Under these circumstances, washing decks every morning used to be a positive pleasure to everybody on board, as we careered about in our bare feet with our trousers rolled up above the knee, when the cold water, instead of being ‘moighty onpleasint,’ as Mick would have said, was gratifying in the extreme.
Such of the officers, too, who had not been on duty keeping the middle watch, used to turn out in their oldest pyjamas, accompanied by most of the midshipmen, when we were at this task and have a regular sluice down on the forecastle; some of them catching hold of the hose and playing it on each other in turn, skylarking and making no end of fun.
Our drills, of course, went on all the time in the usual clockwork fashion observed on board ship, ‘quarters’ and ‘divisions’ and all the rest; all of the men and boys belonging to the ship’s company being polished up quite as smartly as the brasswork and drilled to the highest state of efficiency.
It was not all work, though, on board the Active; for our commodore, taut disciplinarian as he was and as anxious to lick us all into shape as he was to make the ships of his squadron manoeuvre handily, exercising them at all hours both of day and night to this end, did not forget the old adage that a bow should not always be bent.
No, he always allowed us plenty of time for relaxation and enjoyment, besides permitting us to fish overboard, which some commanders would not have allowed.
This was rare sport, I can tell you, the bonetta, a fish common to the tropics and eating uncommonly well when fried, biting freely at a piece of white bunting or any other attractive object attached to a hook, as did the many-hued dolphin, and many a hearty supper did we have on the lower deck through the kindly aid of these beneficent denizens of the deep.
One of the foretopmen who hailed from Newfoundland was an expert with the harpoon, spearing with that weapon as many dolphins as he liked; these beggars being in the habit of plying to and fro under the corvette’s cutwater as she sailed onward, delighting apparently in showing us the dexterity with which they could wheel about and leap athwart the ship’s course as they pleased, keeping up with her or going ahead according to their bent.
We saw lots of flying-fish also; and they, when we had the chance of catching the few that came aboard, were even better fare for hungry sailor-boys of an evening than the dolphins and bonetta.
These latter used to hunt the poor flying-fish like a pack of hounds after some prey on land, the fish leaping out of the sea and making short flights by the aid of the membraneous fins they have, which they extended like wings, flying for some twenty yards or so till exhaustion compelled their return to their native element—a characteristic feature that has gained the ‘flying-fish’ its name.
Unfortunately for the poor beggars, however, they have an enemy aloft as well as one below; and, when they leave the water to escape the bonetta, they fall into the clutches of the sea-hawks that hover over the surface on the watch for them; and so, thus situated ‘between two stools,’ as it were, ‘their lot,’ like that of the ‘Bobby’ in the song, being ‘not a happy one!’