and obey more readily; but, as I told you before, the comfort of my officers is my constant study--you are welcome to go ash.o.r.e, and have twenty-four hours' leave to collect your necessaries."

To this harangue I made no reply; but, touching my hat, quitted the cabin I felt so much contempt for the man that I was afraid to speak, lest I should commit myself.

The captain shortly after quitted the ship, telling the first lieutenant that I had permission to go on sh.o.r.e. I was now left at liberty to make acquaintance with my companions in misery--and nothing conduces to intimacy so much as community of suffering. My resistance to the brutality of our common taskmaster had pleased them; they told me what a tyrant and what a disgrace to the service he was, and how shameful it was that he should be intrusted with the command of so fine a vessel, or of any vessel at all, except it were a convict ship. The stories they told me of him were almost incredible, and nothing but the too-well-founded idea that an officer trying his captain by a court-martial had a black mark against him for ever after, and was never known to rise, could have saved this man from the punishment he so richly deserved: no officer, they said, had been more than three weeks in the ship, and they were all making interest to leave her.

In my report of what occurred in this vessel during the time I belonged to her, I must, in justice to the captains and commanders of His Majesty's navy, observe, that the case was unique of its kind: such a character as Captain G--- was rarely met with in the navy then, and, for reasons which I shall give, will be still more rare in future. The first lieutenant told me that I had acted very judiciously in resisting at first his undue exertion of authority; that he was at once a tyrant, a bully, and a coward, and would be careful how he attacked me again.

"But be on your guard," said he, "he will never forgive you; and when he is most agreeable there is the most mischief to be dreaded. He will lull you into security, and whenever he can catch you tripping, he will try you by a court-martial. You had better go on sh.o.r.e, and settle all your business, and, if possible, be on board before your leave is out.

It is only your threat of writing to the port-admiral that procured you leave of absence. You have nothing to thank him for: he would have kept you on board if he dared. I have never quitted the ship since I joined her; and never has a day pa.s.sed without a scene similar to what you have this morning witnessed. And yet," continued he, "if it were not for his cruelty to the men, he is the most amusing liar I ever heard. I am often more inclined to laugh than to be angry with him; he has a vein of wit and rich humour that runs through his composition and never quits him. There is drollery even in his malice, and, if we cannot get clear of him, we must take the best of him."

I went on sh.o.r.e, collected all my clothes and the other articles of which I stood in need, and was on board my ship again the next morning before eight o'clock.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

He will lie sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool: drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine-drunk, and in his sleep he does little harm. SHAKESPEARE.

When Captain G--- made his appearance, he seemed to be in the most amiable humour possible. As soon as he saw me, he said, "Ah, this is what I like; never break your leave even for five minutes. Now that I see I can trust you, you may go on sh.o.r.e again as soon as you please."

This speech might have done very well to any person before the mast; but as applied to an officer, I thought it rude and ungentlemanly.

The caterer had prepared lunch in the gun-room: it consisted of beef-steaks and broiled bullocks' kidneys, with fried onions; and their savoury smell rose in grateful steams up the sky-light, and a.s.sailed the nostrils of the skipper. His facetious small-talk knew no bounds; he leaned over the frame, and looking down, said,--"I say, something devilish good going on there below!"

The hint was taken, and the first lieutenant invited him down.

"I don't care if I do; I am rather peckish."

So saying, he was down the hatchway in the twinkling of one of his own funny eyes, as he feared the choice bits would be gone before he could get into action. We all followed him; and as he seated himself, he said--

"I trust, gentlemen, this is not the last time I shall sit in the gun-room, and that you will all consider my cabin as your own. I love to make my officers comfortable: nothing more delightful than an harmonious ship, when every man and boy is willing to go to h.e.l.l for his officers. That's what I call good fellowship--give and take--make proper allowances for one another's failings, and we shall be sorry when the time comes for us to part. I am afraid, however, that I shall not be long with you; for though I doat upon the brig, the Duke of N--- and Lord George --- have given the first Lord a d.a.m.ned _whigging_ for not promoting me sooner; and between ourselves--I don't wish it to go further--my post commission goes out with me to Barbadoes."

