“Ah, you jist wait then,” said he, taking this observation of mine for a fresh lead. “I wer’ out once, I tells yer, in the brig when the sea wos mountings ’igh, an’ the wind—Lor’! Yer shood ’a ’errd it blow! It took the mizzen to’s’le right clean out of ’er; an’ there wos four on us at the wheel, ay, ’sides old Jellybelly.”
“Why,” I exclaimed, “who is he?”
“The quarter-master, in course,” rejoined Larrikins indignantly. “Where wos yer raised not fur to know that afore? He allers goes by that name aboard ship, as everybody knows.”
He was proceeding to tell me some thrilling and highly adventurous experiences he had had in the Channel and off the Isle of Wight, out on the autumn cruise in the training-brig, when the bugle sounded, and the boys all mustered at quarters before turning in for the night.
Staying on the upper deck for a time, Mick Donovan and I witnessed the mad race which presently took place on the order being given to sling hammocks; each boy scurrying to the nettings and hurrying below, hammock under arm, to rig up the same in the billet allotted to him on the lower deck.
Ere long, the idea struck both Mick and myself, almost simultaneously, that it was high time for us to think of our sleeping accommodation for the night; and so, we hurried down at the tail end of the crowd of other fellows, to seek the aid of our old friend the master-at-arms, the ‘Deus ex machina’ of our hopes and fears.
Our new hammocks had been left in the police office of the ship under his immediate eye; so, on ascertaining the doubt that harassed our minds anent the night-lodging question, the ‘Jaunty,’ as heretofore, solved the difficulty at once by saying that we were to sling our hammocks on the middle deck, adjacent to the mess-place where we had dined and supped so sumptuously. Just then, as luck would have it, Larrikins, our old cicerone, came up abreast of where we were standing.
“Hi there!” sang out the master-at-arms. “Come and show these boys how to sling their hammocks.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Larrikins, with a scrape and a touch of his cap. “Werry good, sir.”
So saying, he set about knotting the lanyard of Irish Mick’s hammock; and, after slinging it from the hooks in the deck beams, over the mess-table where the famished lad had enjoyed such a rare ‘tuck out’ that day, Larrikins went on to explain how the blankets should be ‘tucked in’ to the frail structure and wrapped round the occupant, so as to prevent him from tumbling out, which Larrikins declared, almost with tears in his eyes, he should deeply regret were such a catastrophe to occur.