In this latter all the boys took the keenest delight, cutting and slashing at one another with a go and gusto worthy of all admiration.
We pointed, guarded, and parried, with a nimbleness and correctness that excited the praise of our instructor; but when we got to what was called ‘general practice,’ and learnt cuts ‘One’ and ‘Two,’ with an extra ‘Point,’ before our teacher sang out ‘Guard!’ our enthusiasm knew no bounds, and all of us would fancy ourselves to be bluejackets in action, boarding a pirate or leading a storming-party and killing hecatombs of enemies on the war-path, our weapons mowing them down with every sweep!
Sometimes our sword-play got us into scrapes, when two boys matched against each other by the instructor allowed their zeal to overcome their discretion; for, occasionally, they would lose their tempers when over the single-sticks and give one another such spiteful blows that the instructor would have to interfere and separate them by force of arms.
In the majority of cases, however, the scratches we received were more the result of accident than of malice intent; and the little embroilments that happened when sword-play degenerated into horseplay were not, as a rule, worth mentioning.
On one occasion, though, my chum Mick nearly had his nose carved off in an encounter with a comrade, though luckily his opponent did not succeed in spoiling Mick’s beauty.
This would have been a pity; for, really, he was a very good-looking chap, and I am sure my sister Jenny, though she wouldn’t confess it, would have been sorry if anything had occurred to mar his comely face.
It happened thus. When skylarking together on the upper deck one evening, Mick and another fellow caught up a couple of cutlasses that had been left inadvertently lying about the deck, and they commenced pointing and cutting and slashing at one another with the keen-edged weapons, just as if they had been mere basket-hilted single-sticks, a rap from which would have done no damage beyond a bruise.
They were going it in fine style, when all at once Mick’s foot slipped; and, missing his guard as his opponent made a vicious cut ‘one’ at him, he received this on his chest, the cutlass cutting through his jumper and flannel and making a slight wound across his breastbone.
Had his head not been thrown backwards as he slipped, poor Mick would have had the most striking feature of his merry countenance sliced off as dexterously as if it had been a carrot!
The last seven weeks of my experiences of the old ship, which I had begun to look upon as much my home as the little cottage at Bonfire Corner, were devoted to practice with the big guns that are used in modern ships of war; and these, I may add, are so unlike the old twenty-four and thirty-two and sixty-four pounders that had been used in our early training, that any drill with them would have failed to have been of much assistance to us in getting the cross-cannon badge on our sleeve.