Three days after leaving Gib. the weather became gloriously warm, the sea simply like a sheet of glittering glass, the sun glaring on it all day long. It was grand to be alive, and we all—officers and men alike—went into training, and were doubled round and round, morning and evening, till the sweat rolled off us. Every evening, too, the parallel bars and the horizontal bar were rigged on the quarterdeck, and the ward-room fellows and we gun-room people did gymnastics for an hour or so, finishing up with a follow-my-leader round the battery till we nearly dropped. On board the Hercules they were doing gymnastics and the new Swedish drill, on the fo'c'stle, the whole day long. But the sight of all was the fat blue marine subaltern—the Forlorn Hope, we called him—doubling up and down the quarterdeck, on his own, to work off his fat, so that he could march properly when he landed—his cheeks flopping from side to side, and running with perspiration. I'm sure you would have died of laughing, especially when his opposite number—the Shadow—the awfully thin red marine subaltern, doubled round after him, trying to work up an appetite, and put on more weight. It was the terribly earnest faces they shipped that made one laugh. When you come to think of it, the whole thing was really jolly odd. Here were these two great grey ships, with their long grim 9.2's and 7.5's, and their twelve hundred odd men, pounding steadily along for eight days and nights, to a country hardly any one of us had heard of before, and every one on board both of them was digging out to make himself and them as fit as 'paint,' in case there was a job for us when we did get there.
The Commander even stopped bellowing at people, and brimmed over with good temper.
We had two great heroes on board—at any rate the mids. thought they were—one of the lieutenants—Bigge—who had been with Sir Edward Seymour in the Relief of Pekin force, and Mr. Bostock, the Gunner, who had been through the siege of Ladysmith during the Boer War.
Some one told the story how five Chinamen had attacked Bigge whilst he was trying to blow in a gate or something like that, and how he settled the whole lot of them with his revolver. Whether it was true or not—and I believe it was—the mids. simply hung round him now, and tried to get him to tell them some of his experiences. They looked at the little bit of yellow and red ribbon on his monkey-jacket, and simply longed for a chance to earn something like it, and have a bit of ribbon to stick on their chests. Although they never could get him to talk about his show, Mr. Bostock would talk about the siege of Ladysmith, and how the naval brigade helped the sappers, that awful morning on the crest of Wagon Hill—would talk as long as they'd like to listen.
He'd sit smoking ship's tobacco in his cabin—it hadn't any scuttle or ventilation whatever of any account, so you can have an idea what the smell was like—and the mids. would crowd in, those who couldn't do so squeezing into the doorway, and listen by the hour. Nothing else but war was talked about from morning to night.
Well, on the ninth day out from Gibraltar, we sighted Prince Rupert's Island, ran in through the northern channel, and anchored two miles off Princes Town in a great wide bay, with the dark mountains of Santa Cruz just showing up on the horizon away to the west. Somewhere up among them old Gerald was teaching his natives to play cricket.
The Skipper went ashore immediately in the picketboat, to call on the Governor and get news and fresh orders; so you can guess how excited we all were when she was seen coming tearing off again, and the Skipper ran up the accommodation ladder. I believe every officer in the ship was up on the quarterdeck to hear the news, and you can just imagine what we felt like when we saw that the Skipper had shipped a long face, and when he shook his head at us and went down below.
In three minutes we knew the worst—it was all over the ship. The Englishmen and the English steamer had been released; old Canilla, the President, had apologised handsomely, and all was peace. Wasn't it sickening?
'Ain't it a bally shame,' Montague, the Gunnery Lieutenant, said, 'stoppin' our gun-layers' test at Gib., just as we were in the thick of it; bringin' us lolloppin' along here, and nothin' for us to do when we get here—no landin' party, no nothin'.' And he sent word down to Mr. Bostock to re-stow and pack up all the leather gear and water-bottles.
'It do take the 'eart out of one,' Mr. Bostock told the sympathising mids., 'not a blooming chawnce to let off so much as a single ball cartridge,' and he went below to see that none of his landing party gear was missing.