Chapter Three.
The Truth about Fitz-Johnes.
“Where are we going, Tom?” I asked, as the boatman, an old chum of mine, proceeded to step the boat’s mast. “You surely don’t need the sail for a run half-way across the harbour?”
“No,” he answered; “no, I don’t. But we’re bound out to Spithead. The Daphne went out this mornin’ at daylight to take in her powder, and I ’spects she’s got half of it stowed away by this time. Look out for your head, Mr Dick, sir, we shall jibe in a minute.”
I ducked my head just in time to save my glazed hat from being knocked overboard by the jibing mainsail of the boat, and then drew out my handkerchief and waved another farewell to my father, whose fast-diminishing figure I could still make out standing motionless on the shore, with his hand shading his eyes as he watched the rapidly moving boat. He waved back in answer, and then the intervening hull of a ship hid him from my view, and I saw him no more for many a long day.
“Ah, it’s a sorry business that, partin’ with friends and kinsfolk when you’re outward-bound on a long cruise that you can’t see the end of!” commented my old friend Tom; “but keep up a good heart, Mr Dick; it’ll all be made up to yer when you comes home again by and by loaded down to the scuppers with glory and prize-money.”
I replied somewhat drearily that I supposed it would; and then Tom—anxious in his rough kindliness of heart to dispel my depression of spirits and prepare me to present myself among my new shipmates in a suitably cheerful frame of mind—adroitly changed the subject and proceeded to put me “up to a few moves,” as he expressed it, likely to prove useful to me in the new life upon which I was about to enter.
“And be sure, Mr Dick,” he concluded, as we shot alongside the sloop, “be sure you remember always to touch your hat when you steps in upon the quarter-deck of a man-o’-war, no matter whether ’tis your own ship or a stranger.”
Paying the old fellow his fare, and parting with him with a hearty shake of the hand, I sprang up the ship’s side, and—remembering Tom’s parting caution just in the nick of time—presenting myself in due form upon the quarter-deck, where the first lieutenant had posted himself and from which he was directing the multitudinous operations then in progress, reported myself to that much-dreaded official as “come on board to join.”
He was a rather tall and decidedly handsome man, with a gentlemanly bearing and a well-knit shapely-looking figure, dark hair and eyes, thick bushy whiskers meeting under the chin, and a clear strong melodious voice, which, without the aid of a speaking-trumpet, he made distinctly heard from one end of the ship to the other. As he stood there, in an easy attitude with his hands lightly clasped behind his back and his eye taking in, as it seemed at a glance, everything that was going forward, he struck me as the beau-idéal of a naval officer. I took a strong liking to him on the spot, an instinctive prepossession which was afterwards abundantly justified, for Mr Austin—that was his name—proved to be one of the best officers it has ever been my good fortune to serve under.
“Oh, you’re come on board to join, eh?” he remarked in response to my announcement. “I suppose you are the young gentleman about whom Captain Vernon was speaking to me yesterday. What is your name?”
I told him.
“Ah! Hawkesley! yes, that is the name. I remember now. Captain Vernon told me that although you have never been to sea as yet you are not altogether a greenhorn. What can you do?”
“I can hand, reef, and steer, box the compass, pull an oar, or sail a boat; and I know the name and place of every spar, sail, and rope throughout the ship.”
“Aha! say you so? Then you will prove indeed a valuable acquisition. What is the name of this rope?”
“The main-topgallant clewline,” I answered, casting my eye aloft to note the “lead” of the rope.
“Right!” he replied with a smile. “And you have the true nautical pronunciation also, I perceive. Mr Johnson,”—to a master’s mate who happened to be passing at the moment—“this is Mr Hawkesley. Kindly take him under your wing and induct him into his quarters in the midshipmen’s berth, if you please. Don’t stop to stow away your things just now, Mr Hawkesley,” he continued. “I shall have an errand for you in a few minutes.”
“Very well, sir,” I replied. And following my new acquaintance, I first saw to the hoisting in of my traps, and then with them descended to the place which was to be my home for so many months to come.
