Mr. Trevelyan laughed when he saw them all falling in for "Divisions" on board the Vig. "That's 'Old Lest' all over," he said. "I bet he's in a towering passion."
Jim told me afterwards that he didn't like the shooting a little bit, and if they all hadn't been so afraid of the Captain, they would have hated it all the more. That was the day we wrote our reports—the Ringdove coming made the Commander remember about them—and I put it all down very clearly, how I had done my best to escape from the four junks, and why I had been obliged to run down through the middle of them. I told exactly how I and all those who were left of the Sally's crew had brought Mr. Travers off in the Ringdove's cutter, and put in a lot about Scroggs and Sharpe and all of them. You see, I wanted Captain Lester to get Scroggs's wife as big a pension as possible, because of all the children.
I didn't want to say much about Dicky, because—well, you know what I mean—I was only a very few places senior to him, although he was only a cadet, and it seemed so cocky.
But Mr. Trevelyan made me do it, and I explained it all to Dicky. Afterwards Mr. Trevelyan wrote some pretty hot stuff too. This was part of it: "With regard to the alleged disobedience of the orders of Lieutenant and Commander Rashleigh to proceed to the given rendezvous, I considered that the information obtained from Midshipman Ford of the Sally made it imperative that further and more definite information should be obtained. Your" (that was Captain Lester's) "original orders to me were to obtain such information at all costs, and I considered this the opportunity to act upon them. As a direct result, I discovered the whereabouts of one of the headquarters of the pirates, and indirectly was the means of the rescue of Mr. Travers."
We took them to the Commander, who made us rewrite them and "tone down" many things; but they were pretty good "snorters" for Mr. Rashleigh, even after that.
The Captain must have thought that he had been a little unjust, because later on in the day he saw me on the quarterdeck and stopped me. He glared at me for a moment, and with his legs wide apart, growled out: "Seem to have shown more sense than I thought. Umph! You'll do—some day," and left me feeling jolly happy.
Of course when the Goldfinch and Sparrow arrived, Mr. Langham and Mr. Forbes and the midshipmen of the other junks came back to the Vigilant. They hadn't any experience worth telling, compared to ours, except Webster, who had managed to run his junk ashore, and the Goldfinch had spent all her time getting her off again.
Jim and I nudged each other; we didn't like Webster.
Dicky didn't come off badly either. You know that we all called him "Dear Little Dicky", all except Jim, who flatly refused to obey the Sub's order, and had been caned twice by him for not doing so. He was let alone afterwards.
Dicky hated it; it had made his life absolutely miserable; and now Mr. Langham, as soon as he got back, held a Court of Enquiry down in the gunroom about our losing the junks. I didn't care a snap what he thought or said about it, nor did Jim. The whole thing was only got up for his amusement—his and Hamilton's (the big Engineer Sub) and Webster's; but one of their "findings" was this. I copied the "rot" off the notice board in the gunroom: