He was the same frolicsome, good-tempered chap that he had been on board the training-ship, I found, after a very few minutes’ talk; but his love of practical-joking had been sobered down a bit within due bounds, and, on the whole, he was very much improved in every way.
“I s’pose ye’ve never bin aboard a hooker like this afore,” he said to me presently, after we had made an end of exchanging reminiscences, noticing that I was all at loggerheads in finding my way below. “It’s them bloomin’ watertight compartments as does it; but come along o’ me, Tom, and I’ll show yez the ropes.”
So saying, he took me over the ship, pointing out how the Mermaid had a steel-protected deck running fore and aft, that sheltered her engines and boilers beneath; the space in beneath this and the bottom of the vessel being subdivided by a series of vertical iron bulkheads, completely shutting off the various ‘flats,’ or lower decks, from each other.
An arrangement so complex naturally necessitated a fellow having to climb up one hatchway and go down another before he could speak to his chum in the next flat, thus causing one to go through ‘sich a getting upstairs’ like that mentioned in the celebrated negro ballad. The difference of the deck plan of a modern cruiser, as compared with that of my old ship the Active, was not the only thing I had to learn on being drafted to the Mermaid; for the drills were quite as strange to me at first as her complicated build inboard.
The stokers, of course, had to see to driving her through the water, that being their special duty, under the superintendence of the engineers; so, as this job was taken out of the hands of us bluejackets, and there was nothing for us to do in the way of setting and taking in sail, the executive officers managed to find other work for us to keep our minds from mischief when we were aboard.
One of these tasks was ‘collision mat’ drill; when we would be tumbled up on deck to rig out a roll of oakum that was plaited into the semblance of a gigantic doormat, right over the side, dragging it by means of guys and springs under our forefoot, to fill up some imaginary hole that had been knocked into us by too friendly a craft passing by and running athwart our hawse!
Another favourite drill in vogue with the johnnies of our new regime was that of ‘closing watertight doors.’
The signal for this being about to be carried out was the blowing of a particularly excruciating sort of foghorn at some unexpected hour of the day or night—it used to be in every watch on the Mermaid; and at the sound of this melodious instrument, which was most likely selected by the authorities in recollection of the story of Joshua and his trumpet, the ‘walls,’ or, rather, bulkheads, of the ship did not ‘come down,’ but were run up!
By this means every compartment throughout the ship was isolated and all communication cut off between the various flats.
The officers were shut into their wardroom; the engineers and stokers in their own special domain; and the men forward, perhaps, on their mess-deck; until the officer of the watch had made the rounds and those in charge of the respective watertight doors had affirmed the fact, from personal supervision, that all these were closed, when, this gratifying intelligence was communicated to the captain, and he gave the order to open them again.