"Every person subject to this Act who shall strike ... or lift up any weapon against his superior officer in the execution of his office, shall be punished with Death or such other punishment as is hereinafter mentioned."—Sec. 16, Naval Discipline Act.
In Official eyes—even in eyes anxious to condone—illicit rum and the unreasoning passion of a Celtic temperament were the sole causes of the trouble. Yet a man may fight Destiny in the shape of these evils and still make a very fair show of it. It was the addition of the third factor that in this case overtipped the scales.
Her red, untidy hair was usually screwed into wisps of last night's 'Football Herald.' She had green, provocative eyes that slanted upwards ever so slightly at the corners, and coarse, chapped hands—useful hands, as many an overbold Ordinary Seaman had discovered to his fuddled amazement, but in no wise ornamental. Her speech was partly Lower-deck, partly Barrack-room, softened withal by the broad West Country burr; her home was an alehouse in an obscure back street near Devonport Dockyard.
She was in no sense of the word a "nice" girl; but she was tall, deep-bosomed, and broad of hip, and appealed inordinately to Ivor Jenkins, Stoker 1st Class of His Majesty's Navy, who was dark and undersized, and had lately developed a troublesome cough.
The recreations of a man who, on a daily rate of pay of 2s. 1d., contrives to support a bed-ridden mother and a consumptive sister, cannot perforce partake of the elaborate. Ivor, denied a wider choice, was therefore content to spend as much of his watch ashore as a jealously eked-out pint would allow, at the "Crossed Killicks." For many weeks past, alternate nights had found the little man perched on a three-legged stool in a corner of the bar, raging inwardly at an unnumbered host of rivals, dumbly grateful for such crumbs of recognition as Arabella, from behind the beer handles, was pleased to fling him.
The sailor-man a-wooing usually conducts his financial affairs with an open-handed generosity calculated to make a ministering angel pensive. In consequence, Ivor, who could not afford to back his protestations by invitations to the Hippodrome, whelk-suppers, and the like, dropped by degrees more and more out of the running. At first the girl gave him encouragement—not the vague, nebulous coquetry Mayfair recognises as such, but an intimate familiarity extended to slaps on the nose (boko), and once a dash of swipes down the back of his neck as Ivor stooped to recover a broken pipe. But nothing came of it—not even a penn'orth of fish-and-chips. Accustomed to tribute tendered with a lavish hand, Arabella decided that this must be a "proper stinge,"—one, moreover, niggardly in his consumption of beer, and (since there was the good of the house to be considered) to be dealt a lesson in due season.
"Bella! ... Give us a kiss!"
Save for Ivor and the girl, the squalid bar was deserted. She paused in the act of replacing a bottle on the shelf behind her, and looked over her shoulder, half-surprised, half-contemptuous. A beam of afternoon sunlight slanted through the dusty panes and caught the greenish feline eyes and ruddy hair, innocent for once of curl-papers.
"Wot? ... Me—kiss—yu!" She spoke slowly, and flung each word like a whip-lash at the soul of Ivor Jenkins.
"Ah, yus, Bella—jest one. There ain't——"