Young Tom Bowling Part 13

Keeping as grave as a judge, Mick then went up to the corporal.

"If y' playse, sor," said he, "some gossoon or t'other, sor, has bin an'

gone an' got into me hammick, sor, bad cess to him!"

"Oh, has he, Paddy," replied Mr Brown, switching his cane, and then drawing it as he gripped it with his right hand carefully through his left, as if feeling whether it had the right sort of edge on it or no.

"I'll soon make him shift his billet, my boy."

We, of course, were all in the joke, and watched Mr Brown with great glee as he stole stealthily up to Mick's hammock and let fly a shower of blows on the supposed intruder's body, accompanying the caning with some pertinent remarks of a very forcible nature anent the offender's want of manners and unneighbourliness towards a brother shipmate; whereupon we all burst into a regular guffaw, and Mick sought refuge in flight on the exposure of his little plot before Mr Brown could pay him out.

The corporal, though, took it in very good part, and did not bear my chum any subsequent ill-will for thus taking him in; albeit, he was wary enough to be on his guard against Mick hoaxing him a second time.

Jokes like these came as little interludes, so to speak, to 'ease the wheels' of our duties, which, however, were to me, at all events, more of a pleasure than so many tasks; that is, after I had gone through the initiatory instructions and drills, and was able to hold my own with the smartest of my shipmates.

I cannot say, though, that I cared much for the schooling, seven months of which every second-cla.s.s boy on board the _Saint Vincent_ has to undergo before he can gain the first rank.

Equally as certainly, however, I must allow that the teaching I gained, watch and watch about, in that big schoolroom astern on the lower deck turned out of considerable a.s.sistance to me, not only in my subsequent experience afloat in the navy, especially when serving abroad, but ash.o.r.e too; for I there learnt the art of learning things, which is the great secret of education to man or boy, though we youngsters do not realise this when we have the chance of getting hold of it.

But it was the seamanship instruction that I went in for with the greatest zest; and, from knotting and splicing up to compa.s.s, and helm, and signalling, I don't think I fell far short of what Captain Mordaunt said when he persuaded father to let me go to sea and join the training- ship--that I was a born sailor and a regular 'chip of the old block.'

In connection with this, I may state, that of all the practical lessons I learnt in sailoring on board the _Saint Vincent_, the going aloft for sail-drill used to please me best.

Every morning at eight o'clock we used to go up the rigging and practise loosing and furling the sails, crossing the royal-yards, and making all things snug before coming down on deck to our usual divisional instruction.

On Mondays the whole forenoon was devoted to these evolutions, the sails being set one after the other, topsails, topgallants, royals, and even stu'nsails sometimes, besides the courses and headsails below; until, often, the whole ship was piled with canvas as if she were fetching down Channel on a cruise, her spars quivering with the strain frequently, when we had the wind abeam from the southward and east'ard, and every rope as taut as a bar of iron!

We used to work our way from the lower yards to the dignity of the upper by rotation more than through any special smartness and activity; and I know I was as pleased as Punch when it came to my turn to be an 'upper- yard boy.'

I was never so happy as when aloft; and many a time up there of a morning have I gazed out to seaward, looking over Southsea beach and the boats cl.u.s.tered in the fairway, that seemed but little dots from the height where I was, to the open stretch of water beyond Spithead and Saint Helens, that seemed to draw my heart to it like a magnet, making me long to leave my present stay at home surroundings and sail away and away on the boundless deep.

This desire of mine was gratified in part after I had been serving for nine months as a second-cla.s.s boy, and pa.s.sed satisfactorily through all my drills and instructions; when Mick and I got promoted.

Strangely enough, my chum the Irish lad proved himself, landsman though he had been before and never having even smelt the sea prior to his coming to Portsmouth, quite as expert as myself after a short stay aboard the training-ship; though I had been a.s.sociated with ships and seafaring folk from the time I drew my first breath, and indeed, like all the Bowlings, as I told you at the beginning of my yarn, was born with the taste for 'the briny,' the feeling being inherent to my blood.

It strikes me, though, that my sister Jenny had something to do with this.

Mick heard her say the first day when I first took him home with me to visit father and mother at Bonfire Corner, that she loved sailors, and wondered how any young fellow could possibly care for anything else, when he had a chance of going afloat and serving his Queen and country, and fighting the battles of Old England.

The remark was a chance one; but, though Mick must have heard Jenny say a good many other things, for he was often at our house afterwards, being generally in the habit of accompanying me home when I had leave to go, he never forgot those words and somehow or other seemed to strive his best to reach Jenny's ideal.

So, you see, smart seaman though I fancied myself to be even at that early age, I had to look out lest I should be supplanted by my own chum; for no sooner did I get the start of him in one thing than he would fetch alongside of me and be working ahead before I well knew where I was, the 'owdacious young beggar,' as father dubbed him, becoming actually a 'royal-yard boy' the following week to myself, while both of us, as I have said, were made first-cla.s.s boys together.

Unfortunately, this was during the winter months; and, as the training- brig _Martin_, which is attached to the _Saint Vincent_ as a sea-going tender in order to cruise about in the Channel to give the boys practical experience of their profession--like a frolicsome chick hanging round a broody old hen that won't leave her nest--does not go out of harbour till the spring, Mick and I were unable for some time to take advantage of the grand privilege of our rise and really go to sea.

