“When you young gentlemen goes to sea you won’t find no STAIRS!”
When they went to sea! That was the gradually increasing burden of his song. For a while it presented a picture too remote almost for serious contemplation. It was practically a figure of speech, meaningless. But as time went on, and the successive dignities of “Sixer” and “Niner” (third and fourth—the last—terms) loomed up and passed into reality, and at last the Great Wall of the final examination alone stood between them and the sea-going gunrooms of the Fleet, the words took on their real significance.
Harker abandoned even sarcasm. He became guide, philosopher, and friend, a patient mentor always accessible—generally somewhere on the chest-deck—in leisure hours to thirsters after knowledge. Was one shaky in that branch of nautical lore known as “Bends and Hitches”? Harker’s blunt fingers tirelessly manipulated the end of a hammock-lashing until the pupil could make even a “sheep-shank” with his eyes shut.
Another would bring him, in a welter of grease and ravelled strands, a tortured mass of hemp-rope.
“It’s meant to be a Long Splice,” was the explanation, “but I don’t seem to get it right—ever,” and with a despondent sigh it would be thrust into Harker’s hands.
Harker would examine the interwoven strands, twisting it to and fro with jerks of his powerful wrists, pulling taut here, tucking something in there, and lo! the thing took shape.
“This is where you goes wrong, Mr. P., every time!” (Recollect there were sixty-odd in his term.) “Don’t forget what I’m always telling you. You splits the middle strands, and then an over-’and knot in the opposite ’alves....” It always looked so easy when Harker did it.
It was during the last night on board that Harker rose to heights truly magnanimous. The fourth term regarded it as its right and privilege, on the last night of the term, to hold high carnival until sleep overtook them. Cadet captains even cast their responsibilities to the winds that night and scampered about, slim, pyjama-clad figures, in the dim light of the lanterns, ruthlessly cutting down the prig who yearned for slumber, lashing-up a victim in his hammock and leaving him upside-down to reflect on certain deeds of the past year that earned him this retribution, floating about on gratings on the surface of the plunge baths, and generally celebrating in a fitting manner the eve of the day that was to herald in new responsibilities and cares.
Harker, who for fifteen months had haunted the shadows on the look-out for just such a “rux,” whose ear caught every illicit sound—even the crunch of the nocturnal butterscotch—Harker was for once unseeing and unseen. It needed but this crowning act of grace to endear him for ever to his departing flock.
Yet he had one more card to play, and played it as he passed in farewell from carriage to carriage of the departing train. Further, he dealt it with accentuated emphasis for the benefit of those he thought needed the reminder most.