This interview having been satisfactorily got through, I was then escorted to the quarters of the naval instructor, who received me most graciously, telling me the hours of study and drill, and coaching me generally in the routine of my duties.
He catechised me all the while, I noticed, in a sly way in respect of my knowledge of mathematics, putting a series of innocent questions that I saw were meant to test my acquirements.
He did this, however, in such an insidious manner as to disarm me at the outset, preventing my feeling that I was being examined and “turned inside out,” so to speak.
He was a nice fat old fellow like Mr Tangent.
Indeed, the majority of naval chaplains I have come across in my time in the service have as a rule been fat, the sea air apparently exercising as beneficial an effect on the clerical constitution as a snug living ashore.
This gentleman now, after telling me he thought I should do very well, excused me from any lessons that day, it being the first I was on board. He then dismissed me to join my messmates, whom, he said, I would probably find below in the gunroom, as it was “close on the luncheon hour!”
This reflection seemed to give him some inward satisfaction; for, he patted his waistcoat with a sort of pleasurable anticipation as I left him, asking the wardroom steward, who just then entered the cabin, whether there wasn’t a veal and ham pie, I recollect.
When I got down to the lower deck I had no need to inquire as to the whereabouts of the gunroom. Such a din and babel of voices proceeded from the after part of the ship that I was certain, from what Dad had let out to me of his former experiences at sea, the noise could only have been made by a batch of middies and naval cadets in their moments of relaxation from the stern discipline of the quarter-deck, when they were allowed to give their superabundance of animal spirits full play.
I was positive I must be in the near vicinity of the gunroom, the “happy hunting ground” of my messmates. Luncheon was evidently either over or not yet begun; for, a crowd of youngsters, amongst whom I at once perceived my friend Tom Mills, were grouped together on the open deck in front of the gunroom, where, as I afterwards heard, their hammocks were slung at night.
The lot were amusing themselves at some game I was not as yet acquainted with, but which evidently was one of the most boisterous character, a “rough and tumble” fight being nothing to it.