We thought the blissful period would never come.

But 'it's a long lane that knows no turning'; and, winter ebbing away into the flood of spring anon, we, with some ninety and nine other youngsters of the same standing, set sail one fine April morning from Portsmouth Harbour, the _Martin_ slipping her buoy abreast of Blockhouse Fort, and standing out into the Solent under easy canvas, with a fair wind from the nor'-east.

A hundred boys are always taken at a time for a month's cruise in the brig, the lot being accompanied by some of the smartest seamen belonging to the complement of the mother training-ship, so that they have every opportunity of picking up now the nautical knowledge necessary to make them worth their salt, in reference both to seamanship and gunnery.

We had a pretty fair knock-about time in the Channel, running down to Plymouth and back, having a 'sojer's wind,' one that was fair both ways, out and home again; and, though, from this fact, we necessarily made an easy pa.s.sage of it, some of the boys were woefully seasick, many of them never having been at sea before.

Notably among these was Mick.

"Bedad!" moaned he, leaning over the side with his dark face turned to pale green that seemed a faint reflection of the water below, into which he looked apparently with the deepest interest as he sacrificed his dearly loved dinner to Neptune, paying the sea-G.o.d his dues, "Oi fale, Tom me darlint, as if Oi'd brought up iverythink, faith, since furst Oi jined the ship, an' me boots, begorrah, same in the back of me hid!

Wurrah, wurrah, why did Oi ivver come to say? Och, Tom mabouchal, kill me at onst, and be done with it!"

I could not help laughing at him, he presented such a contrast to the buoyant lad of my ordinary acquaintance; though, of course, I tried to sympathise with my woe-begone chum.

But ere long something occurred which made him, and the others in a like predicament, forget their seasickness in a hurry, all of us having to be as spry as we could.

The _Martin_ took the ground!

I'll tell you how this happened.

We had run up Channel, as I have told you, with a fair wind from the start; but, on our reaching the westernmost end of the Isle of Wight, this turned against us, so that after pa.s.sing through the Needles we had to beat up the Solent in the teeth of a stiff sou'-easter.

This, of course, gave us plenty of exercise in tacking; and the constant going aloft, with the brig rolling and a choppy sea under her, had overset the equilibrium of poor Mick's stomach.

We had tacked and 'reached' in this way for some time, making short boards between the Hampshire coast and the Island opposite; when, in going about off the Brambles, through one of the uncertain currents which infest Southampton Water taking her on the slant as we shivered our headsails to come up to the wind, the brig missed stays and struck on the edge of the shoal.

CHAPTER TEN.

"UNDER FIRE!"

"Look alive, my lads!" shouted out our tall commander, as we stumbled about the deck of the brig, the shock as her keel touched ground knocking us off our pins and making the poor seasick chaps who were holding their heads over the side pull them in pretty promptly. "Watch, furl sails! 'Way aloft!"

The sheets and halliards were let go in a twinkling before we left the deck and the topsails dropped on the caps, as well as the jib downhaul manned and the spanker brailed up, so as to prevent our being forced farther upon the shoal; and, while we were shinning up the rigging, the clewlines and buntlines were hauled by the watch below, which got in all the slack of the sails preparatory to our pa.s.sing the gaskets when we got aloft, thus enabling us to furl all the canvas, and make everything snug in less time than I take to tell of it.

In the meanwhile our commander made himself busy in other ways, the cutter being lowered and a party of seamen and boys sent in her with a kedge to drop astern and try to warp off; the port bower anchor being dropped at the same time, and a spring set on the cable, which was buoyed so that we could slip it in a moment in the event of her suddenly floating.

A 'distant signal' was also hoisted at the main, consisting of a square flag on top with a ball below, which meant that we were aground and wanted a.s.sistance, to let the men on watch at the Hurst Castle signal- station know what was up with us; and, in addition, our smart commanding officer put on a party of boys at the pumps, to see whether the brig might not have strained her timbers and sprung a leak, through working about on the nasty sand bottom of the Brambles.

This latter precaution, however, proved a useless one; for the gang of eager lads working away with a will at the crank-handles of the pumps, soon cleared the little amount of water that was in the bilge, and the shaft sucked dry.

"Ther' ain't a drop in her," reported Mr Tarbolt, the quarter-master, 'old Jellybelly,' as we called him amongst ourselves. "I don't think, sir, as how she's made a h'inch since we pa.s.sed the Needles and last cleared ship."

"Very good, quarter-master," said the commander; "you can stop pumping."

The chaps who had gone off in the cutter had been equally spry with their job, bending on a stout hemp hawser through the ring of the kedge anchor, which they dropped some half a cable's length from the brig, bringing back the other end aboard, where it was put round the capstan on the forecastle.

This was at once manned, there being no want of volunteers, every one of us wanting to have a turn at the capstan bars, even before Mr Gadgett, the gunner, who was on duty forward, gave the word.

But it was a case of 'yo heave' and 'paul' in vain, the hemp cable coming home as taut as possible, and then surging off the capstan without moving the poor little _Martin_ a hair's-breadth from her sandy bed.

"We must get out the stream anchor, Mr Gadgett," sang out the commander. "Look alive there and rig out the davits, and send some hands into the cutter to stow the anchor properly when we lower it down!"