Chapter Nine.
Containing—If not the Whole—Nothing but the Truth.
If the disposing, in the service, of even a ship-load of assistant-surgeons, is considered a matter of small moment, my disposal, after reaching the Cape of Good Hope, needs but small comment. I was very soon appointed to take charge of a gunboat, in lieu of a gentleman who was sent to the Naval Hospital of Simon’s Town, to fill a death vacancy—for the navy as well as nature abhors a vacuum. I had seen the bright side of the service, I was now to have my turn of the dark; I had enjoyed life on board a crack frigate, I was now to rough it in a gunboat.
The east coast of Africa was to be our cruising ground, and our ship a pigmy steamer, with plenty fore-and-aft about her, but nothing else; in fact, she was Euclid’s definition of a line to a t, length without breadth, and small enough to have done “excellently well” as a Gravesend tug-boat. Her teeth were five: namely, one gigantic cannon, a 65-pounder, as front tooth; on each side a brass howitzer; and flanking these, two canine tusks in shape of a couple of 12-pounder Armstrongs. With this armament we were to lord it with a high hand over the Indian Ocean; carry fire and sword, or, failing sword, the cutlass, into the very heart of slavery’s dominions; the Arabs should tremble at the roar of our guns and the thunder of our bursting shells, while the slaves should clank their chains in joyful anticipation of our coming; and best of all, we—the officers—should fill our pockets with prize-money to spend when we again reached the shores of merry England. Unfortunately, this last premeditation was the only one which sustained disappointment, for, our little craft being tender to the flag-ship of the station, all our hard-earned prize-money had to be equally shared with her officers and crew, which reduced the shares to fewer pence each than they otherwise would have been pounds, and which was a burning shame.
It was the Cape winter when I joined the gunboat. The hills were covered with purple and green, the air was deliciously cool, and the far-away mountain-tops were clad in virgin snow. It was twelve o’clock noon when I took my traps on board, and found my new messmates seated around the table at tiffin. The gunroom, called the wardroom by courtesy—for the after cabin was occupied by the lieutenant commanding—was a little morsel of an apartment, which the table and five cane-bottomed chairs entirely filled. The officers were five—namely, a little round-faced, dimple-cheeked, good-natured fellow, who was our second-master; a tall and rather awkward-looking young gentleman, our midshipman; a lean, pert, and withal diminutive youth, brimful of his own importance, our assistant-paymaster; a fair-haired, bright-eyed, laughing boy from Cornwall, our sub-lieutenant; and a “wee wee man,” dapper, clean, and tidy, our engineer, admitted to this mess because he was so thorough an exception to his class, which is celebrated more for the unctuosity of its outer than for the smoothness of its inner man.
“Come along, old fellow,” said our navigator, addressing me as I entered the messroom, bobbing and bowing to evade fracture of the cranium by coming into collision with the transverse beams of the deck above—“come along and join us, we don’t dine till four.”
“And precious little to dine upon,” said the officer on his right.
“Steward, let us have the rum,” (Note 1) cried the first speaker.
And thus addressed, the steward shuffled in, bearing in his hand a black bottle, and apparently in imminent danger of choking himself on a large mouthful of bread and butter. This functionary’s dress was remarkable rather for its simplicity than its purity, consisting merely of a pair of dirty canvas pants, a pair of purser’s shoes—innocent as yet of blacking—and a greasy flannel shirt. But, indeed, uniform seemed to be the exception, and not the rule, of the mess, for, while one wore a blue serge jacket, another was arrayed in white linen, and the rest had neither jacket nor vest.
The table was guiltless of a cloth, and littered with beer-bottles, biscuits, onions, sardines, and pats of butter.
“Look out there, Waddles!” exclaimed the sub-lieutenant; “that beggar Dawson is having his own whack o’ grog and everybody else’s.”
“Dang it! I’ll have my tot to-day, I know,” said the assistant-paymaster, snatching the bottle from Dawson, and helping himself to a very liberal allowance of the ruby fluid.
“What a cheek the fellow’s got!” cried the midshipman, snatching the glass from the table and bolting the contents at a gulp, adding, with a gasp of satisfaction as he put down the empty tumbler, “The chap thinks nobody’s got a soul to be saved but himself.”
“Soul or no soul,” replied the youthful man of money as he gazed disconsolately at the empty glass, “my spirit’s gone.”
“Blessed,” said the engineer, shaking the black bottle, “if you devils have left me a drain! see if I don’t look out for A1 to-morrow.”
“Where’s the doctor’s grog?” cried the sub-lieutenant.
“Ay, where’s the doctor’s?” said another.
“Where is the doctor’s?” said a third.
And they all said “Where is the doctor’s?” and echo answered “Where?”
“Steward!” said the middy.
