Chapter Four.
Down at Portsmouth.
Next morning, ere I seemed to have been asleep five minutes, it came upon my dreams so suddenly, I was awakened by a terrible din of drumming and bugling from the adjacent barracks close to the line of fortifications which at that time enclosed Portsmouth—but whose moats and ramparts were pulled to pieces, as I have already said, some few years ago to make room for the officers’ and men’s recreation grounds and gymnasium, with other modern improvements.
Then, I could hear the heavy tramp of men marching, followed by the hoarse sound of words of command in the distance, “Halt! Front! Dress!”
I assure you, I really thought for the moment that the long-talked-of French invasion, about which I had been recently reading in my historical researches, had actually come at last and that the garrison had been hurriedly called to arms to resist some unexpected attack on the town.
This reminiscence of my cramming experiences, mixed up in hotch-potch fashion with the martial echoes that caught my ear from the banging drum and brazen bugle, at once recalled the gruesome fact that this was the eventful day fixed for my examination on board the Excellent; so, dreading lest I should be late, I incontinently jumped out of bed in a jiffy, proceeding; albeit unconsciously, to obey the last gruff order of the sergeant of the guard, relieving the sentries.
This, as Dad subsequently explained, was the reason for all the commotion, the sergeant parading his men as he came up to each “post” in turn, with the usual stereotyped formula, “Halt! Front! Dress!”
Dear me! I did “dress;” though in rather a different sense to that implied by the sergeant’s mandate, huddling on my clothes in my haste so carelessly that I broke the button off my shirt collar and put on my jacket the wrong way!
All my hurry, too, was to very little purpose; for, when I reached the coffee-room of the hotel below, after getting confused and losing my proper course amongst the many intricate passages and curving corkscrew staircases that led downwards from the little dormitory I had occupied right under the tiles at the back of the building, I found that neither Dad nor mother had yet put in an appearance for breakfast.
I was in such good time, indeed, that old Saint Thomas’s clock in High Street was only just chiming Eight; while the ships’ bells over the water were repeating the same piece of information in various tones and the shrill steam whistle from the dockyard workshops hard by screeching its confirmation of the story.
There was no fear of my being late, therefore; so, consoling myself with this satisfactory reflection, I was making my way to the nearest window of the coffee-room to look out on the harbour beyond as I had done the evening before when, like as then, a big bouncing “Bang!” came from the Victory, making me jump back and feel almost as nervous as poor mother was on the previous occasion.
“Yezsir, court-martial gun, sir, aboard the flagship, sir,” said the wiry little cock-eyed head waiter, who was hopping about the room “like a parched pea on a griddle,” as dad expressed it, stopping to flick the dust from the mantelpiece with his napkin as he replied to the mute inquiry he could read in my glance. “Look, sir! They’ve h’isted the Jack at the peak, sir, yezsir.”
“Oh, yes, I see,” said I, as if I had not observed this before and was perfectly familiar with the signal. “I did not notice it at first.”
“No, sir? W’y, in course not, sir, or else ye’d ha’ known wot it were,” answered the sly old fellow, ascribing to me a knowledge of naval matters which he knew as well as myself I did not possess, thus pandering, with the ulterior view, no doubt, of a substantial tip, to a common weakness of human nature to which most of us, man and boy alike, are prone—that of wishing to appear wiser than we really are!
“But, as I was a-saying only last night to Jim Marksby, the hall-porter, sir,” he continued, “court-martials, sir, isn’t wot they used to was. Lord-sakes! sir, I remembers, as if it were yesterday, in old Sir Titus Fitzblazes’s time, sir, when they was as plentiful as the blackberries on Browndown!
“W’y, sir, b’lieve me or not if yer likes, but there wasn’t a mornin’—barring Sundays in course—as yer wouldn’t hear that theer blessed gun a-firin’ for a court-martial, sir, j’est the same as ye heerd j’est now, sir, yezsir! Ah, them was fine times, they was, for the watermen on Hardway; for they usest to make a rare harvest a-taking off witnesses and prisoners’ ‘friends,’ as they calls ’em, and lawyers and noospaper chaps to the flagship, they did. The old chaps called the signal gun ‘old Fitzblazes’s Eight o’clock Gun,’ sir. They did so, sir, yezsir!”
“Indeed, waiter?” said I, feeling quite proud of his thus speaking to me as if I were a grown-up person. “But who was this gentleman, old Fitz—what did you call him?”
