“Bah!” said the carpenter. But the other members of the committee said, “Hear, hear.”
“Come back and see the Homes when you get an opportunity,” said the jovial chairman, a little moved by his own eloquence; “remember that we shall watch your career with interest and—God bless you!”
The chairman leaned across the table and shook hands with Robert. The lad bowed awkwardly to the other members of the committee, and would have spoken, but something in his throat prevented him. He punched at his cap, and on a signal from the Superintendent went out at the doorway.
“Pampering of ’em,” said the retired carpenter, darkly, “pampering of ’em as fast as ever you can.”
CHAPTER XIV.
The vessel to which Bobbie went had been in its gallant youth a battleship and possessed an eventful and a creditable record. Moored in the Thames off the flat coast of Essex, and painted black, it was a huge, solid, responsible three-decker, doing excellent work in the autumn of its life, and giving temporary residence to some five or six hundred boys. Mainly, the youngsters were metropolitan, but sometimes the guardians of distant towns in the North would arrange with the Board for one of their lads to be consigned to the training ship, who, being arrived, spoke a language that seemed to the London boys almost foreign. A long, low jetty ran from the shore as far as it dared into the water; where it stopped, a gig rowed by eight of the boys, under the command of an officer, took you off to the big black ship, on the starboard side of which a dozen small boats rocked and nudged each other in the ribs, and a barge dozed stolidly. (In case of alarm the whole of the boys could be cleared out of the ship and carried away by these to safety.) Away down the river a smart brigantine berthed generally in view, and this the boys who intended to join the Royal Navy gazed at hopefully, because it was the brigantine which taught them seamanship, with assistance from a master mariner and two mates; it was the brigantine, too, which now and again skimmed the cream of the Westmouth in the shape of some forty boys whom it conveyed out of the river into the open, and presently down Channel to one of the training vessels which acted as the last refining process before entrance was made into the service. To the Essex shore came, nearly every week, from various poor-law schools, boys who, after inspection, were conveyed out to the Westmouth, where the captain looked at the doctor’s report, giving their heights, chest measurements, and other particulars forming the foundation of their dossier. This over, the new boys went back to shore to be clothed in sailor uniform, and re-appeared in blue serge trousers and jacket and cap, trying to look as though the navy had for them no secrets, and the Westmouth nothing in the way of information to impart. They came in and went out of the training vessel at the rate of about three hundred year, so that the numbered white cases down on the lower deck containing kits were always in use, and every hammock on the three decks contained at night a tired-out lad.
For Robert Lancaster soon discovered that the note of the Westmouth was to keep moving. If you worked, you worked hard; if you played, you played hard. School had no great demands upon him now, for being out of the Fourth Standard, it was required of him that he should attend but two hours on the Friday of every week; a boy might have assumed that with this dispensation one could look forward to a life of ease and content. Not so on board the Westmouth. Robert Lancaster was never allowed to be lazy. The life formed an exact opposite to those old days at Hoxton (several centuries ago it seemed to him), when the delight of life was to “mouch,” which, translated, is to wander through the years aimlessly. Robert made some vague suggestions of reform to his comrades, with the result that a boy from Poplar made up his mind to state a complaint formally on the first opportunity. The Poplar boy (numbered 290) had already written a brief account, which he had shown to Robert, entitled “The Mutiny on the Westmouth,” a forecast of a somewhat bloodthirsty character, where gore flowed readily, and exclamations of a melodramatic character were used, such as “Die, you dog!” and “At last we meet face to face!” but Robert criticized this with some acidity, because in the course of it Number Two Ninety himself performed all the deeds of surpassing valour, using six Martini-Henry rifles and a field gun, at the same time doing desperate action with two cutlasses: the end of the account gave a gruesome description of the upper deck strewn with the bodies of officers, and of Number Two Ninety-being unanimously elected captain by his fellow mutineers. Robert said he thought the picture overdrawn. Opportunity, however, occurred on some of the guardians from Poplar visiting the ship; one, a sharp clergyman, demanded to know of the Poplar boys whether they had any complaint to make.
“No, sir,” sang most of the Poplar boys. The mutineer’s arm went up.
“Ah!” said the clergyman gratified. “Here’s a lad now who has something to say.”
“Step forward, Two Ninety,” ordered the old captain. “Tell this gentleman what it is you wish to complain of. Is it the food?”