This was a tolerably roomy but very indifferently lighted cabin on the lower or orlop deck, access to which was gained by the descent of a very steep ladder. The furniture was of the most meagre description, consisting only of a very solid deal table, two equally solid forms or stools, and a couple of arm-chairs, one at each end of the table, all securely lashed down to the deck. There was a shelf with a ledge along its front edge, and divisions to form lockers, extending across the after-end of the berth; and under this hung three small book-cases, (which I was given to understand were private property) and a mirror six inches long by four inches wide, before which the “young gentlemen”—four in number, including myself—and the two master’s mates had to perform their toilets as best they could. The fore and after bulkheads of the apartment were furnished with stout hooks to which to suspend our hammocks, which, by the by, when slung, left, I noticed, but a very small space on either side of the table; and depending from a beam overhead there hung a common horn lantern containing the most attenuated candle I ever saw—a veritable “purser’s dip.” This lantern, which was suspended over the centre of the table, afforded, except at meal-times or other special occasions, the sole illumination of the place. Although the ship was new, and the berth had only been occupied a few days, it was already pervaded by a very powerful odour of paint and stale tobacco-smoke, which made me anxious to quit the place with the least possible delay.
Merely selecting a position, therefore, for my chest, and leaving to the wretched lad, whom adverse fortune had made the attendant of the place, the task of lashing it down, I hastened on deck again, and presenting myself once more before the first lieutenant, announced that I was now ready to execute any commission with which he might be pleased to intrust me.
“Very well,” said he. “I want you to take the gig and proceed on board the Saint George with this letter for the first lieutenant of that ship. Wait for an answer, and if he gives you a parcel be very careful how you handle it, as it will contain articles of a very fragile character which must on no account be damaged or broken.”
The gig was thereupon piped away, and when she was in the water and her crew in her I proceeded in my most stately manner down the side and flung myself in an easily negligent attitude into the stern-sheets.
I felt at that moment exceedingly well satisfied with myself. I had joined the ship but a bare half-hour before; yet here I was, singled out from the rest of the midshipmen as the fittest person to be intrusted with an evidently important mission. I forgot not only my father’s caution against vanity but also my sorrow at parting with him; my amour propre rose triumphant above every other feeling; the disagreeable lump in my throat subsided, and with an unconscious, but no doubt very ludicrous, assumption of condescending authority, I gave the order to—
“Shove off, and get the muslin upon her, and see that you crack on, coxswain, for I am in a hurry.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” returned that functionary in a very respectful tone of voice. “Step the mast, for’ard there, you sea-dogs, ‘and get the muslin on her.’”
With a broad grin, whether at the verbatim repetition of my order, or in consequence of some pantomimic gesture on the part of the coxswain, who was behind me—I had a sudden painful suspicion that it might possibly be both—the men sprang to obey the order; and in another instant the mast was stepped, the halliard and tack hooked on, the sheet led aft, and the sail was all ready for hoisting.
“What d’ye say, Tom; shall us take down a reef!” asked one of the men.
“Reef? No, certingly not. Didn’t you hear the gentleman say as how we was to ‘crack on’ because he’s in a hurry? Give her whole canvas,” replied the coxswain.
With a shivering flutter and a sudden violent jerk the sail was run up; and, careening gunwale-to, away dashed the lively boat toward the harbour.
It was blowing fresh and squally from the eastward, and for the first mile of our course there was a nasty choppy sea for a boat. The men flung their oil-skins over their shoulders, and ranging themselves along the weather side of the boat, seated themselves on the bottom-boards, and away we went, jerk-jerking through it, the sea hissing and foaming past us to leeward, and the spray flying in a continuous heavy shower in over the weather-bow and right aft, drenching me through and through in less than five minutes.
“I’m afeard you’re gettin’ rayther wet, sir,” remarked the coxswain feelingly when I had just about arrived at a condition of complete saturation; “perhaps you’d better have my oil-skin, sir.”
“No, thanks,” I replied, “I am very comfortable as I am.”
This was, to put it mildly, a perversion of the truth. I was not very comfortable; I was wet to the skin, and my bran-new uniform, upon which I so greatly prided myself, was just about ruined. But it was then too late for the oil-skin to be of the slightest benefit to me; and, moreover, I did not choose that those men should think I cared for so trifling a matter as a wetting.
But a certain scarcely-perceptible ironical inflection in the coxswain’s voice, when he so kindly offered me the use of his jumper, suggested the suspicion that perhaps he was quietly amusing himself and his shipmates at my expense, and that the drenching I had received was due more to his management of the boat than anything else, so I set myself quietly to watch.
I soon saw that my suspicion was well-founded. The rascal, instead of easing the boat and meeting the heavier seas as he ought to have done, was sailing the craft at top speed right through them, varying the performance occasionally by keeping the boat broad away when a squall struck her, causing her to careen until her gunwale went under, and as a natural consequence shipping a great deal of water.
