“Then boom away, my lads; get the trysail down too, and we’ll run under double-reefed topsails alone.”
The ship was much eased by this diminution of canvass, and ran much steadier than might have been expected, only occasionally shipping a little sea over the weather bow.
“A bit of a gale,” muttered the quartermaster to himself, as he descended to the midshipman’s mess. “Humph,” said he, observing the middies seated over a bowl of punch, “you seem to be enjoying yourselves upon the strength of it.”
“Ay, and would have you to do the same,” exclaimed a little mid, pushing him a glass of grog; “come douse your sou’-wester and join us.”
Little invitation was needed on the part of the quartermaster, who was one of those characters so emphatically termed, by seamen, “wet lads,” and who, perhaps, very philosophically reason, that, as they are exposed to so much fluid of a cold nature without, so a proportionable degree of fluid of a hot nature within, is necessary to preserve their equilibrium.
Notwithstanding this frailty, there was not a braver nor a kinder heart in the British navy than that of the old quartermaster. The middies he called his children; and they, in turn, were accustomed to call him Daddy, although some of the tricks which they played him savoured of anything but the respect which children owe to their parents. Having fallen asleep in the midst of a song, with his pipe in the one hand, and his glass in the other, this was too good an opportunity for a lark to be slipped. As his head had fallen back upon his seat, the middies slyly tied a cracker to his pigtail, and were preparing to ignite it, when the quartermaster suddenly awoke, and perceiving the trick they were about to play him, he seized hold of a rope’s-end and soon made the middies seek shelter from his fury under the table, where, being unable to get at them, he sung out—
“Blow me, but you small craft have got into too shoal water for me to follow you now; but if I get my big guns to bear upon you, I will blow you out of the water.”
A sailor at this moment entering to tell the quartermaster that he was required on deck, put an end to the joke, and relieved the midshipmen from their confinement.
When the quartermaster came on deck, the Fern lights were right a-head; and, by his directions, the vessel was soon moored under the lee of the island, in safety from the tempest. Here, after stopping two days, they again set sail, and had already got off the coast of Norfolk, when, in the grey of the morning, a man at the mast-head called out—