On my arrival on board, the first lieutenant, after looking at me closely, said, "Now, Mr. Simple, I have looked attentively at your face, and I see at once that you are very clever, and if you do not prove so in a very short time, why--you had better jump overboard, that's all."
I was very much terrified at this speech, but at the same time I was pleased to hear that he thought me clever. My unexpected reputation was shortly afterwards strengthened, when, noticing the first lieutenant in consultation with the gunner, the former, on my approaching, said, "Youngster hand me that monkey's tail."
I saw nothing like a monkey's tail, but I was so frightened that I snatched up the first thing that I saw, which was a short bar of iron, and it so happened that it was the very article which he wanted.
"So you know what a monkey's tail is already, do you?" said the first lieutenant. "Now don't you ever sham stupid after that."
A fortnight later, at daylight, a signal from the flagship in harbour was made for us to unmoor; our orders had come to cruise in the Bay of Biscay. The captain came on board, the anchor weighed, and we ran through the Needles with a fine breeze. Presently I felt so very ill that I went down below. What occurred for the next six days I cannot tell. I thought I should die every moment, and lay in my hammock, incapable of eating, drinking, or walking about.
O'Brien, the senior midshipman and master's mate, who had been very kind to me, came to me on the seventh, morning and said that if I did not exert myself I never should get well; that he had taken me under his protection, and to prove his regard would give me a good basting, which was a sovereign remedy for sea-sickness. He suited the action to the word, and drubbed me on the ribs without mercy until I thought the breath was out of my body; but I obeyed his orders to go on deck immediately, and somehow or other did contrive to crawl up the ladder to the main deck, where I sat down and cried bitterly. What would I have given to have been at home again! It was not my fault that I was the greatest fool of the family, yet how was I punished for it! But, by degrees, I recovered myself, and certainly that night I slept very soundly.
The next morning O'Brien came to me again.
"It's a nasty slow fever, that sea-sickness, my Peter, and we must drive it out of you."
And then he commenced a repetition of yesterday's remedy until I was almost a jelly. Whether the fear of being thrashed drove away my sickness, I do not know, but this is certain, that I felt no more of it after the second beating, and the next morning when I awoke I was very hungry.