“Where you put them, father,” I replied with a laugh; “you know I’m your son, and mother says I’m ‘a chip of the old block’ whenever she’s a bit put out with me.”
“None o’ your imporence, Tom,” said he, laughing too; for he and I were the best of friends, and I don’t think we ever had a serious difference about anything since first I was able to toddle down to the Hard, a little mite of four or five, to see him put off in his wherry, and sometimes go out for a sail with him on the sly when mother wasn’t watching us, up to the time, as now, when I could help him with an oar. “None o’ your imporence, you young jackanapes. But touching that there signallin’, I’m surprised, sonny, you don’t know by this time that when the commander-in-chief up at Admiralty House, in the dockyard, wishes for to communicate to some ship out at Spithead, he telegraphs from his office to the semaphore, which h’ists his orders, and then every ship in port’s bound to repeat the signal till the craft he means it for runs up her answering pennant, for to show us how she’s took the signal in and underconstubled it.”
“Oh yes, father, I know that,” said I, leading him on purposely. “But what is the signal they’ve been so busy about this morning? I can’t make it out at all.”
Father snorted indignantly.
“Tom Bowling, junior, I’m right down ashamed on you for a son o’ mine!” he said, digging away at his oar savagely, as if trying to dredge up some of the silt from the bottom of the harbour. “You, turned fifteen year old, and been back’ard and forrud ’twixt Hardway and the Gosport shore for a matter of five years or more, and not for to know and read a common signal like that, which you must ’a seed run up at the semaphore or on board the Dook a hundred times at least. Lor’! I’m jest ’shamed of you, that’s what I be!”
“But that ain’t telling me, father,” I retorted, “what is the signal. You needn’t make such a blooming mystery of it, like that chap we saw t’other night at the theayeter!”
In return for my ‘cheek’ he splashed the water over me again.
“Well, if you don’t know it, sonny, which I can hardly believe on, and wants for to know to improve your mind, which needs a lot of improvement, as I knows, that theer signal, Tom, was that cruiser we saw out at Spithead yesterday a-trying her speed at the measured mile, the Mercury, I thinks she is, axin’ the port-admiral if she might have her sailin’ orders; and look there, sonny, the ‘affirmative’ ’s now run up at the mizzen aboard the Dook, over yonder!”
“Yes, father,” said I, playing him artfully, like the wily old fish he was, with an object which you will soon learn—“and what does that mean?”
“What does that mean? You blessed young h’ignoramus! Why, Tommy, your brains be all wool-gathered this mornin’! Can’t you see that old Sir Ommaney is tellin’ the cruiser to ‘carry on’ as soon as she likes, and bid adoo to Spithead when she’s weighed her anchor? See, too, sonny, the old Vict’ry and the Saint Vincent be now a-repeatin’ the signal arter the Dook, the same as they did that first h’ist, jest now!”