Jim Rawlings, Dicky Morton, and I had been such a very short time on the China station, that we all three ought to have gone to the Fisgard when she came out to relieve us.
But just after we had reached Singapore, the Captain asked me whether I wanted to go home with him in the Vigilant, and though I felt an awful brute at leaving Jim and Dicky, I simply jumped at the chance. I wanted to see them at home so much, and go back to Upton Overy and see people nod at each other, and know that they were saying, "That be Master Dick who saved the Cap'en's life," that I forgot all about the other two. I was jolly sad to see them go aboard the Fisgard with their chests, and they were jolly sad too. Dicky was quite well now, and not half the ass that he had been when he first joined.
What made them more sad than anything else, was not being able to see the Chinese field gun given to the Captain. We gave it to him the morning after they left, when we were at sea. He was awfully delighted with it. You could see that by the way he patted it, and ran his fingers over it, and lifted it out of its carriage to test his strength, grunting and growling splendidly.
I wrote to tell Jim all about it, and sent the letter from Aden.
Before we left Singapore, we got the English papers with the accounts of all our fighting, and I was awfully proud to see my name in among the severely wounded, and rather expected that they would make a great fuss of us all at Portsmouth. They didn't, however, and when I went ashore to give "Blucher" a run, and got out of the dockyard gates on to the "Hard", I was disappointed that people didn't take the least notice; you know the funny sort of feeling one has. I kept on thinking whether any of them had an idea that I had been the captain of the junk Sally, and had been all that terrible night in the walled house.
Wasn't it strange for Mr. Hobbs and Sally to turn up there whilst we were paying off? A lot of our chaps think that she's "spoony" on Captain Marshall, but I rather think that she'd be "spoony" on anyone who was tall and good looking—if he took any notice of her.
Mr. Travers thinks so too, because I heard him tell Captain Marshall so; but he only "hee-hawed", and said something about "sour grapes".
She was jolly smartly rigged out, and Webster said she looked a perfect "knock out"; and she came down into the gunroom one afternoon with Captain Marshall, and, I suppose, had forgotten about poor old Withers, because she wanted to play the piano. Mr. Langham sent for the armourer to force the lock, and it was Miller who came, and she recognized him, and asked him if he remembered carrying her across the garden in that walled house. He got frightfully red and out of breath, and scratched a lot of veneer off the piano.
Mrs. Lester came to stay at Portsmouth, and was jolly nice to me. She came so that the Chinese gun could be properly presented to her, and the men were awfully pleased.
You remember Martin, the marine, and how he had made me so tired by telling me so often about having tried to save my life. Well, this had taught me not to remind people about things like that, so I never even led up to it; but Mrs. Lester said awfully jolly things about my having shot that brute. She had brought messages from my mother and Nan, and from lots of people; but my mother couldn't come herself, because she couldn't afford to, and I had to wait to see her till we "paid off", and I went on leave.