I had ample opportunity for noticing this, the commander sending me on another errand down to the scene of operations almost as soon as the drumming and fifing began. This was much to my delight; for I enjoyed the strains of the jolly air played as much as Corporal Macan, as well as the steady tramp of the marines and after-guard round the capstan, the men stamping on the deck in time to the music, as if they would smash through the planking.
“Go and tell Mr Jellaby,” said he, “to shorten in to two shackles.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
With which response to Commander Nesbitt’s order, I sprang down the after-hatchway on to the main deck, proceeding thence below to where old “Joe” and his topmen were working.
Of course I gave the lieutenant the mandate with which I had been charged; but I remaining, boylike, to watch what was going on, the commander not having told me to return immediately, though I ought to have done so.
The capstan, however, was spun round so merrily by the marines while the nippers, in the hands of the active seamen, passed so freely; that, ere I knew how far the task had progressed, so as to be able to report to the commander the state of things, Mr Jellaby suddenly sang out “Belay!”
Instantly, the word being passed by the boatswain’s mates as before, so that the order reached the lieutenant in charge of the working party at the capstan above almost as soon as Mr Jellaby sang out from the lower deck forward, the music stopped suddenly, as if the drummer and fifer had both been shot on the spot.
With it, too, ceased the monotonous tramp, tramp, tramp of the men above our heads, which sounded through the thickness of the deck like a band of Ethiopian minstrels dancing a flap dance and marching “round the mulberry bush” afterwards, to “show their muscle,” as is the wont of these negro “entertainers,” so-called!
“You may go up now to the commander,” said Mr Jellaby to me, as a polite hint to be off, “and tell him that the second shackle’s just inside our hawse.”
“Very good, sir,” I replied, moving away as the blacksmith went to put the slip on the cable to secure it from running out until we were ready to weigh anchor later on. “I’ll tell him at once, sir.”