“I think I had, indeed,” replied Courtenay, as he bolted out of the gun-room door.—“Cursed annoying! but the captain’s such a bilious subject.”
Chapter Twenty.
This chair shall be my state, this dagger my sceptre, and this cushion my crown.
Henry IV. Part I.
We must now descend to the steerage, where our hero is seated in the berth, in company with a dozen more (as they designated themselves, from the extreme heat of their domicile) perspiring young heroes, who were amusing themselves with crunching hard biscuits, and at the same time a due proportion of those little animals of the scaribee tribe, denominated weevils, who had located themselves in the unleavened bread, and which the midshipmen declared to be the only fresh meat which they had tasted for some time.
Captain M—’s character stood so high at the Admiralty, that the major part of the young aspirants who had been committed to his charge were of good family and connections. At that time few of the aristocracy or gentry ventured to send their sons into the navy; whereas, at present, none but those classes can obtain admission.
A better school for training young officers could not have been selected; and the midshipmen’s berth of the Aspasia was as superior to those in other ships, as Captain M— was himself to the generality of his contemporary captains in the service. But I cannot pay these young men the compliment to introduce them one by one, as I did the gun-room officers. It would be an anomaly unheard of. I shall, therefore, with every respect for them, describe them just as I want them. It was one bell after eight o’clock—a bottle of ship’s rum, a black jack of putrid water, and a tin bread-basket, are on the table, which is lighted with a tallow candle of about thirteen to the pound.
“I say, Mr Jerry Sneak, what are you after there—what are you foraging for in that locker?” said one of the oldsters of the berth to a half-starved, weak-looking object of a youngster, whose friends had sent him to sea with the hopes of improving his stamina.
“What for?—why, for my supper if you must know. D’ye think I look too fat? I stowed it away before I went on deck, that it might not fall into your ravenous maw.”