“Old Sir Titus Fitzblazes, sir,” glibly replied the coffee-room factotum, flicking off a fly as he spoke from the table-cloth whereon he had just arranged all the paraphernalia of our breakfast. “Lord-sakes, sir, yer doesn’t mean for to say, sir, as a well-growed young gen’leman like yerself, sir, as is a naval gent, sir, as I can see with arf an eye, haven’t heard tell o’ he? Well, sir, he were port admiral here, sir, a matter of eight or ten year ago, sir, yezsir; and, wot’s more, sir, he were the tautest old sea porkypine ye’d fetch across ‘in a blue moon,’ as sailor folk say!
“Yezsir, I’ve heerd when he were commodore on the West Coast, he used for to turn up the hands every mornin’ regular and give ’em four dozen apiece for breakfast, sir!”
“Good gracious me, waiter!” I exclaimed, aghast at this statement. “Four dozen lashes?”
“Yezsir. Lor’! four dozen lashings was nothink to old Sir Titus, for he were pertickeler partial to noggin’, he were, and took it out of the men like steam, he did!
“The ossifers, in course, he couldn’t sarve out in the same way, not being allowed for to do so by the laws of the service, sir; but he’d court-martial ’em, sir, as many on ’em as would give him arf a chance, and the court-martial gun used for to fire in his time here as reg’lar as clock-work every mornin’ at eight, winter and summer alike, jest the same as when the flag’s h’isted at sunrise, yezsir!”
“What an old martinet he must have been!” I said in response to this. “Perhaps, though, the poor old admiral suffered from bad health, and that made him cross and easily put out?”
“Bad health, sir? Not a bit of it!” exclaimed my friend, the waiter, repudiating such an excuse with scorn. “It were bad temper as were his complaint.
“Lord-sakes, though, sir, he were bad all over, was Sir Titus; ay, that he were, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. As bad as they makes ’em!
“W’y, he ’ad the temper, sir, of old Nick hisself, ay, that he had!
“I don’t mean the Czar of Roosia, sir. Don’t you run away with that there notion! No, sir, I means the rale old gent as ye’ve heerd tell on, wot hangs out down below when he’s at home and allers dresses in black to look genteel-like. Wears top-boots for to hide his cloven feet, sir, and carries a fine tail under his arm with a fluke at the end of it, same as that on a sheet-anchor—ah, yer knows the gent I means, sir!
“Well, yezsir, old Sir Titus wer him all over and must ha’ been his twin-brother; barring the tail, the admiral being shaky about the feet, too, and his boots a’most as big as the dinghy of that sloop. They wos like as two peas, sir, old Nick and he!
“Lord-sakes, though, yer must have heerd tell of him, sir, a young and gallant naval ossifer like yerself, ’specially that yarn consarnin’ him and the washerwoman as was going into the dockyard one mornin’ when he were a-spyin’ round the gates?”
“No, waiter, I never heard the old gentleman’s name before you told it me,” I replied, curious to learn some further disclosures concerning so celebrated a character. “What was this story?”
“W’y, sir, it’s enuff a’most for to make a cat laugh, sir,” he said with a snigger, which he immediately flicked away, as it were, with his napkin, resuming his whilom solemn demeanour. “It happen’d, if yer must know, sir, in this way, sir, yezsir.
“Old Blazes—that wer the name he allers went by in the yard—was a-hangin’ round the main gate a-lookin’ out for to see who comes along, w’en all of a sudding he spies this good woman as was a-takin’ in the clothes from the wash for Admiralty House.
“That were where, yer knows, sir, he himself lived with Lady Fitz, close by the College and jest to the right as yer goes in the yard?
“Lord-sakes, sir! The old admiral thinks he’d made a fine haul and that the woman were a-smuggling in sperrits or somethin’ ‘contraband,’ as they calls it, for the sailors who is allers stationed round the commander-in-chief’s office; and so, he orders her for to turn out her big baskets there in the gateway afore all the grinning policemen and men who was jest a-comin’ into the yard.
“Ye never see such a show, sir in all yer born days; and the beauty on it were that as he was in the middle of it sir, overhaulin’ all the things from the wash, and a-pokin’ ’em about with his gold-headed stick and turnin’ over the ladies’ fal-de-rals and all sorts of women’s gear that they don’t like men for to see, sir, up comes Lady Fitzblazes herself, a-going out for a walk.
“Seein’ what he were after, she axes him wot he means by treating her clothes like that there.
“Lord-sakes, sir, if he were old Nick, she had a temper, too, and were as fiery as a she-tiger cat, she were; and, wot between the two, there was then—Breakfast, sir? Yezsir, comin’, sir!”
The wiry little cock-eyed waiter rushed off, with his napkin over his shoulder, as he uttered the last words; and, wondering what had caused him to break off so unexpectedly in the middle of his yarn, apparently just when he was approaching the most interesting part of it, I turned my head and saw mother and Dad were within the coffee-room, having entered the doorway just behind me.