The first lieutenant c.o.c.ked his eye; and quick as were the motions of that eye, the captain, with a twist of one of his own, caught a glimpse of it, before it could be returned to its bearing on the central object, the beef-steaks, kidneys, and onions. But it pa.s.sed off without a remark.

"A very capital steak this! I'll trouble you for some fat and a little gravy. We'll have some jollification when we get to sea; but we must get into blue water first; then we shall have less to do. Talking of broiling steaks--when I was in Egypt we used to broil our beef-steaks on the rocks--no occasion for fire--thermometer at 200--hot as h.e.l.l! I have seen four thousand men at a time cooking for the whole army as much as twenty or thirty thousand pounds of steak at a time, all hissing and frying at once--just about noon, of course, you know--not a spark of fire! Some of the soldiers, who had been brought up as gla.s.s-blowers at Leith, swore they never saw such heat. I used to go to leeward of them for a whiff, and think of old England! Ah, that's the country, after all, where a man may think and say what he pleases! But that sort of work did not last long, as you may suppose; their eyes were all fried out, d.a.m.n me, in three or four weeks! I had been ill in my bed, for I was attached to the 72nd regiment, seventeen hundred strong--I had a party of seamen with me; but the ophthalmia made such ravages, that the whole regiment, colonel and all, went stone blind--all except one corporal! You may stare, gentlemen, but it's very true. Well, this corporal had a precious time of it: he was obliged to lead out the whole regiment to water--he led the way, and two or three took hold of the skirts of his jacket, on each side; the skirts of these were seized again by as many more, and double the number to the last, and so all held on by one another, till they had all had a drink at the well; and, as the devil would have it, there was but one well among us all--so this corporal used to water the regiment just as a groom waters his horses; and all spreading out you know, just like the tail of a peac.o.c.k."

"Of which the corporal was the rump," interrupted the doctor.

The captain looked grave.

"You found it warm in that country?" inquired the surgeon. "Warm!"

exclaimed the captain; "I'll tell you what, doctor, when you go where you have sent many a patient--and where, for that very reason, you certainly will go--I only hope, for your sake, and for that of your profession in general, that you will not find it quite so hot as we found it in Egypt. What do you think of nineteen of my men being killed by the concentrated rays of light falling on the barrels of the sentinels bright muskets, and setting fire to the powder? I commanded a mortar battery at Acre, and I did the French infernal mischief with the sh.e.l.ls I used to pitch in among them when they had sat down to dinner: but how do you think the scoundrels weathered on me at last? d.a.m.n me, they trained a parcel of poodle dogs to watch the sh.e.l.ls when they fell, and then to run and pull the fuses out with their teeth. Did you ever hear of such d.a.m.ned villains? By this means, they saved hundreds of men, and only lost half a dozen dogs--fact, by G.o.d; only ask Sir Sydney Smith; he'll tell you the same, and a d.a.m.ned sight more."

The volubility of his tongue was only equalled by the rapidity of his invention and his powers of mastication; for, during the whole of this entertaining monodrame, his teeth were in constant motion, like the traversing beam of a steamboat; and as he was our captain as well as our guest, he certainly took the lion's share of the repast.

"But, I say, Soundings," said he, addressing himself familiarly to the master, who had not been long in the vessel, "let us see what sort of stuff you have stowed the forehold with. You know I am a water-drinker; give me only the pure limpid stream, and a child may lead me. I seldom touch liquor when the water is good." So saying, he poured out a tumbler, and held it to his nose. "Stinks like h.e.l.l! I say, master, are you sure the bungs are in your casks? The cats have been contributing to the fluid. We must qualify this;" and having poured away one half of the water, which, by the by, was very good, he supplied the vacancy with rum. Then tasting it, he said, "Come, miss puss, this will rouse you out, at any rate."

