Larrikins and the other first-class boy had meanwhile collared ‘Ugly’ and taken the knife from him, to prevent his doing any further mischief with it; and, as fighting was prohibited on board, and they might possibly have been brought up on the quarter-deck as accomplices, should the affair get wind and come to the notice of the ship’s police, the two, who no doubt were old and tried hands at the game, thought it best to take my advice and ‘keep the matter dark,’ as they said.
“I doesn’t like that yere knifin’, though,” said Master Larrikins, when Mick had bound up my arm with his handkerchief, taking it off his neck for the purpose; and we had all turned to sneak below out of observation before ‘quarters’ should be sounded and the fellows come tumbling up from dinner, ‘Ugly’ concealing his battered face by dragging down his cap over his eyes, and pulling up his collar as if he had toothache, which no doubt was not very far from the truth. “Don’t yer try on that yere bloomin’ game agin, you Reeks, I tell yer, my joker, or else yer ’ad better git yer coffin ready afore yer comes aboard this ship. Lor’! W’y, if the ‘Jaunty’ or ‘Jimmy the One’ knowed it, yer’d be strung up at the yard-arm this very minnit!”
The incident, however, passed off without notice from the authorities; although the news of our encounter, with its almost tragic finale, got about amongst the boys, most of the well-conducted of whom gave ‘Ugly’ a wide berth in consequence, the poor beggar being shunned thenceforth by all but the ne’er-do-wells of the ship, that is, until the circumstance became gradually buried in the past through the pressure of more prominent events.
We managed, combatants and seconds alike, not forgetting the director-in-chief of the fight, Master Larrikins, to reach the sanctuary of the lower deck unseen by any of the ship’s corporals, or ‘crushers,’ as Larrikins facetiously called them.
Not only this; through that wily individual’s artful manoeuvring and pathetic appeal to the gods of the cook’s galley, we also contrived to get some dinner, which, indeed, was particularly grateful to all of us after our exertions.
The meal this day, being a Wednesday, consisted, for a change, of salt pork and pea-soup; ‘pea doo and bolliky,’ as it is styled in Saint Vincent slang.
“Faith, it smills good,” exclaimed Mick, with a loud and prolonged sniff of enjoyment, on the friendly Larrikins anon placing a bowl of the steaming compound under his nose on the mess-table. “A’most as good as tay, begorrah!”
“Ga–a!” cried our caterer. “Only a Paddy wud say that!”
“Bedad, I don’t say much differ,” said Mick, after quickly gulping down the contents of his bowl with great gusto and much apparent inward satisfaction. “Pay-soup an’ tay soup—sure, they bees as loike as two pays!” This certainly seemed a very logical deduction; but, before we could argue the point out, or indeed laugh at Mick’s Irish way of putting it, the bugle sounded again for ‘divisions.’
As we all scrambled up the after-hatch, the ship’s corporal, Brown, who had helped me to sling my hammock again after I had been cut down the first night I was on board, a very decent man altogether, stopped ‘Ugly,’ who was on his way up ahead of me.