Chapter Seven.
I ‘Go Aloft,’ like my Ancestor!
“Tom,” said Mick to me, on my telling him this, when we were dismissed anon from instruction drill and were going up on the upper deck during the ‘break-off,’ for a brief breath of fresh air before proceeding below again to our tea, “wer that theer yarn thrue, sure, ye wos afther tellin’ me?”
He spoke earnestly, and I replied to him in the same tone. “It’s true enough, Mick, that one of our officers did manage to parbuckle a gun up to the top of a high rock, or, rather, mountain, which commanded the land defences of Castries, the principal town of Saint Lucia in the West Indies! I’ve heard father speak about it many a time,” said I. “But, ’pon my word, Mick, I can’t precisely recollect if it was the gallant Rodney or Sir Ralph Abercromby; for both of ’em were busy in those parts at the time, and pretty well made their mark too! All I can say is, though, that through this dodge they took the Frenchies unawares and gave them a dressing as British sailors have always done when we’ve been at loggerheads with them furrin chaps!”
Mick Donovan scratched his head, in the same solemn way father used to do, as if trying to rub in this valuable piece of historical information.
“Faith,” said he, “I can’t underconstubble it at all, at all!”
There our conversation came to an abrupt close; the bugle summoning us to supper, and Mick being extremely particular, I found, never to be late at meal-times if he could possibly help it!
The next morning, after the usual routine of lashing up and stowing our hammocks in the nettings, on the completion of our breakfast, it was the turn of the second division of the starboard watch, to which we belonged, as I have already detailed, to go to school in the big room on the lower deck aft, where we had passed our original initiatory examination before signing our papers.