“Hullo, Jack!” said my father, “what was that waiter chap yarning about? You seemed very much taken up with what he was saying.”
I thereupon told him as much as I had heard of the old port admiral.
“Pooh, nonsense, the rascal has only been ‘pulling your leg’ with a cock-and-a-bull story, Jack,” said dad in a contemptuous tone when I had finished—for he was an officer of the old school and always believed in the obligations of discipline, invariably “sticking up” for those superior to him in rank in the service—“I knew old Admiral Fitzblazes myself very well, and a better officer and gentleman never wore the Queen’s uniform!”
While he was speaking to this effect, the “cock-eyed rascal,” as Dad called him, came in with our breakfast, giving me a sly wink with his sound eye behind Dad’s back as he passed him; so, sitting down, we hurried through the meal without any further conversation, I feeling more and more nervous the nearer the hour fixed for the examination approached, and mother and Dad both keeping silent, in sympathy with me.
Breakfast accomplished, Dad accompanied me to the dockyard, and saw me off to the Excellent; where, on getting on board, with my certificate of birth and moral character in my pocket and my heart in my mouth, I was ushered into the wardroom, with some twenty other aspirants for naval honours like myself.
All of us, of course, were mostly of the same age, but, naturally, of various builds and size; some tall, some short; some thin, some fat; some ugly, some handsome.
One little chap whom I noticed was much smaller than I was, although Dad had expressly drawn Admiral Napier’s attention to the fact of my being rather short for my age.
This youngster had a bright merry face and smiled in a friendly way to me; but the others looked at me generally as a collection of strange dogs appear to regard any new comer suddenly brought amongst them, eyeing and sniffing him suspiciously before they can make up their minds whether to treat him as friend or foe—though, generally, preferring, as a rule, the latter footing!
On entering the wardroom, which had a sort of scholastic look mingled with its ordinary nautical surroundings, we were summoned in turn to the further end of the apartment.
Here, on a raised portion of the deck abutting on the stern gallery, three gentlemen in clerical garb were seated behind a semi-circular green baize table, in front of which we stood, respectively, like so many prisoners on trial, while answering various questions appertaining to our Christian and surnames, age and so on.
We also handed in at the same time our baptismal and medical and character certificates, all of which were duly inspected, docketed and filed, in regular official style.
These preliminaries gone through, we were then directed to take our seats on either side of a long table that ran fore and aft the cabin, whose normal purpose was for the messing of the officers of the ship, but which on the present occasion was supplied with folios of foolscap paper and bundles of quill pens and bottles of ink, systematically distributed along its length, instead of the more palatable viands it more generally and generously displayed.
We were immediately under the eyes of the senior chaplain of the trio forming the board of examiners, a gentleman whose position at the centre of the cross table at the top of the room enabled him to command a full view of the double line of boys and detect at once any attempt at cribbing or unfair assistance given by one to the other; and our ordeal began punctually on the ship’s bell striking Ten o’clock, dictation being the first subject set us “to test our spelling and handwriting,” as my Lords of the Admiralty were good enough to inform us.
Thanks to my mother’s persistency in keeping me up to the mark with regard to my lessons, long before I had recourse to the crammer, this introductory stage of the examination presented no difficulties to me; and I was able not only to keep pace with the gentleman who dictated a portion of one of Macaulay’s Essays to us, but also found time to look round me occasionally to see how my companions fared with the big words, the faces of some of them presenting quite a study when a portentous polysyllable was given them to spell.
The little chap with the curly hair who had smiled at me on coming in, I observed, did not smile now.
His whilom merry countenance, on the contrary, was all puckered up in the most comical way; while his brows were knit as he chewed the feather end of his quill pen trying to get inspiration from that source how to properly write some long word—I think it was “Mesopotamia!”
Poor little fellow! he had a fearful struggle over it; but, although I should have dearly liked to have helped him, it was against the rules, so I could only watch his growing despair with a mute sympathy that was mingled with amusement at the funny faces he made over the, to him, serious business.
A little later on, however, if this victim of the stiff dictation paper had looked at me when ruthless old Euclid, my former antagonist, came on the scene, he would in like fashion have pitied me; for I was quite fogged by an easy proposition that I had thought I knew by heart the night before, but now found I had not the slightest glimmering of, although I answered most of the other questions.
Thus the examination proceeded, until the hour came for us to hand in our papers; the lot of us then filing before the presiding genii seated behind the green baize table at the end of the wardroom, and each giving up his roll of spoilt foolscap in turn as he came up abreast of the reverend trio.
