Mick scratched his head in father’s way, puzzled to explain his keenness of vision.
“Faith, sor,” he said at length, “it moost ’a bin tryin’ to say if I could say any thin’ good turn up afore I jined the sarvice, sure; whin me fayther wor a blissid Oitalian organ-grinder an’ none of us had nothin’ to ate, bedad!”
“By jingo!” exclaimed Mr Gadgett, smiling for once, for I never previously saw the slightest change of muscle on his thin, weather-beaten, grey-whiskered face, “you’ll do!”
Before we came back again from this cruise, we had a bout of bad weather while knocking about in the Channel, which brought back to my mind the yarn Larrikins told the first evening I passed on board the Saint Vincent, in order to distract my attention while he was rigging up my hammock so that it would come down by the run—of seas that were ‘mountings ’igh,’ and winds that blew the ‘’air off ’is ’ead!’
I took at the time, it may be recollected, Master Larrikins’ tale with a very good pinch of the proverbial salt, believing he only intended to ‘pull my leg’; but when on the present occasion the brig began to labour heavily and the green seas, rolling over from the open sea beyond Ushant, the wind having come on to blow a regular stiff sou’-wester, topped our bulwarks and made a clean sweep of the deck, I thought possibly the old joker Larrikins, who had left the training-ship long ere this and was serving as an ordinary seaman on a foreign station, might not have been ‘stretching’ to such an extent as I had at the time imagined.
The little brig, however, was a staunch sea boat, having braved much worse weather than we now experienced; and, being well handled by our commander, who was a sailor every inch of him, we ran before the gale round the easternmost end of the Isle of Wight and snugly brought up under the lee of Saint Helens, where we dropped both our anchors, remaining in this sheltered roadstead until the weather broke, when we returned to Portsmouth.
So far, everything had gone well with me since I entered on board the Saint Vincent, for I had never got into any trouble beyond a slight scrape or two; but tow the Fates, as if to condone the previous good fortune with which they had favoured me, all at once did me a very bad turn, getting me into sad disgrace.
Serious as the matter was, no doubt, in the eyes of the authorities, it was not, however, such a very terrible crime in itself, though it got me into the bad books of the captain, who had been so friendly disposed towards me that he often used to let me take his dog ‘Gyp’ for a walk when I went ashore.
The fact was, to confess my sin outright, I committed a breach of one of the strictest regulations of the training service.
I was caught smoking.