Young Tom Bowling Part 7

"Ah, perhaps you'd better 'go through the ropes,' my lads, properly, and begin at once at your 'bag and hammock drill,' as all new boys should; though sometimes, they wait till they get uniforms first," said he, hailing, as he spoke, one of the first-cla.s.s boys standing by the police office, detailed to act as messengers, like our friend Larrikins. "Boy, there! See if you can find one of the instructors handy, and tell him, with my compliments, I should like to see him for a minute!"

"Yes, sir," replied this chap, saluting. "I seed Mister Saunders by the fore-hatchway jist now."

"He'll do," said the master-at-arms. "Carry on, my lad. Look sharp!"

The next instant, back came the boy with one of the instructors in his wake, a stalwart seaman, dressed in the usual bluejacket rig, with a petty officer's badge.

"These boys here, Mr Saunders," said the master-at-arms, pointing us out with a collective sweep of his long brawny arm, "are all novices, who came aboard yesterday, and don't know what to do with themselves till they join the ship's company. Hadn't they better pa.s.s their 'bag and hammock' while waiting for their rig, instead of loafing about here?

Mr Gadgett, the bo'sun, was complaining just now of their taking up all the fairway of the deck, and told me I must get rid of them from here somehow or the other!"

"All right," responded the seaman-instructor to this suggestion of the master-at-arms; and, turning to us, he said, "Take up your hammocks, my lads, and follow me down to the lower deck. You'll have a practical lesson in seeing how your shipmates do it, lads. We're just in time!"

We were, barely so; for, as we pa.s.sed down the hatchway from the middle deck to the lower region he had previously indicated, it was hard work for us to shove by the surging crowd of boys who were hurrying up, each with his hammock neatly made up and lashed in the regulation form, to be stowed in the nettings on top of the bulwarks amidships the upper deck, according to nautical routine.

Some, however, were slower at the work, and, taking stock of these, in obedience to the instructor's orders, I got a very fair notion of how the thing was done; the more especially, as father had shown me the way he used to lash up his hammock in the old days when he was at sea, by the aid of a biscuit bag and a piece of string.

But our instructor was not satisfied by our now having mere ocular demonstration and doing nothing further; not he. On the contrary, he took us up to make another requisition on the ship's steward for our regular kit, which was promptly served out to us; and all the morning, after a good breakfast, which made Mick Donovan open his eyes wider than ordinarily and stare like a stockfish, consisting as it did of cold salt pork and bread, with some splendid hot cocoa, that was more like chocolate, and such as he had never tasted before, we were kept hard at it till the 'a.s.sembly' was bugled out before dinner--going through the details of 'bag and hammock drill' seriatim, from the initiatory stage of plaiting the ends of the 'nettles' to lashing it up with the specified number of turns.

We new boys returned to Number 52 Mess on the middle deck for dinner, when 'cooks to their messes' was sounded.

Our meal this day, it being a Friday, was of a different kind, though quite as substantial as we had experienced on the previous day; a well- piled plate of beef and potatoes being allotted to each of us by the presiding genius of the galley, the sight of which viands made our mouths water.

"Lor', it ain't much to holler about!" exclaimed the fastidious Larrikins, on Mick rubbing his hands at seeing those appetising viands; while 'Ugly' cried out joyously, on noticing his mealy ma.s.s of potatoes, "Them's the raal jockeys fur I," thus paraphrasing the remark of a once celebrated millionaire possessed of much lucre but boasting of little conversational power, when at a state banquet, "Why, we only calls this aboard 'two spuds and a Jonah!'"

"I can see the 'spuds' all right," said I; "but where's the Jonah?"

"That be the bone, silly!"

With which withering rejoinder, Larrikins left us to enjoy ourselves with the food he contemned; though he probably went away to make a hearty dinner off the same at his own mess on the deck below, where his division "hung out."

Nothing further of any note occurred during the afternoon to mar the harmony or vary the monotony of our 'bag and hammock drill,' at which we were religiously kept up to the time to leave off work; when we enjoyed again our tea-supper, and skylarked afterwards till it was time to 'turn in,' which we managed to do now more comfortably as well as expeditiously than on the night before; while, I may add, my dreams happily were not disturbed by any storms and thunder-claps of that imp Larrikins' contrivance.

The next day, Sat.u.r.day, it was a case of 'wash and scrub decks,' and wash and scrub everything, I think, from early morning till dewy eve.

A very 'dewy' eve it was, too, if dampness made it so; but if one did feel wet and miserable, as I confess I was, the remembrance it brought back to my mind of my mother's house-cleaning at home being almost too vivid to be pleasant, still, everybody on board had the satisfaction of knowing that the ship was as smart as holystone and sand could make her, from upper deck to keelson, I verily believe!

I was none the less miserable, either, the following morning, when all the boys were rigged out in their best and inspected by the captain; for the tailor, true to the character of all 'snips' since the days when Adam started in that line with his fig-leaf costume, never sent on board, as he promised, the uniforms of us unfortunate novices, so we could neither make a decent appearance with the rest of our comrades, nor have permission to go ash.o.r.e--'unclothed' scarecrows, as some of us were, would have seemed queer fish to come from a well-ordered ship.

