The Pearl arrived at Spithead early in June, and was immediately paid off. Our Lieutenants were all promoted, and the midshipmen were to have their Lieutenants’ commissions when duly qualified after examination. Besides, we received the great honour of being voted the thanks of both Houses of Parliament for our services during the mutiny.
After two months’ leave I was appointed to the Algiers, then in the Channel Fleet. I had to wait until the following spring to complete my six years as a mid and to attain the age of nineteen.
I now had to set to work and get up my navigation and gunnery, so long neglected, in order to qualify in February.
While I was in the Channel Fleet there was the usual cruising—to Vigo, Lisbon, and so forth;—but we spent most of the winter of 1859 lying in Portland Roads. How dull that service was to me after years of excitement and constant change!
I pass it over, and come to March 1860, when I went up to be examined for my Lieutenantcy. The first ordeal was a Seamanship examination on board the Victory. Three old salts sat on me—two of them brig Commanders, the other a Post Captain. The ball was opened by one of these setting me questions, which I was expected to answer vivâ voce. I was to take command of his old brig, to find her alongside the jetty in Portsmouth Harbour, dismantled; to fit her out, get my guns in, and stores, and take her out to Spithead, mooring her at that anchorage; I was to let them know when I was ready to begin the ordeal. In the meantime they left the cabin and disappeared—I suppose in the hope that I should be better able to make out my programme and so save their time. This question was a hot one. I gave myself a clear ten minutes over it. I made some pencil notes to assist me in my answers. These notes I consistently followed, and at the end of my ten minutes’ grace I sent a message by the sentry to say that I was ready. It always struck me on such occasions that there was a chuckle of delight dimly visible in your examiner’s countenance at the thought that he had got you dead-beat. When all three reappeared smiling and joking I wondered whether their merriment was levelled at me. For a moment it put my back up, and I felt inclined to sulk. However, “Go on, my boy,” put me straight again, and I thought there was a wee bit of solicitude in the tone of the speaker’s voice. I went steadily on for some time: until first one began to yawn, another got up and walked about, and the third looked out of a port. Evidently bored, thought I to myself, and my story getting prosy. Reader, I never got to Spithead in my brig. I had stowed my hold so nicely—the peas placed carefully in one corner, the biscuit in another, and the rum properly stowed “bung up” in the spirit room—that the examiners had had quite enough of my capabilities, and (beyond shifting a topsail in a gale of wind and some other such detail) I was asked no more. “That will do, sir,” I was told, though for the life of me I could not tell the extent of my knowledge: until the Post Captain, on walking out quietly, whispered into my ear, “You are all right! But say nothing about it.—Sentry, tell them to make a signal for our galleys.”
“Thank God,” said I to myself; and down below I went to refresh the inner man, my lips parched with thirst.
“Well, old chap,” says one, “how did you get on?”
“Pretty well, I think,” said I; “but, of course, I don’t know.” Soon appeared my sheet of foolscap duly signed, and I was a free man, as having passed my Seamanship examination.
The next step was the Gunnery examination, on board the Excellent; and finally I had to be put through my facings at the Royal Naval College examination in the Dockyard.
There were just six weeks before the Vacations, and there was to be one day for each exam. The Gunnery day gave me only a clear fortnight—short notice, certainly; but I thought I would have a try for it, so as to be able to get clear away before the Vacation of July, and not have to begin again later in the year.