“Yezsir, court-martial gun, sir, aboard the flagship, sir,” said the wiry little cock-eyed head waiter, who was hopping about the room “like a parched pea on a griddle,” as dad expressed it, stopping to flick the dust from the mantelpiece with his napkin as he replied to the mute inquiry he could read in my glance. “Look, sir! They’ve h’isted the Jack at the peak, sir, yezsir.”
“Oh, yes, I see,” said I, as if I had not observed this before and was perfectly familiar with the signal. “I did not notice it at first.”
“No, sir? W’y, in course not, sir, or else ye’d ha’ known wot it were,” answered the sly old fellow, ascribing to me a knowledge of naval matters which he knew as well as myself I did not possess, thus pandering, with the ulterior view, no doubt, of a substantial tip, to a common weakness of human nature to which most of us, man and boy alike, are prone—that of wishing to appear wiser than we really are!
“But, as I was a-saying only last night to Jim Marksby, the hall-porter, sir,” he continued, “court-martials, sir, isn’t wot they used to was. Lord-sakes! sir, I remembers, as if it were yesterday, in old Sir Titus Fitzblazes’s time, sir, when they was as plentiful as the blackberries on Browndown!
“W’y, sir, b’lieve me or not if yer likes, but there wasn’t a mornin’—barring Sundays in course—as yer wouldn’t hear that theer blessed gun a-firin’ for a court-martial, sir, j’est the same as ye heerd j’est now, sir, yezsir! Ah, them was fine times, they was, for the watermen on Hardway; for they usest to make a rare harvest a-taking off witnesses and prisoners’ ‘friends,’ as they calls ’em, and lawyers and noospaper chaps to the flagship, they did. The old chaps called the signal gun ‘old Fitzblazes’s Eight o’clock Gun,’ sir. They did so, sir, yezsir!”
“Indeed, waiter?” said I, feeling quite proud of his thus speaking to me as if I were a grown-up person. “But who was this gentleman, old Fitz—what did you call him?”
“Old Sir Titus Fitzblazes, sir,” glibly replied the coffee-room factotum, flicking off a fly as he spoke from the table-cloth whereon he had just arranged all the paraphernalia of our breakfast. “Lord-sakes, sir, yer doesn’t mean for to say, sir, as a well-growed young gen’leman like yerself, sir, as is a naval gent, sir, as I can see with arf an eye, haven’t heard tell o’ he? Well, sir, he were port admiral here, sir, a matter of eight or ten year ago, sir, yezsir; and, wot’s more, sir, he were the tautest old sea porkypine ye’d fetch across ‘in a blue moon,’ as sailor folk say!
“Yezsir, I’ve heerd when he were commodore on the West Coast, he used for to turn up the hands every mornin’ regular and give ’em four dozen apiece for breakfast, sir!”
“Good gracious me, waiter!” I exclaimed, aghast at this statement. “Four dozen lashes?”
“Yezsir. Lor’! four dozen lashings was nothink to old Sir Titus, for he were pertickeler partial to noggin’, he were, and took it out of the men like steam, he did!