"Well, what about it?" the Sub asked Mr. Meredith, with a note of anxiety in his voice. "The breeze is blowing straight out of the harbour; if we run to lee'ard, 'twill be too narrow there to beat back, won't it? We'd best start beating to wind'ard, hadn't we? Look here," he said, "this is rather out of my line; you'd best run the show. You'd better start a mutiny right away."
As Mr. Meredith had been in sailing-ships for years, and had been Captain of a full-rigged ship before he was thirty, what he didn't know about sailing wasn't worth knowing. "All right," he smiled, "I'm game;" and seizing the unresisting Sub by the neck of his coloured jersey, hurled him to the deck with fierce yells, and planting one foot on his chest, roared: "Clear lower deck! I'm now the Captain of the What's Her Name. Now, you dog," he hissed, as the pirate crew "fell in", "get up and 'fall in' among those rascals; another word and you'll walk the plank, and your bones shall bleach on the coral islands of the Spanish Main. Ha! ha!"
The crew, overawed by his daring, and the ferocity of his appearance in a Turkish fez, a red shirt, Sam Browne belt, and khaki riding-breeches, gave three cheers for the new Captain; old Fletcher, who had put "Kaiser Bill" in a safe place where he could not fall down the hatchways, smiled indulgently; and Barnes, trying to enter into the spirit of the game, grumbled in an undertone: "This 'ere 'clear lower deck' and 'fall in' sounds too much like the real thing," and "'e didn't see quite where the fun came in."
Then the Lamp-post and his foretopmen, the Hun, the Orphan, and Rawlins, were sent off to clear the jibs and slack away the tops'l gaskets up aloft, and to learn where their proper halyards "ran"; Dr. Gordon, the Pimple, and Bubbles went aft to get the big spanker ready for setting; Barnes and the China Doll were ordered to explore the little cook-house, just under the fo'c'sle; Fletcher had strict orders to keep alight the cigar which the Sub had brought him, and enjoy himself at all costs, and all the others followed Mr. Meredith up on the fo'c'sle to heave up the cable.
In five minutes after getting on board, the Orphan and Rawlins were climbing out along the bowsprit and jib-boom, and the Lamp-post and the Hun were up aloft, out along the tops'l-yard, unlashing the gaskets and having a grand time; whilst the crowd on the fo'c'sle began levering round the old horizontal windlass ("wild cat", Mr. Meredith told them, was its proper name) with two long levers, like crowbars, stuck in the holes at each end of it.
"Let's have a 'chanty'," they called, and the Sub started "We'll rant and we'll roar"; but that did not "fit in", so Mr. Meredith gave them a very old one:
"For the times are hard, and the wages low;
Leave her, Johnny, leave her.
Last night I heard the Old Man say,
'Tis time for us to leave her."
Whilst he sung the first line to a mournful dirge, they shifted the crowbars into fresh holes, and then, hauling aft on them, joined in the chorus: "Leave her, Johnny, leave her"; shifted them again whilst he chanted the third line, and pulled to "'Tis time for us to leave her"; and each time they pulled the "wild cat" round, the links of the old rusty cable came creaking in through the hawse-pipe, and the metal pawls of the "wild cat" fell, "clink-clank", into the ratchet notches.
In a minute everybody had joined in the chanty, the Orphan and Rawlins out beyond the fo'c'sle on the bowsprit, the Lamp-post and the Hun busy aloft, Dr. Gordon and his "hands" aft. The China Doll, dashing up to have one pull at the levers, chipped in too; whilst Barnes bellowed "Leave her, Johnny, leave her" (thinking it was something about a girl) from inside the cook-house; and old Fletcher, busy with his cigar, beamed at everyone through his gold spectacles.
Presently Mr. Meredith, leaning over the bows, sang out: "She's 'up and down'. Heave away, my hearties! 'Leave her, Johnny, leave her'," and ran aft to take the wheel; the Orphan and Rawlins, scrambling back on the fo'c'sle, hoisted the jib, and in a few more turns of the "wild cat" the clumsy old "tub" began to pay off before the breeze.