At length he rather overdid it, a squall striking the boat so heavily that before he could luff and shake the wind out of the sail she had filled to the thwarts. I thought for a moment that we were over, and so did the crew of the boat, who jumped to their feet in consternation. Being an excellent swimmer myself, however, I managed to perfectly retain my sang-froid, whilst I also recognised in the mishap an opportunity to take the coxswain down a peg or two.
Lifting my legs, therefore, coolly up on the side seat out of reach of the water, I said:
“How long have you been a sailor, coxswain?”
“Nigh on to seven year, sir. Now then, lads, dowse the sail smartly and get to work with the bucket.”
“Seven years, have you?” I returned placidly. “Then you ought to know how to sail a boat by this time. I have never yet been to sea; but I should be ashamed to make such a mess of it as this.”
To this my friend in the rear vouchsafed not a word in reply, but from that moment I noticed a difference in the behaviour of the men all round. They found they had not got quite the greenhorn to deal with that they had first imagined.
When at last the boat was freed of the water and sail once more made upon her, I remarked to the coxswain:
“Now, Tom—if that is your name—you have amused yourself and your shipmates at my expense—to your heart’s content, I hope—you have played off your little practical joke upon me, and I bear no malice. But—let there be no more of it—do you understand?”
“Ay ay, sir; I underconstumbles,” was the reply; “and I’m right sorry now as I did it, sir, and I axes your parding, sir; that I do. Dash my buttons, though, but you’re a rare plucky young gentleman, you are, sir, though I says it to your face. And I hopes, sir, as how you won’t bear no malice again’ me for just tryin’ a bit to see what sort o’ stuff you was made of, as it were?”
I eased the poor fellow’s mind upon this point, and soon afterwards we arrived alongside the Saint George.
I found the first lieutenant, and duly handed over my despatch, which he read with a curious twitching about the corners of the mouth.
Having mastered the contents, he retired below, asking me to wait a minute or two.
At that moment my attention was attracted to a midshipman in the main rigging, who, with exaggerated deliberation, was making his unwilling way aloft to the mast-head as it turned out. A certain familiar something about the young gentleman caused me to look up at him more attentively; and I then at once recognised my recent acquaintance, Lord Fitz-Johnes. At the same moment the second lieutenant, who was eyeing his lordship somewhat wrathfully, hailed him with:
“Now then, Mr Tomkins, are you going to be all day on your journey? Quicken your movements, sir, or I will send a boatswain’s mate after you with a rope’s-end to freshen your way. Do you hear, sir?”
“Ay ay, sir,” responded the ci-devant Lord Fitz-Johnes—now plain Mr Tomkins—in a squeaky treble, as he made a feeble momentary show of alacrity. Just then I caught his eye, and, taking off my hat, made him an ironical bow of recognition, to which he responded by pressing his body against the rigging—pausing in his upward journey to give due effect to the ceremony—spreading his legs as widely apart as possible, and extending both hands toward me, the fingers outspread, the thumb of the right hand pressing gently against the point of his nose, and the thumb of the left interlinked with the right-hand little finger. This salute was made still more impressive by a lengthened slow and solemn twiddling of the fingers, which was only brought to an end by the second lieutenant hailing:
“Mr Tomkins, you will oblige me by prolonging your stay at the mast-head until the end of the afternoon watch, if you please.”
As the answering “Ay ay, sir,” came sadly down from aloft, I felt a touch on my arm, and, turning round, found my second acquaintance, Lord Tomnoddy, by my side. As I looked at him I felt strongly inclined to ask him whether he also had changed his name since our last meeting.
“Oh, look here, Hawksbill,” he commenced, “I’m glad you’ve come on board; I wanted to see you in order that I might repay you the sovereign you lent us the other day. Here it is,”—selecting the coin from a handful which he pulled out of his breeches pocket and thrusting it into my hand—“and I am very much obliged to you for the loan. I really hadn’t a farthing in my pocket at the time, or I wouldn’t have allowed Tomkins to borrow it from you—and it was awfully stupid of me to let you go away without saying where I could send it to you.”
“Pray do not say anything further about it, Mr —, Mr —.”
