“Aye, my son,” replies old Jellybelly, thinking to himself, no doubt, that the chap showed wonderful good feeling for a boy; he regarding them all as a rule, not without reason probably, as imps of mischief. “It is rather tiring sometimes. I feels it in my bones and all down my legs.”
“Then, sir,” rejoined the young demon, who only wanted to draw him out and laugh at him, “why doesn’t yer sit down on the rail, sir?”
Of course, this would have been almost a penal offence for the quarter-master to have done, he being on duty at an appointed station; and the remark he made as his tormentor made off with a laugh, which was joined in by all the adjacent boys, was a caution.
Mick, not long after this, had Mr Brown, the ship’s corporal, nicely too.
He crammed his bag and a lot of other things into his blanket, which he rolled up so as to represent a sort of lay figure, stowing this into his hammock at turning-in time, just before the ‘out lights’ sounded.
Keeping as grave as a judge, Mick then went up to the corporal.
“If y’ playse, sor,” said he, “some gossoon or t’other, sor, has bin an’ gone an’ got into me hammick, sor, bad cess to him!”
“Oh, has he, Paddy,” replied Mr Brown, switching his cane, and then drawing it as he gripped it with his right hand carefully through his left, as if feeling whether it had the right sort of edge on it or no. “I’ll soon make him shift his billet, my boy.”
We, of course, were all in the joke, and watched Mr Brown with great glee as he stole stealthily up to Mick’s hammock and let fly a shower of blows on the supposed intruder’s body, accompanying the caning with some pertinent remarks of a very forcible nature anent the offender’s want of manners and unneighbourliness towards a brother shipmate; whereupon we all burst into a regular guffaw, and Mick sought refuge in flight on the exposure of his little plot before Mr Brown could pay him out.
The corporal, though, took it in very good part, and did not bear my chum any subsequent ill-will for thus taking him in; albeit, he was wary enough to be on his guard against Mick hoaxing him a second time.