Ben Burton: Born and Bred at Sea

by William Henry Giles Kingston

With regard to the prize, she was carried safely into Macao, in the expectation that she would be fitted out as a cruiser, and that Mr Schank would get the command of her. Her fate I shall have hereafter to relate.

I meantime grew apace, and speedily cut out Quacko in the estimation of our shipmates. He, however, had his friends and supporters; for some months, at all events, he afforded them more amusement than I could do. They could tease him and play him tricks, which my mother and Mrs King took very good care they should not do to me. I had no lack of nurses from the first, and highly honoured were those into whose hands my mother ventured to commit me.

Mrs King had enough to do for some time after the action, in attending both to my mother and the poor fellows who had been wounded, both English and French, the latter receiving as much care from her gentle hands as did our own people. The two chief rivals for the honour of looking after me were my cousin, Pat Brady, and Toby Kiddle, boatswain’s mate. Although many of my old shipmates have passed away from my memory, Toby Kiddle made an impression which was never erased. Nature had not intended him for a topman, for though wonderfully muscular, his figure was like a tun. His legs were short, and his arms were unusually long. With them tucked akimbo, he could take up two of the heaviest men in the ship, and run along the deck with them as lightly as he would have done with a couple of young children. He had a generous, kind heart, could tell a good story, and troll forth a ditty with any man; and as to his bravery, where all were brave, I need scarcely mention it, except to say that I do no not think anyone beat him at that. Boatswain’s mate though he was, Toby Kiddle had a heart as gentle as a lamb’s. He scarcely seemed cut out for the post, and yet there was a rough crust over it which enabled him to do his duty, and when he had to lay on with the cat, to shut his eyes, and to hit as hard as he was ordered. And yet I always have pitied a kind-hearted boatswain’s mate, though he is not after all worse off than the captain and officers, who have to stand by and see men punished. However, I will not say anything about that matter just now. Time went on, and I grew bigger, and began to chew beef and bacon with the rest of the ship’s company becoming more and more independent of my mother in every way. Yet I loved her, as such a mother deserved to be loved. As I grew bigger I made more and more friends. The Captain himself very frequently took notice of me, and patted my head, which was beginning to get curls upon it, and often gave me cakes and other Chinese manufactured delicacies which he had got from the shore. Captain Cobb was a short man, and since he came out to China had grown very round and stout. His face, as a boy, had been probably pink and white, but it had now been burnt into a deep red copper colour. His eyes, which were small, were bloodshot, with a ferrety expression, and altogether his outward man was not attractive. His uniforms, which had hung loosely on him when he left home, had been, by the skill of the tailor, let out and out to meet the demands of his increasing corpulency; but no art or skill could do more for them; and as he was unwilling to procure others till those were worn out, he looked, when walking the quarter-deck, very much as if he had on a straight waistcoat.

Captain Cobb was not disregardful of his creature comforts, and in order to supply himself with milk for breakfast and tea, he had shipped on board, some time back, a she-goat, which fully answered his wishes. Seamen will make pets of everything—monkeys, babies, lions, pigs, bears, dogs, and cats. The goat had become a favourite, for she was a handsome creature, and very tame, but it was chiefly in connection with Quacko, who was soon taught to ride upon her. Quacko was certainly very well aware that he must never venture upon the quarter-deck, and before, therefore, he reached the sacred precincts on his daily rides, he always managed to wheel the goat about and retrace his steps forward. Quacko was a wonderfully sagacious monkey, and held his position in the good opinion of the crew in spite of my rival claims. Had I been thrown entirely upon their mercy as Quacko was, I might have completely cut him out; but having my mother and Mrs King, with two or three select friends to look after me, the remainder very naturally felt that they had not so much interest in the matter. On one occasion, when I was about three years old, the frigate was caught in a typhoon. I was safe below in my poor mother’s arms, but Quacko remained on deck to see what was going forward. Nobody was thinking of him. The seamen, indeed, had to hold on with might and main to secure their own lives. Some preparation had been made, and fortunately it was so, for all the sails still set were blown out of the bolt ropes. The frigate was hove on her beam-ends. Where Quacko had come from nobody knew, when on a sudden he was seen hanging to the slack end of a rope. In vain one of the topmen made an attempt to grasp him. The rope swung away far over the foaming sea. He swung back, but it was to strike the side apparently, for the next instant the rope returned on board and no Quacko hanging to it. The ship righted without having suffered much damage; indeed, the loss of Quacko was our greatest misfortune.

After the sad event just mentioned, Quacko’s friends made various attempts to appropriate me; indeed, Mrs King and Toby Kiddle had, in order to console them for their loss, to give me up to them occasionally.

“Here, Toby, let’s have the little chap and learn him to ride,” said Tom Trimmers, one of the topmen. “Why, Nanny will be forgetting how to carry a human being as she has been accustomed to do, and you will soon see what a capital horseman he will make, won’t you, Ben?”

“Ay, ay,” I answered, for though I could not say much I could say that, and so Nanny was brought forth, and I was placed on her back, Toby, however, remarking, that though some day I should have more sense than the defunct Quacko ever had, yet at present, as I had no experience in riding, he must decline allowing me to mount unless he held me up. “It will be time when the little chap has had some practice to let him go along by himself,” he observed, looking round at our shipmates. “Now, you don’t know what would become of him, for Nanny is more than likely to trot off on the quarter-deck and make herself disagreeable there, and maybe pitch Master Benjy down the main hatchway. No, no, I will stand by and hold him on till he is a bit older.”

This resolution was certainly very prudent; but I very soon began to complain of it, and to assert, by signs rather than by words, that I was well able to take care of myself, and steer the goat as Quacko had done.

“And where is Quacko, Master Ben?” asked Toby, who understood me better than anyone else. “He thought he could take care of himself, but he could not do so, you see, nor can any of us, and that’s my opinion. If there was not one better able to take care of us than we are of ourselves, we poor sea-going chaps would be in a bad way.”

In spite, however, of Toby Kiddle, my other friends managed occasionally to let me have my own way; and with great pride they looked on while I, with the end of a mop stick in my hand, went galloping about the deck, belabouring the goat’s hinder quarters, very much after the fashion of an Irishman riding a donkey at a race. The Sergeant of Marines, Julian Killock was his name, on seeing the use I made of my weapon, took it into his head to teach me the broadsword exercise, which I very soon learnt. The Jollies now began to contemplate appropriating me to themselves, and thus, as it may be supposed, made the Blue-jackets somewhat jealous.