Young Tom Bowling Part 5

"Yes, if you can find them," answered the 'Jaunty' shortly. "It strikes me, Larrikins, you'll soon be on short allowance yourself if you don't keep a better hold on your tongue! Let me see these mess-tables all cleared up before I come back from the wardroom, or you'll smell powder before Six Bells, I promise you, and shan't go ash.o.r.e to-day."

This threat had the effect of sobering down our lively friend, who then put us in the way of what we were to do; and, all of us lending willing hands, we soon had the place as trim as it was before we had sat down to our dinners.

After this, taking the dirty plates back to the galley, we washed all of them up in a bucket of water and restored them to their proper racks, returning to the entry-port just as the master-at-arms came sauntering back along the deck from the officers' quarters aft.

"Ha, done that job all right, I see," said he in an approving tone.

"Now, let me see what we can find for you, to keep your hands out of mischief. Corporal, have they told off any hands yet to clear the bilge?"

"Yes, sir," replied one of the ship's corporals who had just come up the forward hatchway from the lower deck. "I jest heered the bosun givin'

orders for a gang to go down on the orlop deck."

"Then, take th's lot of new boys with you and show them the way down.

They're almost enough to man the pumps all by themselves!"

"Aye, aye, sir," responded the corporal, turning to retrace his steps down the hatchway which he had just ascended. "Come along, my lads, follow me!"

Down we all trooped accordingly, on to the lower deck, where we saw a number of the boys, who had been dismissed from quarters, busy at their various instruction drills; which we, unhappy 'unclothed' ones, could not partic.i.p.ate in till we had been clad in uniform and become part and parcel of the ship's company.

Giving these the go-by, and also pa.s.sing the schoolroom, leaving that astern on our starboard hand, we descended yet lower to the orlop deck, the lowest in the ship, being just above the hold where lies the ballast, and the water-tanks are stowed, as well as spare gear.

Here, some twenty other boys, under the superintendence of one of the petty officers, were working away at the cranks of the Downton pumps with the energy of so many convicts on the treadmill; clink-clanking at such a rate, that one could hear the suck of the pumps and the rush of the water through the pipes, ending with a sort of gurgle at the end of the stroke!

In the 'dim religious light' produced by a couple of ship's lanterns hung at the head of the hatchways, widely apart, not very much could be seen of the interior, save the broad substantial deck beams and curved knees at the sides; but I noticed that the faces of two or three of the boys nearest one of these lights were streaming with perspiration, which showed that the work was "taking it out of them."

"Tail on here!" shouted out the petty officer, who seemed a rather grumpy individual, on our coming down to join the gang. "We don't want no idlers here!"

With that, Mick Donovan and I gripped the handle of one of the cranks, two others of the new boys facing us; and we soon all found our places, clink-clanking away like the rest had done before we joined in. Indeed, we couldn't stop once we had started, but had to 'sling on' whether we liked it or not, the handles of the pumps keeping up their up and down motion through the action of the others; so that if we had let go, we should have got either a tidy crack under the chin, or else been tumbled over on the deck.

After half-an-hour's experience of this exhilarating labour, the petty officer sang out, "Spell ho!" and we left off the job, the pumps having sucked dry, and the bilge being thus clear for the day.

We then returned up the two hatchways to the middle deck above, the boy messenger Larrikins being sent down by the direction of the master-at- arms to fetch us to be measured for our uniforms, the tailor having come aboard.

The 'snip' did not take long over his business; for he and his a.s.sistant, after putting their tapes round us, and punching 'Ugly,' who would stoop, to make him really stand upright, promised that we should all have our new clothes by the following Sat.u.r.day.

"Hurrah!" said one of the novices near me. "I'll then be able to go home and see mother again!"

"G-a-a, cry babby!" jeered 'Ugly.' "Yer oughter 'a bin tied to yer mother's aprun string!"

"Begorrah!" interposed Mick Donovan, "that's more'n ye could be afther!

I doesn't think ye're afther havin' a moother at all. Faith, ye're too ugly fur inny one to own ye, save the divvle; an' he'd be a born fool fur his pains if he did."

A laugh went round amongst us, which was only quenched by the master-at- arms singing out "Silence there!" and then; the lot of us were taken by Larrikins to the ship's steward, who served out to each of us a hammock and a pair of blankets, part of the outfit to which all second-cla.s.s boys are ent.i.tled on joining the Navy, when a grateful country makes them a present of six guineas to furnish themselves with a rig-out!

Mind you, though, this sum is not allowed to be spent at the sucking seaman's own discretion, but is laid out for him in a wardrobe of the most approved nautical type, suited alike to his wants and the requirements of the service.

The afternoon, through these means, pa.s.sed away so quickly, that though I was once or twice near the entry-port on the starboard side, close by to which the tailor had measured us, I declare I never once thought of looking out over the waterway to see what had become of father and his wherry; albeit, from the tide having ebbed, my outlook was now much more circ.u.mscribed than when I had come afloat in the morning, it seeming but a stone's throw to Point; while on the port side of the ship one could almost have walked ash.o.r.e, the mud flats of Haslar Creek being out in all their glory, and stretching up almost to the old _Saint Vincent's_ rudder-post!