I was nearly the last of the file; and, as I approached the table, the chaplain occupying the middle seat looked up.
He had a jolly, round, benevolent sort of face, which wore at the moment such a good-humoured expression that, I suppose, it became reflected on mine causing me to smile.
“Hullo, my boy!” said he, smiling, too. “You seem in a very happy frame of mind, I’m sure. Answered all your questions right, eh?”
“I’m afraid not all, sir,” I replied diffidently; “but I hope for the best.”
“That’s right, youngster! There’s no good to be got by despairing over things, and remember, you can have another try, you know, if you fail now,” said he encouragingly. “‘Never say die,’ you know, as an old friend of mine used always to say, ‘care once killed a cat!’”
“Why, sir,” I exclaimed at this, “that’s what my father always tells me. It’s his favourite expression when any difficulty arises. He never gives in, sir!”
“Indeed!” said the fat gentleman, while the others on either side of him looked interested. “Who is your father, my boy, if you’ll excuse my asking you the question?”
“Francis Vernon,” I answered promptly. “A captain in the Royal Navy, now on half-pay, sir.”
The fat clergyman laughed at my laconic reply.
“Vernon, ha!” he repeated after me. “I wonder if he is the Frank Vernon I once knew?”
“Can’t say, sir,” said I, cautiously. “My mother, though, always calls him ‘Frank.’”
My new friend laughed again.
“Ah, I’m sure he is the same, if only from your manner, which is just like what I remember in the Frank Vernon who was in the Pelican with me,” said he, looking at me all over with his twinkling round eyes. “Was your father ever up the Mediterranean with old Charley Napier, my boy?”
“Oh yes, sir,” I replied, glib enough now. “It was Admiral Napier who gave me my nomination the other day, sir.”
“Really, you don’t say so?”
“I do, though, sir,” I said sturdily, thinking he doubted my assertion. “Dad and I met him in Pall Mall, and I got my nomination from the Admiralty, sir, the very next morning as he promised!”
“All right, my boy, all right,” he observed in an absent way, turning to whisper to the two other gentlemen something, I think, about “old Charley,” and “must be passed for my old shipmate’s sake.”—“I quite believe what you say: I do not doubt your word for an instant; for Frank Vernon’s son, I am sure, could not but always speak the truth. Did your father come down with you for your examination?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. “He and my mother came with me; and we’re all staying at the old ‘Keppel’s Head Hotel,’ on Hardway, sir.”
“Humph! I think I know the place you mention, youngster,” said he, with a significant twinkle in his eye which made the other two chaplains grin, I could see, at some joke they had between them. “I’ll try and call on your father, if I can find time before he leaves Portsmouth. Tell him when you get back, that old Tangent asked after him, please.”
“I’ll make a point of doing so, sir,” I replied, with a bow, repeating the name after him to make certain. “I will tell him, sir, about Old Tangent.”
“Old Tangent, indeed!” cried the old fellow, shaking his fat sides, while the other two examiners roared outright. “You’ve a pretty good stock of impudence of your own, I’m sure! Be off with you, you young rascal, or I’ll pluck you as certain as I’m that Old Tangent with whom you dare to be so familiar!”
His jovial face, however, belied the threat, so it did not occasion me any alarm; and, bowing again politely to the three clerical gentlemen collectively, I bent my steps, on the grin all the way, to the door of the wardroom, which was opened and shut behind me by a marine standing without.
I was Last of the Mohicans, all the other fellows having taken their departure and gone ashore long before I got my own happy dismissal.
“By Jove, Jack, I think you may put yourself down as passed!” said my father when I subsequently detailed the incidents of my examination, drawing a good augury from my description of what had occurred on board the gunnery ship. “He was always a knowing hand was Old Tangent; and such a remark from him to his brother examiners, would be as efficacious as a whisper in ear of the First Lord’s Secretary on your behalf, my boy!”
“Do you remember him, Frank? I mean the gentleman who spoke to Jack.”
“Oh, yes, my dear,” replied Dad to this question of my mother’s, “I recollect Old Tangent quite well. He was always a good-natured fellow and a capital shipmate. Why, he sang the best song of any of us in the mess on board the old Pelican!”
“What!” exclaimed my mother, holding up her hands in pious horror at the mention of such an unclerical characteristic. “A clergyman sing songs?”
“Yes, why not?” retorted Dad, who was in his jolliest mood at the prospect of my having passed my examination successfully. “They were spiritual songs of course, my dear, I assure you!”
“No doubt,” said mother, drily. “I think, my dear, you can ‘tell that yarn to the marines,’ as you say in your favourite sea slang. I know what sort of spirits you refer to!”
At which observation they both laughed; and, naturally, I laughed too.