Chapter Seven.
I Startle my Father.
My father was first up next morning, and had been out for an hour before I went down the garden to join him, and found him walking the quarter-deck.
You must not think by these words that he was on board a ship. Nothing of the kind. He called by that name a flat place at the bottom of the garden just at the edge of the cliff, where there was a low stone wall built to keep anyone from falling over a couple of hundred feet perpendicular to the rocks and beach below.
This was my father’s favourite place, where he used to spend hours with his spy-glass, and along the edge of the wall, all carefully mounted, were six small brass cannon, which came out of a sloop that was wrecked below in the bay, and which my father bought for the price of old metal when the ship was broken up and sold.
I used to think sometimes that he ought to have called the place the battery, but he settled on the quarter-deck, and the quarter-deck it remained.
Always once a year on his birthday he would load and fire all the cannons, and it was quite a sight; for he used to call himself the crew and load them and prime them, and then send me in for the poker, which had all the time been getting red-hot in the kitchen.
Then he used to take the poker from me, and I used to stop my ears. But as soon as I stopped my ears, he used to frown and say, “Take out the tompions, you young swab!”
So I used to take out the tompions—I mean my fingers—and screw up my face and look on while with quite a grand air my father, who was a fine handsome man, with a fresh colour and curly grey hair, used to stand up very erect, give the poker a flourish through the air, and bring the end down upon a touch-hole.
Then bang! There would be a tremendous roar, and the rocks would echo as the white smoke floated upwards.