“Right about face!”
“March!”
The band plays; the two broad, close, moving detachments go steadily around. A roar from the chief officer, and at once the broad masses become a number of thin strands with a serpentine movement to a new and more cheerful march from the band, and doing it with absolute accuracy for several minutes. “Halt!” Music stops.
“Boys,” shouts the old captain from the poop, “very fair, very fair indeed! Eh, Mr. Waltham?”
“Very fair indeed, sir.”
A selection made from the crowd; the rest jump up on the sides of the ship, and become an audience. The selected boys stiffly in line, jackets off, accept from a chief petty officer with a sack, pairs of wooden dumb-bells. Order given, they face round, watching the instructor narrowly and with seriousness. A signal from him and band having started a gentle waltz, the two hundred sailor boys go through a movement of thrusting the arms forward, withdrawing them sharply, keeping time ever to the music. A change of air on the part of the band, and each pair of arms swings from side to side. Another, and with clockwork preciseness the bells are up high, return to touch breast, go down to toes. A whole dozen of these changes, and amongst the later ones, movements with definite stamp of the right foot on the deck to the music of a Scotch reel. Pantomime rally from the band; a bugle call, and the deck is clear.
“If I hadn’t seen it,” says astounded little Miss Threepenny to her two neighbours, and standing now on the topmost stair of the foc’sle steps, “I should never ’ave believed it true!”
“That’s nothing,” remarks one of the women, lightly. “You watch out now, Miss. My Jimmy’s in the next.”
To a march from the obliging band, enter forty serious boys, brown-legginged, belted, and bearing rifles. At the words of command, these go through a number of offensive and defensive movements, forming squares, performing cutlass drill, making lunges with their bayonetted rifles at a supposititious enemy; killing this supposititious enemy and withdrawing the bayonet neatly from his lifeless body. A good quarter of an hour of hard drill this, for which they are more than repaid by applause from the younger boys seated on the sides of the vessel, and a word of approval from the captain:
“’Ere comes Bobbie,” cries Miss Threepenny, excitedly. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! what will they be up to next?”