When we came down to the Cape, which we managed to do without any further adventures, there lay the new admiral’s ship, all spick and span from England’s shores, so all our fellows were turned over to, and went home in the old Admiral’s ship, all except our engineer and my unhappy self. We, much to our disgust, were reappointed to the saucy Tickler, which was to remain out for another commission, as tender to the new flagship. Now, however, we had a new captain, the jolliest little man alive; new officers, and a new crew, and we were all as jolly as sandboys. The new officers thought themselves tremendously clever chaps, and every night they used all to pull off their slippers and go pell mell at the unfortunate cockroaches; but the engineer and I sat like stoics, and let them crawl over us in scores, and if too many at one time came on the book we might be reading, we gently removed them. But before a month was over, our messmates found out the futility, of trying to diminish the number of cockroaches, and these interesting creatures had carte blanche all over the ship.
TORTOISESHELL.
First Prize—Owned by Mr. L. Smith.
SILVER, or BLUE TABBY.
First Prize—Owned by Mr. Reynolds.
We sailed for Bombay.
But though black Tom was no more, ill-luck seemed still to hover in the wake of that little vessel.
I would willingly narrate our further adventures in detail, but somehow I have no heart, now that the cat has left the story. But, how we were caught in a gale off the Cape and the ship taken aback (that, reader, is much more dreadful than it appears on paper), how we sprang a leak a week after—glass falling and weather stormy, on a rock bound coast—and, just as the ship was beginning to stagger like a drunk man, and the boats were got ready for lowering, the engineer—brave little man—dived below water in the engine-room, and found it was no leak at all, but the great sea-cock left open by a drunken stoker; how we ran on shore on that wild reef outside Johanna, and lay there for a whole week with our keel floating in splinters around us; how, finally we got off, and steamed to Bombay almost a wreck; the pumps going continually, and barely keeping her afloat; how we arrived safely through it all; how a liberal government paid rather more for repairing her, than would have bought a new one, and how she was sold three years after for an old song,—is it not all written in the log of Her Majesty’s saucy gunboat, Tickler.