Merry-Garden and Other Stories Part 15

He stared at me, turning with his foot on the boat's gunwale. "Why, G.o.d bless the boy! you've only to turn to your left and follow your innocent nose for a hundred and fifty yards, and you'll run your heads against the doorway."

We watched the boat as it pushed off. A few of the crowd still lingered on the quay's edge, and it has since occurred to me to wonder that, as Hartnoll and I turned and ascended the steps, no violence was offered to us. We had come out to flaunt our small selves in his Majesty's uniform.

Here, if ever, was proof of the respect it commanded; and we failed to notice it. Meliar-Ann had disappeared. The loungers on the quay-head let us pa.s.s unmolested, and, following the lieutenant's directions, sure enough within five minutes we found ourselves under the lamp of the Blue Posts!

The night-porter eyed us suspiciously before admitting us. "A man might say that you've made a pretty fair beginning," he ventured; but I had warned Hartnoll to keep his chin up, and we pa.s.sed in with a fine show of haughty indifference.

At eight o'clock next morning Hartnoll and I were eating our breakfast when the waiter brought a visitor to our box--a tallish midshipman about three years our senior, with a face of the colour of brickdust and a frame that had outgrown his uniform.

"Good-morning, gentlemen," said he; "and I daresay you guess my business.

I'm to take you on board as soon as you can have your boxes ready."

We asked him if he would do us the honour to share our breakfast: whereupon he nodded.

"To tell you the truth, I was about to suggest it myself. Eh? What have we? Grilled kidneys? Good."

I called to the waiter to fetch another dish of kidneys.

"_And_ a spatchc.o.c.k," added our guest. "They're famous, here, for spatchc.o.c.k. _And_, yes, I think we'll say an anchovy toast. Tea? Well, perhaps, at this time of the morning--with a poker in it."

This allusion to a poker we did not understand; but fortunately the waiter did, and brought a gla.s.sful of rum, which Mr. Strangways--for so he had made himself known to us--tipped into his tea, a.s.suring us that the great Nelson had ever been wont to refer to this--his favourite mixture--as "the pride of the morning."

"By the way," he went on, with his mouth full of kidney, "the second lieutenant tells me you were in luck's way last night."

To this we modestly agreed, and hoped that the prisoners had arrived safely on board.

He grinned. "You may lay to that. We had to club half a dozen of them as soon as they were lifted aboard. When I say 'we' I ought to add that I was in my hammock and never heard a word of it, being a heavy sleeper.

_That,_" said Mr. Strangways pensively, "is my one fault."

We attempted to convey by our silence that Mr. Strangways' single fault was a trifling, a venial one.

"It'll hinder my prospects, all the same." He nodded. "You mark my words." He nodded again, and helped himself to a round of b.u.t.tered toast.

"But I'm told," he went on, "there was an unholy racket. They couldn't do much, having the jollies on both pair of paws; but a party in mother-o'-pearl b.u.t.tons made a speech about the liberty of the subject, in a voice that carried pretty nearly to Gosport: and the first lieutenant, being an old woman, and afraid of the ship's losing reputation while he was in charge, told them all to be good boys and he would speak to the Captain when he came aboard; and served them out three fingers of rum apiece, which the bo'sun took upon himself to hocus. By latest accounts, they're sleeping it off and--I say, waiter, you might tell the cook to devil those kidneys."

"But hasn't Captain Suckling returned yet?" I ventured to ask.

"He hasn't," said Mr. Strangways. "The deuce knows where he is, and the first lieutenant, not being in the deuce's confidence, is working himself into the deuce of a sweat. What's worse, His Excellency hasn't turned up yet, nor His Excellency's suite: though a boat waited for 'em five solid hours yesterday. All that arrived was His Excellency's valet and about a score of valises, and word that the great man would follow in a sh.o.r.e-boat. Which he hasn't."

From this light gossip Mr. Strangways turned and addressed himself to the devilled kidneys, remarking that in his Britannic Majesty's service a man was hungry as a matter of course; which I afterwards and experimentally found to be true.

Well--not to protract the tale--an hour later we took boat with our belongings, under Mr. Strangways' escort, and were pulled on a swift tide down to the ship. It so happened that the first and second lieutenants were standing together in converse on the break of the p.o.o.p when we climbed on board and were led aft to report ourselves. The second lieutenant, Mr. Fraser (in whom we recognised our friend of the night before) stepped to the gangway and shook hands with a jolly smile.

His superior offered us no such cheerful welcome, but stuck his hands behind him and scowled.

"H'm," said he, "are these your two infants? They look as if they had been making a night of it."

I could have answered (but did not) that we must be looking pasty-faced indeed if his gills had the advantage of us: for the man was plainly fretting himself to fiddle-strings with anxiety. He turned his back upon us and called forward for one of the master's mates, to whom he gave orders to show us our hammocks. We saluted and took leave of him, and on our way below fell in with Strangways again, who haled us off to introduce us to the gun-room.

Of the gun-room and its horrors you'll have formed--if lads still read their Marryat nowadays--your own conception; and I will only say that it probably bears the same relation to the _Melpomene's_ gun-room as chalk to cheese. The _Melpomene's_ gun-room was low--so low that Strangways seldom entered it but he contused himself--and it was also dark as the inside of a hat, and undeniably stuffy.

