“Hear, hear, hear!” shouted the officers again, and the men threw up their caps, cried “Hoorar!” and the sentry on the roof presented arms.
“Now then, play up, Private Mustard—‘The Englishman,’” cried Bob Roberts. “Get ready, Tom, and run it out with all your might!”
“Must I?” said the ensign, nervously.
“To be sure you must. Wait a minute, though, and let him play the introduction.”
Billy Mustard gave the bow a preliminary scrape, and the audience grew larger.
“What key shall I play it in, sir?” said Billy.
“Any key you like,” cried Bob, excitedly. “Play it in a whole bunch of keys, my lad, only go ahead, or we shall forget all the words.”
Off went the fiddle with a flourish over the first strain of the well-known song, and then, after a couple of efforts to sing, Tom Long broke down, and Bob Roberts took up the strain, singing it in a cheery rollicking boyish way, growing more confident every moment, and proving that he had a musical tenor voice. Then as he reached the end of the first verse, he waved his puggaree on high, jumped upon the table to the upsetting of a couple of glasses, and led the chorus, which was lustily trolled out by all present.
On went Bob Roberts, declaring how the flag waved on every sea, and should never float over a slave, throwing so much enthusiasm into the song that to a man all rose, and literally roared the chorus, ending with three cheers, and one cheer more for the poor girls; and as Bob Roberts stood upon the table flushed and hot, he felt quite a hero, and ready to go on that very night and rescue half-a-dozen more poor slave girls from tyranny, if they would only appeal to him for help.
“Three cheers for Mr Roberts,” shouted Dick, the sailor, as Billy Mustard was confiding to a friend that “a fiddle soon got outer toon in that climate.”