The assistant-paymaster, however, took no notice whatever of the interruption, pursuing the even tenor of his narrative.
“The admiral had the cow and stock taken in; but just as his daughter Sally was coming across the gangway, he ordered her back, for the royal yacht was now coming up. ‘Stop where you are, Sally!’ he shouted out from the poop. ‘Stop, Sally, stop!’ bawling out the words so loudly that you could have heard him in Common Hard, for he had a powerful pair of lungs had Old Charley, and could raise his voice above a gale. Almost in the same breath, too, he sang out to the wives and friends of the sailors who had come out from Portsmouth to wish them good-bye, ‘Now, all you women and people there! go aboard the tug with my darter, and when Her Majesty has passed you may come back again.’ Of course, they all cleared out at once, the master-at-arms and his corporals assisting them over the side; but when they were all comfortably landed on board the tug, she steamed off right away for the harbour, with a long string of wherries and shore boats pulling like blue niggers after her, the men in them swearing like anything at being cheated of their fares. We all the while were getting up anchor and in another minute or two were under weigh. Captain Gordon, who was the admiral’s flag captain, spoke to him about the poor watermen and bumboat women being robbed of their money by our starting so suddenly; but he could get no satisfaction from old Charley. ‘Bumboat women be hanged!’ was all he said. ‘Let ’em take their payment out of the fore tops’l, and the main topgallant s’l shall be witness to the bargain!’ With that, he orders the men, who were muttering to be piped down.”
“But the cow, sir,” said I, on the paymaster’s assistant thus coming to a conclusion, without alluding to what I considered the principal point of his story. “You haven’t told us yet about that, sir.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot,” said he. “It was a fine beast, I remember, one of the red Alderney breed. Well, this cow was first stowed away in a pen the admiral had rigged up for her on the starboard side of the main deck, forrud; but on the gunner objecting to the mess the animal made there, she was then shifted to the port side, in the middle of the mess deck of the foretopmen. Here, too, she was found such a nuisance that the hands in a very short time determined to get rid of her as quickly as they could, either by fair means or foul; and, of course, they managed this right enough. Let sailors alone for that!”
“But, how did they manage it, sir?” asked Tommy Mills, who appeared to take as much interest in the narrative as myself. “Did they kill her, or chuck her overboard?”
“They did neither directly; but, indirectly, I may say they did both,” answered Mr Jones, enigmatically, smiling and pulling his long whiskers caressingly through his fingers, as if particularly proud of these hirsute adornments. “The fact was, the unprincipled scoundrels gave her alternately buckets full of dry biscuit-dust and water which so inflated the poor beast that she became the size of a balloon in less than a week; and, if she had not through this been suffocated, she would of course have burst from the ‘abnormal expansion!’ That is how our doctor, old Nettleby, the same we’ve got on board here now, described it to the admiral when he was sent to inspect the cow, when the butcher reported her dead.”
“What did the admiral say, sir, when he heard this?”
“Oh, he stormed and let fly a volley of picturesque language,” replied Mr Jones to this inquiry of mine; “but what could he do? ‘Throw her out of the bow port,’ he said to the gunner, who pitched a yarn about it being the foretopmen who had done the fell deed. ‘I don’t know whether its your foretopmen or maintop-men that are to be blamed for it, and I don’t care; but, you’ve stopped my milk between you, and I’m hanged if I don’t stop your grog!’”
“And did he, sir?” asked little Tom Mills. “Did he stop their grog for it?”
“No,” replied Mr Jones. “He was too good-natured an old chap for that.”