But we must return to the sailors whom we left standing before the lieutenant on the quarter-deck.
"What do you want leave for?" demanded Crushe, as Jerry, with his face elongated in a most doleful way, touched his forelock to attract the officer's attention.
"Leave to visit my widowed mother, who is werry ill," replied the scamp.
As he said this, his visage relaxed for a moment, and in his endeavour to work it back into a solemn cast, he presented such a serio-comic appearance, that the lieutenant laughed outright; and telling the impudent fellow to go on shore and be hanged to him, turned to the other sailor, to whom he granted the same privilege.
Of course the illness of Jerry's mother existed only in his fertile imagination, and he afterwards remarked to the boatswain that he had obtained leave through a pious fraud, which he trusted would not be chalked down agin him up aloft.
Since the night of the memorable tea-party at her sister's, Mary Ann had become the lady's-maid of Mrs. Captain Puffeigh, who was residing with a relative at Portsea, near Portsmouth. Thompson heard the ship was to be sent to the Cape of Good Hope, and determined to say good-bye to his lady-love, who had written to inform him, "the captain and ladies would be absent from home that evening, and if he did not come and see her, she would forever discard him."
After rigging himself in his best suit, he was, with the other sailor, paraded before the first lieutenant, who gave them the comforting assurance that if they were not on board by six o'clock the following morning, they would both be looked upon as deserters, then allowed them to depart, the ship's corporal passing them through the dock gates. Jerry now wished to get rid of his companion, who, on his part seemed determined to stick by him, in spite of hints, and even of the pointed remark "that his absence would not be felt." At last, being somewhat annoyed by the patient way in which his companion took his rebuffs, Thompson suddenly stopped before the door of a private residence, and taking the bell-handle, as if about to ring, told his shipmate "that his mother was in there dangerously ill," and curtly bade him good-night.
When the man was out of sight, Jerry pulled forth a small bag, suspended by a string around his neck, and took from it a black ribbon, which had formerly encircled the slender waist of Mary Ann. He first looked round in order to ascertain if any one was watching him, when, noticing a smartly-dressed girl at an attic window, he waved the belt triumphantly towards her, and then pressed it to his heart. The damsel affected the greatest indignation, though in reality she was highly delighted with his impudent manner, and giving him several scornful and withering glances, intended as "finishers," withdrew behind the curtain, through a hole in which she watched him, wishing all the while "that heaven had made her such a man."
He pulled off his hat, removed a ribbon, bearing in letters of gold the word "Stinger," and tied Mary Ann's gift in its place; or, as he termed it "flew her pennant." This, also, prevented any one knowing the name of his ship, and subsequent events proved the wisdom of the precaution. With a true nautical twist, he jerked the hat upon the back of his head, then blowing a few sounding kisses in the direction of the hidden one, shaped his course for Portsea.