Young Tom Bowling Part 27

"But," persisted Mr Blockley, smelling a rat, "who's Jenny?"

"Tom's sisther, sure."

"O-o-oh!"

Not being certain exactly as to the meaning of Mr Blockley's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, Mick went on to explain further.

"Yis, sor, she's the sisther, sure, ov me fri'nd Tom Bowlin' here, sor,"

he said, pointing me out by a punch in the ribs that nearly knocked all the breath out of me. "An', sure, she's moighty fond ov burrds!"

Mr Blockley laughed.

"From that, I suppose, Paddy," he said, as soon as he could speak, "you put Jocko here in the same boat as the birds?"

"Begorrah, Oi do, sor," replied Mick, with a broad grin, as he cuddled the monkey up to him in his arms; Jocko taking off Mick's cap the while, and carefully scattering its motley contents to the winds. "Oi call him, sure, a Saint Michael's canary, faith, sor!"

"You'll do," said Mr Blockley, laughing again as he went away to attend to his duties, in seeing the chain cables got up from below, and ranged along the lower deck in preparation for our anchoring anon. "Let alone an Irishman for having the last word!"

Having a good breeze with us from the southward and westward, we soon rounded Saint Helen's point, off the east end of the island; and making a wide reach in towards the Warner lightship, we brought up at Spithead at Four Bells, comfortably.

Just before we anch.o.r.ed, Mr Osborne, the first lieutenant, sent for Mick and myself, the marine who pa.s.sed the word forward for us, saying that 'Number One' wanted to see us in the wardroom.

Wondering what was up, my chum and I proceeded aft, where we found Mr Osborne seated at the table, having just had lunch, as the cloth showed.

'Number One,' who had evidently enjoyed his meal, being in a genial mood, as indeed, to give him his due, he usually was, did not keep us long in suspense.

"Ha, my lads," he said, on the sentry ushering us up to where he sat, "you've given in your names, I believe, to pa.s.s for ordinary seamen, eh?"

The cat was out of the bag at once, and mightily we felt relieved at that.

I could not help smiling as I answered Mr Osborne in the affirmative; while, as for Mick, his "Yis, sor," was rolled out with an emphasis that made 'Number One' laugh outright.

"I hear very good reports of both of you, my lads--of you Bowling in particular," he said, looking at some papers before him, which he signed and handed over to the marine sentry, telling him to send them on to the ship's office; "and, as you are now both eighteen, the proper age to be entered on the books as 'ordinary seamen,' and have shown your apt.i.tude for the service during the six months you have been aboard this ship, I pa.s.s you, my lads, so you may now look upon yourselves as 'boys' no longer!"

Thanking the lieutenant, we left the wardroom, as may be supposed, decorously enough; but we had no sooner got out on the dock without than Mick executed a wild caper, which made the sentry grin.

"Bedad, Tom," he said, loud enough for the marine to hear, "me fayther allers s'id Oi'd be a man afore me moother; an', faith, Oi'm thet now, plaize the pigs!"

It was certainly a most unexpected denouement to the ordeal we had expected when sending in our names, both of us thinking we would have had to pa.s.s some stiff grind in seamanship and other naval acquirements, similar to the examinations we used to undergo on board the old _Saint Vincent_; and as we now were rated really as seamen, with the pay of one shilling and threepence a day, instead of sevenpence, besides having all the dirty work of the ship taken off our hands, Mick and I considered ourselves in clover, as you may readily imagine!

The _Active_ and _Volage_, the two Portsmouth ships of the Training Squadron, went into harbour early the very next morning, laying alongside the dockyard as before, to refit for their summer cruise; and, later on, when we were moored in our old berth at the Pitch-House jetty and things made right on board, we got leave with the rest of the starboard watch to go ash.o.r.e, Mick, of course, going home with me, and Jocko equally, of course, forming one of the company.

On our reaching Bonfire Corner, Mick was in a fix about Jocko, apparently, eyeing him when we got near the door of father's cottage, and then looking at me with a puzzled expression on his face, the monkey saving him the trouble of scratching his head, which Mick had got into the habit of doing whenever he was in a quandary, by most affectionately performing the operation for him.

"Hullo, old chap," said I, "what's up?"

"Faith, Tom, Oi'm onaisy in me moind, sure, about Jocko," he replied.

"Oi don't want yer sisther to be afther sayin' him at foorst. Sure, Oi want to take her be surprise, alannah."

"Well," said I, "that needn't trouble you, Mick. Let's put the little beggar over the garden wall."

"But, s'posin' onywun's theer?"

"You needn't be afraid of that," said I. "Mother and Jenny will be just having tea about this time, most likely, in the kitchen; and, if father's at home and not out in his wherry, he'll be taking a caulk in his old seat under the mulberry-tree."

"Begorrah, thin," cried Mick, in high glee at my now giving him this information, "we'll put the little baiste roight over the wall forninst whare he's a-sottin'; an', faith, if Jocko says him, he'll rouse him oop fast enuff, an' thin yer fayther'll think he's the divvle, sure, jist ez the chaplin did aboard the ship t'other day whin Jocko got into his cabin an' carried on 'Meg's divarshuns'!"

