Band, which has been interested in this scene of carnage, snatches up its instruments and starts a cheerful, brisk, trotting air; the boys take the ropes and tug the guns on the field carriages once around the deck, the wounded following in the rear and still giving realistic groans at every other step, all disappearing at last through the large doors of the foc’sle to the applause of boys seated on the sides and fluttering of handkerchiefs from the foc’sle steps.
“Bray’vo, Bobbie,” cries little Miss Threepenny. She turns and whispers apprehensively to the two women. “They’re none of ’em reelly ’urt, are they?”
“’Urt?” echoes one of the two women. “They know better than go and get ’urt, bless you.”
“All the same,” says the little woman, “I wouldn’t join in it for forty thousand million pound.”
The rifle lads again, faces set determinedly, marching up the deck with steady and definite stride. Four movements, and they are down on one knee preparing to receive the enemy. This time the enemy is no fictitious enemy, for the doors of the foc’sle being thrown open, out rush shrieking noisy warriors who from their language and the fact that they are carrying long poles instead of firearms are clearly negro aborigines of the district, and these shout “Alla-bulla-wulla” in a very desperate way, throwing themselves on their opponents under the foolish impression that something can be done to a solid square of British sailors. A bugle call and the square rises, moves, and taking the offensive, presses the mistaken aborigines back, but these still cry “Alla-bulla-walla” (being apparently of a race with limited conversational powers), and break up the detachment, so that a hand-to-hand struggle ensues where every man carries his life in peril, and every man remembers the country that gave him birth. The British are pulled together again; they form by command into two lines, these two lines stretching well across the field of operations press the enemy slowly but determinedly back. Changing its tactics the enemy now shout, “Wulla-bulla-alla,” but even this reversal of the original battle cry proves useless, and the final struggle is stopped (because in point of fact, one or two sets are beginning to fight in real earnest) by the bugle call to retreat. Victory gained, the British sailors re-form, and singing exultant music to—
“A life on the ocean wave,
A life on the stormy deep,
Where the billowy waters wave,
And the stars their vigil keep,”
they march round and pass the saluting point.
“Not at all bad,” says the captain. “Eh, Mr. Waltham? Considering.”
“Not at all bad, sir,” replies the chief officer, “considering.”
Robert escorted his little visitor down to tea, a few of his intimate chums forming a circle around her in order to prevent the incursion of mere curiosity. Miss Threepenny, finding herself the object and centre of all this consideration, chattered away over her tea and bread and butter, telling the circle a few of her best repartees, with many a “Oh, I says,” and “What! she says”; each recital finishing triumphantly with the sentence, “And that’s all they get for trying to score off me.” The small woman being swung down to the lower deck, professed herself much shocked at seeing the slung-up hammocks, declaring that eviction from her model dwellings would ensue if this were known, and covering her face with her tiny hands in a way that amused the lads very much. Before leaving she ascertained the whereabouts of Robert’s locker, and finding the white box with Robert’s number painted atop, slipped inside an envelope containing a silver coin of enormous proportions. On the upper deck again, Robert Lancaster feeling it politic to do everything possible in order to give Miss Threepenny subject-matter for conversation on her return to Trixie, went up to the foc’sle rigging to the foretop and was down again before she had time to beg of him to be careful, following this up by acts of a similarly perilous nature.