On Monday, however, all things were made right in this respect; and, having satisfactorily pa.s.sed 'bag and hammock drill,' the test of our novitiate, I and my fellow-unfortunates became not only clad like our fellows, but were enrolled amongst the rest of the second-cla.s.s boys, and appointed to our proper place in the ship.

My number being 2799, through some occult system of nautical numeration, I was detailed to the 'Third,' or second starboard, division of the ship's company; so I joined mess Number 38, which was on the port side on the lower deck, the first one aft of the schoolroom.

I also proceeded a day or two after, being thenceforth regarded as a neophyte no longer, to take part in all the regular drills of the ship, and one morning, subsequent to breakfast, underwent that rudimentary stage of seamanship styled 'boxing the compa.s.s'--though I might have really told the painstaking instructor, who painfully and ploddingly laboured to instil the cardinal points into my head as if I were an ignoramus, that I not only knew the 'lubber's point' probably as well as he did, but could, on a pinch, have conned the ship in and out of Portsmouth Harbour!

This 'boxing the compa.s.s' business, though, brought me to loggerheads with that brute 'Ugly' somehow or other, strangely enough.

I don't know how it was, but from the moment, I believe, I first cast eyes on his singularly unprepossessing face, Moses Reeks had been my special antipathy!

It was not so much that he said anything to me or of me, as from the fact of his always 'putting it on' poor Mick Donovan, for whom I entertained as great a liking as I disliked the other.

'Ugly' was always snarling at my chum, and ever giving him a chance kick or blow, should he be able to do so un.o.bserved and without being directly taxed with it; though, of course, he would deny it if observed by any of the other boys, being an unmitigated liar, in addition to having a sour and vindictive disposition.

That very morning I noticed him deliberately stamp on poor Mick's bare toes with all the weight of his big heavy foot, as we were coming down the hatchway from early 'divisions'; and when I spoke to him about it he said coldly he "hadn't done nuthin' of the sort!"

I knew this was an untruth; but I bided my time, judiciously watching for an opportunity to pay him out.

This came sooner than I expected; for during our compa.s.s lesson I managed to get him into a fog about the points which the instructor was explaining, drawing down on my joker the wrath and outspoken opprobrium of that officer.

'Ugly' noted this, and in his turn bided his time.

The watch was dismissed, and the 'stand by' had been bugled before quarters, preparatory to our being dispersed for dinner; when 'Ugly'

nudged me as we pa.s.sed up the hatchway together, coming much closer to me than I liked, the very touch of the unclean brute being obnoxious to me.

"Wot d'yer mean by comin' the barney over me and a-makin' that codger of a kinstructor bullyrag me afore all the t'other chaps fur?"

"What do you mean, Reeks?" said I, in reply to this, returning his nudge with a good dig from the bony k.n.o.b of my elbow in his ribs, and knocking the wind pretty well-nigh out of him. "You jumped on poor Mick Donovan's bare foot this morning, and now you try to shove me!"

"Oh!" he exclaimed, as we emerged on the upper deck, where our division had by now already partly a.s.sembled on the starboard side, forward; "that be it, mister?"

"Yes," said I, as I slipped into my place near Mick, "that's it!"

After 'divisions,' when the other boys were rushing down below to their messes to dinner, the bugle-call for which was braying out its cheerful sounds, I stopped behind on the upper deck, as did "Ugly."

"Sure an' what are ye stoppin' fur, Tom, mabouchal?" said Mick to me in surprise. "Begorrah, I can smill the mate alriddy, an', faith, the praties, too! I can say their smilin' faces bickonin' to me an' sayin', 'Coom an' ate me!'"

"I'm not coming yet," I replied, in a more serious tone than Mick evidently expected. "I've got some business with this chap here."

'Ugly' overheard me, as I intended he should.

"Hay," said he, "did yer speak to Oi?"

"Hay is meant for horses and a.s.ses," I answered drily, with a grin; "and if you be one of them latter, as I think, and so does Mick here I know, why, I did refer to you!"

"Want ter fight?"

"Yes," I said, launching out my fist straight towards his bullet head and giving him a cropper on the mouth that sent him tumbling backwards on the deck, all of a heap; "I do."

'Ugly' rose slowly to his feet, his face streaming with blood; and he was just about making a rush at me like a mad bull at a gate, while I put myself in a posture of defence in proper pugilistic fashion, when an interruption, though but of a temporary character, came to these proceedings.

The ubiquitous Larrikins was the intervener.

"Lor', you be green 'uns!" he cried, sinking his voice to a cautious pitch. "Don't you fight here; why, the 'crushers' will nab yer afore yer can strike a blow comfortably! If fight yer must, coom up here on the fo'c's'le, and then you can fight away theer to yer 'art's content, without n.o.body not a-hinterfeerin' with yer!"

CHAPTER SIX.

A KNOTTY POINT!