"The very thing," I said, entering into the joke and antic.i.p.ating father's astonishment. "Sling him over by that apple-tree, and then n.o.body will be able to see how he got in."

Mick at once carried out my suggestion.

The apple-tree, which had all its pretty pink and white blossoms out in full bloom, ran up close to the side of the wall, one branch indeed projecting over it, though at too great a height for the street boys to get at the fruit, having to content themselves instead with shying stones at what they were unable to reach.

Clambering up the face of the rough old brick wall like a cat, Mick carefully let down Jocko on the other side at this point, telling him in a whispered word of command that he was on 'sentry go' and mustn't stir till the order was given to 'relieve guard.'

Jocko evidently understood him clearly; for, although I expected he would have climbed back again on Mick's shoulder almost as soon as he put him down, the intelligent animal remained in the garden.

All things therefore working together as we wished, Mick and I now proceeded up to the front door and knocked.

Unfortunately, father had seen the _Active_ coming in and "blown the gaff" on us; and so, instead of our taking them by surprise, we found them on the lookout and all ready to receive us.

Little Jenny, who had grown considerably since I had last seen her, and was all the prettier, too, as Mick, I noticed, observed as well as myself, of course opened the door for us; and coming up the pa.s.sage behind her was mother and father, with the c.o.c.katoo 'Ally Sloper'

bringing up the roar of the procession, all of them laughing and talking, and saying, all in one breath and at the same time, how glad they were to see me and Mick again, old 'Ally Sloper' screaming out louder than the lot, "I'll wring your neck! I'll wring your neck!" We did have a tea.

To look at the table, one would have thought we had been starved all the time we were afloat, and that mother wished us to make up what leeway we had lost in the grub line by stowing our holds now as full as we could possibly manage.

Bless you, there was a dish of ham and eggs got ready by Jenny in a jiffy, sufficient to have served round the whole of our mess; while, as for the bread and b.u.t.ter, cut thin so as to make one want to eat the more, with marmalade and cakes and the jam, there was plenty, I think, for our whole ship's company!

Mick and I ate and ate, I pressed by mother, and he unable to resist Jenny's hospitable solicitude, until neither of us felt inclined to rise; when, just at the end of the feast--Mick and I being only just able then to make signs showing our inability to stow any more, speech having failed us--a most terrible bobbery broke out in the back garden, the c.o.c.katoo yelling like mad, and every other bird, I believe, in the shop joining in a demoniac chorus and lending emphasis to his screams.

"Ship my rullocks!" cried father, jumping up from his seat and making for the scullery door, with mother and Jenny after him. "It's that dratted old tom-cat of Bill Squeers come prowling arter the birds again, I knows. I've sworn I'll pison him some day; and, by the Lord, too, I will, if he's bin and gone and meddled with 'Ally Sloper'!"

"Aye, Thomas Bowling, just you stick to that," said mother, spurring him on to instant vengeance, fearing that father's loudly expressed animosity to our namesake the cat would evaporate, as it invariably did, after the cause of the commotion had made off. "The nasty beast nearly frightened one of Jenny's canaries to death the other day; but I gave him one with my broom-handle which made him scoot, I can tell you, the brute not having come back into the garden again, as I knows of, till to-day!"

So saying, mother disappeared, with her potent broomstick, behind the hedge of evergreens that shut off the backyard from our garden, in the wake of father and Jenny, who, being more speedy in their movements, were already out of sight.

Mick looked at me, and I looked at Mick; and then the two of us burst into a roar of laughter as we followed up the chase to see the end of it.

We arrived just in time.

Jocko, who, as may be supposed, was the originator of all the row, had got up into the mulberry-tree, the c.o.c.katoo's own especial domain, and, chattering and making faces at the bird, had clutched hold of one of his legs in his hand-like paw, trying to pull him from his perch.

This 'Ally Sloper' resisted with all his might and main, hanging from a branch of the tree with the claw that was free, while he pecked and bit the monkey with his nut-cracker beak, making Jocko wince and snarl and pull all the harder to get him into his clutches, the c.o.c.katoo screaming like mad, as I have said, all the while!

"Lor'!" exclaimed mother, holding up her hands at this sight, just as we came up, "it ain't Squeers's cat after all! How ever did that there monkey get here?"

"It must have broken loose from some place near," said Jenny. "The milkman told me this morning that Smith, the fancier, had one the other day which crammed a lot of cinders down the baby's throat and nearly killed it, and that Mr Smith was obliged to get rid of it."

"Then, this can't be that chap," said father, sitting down in his old armchair under the tree and looking up at Jocko, who had released 'Ally Sloper' on our approach and gone up aloft in one of the topmost branches. "I'd bet 'arf-a-crown now, Sarah, as how them two youngsters here could tell us summat o' the monkey if they likes!"