Yet to me, in my first flush of enthusiasm, it appeared eminently cosy: and the six midshipmen of the _Melpomene_--Walters, de Havilland, Strangways, Pole, Bateman, Countisford--six as good fellows as a man could wish to sail with. Youth, youth! They had their faults: but they were all my friends till the yellow fever carried off two at Port Royal; and two are alive yet and my friends to-day. I tell their six names over to-day like a string of beads, and (if the Lord will forgive a good Protestant) with a prayer for each.

Our next business was to become acquainted with the two marines who had carried our chests below, and who (as we proudly understood) were to be our body-servants. We were on deck again, and luckily out of hearing of our fellow-midshipmen, when these two menials came up to report themselves: and Hartnoll and I had just arrived at an amicable choice between them.

"Here, Bill," said the foremost, advancing and pointing at me with a forefinger, "which'll it be? If you _don't_ mind, I'll take the red-headed one, to put me in mind o' my gal."

So on the whole we settled ourselves down very comfortably aboard the _Melpomene_: but the ship was not easy that day as a society, nor could be, with her commanding officer pacing to and fro like a bear in a cage.

You will have seen the black bear at the Zoo, and noticed the swing of his head as he turns before ever reaching the end of his cage? Well just so-- or very like it--the _Melpomene's_ first lieutenant kept swinging and chafing on the quarter-deck all that afternoon--or, to be precise, until six o'clock, when Captain Suckling came aboard in a sh.o.r.e-boat, and in his sh.o.r.e-going clothes.

He was a pleasant-faced man; clean-shaven, rosy-complexioned, grey-haired, with something of the air and carriage of a country squire; a pleasant-tempered man too, although he appeared to be in a pet of some sort, and fairly fired up when the first lieutenant (a little sarcastically, I thought) ventured to hope that he had been enjoying himself.

"Nothing of the sort, sir! It's the first--" Captain Suckling checked himself. "I was going to say," he resumed more quietly, "that it's the first prize-fight I have ever attended and will be the last. But in point of fact there has been no fight."

"Indeed, sir?" I heard the first lieutenant murmur compa.s.sionately.

"The men did not turn up; neither they nor their trainers. The whole meeting, in fact, was what is vulgarly called a bilk. But where is Sir John?"

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"His Excellency--you have made him comfortable?"

"His Excellency, sir, has not turned up. In fact," said the first lieutenant prettily, "I fancy that His Excellency, too, must have done what is--er--vulgarly termed a bilk."

Captain Suckling stared from his lieutenant to the sh.o.r.e, and from the sh.o.r.e to the horizon.

"The boat waited no less than five hours for him yesterday, and in the end brought off his valet with some luggage. He gave us to understand that Sir John and his Secretary would follow in a sh.o.r.e-boat. This was twenty-four hours ago, and they have not appeared."

"Extraordinary!"

"I have to report also," said the first lieutenant, "that at seven o'clock, in accordance with orders, Mr. Fraser took a party ash.o.r.e.

The press has been active of late, and at first they found the whole town shy: in fact, sir, they met with no success at all until midnight, when, just as they were on the point of returning, they raided a house and brought off eight able-bodied fellows--as fine a lot, sir, physically, as you could wish to see. For their seamanship I am unable to answer, having had no opportunity to question them. To judge from his report Mr. Fraser handled the affair well, and brought them off expeditiously; and I am relieved to tell you that, so far, we have had no trouble from sh.o.r.e--not so much as an inquiry sent."

"That is luck, indeed," said Captain Suckling approvingly; "and a comfort to hear at the end of a day when everything has gone wrong. Fetch them up--that is, if they are sufficiently recovered; fetch them up, and when I've shifted these clothes I'll have a look at them while daylight serves."

The Captain went below: and five minutes later I saw the first of the prisoners haled up through the hatchway. It was the man in the double overcoat; but he had lost his colour, and he no sooner reached the deck than he lurched and sat down with a thud. Since no one helped him to rise, he remained seated, and gazed about him with a drugged and vacuous stare, while the light of the approaching sunset shimmered over his mother-of-pearl b.u.t.tons.

The next to emerge was my friend of the splendid torso, handcuffed and fettered. When he, too, lurched and fell, I became aware for the first time that the frigate was rocking on a gentle south-westerly swell, and I turned to the bulwarks for a glance overside at the water which, up to an hour ago, had been smooth as a pond. I had scarcely reached the bulwarks when a voice forward sang out that a boat was approaching and hailing us.

Sure enough, a boat there was: and in the stern-sheets, with a couple of watermen pulling, sat two men of whom the portliss was promptly and confidently proclaimed by the midshipmen gathered around me to be no other than His Excellency.

The boat approached and fell alongside the ladder suspended a few yards aft of the ship's waist. The first lieutenant, having sent word to the Captain, hurried forward to receive our distinguished guest, who climbed heavily on his Secretary's arm. Arriving thus at the sally-way, he nodded graciously in answer to the first lieutenant's salute, pulled out a handkerchief to mop his brow, and in the act of mopping it cast a glance across the deck.

"Captain Suckling has asked me to present his excuses to your Excellency--" began the first lieutenant in his best tone of ceremony; and, with that, took a step backward as His Excellency flung out a rigid arm.

"The Dustman! for a fiver!"

"I--I beg your Excellency's pardon--your Excellency was pleased to observe--"

"The Dustman, for a hundred pounds! Jem Clark, too! Oh, catch me, Winyates!" and His Excellency staggered back, clutching at a man-rope with one hand, pointing with the other. His gaze wavered from the prisoners amidships to the first lieutenant, and from the first lieutenant to the p.o.o.p-ladder, at the head of which Captain Suckling at this instant appeared, hastily b.u.t.toning his uniform coat as he came.