Creggan had been keeping the second dog-watch, but now went below. There was first the fighting deck to pass through, where the great port-holes were, and the black, shining guns, each with its snow-white lanyard prettily coiled and lying on the breach. A fine open breezy deck, the shot and shell neatly arranged in racks around the hatchways, and the sick-bay far away forward yonder. Abaft here was the captain's quarters or saloon, with a red-coated, armed sentry walking near it, slowly fore and aft.
Then Creggan dived below. Aft again on this deck and right under the captain's quarters, only coming more forward, was the well-lighted ward-room, from which issued the sound of merry voices and laughing. Turning forward and on the port side there was first a cabin or two, and then the gun-room.
Below this was the orlop deck, where many hammocks were hung, and which was lined with two rows of dingy, dark, though white-washed cabins, lighted by day only by the round scuttle-hole, and at night by a candle hung in jimbles. These cabins were told off to warrant officers, bo's'n, carpenter, &c., &c., and to senior officers of the gun-room. But really most of these preferred a hammock just outside, for the sake of fresher air.
To-night, Creggan, to whom one of these cabins, and a good one too, was allotted, had occasion to go below. He heard a sad moaning proceeding from a hammock, and a white, white melancholy face hanging half over the side.
"I say!"
"Yes, my lad."
"Are you the surgeon? I'm very dickey. I'm a a clerk, and I wish I had never, never left the land."
"Well, I'm sub, and the second senior member of your mess. Don't give way. I'll go and get the surgeon."
And so he did.
Kind-hearted Grant first gave him a doze of something, which I know well but must not mention, then a tumblerful of good champagne, and in five minutes' time poor little Mr. Todd was wrapt in dreamless slumber.