On account of its being Thursday, a lot of the boys were allowed ash.o.r.e; and in the quiet that generally reigned, the majority of the others being occupied drilling below, the middle and upper decks were comparatively deserted, and things apparently at a standstill.

At Eight Bells, however, all this was altered, the boys scuttling about to their respective messes to supper, or what we call 'tea' time ash.o.r.e.

This meal was as fairly nourishing as the dinner that was served out, each boy having ten ounces of bread, an ounce of sugar, and one-eighth of an ounce of tea, to his own cheek.

Tea, you must know, is styled 'plew' on board, in the slang of the training-ship; possibly, through some a.s.sociation with the 'sky blue'

known in the boarding-schools of sh.o.r.e folk.

Larrikins was put by the master-at-arms to 'show us the ropes' in getting our supplies from the galley for this supper, as previously; and amused himself considerably at our expense, chaffing some of the new chaps about their not having "smelt such a thing as tea before," so he hinted.

"I s'pose now," he said to Mick Donovan, whose queer description of himself had already got wind through the ship. I'm afraid from the corporal who took us to the sick-bay having 'split' upon him, "in your country you'd eat them tea leaves, instead o' wettin' on 'em, stooed in ile, same as the I-talians cook everything I'm told, hey?"

"Faith, if I had ye in the ould counthry," answered back Mick, not for a moment nonplussed, "I'd soon show ye how an Oitalian of the raal sort, loike me fayther, sor, lives! Bedad, it's praties an' crame we hev fur tay, sure, ivvery day in the wake!"

This created a good deal of noisy merriment as we sat round the mess- table near the entry-port, causing the sharp-eared, lynx-eyed 'Jaunty'

to spot the offender from his convenient post of observation hard by.

"Be quiet there, Paddy!" he sang out, poking his head above the window- sill. "Do you think you're in your own mud cabin in the wilds of Connemara? As for you, Larrikins, I have warned you before, and you had better keep your weather eye open, my joker!"

We were all as quiet as lambs in an instant, not a sound being heard above the clatter of the cups and saucers, and the gulps made by 'Ugly'

in swallowing his tea, that individual being as piggish in his habits as he was in his appearance; and, presently, this clatter was increased by our collecting the mess-traps after finishing our meal, when the same process of cleaning up was effected as before, everything being left as tidy in and around the vicinity of Mess Number 52 as we had found it when first installed there.

From Six to Eight Bells, in the second dog-watch, the boys, I found, were allowed to skylark about the upper deck and aloft, playing 'follow my leader' up and down the rigging, without any interference or interruption from the officers and instructors, save when it seemed to them the larking might degenerate into horseplay.

Then, it was put a slop to, so far as the particular incident was concerned, in a twinkle.

Not being in uniform, I kept aloof from these mad pranks, sticking close to Mick Donovan, who I saw was ashamed of his ragged clothes, being afraid of the boys jeering him, like Larrikins.

That worthy soon picked us out, though; aye, in spite of our sheltering under the lee of the bridge, and being almost concealed in the evening gloom.

"S'pose yer afeerd o' clim'in' riggin'?"

"Divvle a bit!" replied Mick in a moment. "Oi'd cloimb in a jiffey; ounly the jintleman downstairs, faith, tould us all we wasn't."

This allusion to the 'Jaunty' silenced the incorrigible Larrikins for the nonce; though he sn.i.g.g.e.red at Mick saying 'downstairs' instead of below, as most landsmen do when new to board-ship life.

The next moment, however, Master Larrikins was at it again, trying to 'take a rise out of me,' Mick having thus discouraged his advances in that direction.

"You'll be havin' orful times when yer goes aloft," he said, in a sort of awesome tone meant to frighten me. "I've bin up theer on the main crosstrees when yer jist couldn't 'old yer 'air on yer 'ead, let alone 'oldin' on with one 'and fur yerself and t'other for the Navy."

"Stow that," said I, laughing in his face. "Why, I've been up to the main truck of a line-o'-battle ship before to-day and am not afraid of climbing! I'm not strange to the sea, my smart chap, let me tell you.

My father, though he's a waterman now, is an old sailor, and has taught me pretty well all he learnt."

"Aye, aye, that's right enuff; but 'earin of it an' a-seein' it's two different things. You jist wait till yer gets to sea and ain't a-plying bark'ards and forruds in Porchmouth 'arbour. My stars, won't yer be flummuxed then."

"Don't you believe it," I retorted. "I've been to sea, I tell you, before to-day."

"Oh aye, that's right enuff; but there's goin' to sea, an' goin' to sea.

Lor! Yer 'aven't ever bin out in the _Martin_ brig, have yer, now?"