Chapter Fourteen.
“In the Bay of Biscay, O!”
“Tom,” said Mick to me, when we came down from the yards, by which time the ship was abreast of Southsea Pier on her way out in the fairway, “Oi’m afther settin’ oop, faith, fur a conjirer, now me drame’s coom roight!”
“You’re more than a conjurer, Mick,” I replied to this, laughing. “You’re a prophet!”
“Begorrah!” he rejoined with his usual grin, “it ain’t mooch profit Oi’ll git oot ov it, me darlint, or yersilf ayther, fur thet matther—aboot ez mooch, faith, ez Pat O’Connor got whin he shaved his pig!”
The squadron remained but a couple of days at anchor at Spithead; proceeding thence to Portland, whence, the Calypso and Ruby, ships belonging to the eastern division, having joined us, we all set sail in company for our cruise, bound for the West Indies.
Passing down Channel, through those ‘chops’ which our late cruiser had so watchfully guarded during the Manoeuvres, we gave Ushant a wide berth and entered the celebrated Bay of Biscay; the subject of a song as popular with us sailors as that of which my great-great-great-ancestor, Tom Bowling of pious and historic memory, was the hero.
Now, at last, I could say that I really was at sea!
A good many of my shipmates had no necessity, however, to do this; for they felt it—especially crossing the Bay!
The weather was dirty, as it usually is in this region.
This occurs through the influence of the Gulf Stream, which, after being wooed by the incurving and more hospitable coast of France, suddenly finds itself violently repulsed by the projecting Spanish peninsula; when, naturally angry, the current, like some folk who, on their not being able to vent their spleen on the people who may offend them, ‘pass it on’ to the nearest, tries to ‘make it warm’ for such unfortunate mariners as may cross its turbid bosom!
It is always rough there, and the winds as uncertain as a lady’s smile; and, I may say that on this occasion both Boreas and Neptune seemed to have arranged to render our passage over this special broken-water domain of theirs as disagreeable as possible.
We were well handled, our commanding officer being, as I have already said, one of the smartest sailors in the service; but, notwithstanding this, the Active had very bad weather of it, while those of our consorts whom we could see in the distance appeared to experience worse.
The ship plunged and rolled to such an extent that it was almost impossible to go up and down the hatchways carrying anything; for a chap wanted more hands than he possessed to hold on with, let alone dunnage!
We boys had, as might be expected, most of the dirty work to do; and it was our task, when dinner was finished below, to help clear up the messes, and take the ‘gashing-tubs,’ in which the refuse of all our meals was thrown, up above to the upper deck and pitch the contents over the side, it being impossible for us to open any of the ports on the lower deck, from the heavy rolling seas that came toppling inboard every now and again.
The job was not a nice one, nor an easy one either; and the second day we were knocking about in the Bay an accident happened while we were at it that nearly settled the hash of one of us, making him more fit to go into the ‘gashing-tub’ himself than to handle it!
Four of us were trying to hoist our burden up the slippery ladder, which was rendered all the more slippery by the water washing down in a cataract every time a roller came over the forecastle and filled the waist of the corvette; not to speak of the rolling of the ship from port to starboard, and from starboard to port, varied by an occasional lift up in mid-air atop of some huge billow, and a dive down the next moment into the hollow of the waves, as if we were going down to Davy Jones’s locker.
Mick, who was the leading member of our quartet, on the top step of the ladder, was holding on like grim death to the side-rope with one hand, and stretching out the other towards Finlayson, a new boy whom we had not seen before till we joined the Active, he having been drafted from the Boscawen at Portland; and who, in turn, had hold of the tub and was clutching Mick’s hand to steady himself.
“Pull away, ye divvle!” cried Mick. “One more stip, begorrah, an’ we’ll be landid on the dick!”
“Shove up, you fellers below there!” shouted Finlayson, in response to this, to myself and another boy who had come forwards from the after part of the mess-deck to our assistance, but whose face I had not seen, from the fact of my back being turned to him. “Shove up, carn’t you! This chap atop here an’ me is bearin’ all the weight on it!”
“That’s all very well,” I growled, for the tub was slipping back on me, though I was holding it with both hands and shoving my knees into the steps of the ladder to keep myself steady. “Pull away, you beggar, your self! Aye, and you too, Mick, aloft there! I shall tumble back if you don’t take the weight of the tub off me!”
“Begorrah, Tom, me hearty, ye shan’t git kilt wid that there gashing-tub!” cried Mick, squinting down the hatchway and seeing my predicament. “Pull away, ye young divvle—it’s you, ye new boy, I’m afther manin’—pull away wid a will! Tom, why, sure, don’t ye make thet chap alongside ye put his shoulder to it properly? He ain’t workin’ at all, at all, bad cess to him, who ivver he is, fur I can’t say him at all, at all!”
“Whoi, I be a-shuvvin’ and a-shuvvin’ all the time,” rejoined a voice whose accents were strangely familiar to me. “You pull yerself, maister, and stop hollerin’ at Oi!”
I turned; and there, much to my astonishment, at the foot of the ladder was ‘Ugly,’ of whose being on board the same ship I was ignorant up to that moment, he being in the starboard watch and I in the port, and the necessities of the service not having brought us together before, though how I’d never seen him even casually at Portsmouth or at Portland I can’t account for.
Unfortunately, the curiosity that made me turn round brought about the mishap to which I have alluded, nearly making Tom Bowling, junior, your present informant, lose the number of his mess.
‘Ugly,’ as much surprised as myself at our strange meeting, started back on seeing me.
He had really, in spite of all that Mick said, been doing his part to assist me; and now, from his loosing his hold of the tub, which he had been trying to shove upwards on the one side the same as I did on the other, while the other two fellows above us pulled, the beastly thing came sliding back a step on me; and, as I was not holding on to anything, and the ship lurched at the moment, making Mick and Finlayson both let go at the same time, I tumbled incontinently backwards on to the lower deck, with the gashing-tub on top of me!
My good providence, however, still watched over me; for, as I fell, a big wave, coming splosh right over the side into the waist, poured down bodily through the hatchway, floating away the tub and flooding the lower deck.
This probably saved my life, as had the heavy tub fallen really on top of me I should have been squashed into a jelly.
“Faith, I belaive ye’ve ez many loives ez a cat,” cried Mick, making little, in proper sailor fashion, of my peril; and then, dropping his voice so that the others shouldn’t hear him, he added, “Whisht, Tom—faith it’s thet nasty baste ‘Ugly’ thet done it; an’, sure, he’s done it a-purpos!”
“No, Mick, I don’t believe that,” I whispered, in my turn, picking myself up with the aid of my suspicious chum, who proceeded to help me in clearing away the remains of the garbage from the tub which had been emptied into my jumper. “The fellow started back at sight of me, and I don’t think he meant to leave go of the gashing-tub as he did.”
“Begorrah!” cried Mick indignantly, “why didn’t he stop and say so loike a man, insted ov snakin’ away loike a cur?”
I cast my eyes about me and saw, truly enough, that ‘Ugly’ had disappeared.