CHAPTER XII
Chief Water Tender Hester
“All hands up anchor! Turn out everybody, lash and carry! Bear a hand, show a leg there, out you go!” were the rude cries aboard the Puritan at a little after five o’clock Monday morning. The Puritan was getting under way and left early, her captain wanting to take advantage of the high tide that existed at that hour. The midshipmen had slung their hammocks in a confined space inside the superstructure, and first classmen were turning them out. They bawled and yelled; Ralph Osborn was sleeping soundly at that hour and didn’t fully comprehend what it was all about until one of the first classmen stooping directly under Ralph’s hammock, having noticed that the occupant had made no move toward turning out, suddenly raised himself and Ralph was instantly spilled out of his hammock. He lit feet first, and now wide awake started to lash his hammock. Everything was in confusion on the deck, for a number had been turned out in this same unceremonious fashion.
Cries of: “Bear a hand, get your hammocks on deck,” hastened him and soon his hammock was neatly lashed and was in its netting. For two hours after that, as far as Ralph was concerned, nothing whatever happened. The old monitor steamed out the narrow-dredged channel leading from the Severn River to Chesapeake Bay. On the bridge were the captain and several other officers navigating the ship, and forward an officer in charge of the anchors walked up and down.
Ralph longed for the good old days of the previous summer when he would have been busily engaged hauling on different ropes; but now, longing to do something, and there being nothing whatever for him to do, he walked about listlessly.
“If they won’t let us work why didn’t they let us sleep? What was the good of dumping us out in that style?” he complained to Bollup.
“Custom, Os, custom. When a navy ship gets under way everybody has a station and must be there, no matter whether he has anything to do or not. Same thing happens when a ship comes to anchor. Everything in the Navy is run by regulation or custom. Why, there was an old regulation years ago that required a ship to let go her anchor if she went aground. Well, a lieutenant named Percival one time was officer of the deck of a ship that went aground. ‘Let go both anchors!’ he shouted. ‘Can’t do it, sir,’ yelled back the boatswain’s mate on the forecastle; ‘they’re not bent to the chains.’
“‘Bother the difference,’ shouted back Percival. ‘Let ’em go, I say; if we lose the ship, it’ll be logged we went ashore according to the rules, regulations and customs of the service,’ and the anchors were dropped, though they were not attached to the chain cables. And so, Os, we were turned out not for any useful exercise, but just because it is the custom for everybody to be up when the ship gets under way.”
“Stuff,” remarked Ralph disdainfully. “Do you believe that yarn?”
“Of course I do. Anderson of the first class just told me, Captain Waddell told him, Admiral Farragut told Waddell just before he said, when they were running by the forts at New Orleans, ‘Damn the torpedoes, go ahead,’ and years before that Lieutenant Percival told Admiral——”
“Hold on there, Bollup, Admiral Farragut said that at Mobile Bay, not at New Orleans. How in the world did you ever pass your history entrance exam? and as for that yarn about Percival, pshaw, I don’t believe it ever happened. Hello, there is the bugle call for breakfast. Goodness, I’m glad we’re going to get something to eat.”