CHAPTER XX.
GUN-ROOM FUN.
If the reader—who I sincerely hope is going to be a sailor, for there is no life like that on the ocean wave—will take a glance at a map of the world and ferret out Venezuela, he will note that by sailing south-west by west in almost a bee-line for about 4700 miles, he would strike this land of beauty, and land of flowers and forests.
After leaving Azores, if his ship called there, he would find himself in a long and lonesome sea indeed, and after some weeks the Caribbean Islands would heave in sight, and our young sailor would know then he was far, far away from home.
Our own land—God bless it, and wouldn't you and I fight for it just?—is but like the cloud of fog that hangs over a city, compared to the loveliness of many of these fairy isles. The blue sky is fringed with the tall palm-trees that shoot from the soil, the islands themselves as you approach them appear to hang on the horizon, and so azure is the ocean, so cerulean the sky, you scarce can tell in fine weather where they meet and kiss.
The water around one's yacht or ship is sometimes so clear, so pellucid, that you see the bottom full ten fathoms beneath, where corals lie deep, where gorgeous and magnificently coloured shell-fish move slowly about, where marine gardens—more lovely far than any on earth,—planted and attended to by mermaids one would think, dazzle the eyes and delight the senses, and where on clear yellow patches of sand you may see flat fishes float, their sides so bedecked with patches of bright crimson, orange, and blue, that you cannot help thinking there must be a fish's fancy-dress ball on.
Then between you and the bottom float medusæ or jelly-fishes—bigger and more transparent than even those in Skye, for the limbs of these seem to be rainbow-tinted, or studded with gems of purest ray serene, diamonds, rubies, and amethysts. Yet all the creatures in that submarine garden wide and wild are not beautiful. Perhaps you are lying in a boat, gazing down through your water-telescope entranced, and half believing you will presently see a mermaid come out of a little cave combing her bonnie yellow hair, when, instead of the tiny mermaid, some patches of black-brown weeds are visibly stirred, and an awful head with fore-fins or fore-feet and claws, you cannot tell which, is protruded. Oh that deformed, scaly, warty head and these awful eyes, bearing some faint resemblance to a nightmarish caricature of man or fiend! If you are a nervous lad you will think and dream about this slimy apparition for weeks.
Well, all around Bermuda the rocks and sea-gardens are almost quite as lovely. Had the Osprey been going straight to Venezuela it would have been out of her course to stop here, but she had despatches to leave.
Two of the Ossian's shipwrecked crew were left there, but the mate begged to be allowed to remain and the captain had no objections. Goodwin was a naval reserve man, and even a lieutenant in that service.
This mate of a merchantman was in some ways a singular being, for although I think that the English he spoke was often rude, he could talk the language purely when he chose. Moreover, he was a student of gunnery, and could have worked a gun with any officer afloat. He was made an honorary member of the warrant officers' mess, and having no particular duties to perform, he spent most of his time making models of the newest guns and machinery of great iron-clads. Having got together, with the aid of the gunner and carpenter, some nice models, he announced in the gun-room that he was willing to give lessons to the midshipmen therein which would be of use to them when war's pennant floated red and bloody over the main. And many availed themselves of the kind offer, chief among them being Creggan himself and the Ugly Duckling—more about the latter presently. But even some of the ward-room officers, and now and then the captain himself, would look on as this ultra-enthusiast in naval warfare described the play of a battle of giant iron-clads, and the use of the terrible guns.
"Ah, boys," he would say, "there was much romance attached to the glorious days of Nelson, when hostile fleets lay in rows, mebbe two deep, one to support t'other like. When it was ship to ship, and hammer and tongs till one blazed, blew up, and sank, or when the skipper of a Britisher shouted through his trumpet to the master at the wheel: 'Lay us aboard that frog-eating Frenchman!' When the master steered so close to the foe that guns met muzzle to muzzle, and high o'er the din o' battle rang out the order: 'Away, boarders! Give the beggars Rule Britannia, lads!' The days when our brave blue-jackets used to swarm over the sides of the enemy's ship, or creep in through the ports, pistol in hand, cutlass in mouth perhaps, and lay the Frenchees dead at their guns.