ON THE "SCOUT"
Because Dr. McTavish was a scientist and a thinker was no reason why he should be otherwise than hearty and jolly.
Indeed, he was admitted to be the life and soul of the mess. He had travelled a good deal before joining the Service, but had never quite lost his accent. He rather preferred to retain it. But this was only when chaffed about his tongue, and when little Mr. Sneyd, for example, rubbed it in too hard.
But the anecdotes, often against his own country, which the surgeon used to retail of an evening, couched in this broad accent, were often highly laughable. As a raconteur there was little chance of his being beaten in the Breezy for some time to come.
The Captain himself never spliced the main-brace; it was his duty or pleasure to ask the surgeon if the men needed that extra glass of grog. But Mac loved the old tales of the sea that he had read when a boy, and sometimes, especially on a Saturday night, he would inform Captain Breezy or the first lieutenant that the men looked rather pallid from the heat of the day, and that splicing the main-brace would do good.
The Captain laughed at the idea of his men looking pale, for they were as weather-beaten as New Forest oaks, and as red in face as a full moon setting in a fog.
But on certain Saturday nights, if the weather was all that could be expected, Captain Breezy himself came as an invited guest into the ward-room, and often thus assembled the officers would have what was called a night with Burns. At dinner the band--a string one, and led on such occasions by Kep himself--played little else save Scottish music.
Kep would play a solo on piano or piccolo, and then recite, as he well could do, selections from Burns, notably "The Cottar's Saturday Night," or "Tam o' Shanter."
The anecdotes must all be Scotch, some serious and terrible enough, but some highly ludicrous.
More than once did McTavish play solos on his great Highland bagpipes, or dance the sword-dance, if the ship were steady enough.