CHAPTER XXIII
SHE VISITS THE BARRACKS
I have said that this passage of wet, violent weather lasted about four days. On the morning of the fourth day of it the steward sent me to the galley on some errand I forget the nature of. The cook was wild with temper. Everything seemed to have gone wrong with him. The baker had offered to fight him for his day’s allowance of rum. He had scalded himself, besides, during an unusually heavy lurch. When I looked in on him he swore and told me to wait. It was all the same to me. It had ceased to rain, and I stood under the lee of the galley for shelter from the wind.
It was a grey, dark, dismal, roaring day. The seas rolled in hills of green, and the foam of them, as their heads broke, was blown high up in white smoke. The ship looked strained aloft. Her lee rigging and gear were arched out by the gale; the bands of topsails were dusky with wet, and the wind screamed like children flying in terror. The barricades gave the ship a most miserable appearance. The decks sobbed with the ceaseless soaking, and the white water flashed inboards through the scupper-holes wherever the vessel buried her lee side. At the far end of the poop was the helmsman, sharply rising and falling against the whirling soot of the sky. The officer of the watch, clothed in oilskins, stood grasping a stay near a quarter-boat. A single sentry stood at the head of the poop-ladder. The poor fellow was sodden, and seemed withered by the ceaseless pouring of the blast. One cannot but feel sorry for soldiers at sea. The forecastle sentry looked equally wretched. Those on the main-deck were in some degree sheltered by the weather bulwarks. A strange smell of cattle, hay, poultry, and pigs, came from the long-boat, within and under which the live-stock were stowed. A dismal, wet, roaring, frost-cold picture. The melancholy horror of it is upon my spirits as I talk to you, and yet this was but the first week of what might prove a passage of months.
I heard the boatswain’s voice of thunder giving orders to some seamen on the other side of the galley. Presently he came round to my side of the deck, and on seeing me called out, ‘I’ve got some o’ your property. The chief mate says I’m to hand it over to you. Here’s the handkerchief,’ said he. ‘There was two pipes. Well, I can’t return ’em because they’re broke. Here’s yer tinder-box and arrangement, and a pretty contrivance it is. When I get ashore I shall ask my young woman to make me a present of such another.’
‘You are very welcome to it, Mr. Balls.’
‘Say you so? Smite me if I haven’t been swearing you was a gentleman born and bred ever since I first lugged you out of the t’garns’l. Well, I’m truly obliged. As pretty a little——’ and he walked off, talking aloud as he looked at the tinder-box.
I heard the cook speaking with great excitement to his mate, and guessed that I should do well to keep quiet until he told me that he was ready. A few minutes later a soldier’s wife rose through the hatch near the cuddy-front—they called it the booby-hatch—and came forward. She had a shawl over her head, and was bringing a pudding to the cook to be baked. A sudden heave of the ship drove her against the lee bulwarks. I went to her help, took the dish from her, and put it into her hands again when we had reached the galley. She was the pretty young wife who had before taken notice of me with smiles. The cook spoke insolently to her—asked her if she thought he’d shipped to do nothing but look after such small mucking jobs of barracks pastry as that there. He wasn’t ‘no blushen’ soldiers’ cook.’ If it depended upon him there’d be no army. ‘What! Keep a scaldin’ lot o’ gutterpeckers in money, good wittles, and fine clothes at the expense of the nation, whose sailors has to do all the real fighting when it comes to it?’ He said much in this way, shouting loudly, and sticking and thrusting and gesticulating with a long, dangerous-looking fork used for bringing up the meat out of the coppers. The woman threatened to fetch the sergeant. The cook, with a horrid laugh, begged her to lose no time. His coppers were ready, he said, and he’d warrant the sergeant boiled to a turn before four bells. After more of this Mr. Cook took the dish from the woman, eyed and smelled it, with a sarcastic leer, and requested the woman to clear out.
She stood at my side, breathing short, and very angry and flushed, and said if she told her husband of the cook’s behaviour he would kill him. I advised her to take no notice of the fellow. All sea cooks in a gale of wind were bad-tempered to a proverb. They had much to put up with. Only think of being forced to cook in a kitchen that was continually rolling about, saucepans sliding, sea-water bursting in, hungry sailors, with knives in their hands, full of threats and oaths if time was not punctually kept. I put the case humorously, and she began to laugh and to peep at me with her bright eyes.