The early part of their evenings was generally spent in witticisms and tales; and, in conclusion, by way of a lullaby, some long-winded fellow commenced one of those everlasting ditties in which soldiers and sailors delight so much—they are all to the same tune, and the subject, (if one may judge by the tenor of the first ninety-eight verses,) was battle, murder, or sudden death; but I never yet survived until the catastrophe, although I have often, to attain that end, stretched my waking capacities to the utmost. I have sometimes heard a fresh arrival from England endeavour to astonish their unpolished ears with "the white blossomed sloe," or some such refined melody, but it was invariably coughed down as instantaneously as if it had been the sole voice of a conservative amidst a select meeting of radicals.
The wit and the humour of the rascals were amusing beyond any thing—and to see them next morning drawn up as mute as mice, and as stiff as lamp-posts, it was a regular puzzler to discover on which post the light had shone during the bye-gone night, knowing, as we did, that there were at least a hundred original pages for Joe Miller, encased within the head-pieces then before us.
Their stories, too, were quite unique—one, (an Englishman,) began detailing the unfortunate termination of his last matrimonial speculation. He had got a pass one day to go from Shorncliffe to Folkestone, and on the way he fell in with one of the finest young women "as ever he seed! my eye, as we say in Spain, if she was not a wapper; with a pair of cheeks like cherries, and shanks as clean as my ramrod, she was bounding over the downs like a young colt, and faith, if she would not have been with her heels clean over my head if I had'n't caught her up and demanded a parley. O, Jem, man, but she was a nice creature! and all at once got so fond of me too, that there was no use waiting; and so we settled it all that self same night, and on the next morning we were regularly spliced, and I carries her home to a hut which Corporal Smith and I hired behind the barrack for eighteen pence a week. Well! I'll be blessed if I was'n't as happy as a shilling a day and my wife could make me for two whole days; but the next morning, just before parade, while Nancy was toasting a slice of tommy[B] for our breakfast, who should darken our door but the carcase of a great sea marine, who began blinking his goggle eyes like an owl in a gooseberry bush, as if he did'n't see nothing outside on them; when all at once Nancy turned, and, my eye, what a squall she set up as she threw the toast in the fire, and upset my tinful of crowdy, while she twisted her arms round his neck like a vice, and began kissing him at no rate, he all the time blubbering, like a bottle-nose in a shoal, about flesh of his flesh, and bones of his bones, and all the like o' that. Well! says I to myself, says I, this is very queer any how—and then I eyes the chap a bit, and then says I to him, (for I began to feel somehow at seeing my wife kissed all round before my face without saying by your leave,) an' says I to him, (rather angrily,) look ye, Mr. Marine, if you don't take your ugly mouth farther off from my wife, I'll just punch it with the butt end of my rifle! thunder and oons, you great sea lobster that you are, don't you see that I married her only two days ago just as she stands, bones and all, and you to come at this time o' day to claim a part on her!"
[B] Brown loaf.
The marine, however, had come from the wars as a man of peace—he had already been at her father's, and learnt all that had befallen her, and, in place of provoking the rifleman's further ire, he sought an amicable explanation, which was immediately entered into.
It appeared that Nancy and he had been married some three years before; that the sloop of war to which he belonged was ordered to the West Indies, and while cruising on that station an unsuccessful night attempt was made to cut out an enemy's craft from under a battery, in the course of which the boat in which he was embarked having been sent to the bottom with a thirty-two pound shot, he was supposed to have gone along with it, and to be snugly reposing in Davy Jones's locker. His present turn up, however, proved his going down to have been a mistake, as he had succeeded in saving his life at the expense of his liberty, for the time being; but the vessel, on her voyage to France, was captured by a British frigate bound for India, and the royal marine became once more the servant of his lawful sovereign.
In the meanwhile Nancy had been duly apprised of his supposed fate by some of his West Indian shipmates—she was told that she might still hope; but Nancy had no idea of holding on by any thing so precarious—she was the wife of a sailor, had been frequently on board a ship, and had seen how arbitrarily every thing, even time itself, is made subservient to their purposes, and she determined to act upon the same principle, so that, as the first lieutenant authorizes it to be eight o'clock after the officer of the watch has reported that it is so, in like manner did Nancy, when her husband was reported dead, order that he should be so; but it would appear that her commands had about as much influence over her husband's fate as the first lieutenant's had over time, from his making his untoward appearance so early in her second honey-moon.
As brevity formed no part of the narrator's creed, I have merely given an outline of the marine's history, such as I understood it, and shall hasten to the conclusion in the same manner.
The explanation over, a long silence ensued—each afraid to pop the question, which must be popp'd, of whose wife was Nancy? and when, at last, it did come out, it was more easily asked than answered, for, notwithstanding all that had passed, they continued both to be deeply enamoured of their mutual wife, and she of both, nor could a voluntary resignation be extracted from either of them, so that they were eventually obliged to trust the winning or the losing of that greatest of all earthly blessings, (a beloved wife,) to the undignified decision of the toss of a halfpenny. The marine won, and carried off the prize—while the rifleman declared that he had never yet forgiven himself for being cheated out of his half, for he feels convinced that the marine had come there prepared with a ha'penny that had two tails.