“I am Lord Southdown, at your service—not Lord Tomnoddy, as my whimsical friend Tomkins dubbed me the other day. It is perfectly true,” he added somewhat haughtily, and then with a smile resumed: “but I suppose I must not take offence at your look of incredulity, seeing that I was a consenting party to that awful piece of deception which Tomkins played off upon you. Ha, ha, ha! excuse me, but I really wish you could have seen yourself when that mischievous friend of mine accused you of—of—what was it? Oh, yes, of playing fast and loose with the affections of the fictitious Lady Sara, or whatever the fellow called her. And then again, when he remarked upon your extraordinary resemblance to Lord—Somebody—another fictitious friend of his, and directed attention to your ‘lofty intellectual forehead, your proud eagle-glance, your—’ oh, dear! it was too much.”
And off went his lordship into another paroxysm of laughter, which sent the tears coursing down his cheeks and caused me to flush most painfully with mortification.
“Upon my word, Hawksbill—” he commenced.
“My name is Hawkesley, my lord, at your service,” I interrupted, somewhat angrily I am afraid.
“I beg your pardon, Mr Hawkesley; the mistake was a perfectly genuine and unintentional one, I assure you. I was going to apologise—as I do, most heartily, for laughing at you in this very impertinent fashion. But, my dear fellow, let me advise you as a friend to overcome your very conspicuous vanity. I am, perhaps, taking a most unwarrantable liberty in presuming to offer you advice on so delicate a subject, or, indeed, in alluding to it at all; but, to tell you the truth, I have taken rather a liking for you in spite of—ah—ahem—that is—I mean that you struck me as being a first-rate fellow notwithstanding the little failing at which I have hinted. You are quite good enough every way to pass muster without the necessity for any attempt to clothe yourself with fictitious attributes of any kind. Of course, in the ordinary run of events you will soon be laughed out of your weakness—there is no place equal to a man-of-war for the speedy cure of that sort of thing—but the process is often a very painful one to the patient—I have passed through it myself, so I can speak from experience—so very painful was it to me that, even at the risk of being considered impertinent, I have ventured to give you a friendly caution, in the hope that your good sense will enable you to profit by it, and so save you many a bitter mortification. Now I hope I have not offended you?”
“By no means, my lord,” I replied, grasping his proffered hand. “On the contrary, I am very sincerely obliged to you—”
At this moment the first lieutenant of the Saint George reappeared on deck, and coming up to me with Mr Austin’s letter open in his hand, said:
“My friend Mr Austin writes me that you are quite out of eggs on board the Daphne, and asks me to lend him a couple of dozen.” (Here was another take-down for me; the important despatch with which I—out of all the midshipmen on board—had been intrusted was simply a request for the loan of two dozen eggs!) “He sends to me for them instead of procuring them from the shore, because he is afraid you may lose some of your boat’s crew.” (Evidently Mr Austin had not the high opinion of me that I fondly imagined he had.) “I am sorry to say I cannot oblige Mr Austin; but I think we can overcome the difficulty if you do not mind being delayed a quarter of an hour or so. I have a packet which I wish to send ashore, and if you will give Lord Southdown here—who seems to be a friend of yours—a passage to the Hard and off again, he will look after your boat’s crew for you whilst you purchase your eggs.”
I of course acquiesced in this proposal; whereupon Lord Southdown was sent into the captain’s cabin for the packet in question; and on his reappearance a few minutes later we jumped into the boat and went ashore together, his lordship regaling me on the way with sundry entertaining anecdotes whereof his humorous friend Tomkins was the hero.
We managed to execute our respective errands without losing any of the boat’s crew; and duly putting Lord Southdown on board the Saint George again, I returned triumphantly to the Daphne with my consignment of eggs and handed them over intact to Mr Austin. After which I dived below, just in time to partake of the first dinner provided for me at the expense of His Most Gracious Majesty George IV.
For the remainder of that day and during the whole of the next, until nearly ten o’clock at night, we were up to our eyes in the business of completing stores, etcetera, and, generally, in getting the ship ready for sea; and at daybreak on the second morning after I had joined, the fore-topsail was loosed, blue peter run up to the fore royal-mast head, the boats hoisted in and stowed, and the messenger passed, after which all hands went to breakfast. At nine o’clock the captain’s gig was sent on shore, and at 11 a.m. the skipper came off; his boat was hoisted up to the davits, the canvas loosed, the anchor tripped, and away we went down the Solent and out past the Needles, with a slashing breeze at east-south-east and every stitch of canvas set, from the topgallant studding-sails downwards.