Chapter Sixteen.
“His Last Muster!”
On that, the noble fellow, who thus unselfishly sacrificed his life for mine, fell with a whiz through the air that seemed to send the wind up into my face, down to the deck below.
Cannoning against the rigging on the port side, he was caught up in the belly of the mizzen-top sail, which slightly stopped the impetus of his descent, but, the concussion broke his spine, and when I, pale, trembling, and almost as lifeless as he, coming down from aloft, I hardly know how, reached his side, the doctor, who was bending over him and applying stimulants, said he had only a few moments longer to live.
The chaplain, too, was there, having been hastily summoned from his duties of instructing the young middies in the wardroom; as also was the commodore, with a graver face on him than I had ever seen before.
I don’t know whether he heard my step, or the cry I ejaculated when the doctor spoke of his approaching end.
Whatever it was, something made my dying shipmate open his eyes just then, his glance wandering round the circle of those near.
“What is it, my poor lad?” asked the chaplain kindly, stooping down, so as to hear better any request he might make. “Is there anything you would like done or said for you?”
He was thinking, good man, no doubt, of offering up a prayer.
But the mind of Moses Reeks—to call him by his right name, and drop the somewhat opprobrious sobriquet by which I have hitherto styled the poor fellow, and by which, indeed, he was always known on board—was still bent on things terrestrial; though, possibly, his motive might have been as high and had as divine a source as anything the chaplain might have intended to say!
His eyes lighted on me and their wandering ceased.
“Coom here, lad,” he whispered very faintly, so very faintly that his lips seemed to give out no sound at all. “Coom here!”
I heard, though, and went to his side, listening earnestly, for I could not speak.
He did not notice this, however, making up, with his slowly ebbing senses, what he wished himself to say.
“To-am Bowlin’,” he faltered out in lisping accents with his failing breath, “ye’ve done Oi a toorn wanst, lad, an’ I wer an oongrateful cur to ’ee, thet Oi wer, ez Oi didn’t warnt fur to be a-beholden to yer; but you a’ me, To-am, be naow quits, lad!”
As he thus spoke, a smile irradiated his rough-hewn features, making them look positively beautiful; and, with the last word he uttered, his spirit fled, with a sigh that was stifled in its birth.
The commodore uncovered his head in the presence of Death—the superior officer of even one flying the broad pennant and the personal representative of her Majesty wherever the broad red cross of Saint George, borne on that oblong flag, may float.
At that moment the ship’s bugler forwards sounded the ‘assembly.’
“Peace to his spirit, poor boy,” said our chief solemnly. “He’s gone to his last muster!”
It was Two Bells in the first dog-watch before the Ruby closed with us sufficiently to speak with us; when she reported that she had parted with the other ships of the squadron even before she had lost sight of us at the commencement of the gale, not seeing anything of them since.
Her commander also informed the commodore that they had lost two men overboard while reefing topsails in a squall, the sea running so high that it was impossible to lower a boat to save them.
We, in our turn, told of poor ‘Ugly’s’ heroic end: and, as it was approaching sunset, his body was sewn up in his hammock, with a shot fastened to the feet, and committed to the deep.
All hands were present while the chaplain read the funeral service on the quarter-deck: and, as the grating on which the poor fellow’s remains rested, covered for the moment with the Union Jack, was canted through the port and its lifeless burden went below with a splash, to its last resting-place until the sea shall give up its dead, the waning sun dipped below the horizon.
We then squared yards and bore away straight for Madeira, with the Ruby keeping company on our lee beam; the wind having sobered down now to a good ten-knot breeze, and the weather all that one could wish, getting warmer with every hour of south latitude that we made.
Everybody was jolly that evening as we bowled along before the spanking breeze, fresh sail being set every watch, until the corvette was presently clothed in canvas from truck to keelson, the commodore wishing to take every advantage of the fair wind we had; but, though all the rest, sailor-like, were laughing and joking on the mess-deck forwards, I could not so soon forget the poor chap who had gone, his noble self-sacrifice being ever in my mind.
It was strange that reserved, unforgiving, and yet not unforgetful temperament of his!
I saw now, when too late, that he had not been quite oblivious of my having saved him that time on board the Saint Vincent when he so nearly tumbled from aloft. He had not been ungrateful, as Mick and I thought him, evidently.
On the contrary, the obligation he believed himself to be under to me had so weighed upon him that he was too proud to speak until he had cleared it off, so, he apparently fancied, to be able to treat with me on level terms.
Mick Donovan had not been on deck when the tragic occurrence happened; but he was almost as much impressed as myself when I told him of our shipmate’s last words.
“Begorrah, Tom,” cried he, wiping his eye with the sleeve of his jumper, “Oi wudn’t ’a belaved it, sure, if ye hadn’t towld me, mabouchal, wid yer own potato trap! Faith, the poor chap samed quoite a t’other sort. Sure, Tom, me darlint, as he’s bin an’ gone an’ saved the noomber ov yer mess, be the powers, Oi’ll spake to Father O’Flannagan whin I git back to Porchmouth an’ ax him fur to say a mass, sure, fur the poor beggar, so that his sowl may rest in paice. May the saints protict him!”
Three days afterwards, without any further adventure, we anchored in Funchal Roads.
Here the squadron remained a week, the other ships having joined us when within a day’s sail of Madeira; and, as we were going to make such a comparatively long stay, the men were granted leave to go ashore, watch and watch in turn.
Just before we left, the commodore gave a grand picnic to all the officers at the Grande Curral, when I had the luck of accompanying the party that went from our ship, a piece of good fortune shared by Mick, my chum.