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“See if that beggarly bumboat-man is alongside, and get me another pat of butter and some soft tack; get the grub first, then tell him I’ll pay to-morrow.”
These and such like scraps of conversation began to give me a little insight into the kind of mess I had joined and the character of my future messmates. “Steward,” said I, “show me my cabin.” He did so; indeed, he hadn’t far to go. It was the aftermost, and consequently the smallest, although I ought to have had my choice. It was the most miserable little box I ever reposed in. Had I owned such a place on shore, I might have been induced to keep rabbits in it, or guinea-pigs, but certainly not pigeons. Its length was barely six feet, its width four above my cot and two below, and it was minus sufficient standing-room for any ordinary-sized sailor; it was, indeed, a cabin for a commodore—I mean Commodore Nutt—and was ventilated by a scuttle seven inches in diameter, which could only be removed in harbour, and below which, when we first went to sea, I was fain to hang a leather hat-box to catch the water; unfortunately the bottom rotted out, and I was then at the mercy of the waves.
My cabin, or rather—to stick to the plain unvarnished truth—my burrow, was alive with scorpions, cockroaches, ants, and other “crawlin’ ferlies.”
“That e’en to name would be unlawfu’.”
My dispensary was off the steerage, and sister-cabin to the pantry. To it I gained access by a species of crab-walking, squeezing myself past a large brass pump, and edging my body in sideways. The sick came one by one to the dispensary door, and there I saw and treated each case as it arrived, dressed the wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and bandaged the bad legs. There was no sick-berth attendant; to be sure the lieutenant-in-command, at my request, told off “a little cabin-boy” for my especial use. I had no cause for delectation on such an acquisition, by no means; he was not a model cabin-boy like what you see in theatres, and I believe will never become an admiral. He managed at times to wash out the dispensary, or gather cockroaches, and make the poultices—only in doing the first he broke the bottles, and in performing the last duty he either let the poultice burn or put salt in it; and, finally, he smashed my pot, and I kicked him forward, and demanded another. He was slightly better, only he was seldom visible; and when I set him to do anything, he at once went off into a sweet slumber; so I kicked him forward too, and had in despair to become my own menial. In both dispensary and burrow it was quite a difficult business to prevent everything going to speedy destruction. The best portions of my uniform got eaten by cockroaches or moulded by damp, while my instruments required cleaning every morning, and even that did not keep rust at bay.
Imagine yourself dear reader, in any of the following interesting positions:—
Very thirsty, and nothing but boiling hot newly distilled water to drink; or wishing a cool bath of a morning, and finding the water in your can only a little short of 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
To find, when you awake, a couple of cockroaches, two inches in length, busy picking your teeth.
To find one in a state of decay in the mustard-pot.
To have to arrange all the droppings and eggs of these interesting creatures on the edge of your plate, previous to eating your soup.
To have to beat out the dust and weevils from every square inch of biscuit before putting it in your mouth.
To be looking for a book and put your hand on a full-grown scaly scorpion. Nice sensation—the animal twining round your finger, or running up your sleeve. Dénouement—cracking him under foot—full-flavoured bouquet—joy at escaping a sting.
You are enjoying your dinner, but have been for some time sensible of a strange titillating feeling about the region of your ankle; you look down at last to find a centipede on your sock, with his fifty hind-legs—you thank God not his fore fifty—abutting on to your shin. Tableau—green and red light from the eyes of the many-legged; horror of yourself as you wait till he thinks proper to “move on.”
To awake in the morning, and find a large and healthy-looking tarantula squatting on your pillow within ten inches of your nose, with his basilisk eyes fixed on yours, and apparently saying, “You’re only just awake, are you? I’ve been sitting here all the morning watching you.”
You know if you move he’ll bite you, somewhere; and if he does bite you, you’ll go mad and dance ad libitum; so you twist your mouth in the opposite direction and ejaculate—
“Steward!” but the steward does not come—in fact he is forward, seeing after the breakfast. Meanwhile the gentleman on the pillow is moving his horizontal mandibles in a most threatening manner, and just as he makes a rush for your nose you tumble out of bed with a shriek; and, if a very nervous person, probably run on deck in your shirt.
Or, to fall asleep under the following circumstances: The bulkheads, all around, black with cock-and-hen-roaches, a few of which are engaged cropping your toe-nails, or running off with little bits of the skin of your calves; bugs in the crevices of your cot, a flea tickling the sole of your foot, a troop of ants carrying a dead cockroach over your pillow, lively mosquitoes attacking you everywhere, hammer-legged flies occasionally settling on your nose, rats running in and rats running out, your lamp just going out, and the delicious certainty that an indefinite number of earwigs and scorpions, besides two centipedes and a tarantula, are hiding themselves somewhere in your cabin.
Note 1. Officers, as well as men, are allowed one half-gill of rum daily, with this difference,—the former pay for theirs, while the latter do not.