Chapter Forty Two.
It’s well to have a long spoon when one sips soup with the Devil—The captain’s shot seldom misses.
It is always a greater proof of courage to stand fire coolly than to fire. Captain Reud, I must suppose, wished to try the degree of intrepidity of his officers, by permitting the chase to give us several weighty objections against any more advance of familiarity on our parts. A quarter of a century ago there were some very strange notions prevalent in the navy, among which none was more common, than that the firing of the bow guns materially checked the speed of the vessel. The captain and the first-lieutenant both held this opinion. Thus we continued to gain upon the corvette, and she, being emboldened by the impunity with which she cannonaded us, fired the more rapidly and with the greater precision, as our rent sails and ravelled running rigging began to testify.
I was rather impatient at this apparent apathy on our parts. Mr Burn, the gunner, seemed to more than participate in my feelings. Our two bow-guns were very imposing-looking magnates. They would deliver a message at three miles’ distance, though it were no less than a missive of eighteen pounds avoirdupois; and we were now barely within half that distance. Mr Burn was particularly excellent at two things—a long shot, and the long bow. In all the ships that I have sailed, I never yet met with his equal at a cool, embellished, intrepid lie, or at the accuracy of his ball practice. Baron Munchausen would have found no mean rival in him at the former; and, were duels fought with eighteen pounders, Lord Camelford would have been remarkably polite in the company of our master of projectiles.
I was upon the point of writing that Mr Burn was burning with ardour. I see it written—it is something worse than a pun—therefore, per omnes modos et casus—heretical and damnable—consequently I beg the reader to consign it to the oblivion with which we cover our bad actions, and read thus:— The gunner was burning with impatience to show the captain what a valuable officer he commanded. The two guns had long been ready, and, with the lanyard of the lock in his right hand, and the rim of his glazed hat in his left, he was continually saying, “shall I give her a shot now, Captain Reud?”
The answer was as provokingly tautologous as a member of parliament’s speech, who is in aid of the whipper-in, speaking against time. “Wait a little, Mr Burn.”
“Well, Mr Rattlin,” said the fat doctor, blowing himself up to me, “so you have been knighted—on the field of battle, too—knight banneret of the order of the light bobs.”
I was standing with the captain’s glass to my eye, looking over the hammocks. In order to get near me he had been obliged to cling hold of the hammock rails with both hands, so that his huge, round, red face, just peeped above the tarpaulin hammock cloths, his chin resting upon them, no bad type of an angry sun showing his face above the rim of a black cloud, through a London November fog.