A moment's pause, while he held the b.u.mper before his eye, and then down it went, producing no other emotion than a deep sigh. "By the bye, that's well thought of--we'll have no cats in the ship (except those which the depravity of human nature unhappily compels the boatswain to use). Mr Skysail, you'll look to that. Throw them all overboard."

Taking his hat, he rose from the table, and mounting the ladder, "On second thought," said he, addressing Skysail again, "I won't throw the cats overboard; the sailors have a foolish superst.i.tion about that animal--its d.a.m.ned unlucky. No! put them alive in a bread-bag, and send them on sh.o.r.e in the b.u.m-boat."

Recollecting that my dinner-party at the George was to take place this day, and remembering the captain's promise that I should go on sh.o.r.e whenever I pleased, I thought it only necessary to say I was going-- merely pa.s.sing the usual compliment to my superior. I therefore went to him, with a modest a.s.surance, and told him of my engagement and my intention.

"Upon my honour, sir," cried he, putting his arms akimbo, and staring me full in the face; "you have a tolerable sea-stock of modest a.s.surance; no sooner come on board than you ask leave to go on sh.o.r.e again, and at the same time you have the impudence to tell me, knowing how much I abhor the vice, that you mean to wet your commission, and of course to get beastly drunk, and to make others as bad as yourself. No, sir; I'd have you to know, that as captain of this ship, and as long as I have the honour to command her, I am _magister morum_."

"That is precisely what I was coming to, sir," said I, "when you interrupted me. Knowing how difficult it is to keep young men in order, without the presence of some one whom they respect, and can look up to as an example, I was going to request the honour of your company as my guest. Nothing, in my opinion, could so effectually repress any tendency to improper indulgence."

"There you speak like a child of my own bringing up," replied Captain G---: "I did not give you credit for so much good sense. I am far from throwing a wet blanket over any innocent mirth. Man is man after all-- give him but the bare necessaries of life, and he is no more than a dog.

A little mirth on such an occasion is not only justifiable, but praiseworthy. The health of a good king like ours, G.o.d bless him!

should always be drunk in good wine; and as you say the party is to be select, and the occasion the wetting of your commission, I shall have no objection to come and give away the bride; but, remember, no hard drinking--no indecorum--and I'll do my best, not only to keep the young bloods in order, but to add my humble powers to the hilarity of the evening."

I thanked him for his kind condescension. He then gave a few directions to Skysail, the first lieutenant, and ordering his gig to be manned, offered me a pa.s.sage on sh.o.r.e.

This was, indeed, a mark of favour never before conferred on any officer in the ship, and all hands spontaneously turned out to see the sight.

The first lieutenant c.o.c.ked his eye, which was more than saying, "This is too good to last long." However, into the boat we went, and pulled away for old Sallyport. The harbour tide rolling out, we, pa.s.sed close to the buoy of the _Boyne_.

"Ah! well I remember that old ship; I was midshipman of her when she blew up. I was signal midshipman. I was in the act of making the signal of distress, when up I went. d.a.m.nation! I thought I never should have come down any more."

"Indeed, sir!" said I, "I thought there had been no one on board at the time."

"No one on board!" repeated the captain, with scorn on his upper lip, "who did you get that from?"

"I heard it from a captain I served with in America."

"Then you may tell your captain, with my compliments, that he knew nothing at all about it. No one on board! Why, d.a.m.n me, sir, the p.o.o.p was crowded like a sheepfold, and all bellowing to me for help. I told them all to go to h.e.l.l, and just at that moment away we all went, sure enough. I was picked up senseless, I was told somewhere in Stokes Bay, and carried to Haslar Hospital, where I was given over for three months--never spoke. At last I got well; and the first thing I did was to take a boat and go and dive down the forehold of my old ship, and swim aft to the bread-room."