His coxswain followed him up the ladder with some rope and blocks and flung them down on the deck.
"There's your confounded tackle you left aboard me last night. You're a confounded lot of burglars, the whole boiling lot of you," Rashleigh said to the Commander, and I am certain I could detect some slight traces of irritation in his manner.
Old Truscott himself flared up then—I'd never seen him angry before—and cursed the coxswain for throwing the tackle on the quarterdeck, and ordered him to pick it up again. He then took the fat little sausage, stamping with rage and red as a lobster, down to see the Skipper, whilst the others hauled me into the battery, banged me on the back, and implored me in the most gentlemanly way to stow "'hee-hawing', like a whole pack of jackasses, you chump-headed son-of-a-sea-cook, or you'll be giving the whole show away".
As Trevelyan had been the officer of the watch when the dastardly outrage was supposed to have taken place, he was sent for to throw some light on the subject, and after Rashleigh had gone away we heard from him all that had happened down there.
Neither the Skipper nor Truscott actually did know anything about it at all, and when Rashleigh, like the blundering ass that he was, suggested that they both did, the Skipper naturally flew into a rage, and after Trevelyan and the quartermaster who had been on duty at the time had sworn blindly that they'd seen nothing come on board during their watch (they had taken jolly care to be out of the way whilst we hoisted it in), he roared out, "What have you to say to that?" and little Rashleigh didn't know what to say, but was so madly angry, and so certain that no other ship could have taken it, that he stammered out that he would like the ship searched.
"Search 'Old Lest's' ship for your lousy gun! You! You!——"
Fortunately the Skipper could never do justice to his vocabulary when he really was angry, so could not think of any particularly appropriate epithets suitable for this occasion.
But Rashleigh wasn't finished with yet, and stuttered out, "I'll report the whole thing to the Commander-in-chief!"
"Report till you're blue in the face!" the Skipper roared. "You've got no blessed right to the gun—no more right than the other gunboats; you got it under false pretences, in the first place;" and he shook his fists at him.
"If a gun and its carriage—umph!—can be taken off your quarterdeck without anyone knowing about it, you must run your ship in a pretty smart way. Umph! If you can't be trusted to keep it safely, I'll take jolly good care you don't get the chance again. You got it by a lie—yes, a downright lie—and if it does turn up aboard here, you can shout yourself hoarse for it. 'Old Lest's' blowed if he'll give it you again."