This Curral, a name which means, I’m told, in the Spanish language a ‘sheepfold,’ is an immense valley, completely surrounded by hills, that lies a few miles to the north-west of Funchal, the capital of the island.
The hills encircling the natural plateau of the Curral are literally perpendicular, being in no part less than a thousand feet high; while round a part of the cliffs there is a narrow road leading to the ‘garden houses’ of the rich folk having business premises in the town, and a number of plantations, which is cut out of the solid rock and is about ten or twelve feet high.
As the picnic party went along over this road, the view presented to our eyes on looking down below was that of an unfathomable abyss, filled up by a mass of clouds and vapours, all rolling about in constant motion, and tumbling the one on top of another.
Mick and I were each aboard a mule and enjoyed ourselves to rights, racing against one another all the way; though we took precious good care to keep in the rear of our officers, amongst whom was Lieutenant Robinson, whose liver must have been particularly out of sorts that morning, for he was in a grumpier and more fault-finding mood than usual.
He did catch sight of us once as we were turning a sharp point in the road round a projection of a cliff; but, through the fortunate circumstance of the mule which the lieutenant was riding happening to bolt at the moment, the joker had too much to do in taking care of his own valuable carcass to have much time to growl at us.
The lieutenant, though, did not forget the incident: for, on Mick chancing to trip over one of his legs as he sat on the grass while handing him a plate of salad, the pleasant gentleman called him as many names as some of the watermen at Point are in the habit of using when they are put out of temper by being cheated of a fare.
“Bedad, Tom,” whispered Mick to me, when he got out of range of the lieutenant’s grapeshot, and we were having a feed ourselves in a quiet corner, “Oi wush thet blissid ould baist he wor roidin’ hed run away wid him, sure, over the cliff an’ made an ind ov the spalpeen! Faith, it isn’t mesilf thet wud cry me oyes out, or wear mournin’ fur him!”
On leaving Madeira, which we did with much regret, the people being very hospitable and most good-naturedly disposed towards all sailors, especially to British bluejackets, we fetched a compass for Teneriffe, where we arrived some three or four days afterwards; the commodore occupying the additional time in exercising the ships under his command, and matching them one against another.
In sailing on a wind the Active, I’m glad to say, beat all the rest of the squadron; though, in running before the wind, the little Ruby weathered on us and the Volage, our sister ship, ran us pretty close.
When nearing Teneriffe and close in to the African coast, we saw a splendid tight in the sea, between a big black whale on the one side, and a ‘thrasher’ or fox-shark on the other, aided by a swordfish, with which latter he had just apparently struck up an alliance offensive and defensive for the time.
The thrasher, which has a back as elastic as an india-rubber ball, would jump clean out of the water and give the whale a whack in the ribs that must have taken all the elasticity out of him; and then, on the poor leviathan of the deep fluking his tail to dive so as to escape from his aerial antagonist, his chum the swordfish would tickle up the whale from below by sending a yard or two of his long saw-like snout into his tenderest part.
Presently, as we luffed up to see the end of the fun, the sea in the vicinity of the fray became tinged with blood, the colour of carmine, showing that somebody at all events was having a bad time of it.
“By the powers, it bates Bannagher,” cried Mick, who was watching the fight alongside of me on the upper deck, springing up on to the hammock nettings in his excitement to see the finish, unthinking of the breach of discipline he was committing. “Go it, ye cripples. Sure, Tom, the little wun’ll win—what d’ye call him?”
“He’s a thrasher,” I replied, jumping up, too, on the top of the nettings. “A sort of shark, I think. Father has one stuffed at home, stowed away somewhere, that looks like that chap. If so, he’s a fox-shark.”
“A fox-shark, begorrah!” repeated Mick, with a grin. “Faith, Tom, he’s goin’ fur thet ould whale theer ez if he wor not ownly a fox, sure, but a pack of hounds as will, alannah!”
“Hi, there, you boys,” roared out a voice at this juncture, which we had little difficulty in recognising as belonging to Lieutenant Robinson, who was again officer of the watch this afternoon, his turn of duty having once more come round. “Get off that netting at once and go below, both of you. Master-at-arms, take those boys’ names down and put them in the report, and bring them up on the deck after ‘divisions’ to-morrow!”
The ‘Jaunty,’ who was standing below the break of the poop, looked up at the scowling lieutenant, saluting him.
“Very good, sir,” said he, with another touch of his hat, in recognition of the authority of the speaker. “I will see to it, sir.”
But, a ‘Deus ex machina,’ or ‘God from the bathing-machine,’ as our old captain of the Saint Vincent would have said in his Latin lingo, just then intervened on our behalf.
Mick Donovan and I were sneaking down the main hatch, like a pair of whipped dogs with their tails between their legs—though I must say we were more chagrined at losing the best part of the fight going on in the water, which was rapidly approaching a climax, than dismayed at having incurred the displeasure of the lieutenant—when, if you please, we heard somebody shout out something behind us, and the master-at-arms, who had followed in our wake, called out to us to stop.
“Belay there, you boys,” he shouted down the hatchway. “Ye’re to return on deck!”
In obedience to this order, we ascended the ladder-way again, retracing our steps at an even slower pace than we had gone down at; for we both expected, the same thought having flashed across our minds when the ‘Jaunty’ hailed us, that Lieutenant Robinson had, on more mature consideration, fancied he had let us off too lightly for the heinous offence we had committed, and had ordered us to be brought back to give us ‘four dozen’ apiece at least, there and then!
The result, however, was very different to our sad anticipations; for when we reached the deck the old commodore was standing by the poop rail, close to the ladder on the port side leading down from thence into the waist of the ship.