“Well, time will tell,” observed my good-natured adviser, who was a man like father, I saw, one always anxious to make the best of everything. “None of us ever know what will happen in this life, especially with sailor folk; and though you may think it difficult to ‘make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,’ for I can see, my lad, with half an eye that that unfortunate yokel is of a different stamp to you, still I’ve known stranger things occur. I wouldn’t mind betting, if I ever did such a thing, that one day you and he will be the fastest chums.”
“Perhaps, sir,” I answered, in a very doubting manner; and I couldn’t help adding, as I turned to go below to my dinner, if there should be any left for me, the other fellows having pretty well done by this time, “Some day, as father says, pigs may fly, sir!”
The instructor laughed.
“Your father, Tom Bowling,” said he, giving me a friendly pat on the shoulder as I went down the after-hatchway, “must be a knowing hand; and I think, my lad, you take after him.”
It being ‘pea doo and bolliky’ day, my fast friend Mick, who, from his highly developed instincts in the grub line, had been elected cook of our mess on the lower deck, had saved me a good basin of soup and hunch of bread, with which I managed to assuage the cravings of my appetite, this having been accentuated not only by my long wait but by my exercise aloft.
“Begorrah, Tom,” said he, as he watched me tucking into the stuff with great complacency, while the rest of the fellows were cleaning up the mess-table and generally making things snug, “it’s as good as aitin’ onesilf fur to say how ye git outside that pay-soup. An ould play-acting chap I onst sayd a-swallerin’ knoives an’ sich loike onnatural stuff, worn’t a patch on ye, me hearty!”
I had, however, to make short work of my meal, for the ‘assembly’ just then sounded; and, after our usual parade again on deck, according to the routine, a part of our division went ashore to a large field between Blockhouse Fort and Haslar on the Gosport side of the water, belonging to the Saint Vincent, and which is used for drilling the boys in marching and small-arm instruction.
Some of the remainder of us were put to signalling on the upper deck, carrying on highly interesting dialogues with small flags that were waved to and fro between the bows and stern of the ship; but the major part of the division—I, much to my delight, being one of the number—practised all the afternoon at boat-pulling. In this my experience with father’s wherry during the last three or four years stood me in good stead; though I had some little difficulty at first in mastering the usual man-o’-war stroke with the long ash oars in the heavy launch which we pulled, the boat being double-banked.
The next day was the most exciting I had passed since I had been on board the ship, now over a week.
To begin with, it was ‘pay-day,’ the whole ship’s company marching up to the paymaster in turn at the temporary office he had rigged up al fresco, as Mick’s ‘Oitalian’ friends would say, on the upper deck, and receiving each his weekly pay; the boys being allowed, those of the first-class a shilling, and those of the second sixpence, for pocket-money, the balance being saved up to their account or else forwarded to their parents.