I don’t believe I slept a wink that night with thinking of what I should do when I got on board the frigate. It was a satisfaction to remember that the ice had been broken, and that I should not appear as a perfect stranger amongst my messmates. I already knew Tom Pim, and he had told me the names of several others, among whom were those of Jack Nettleship the old mate and caterer of the mess, Dick Sinnet the senior midshipman, Sims the purser’s clerk, and Donald McPherson the assistant-surgeon. The others I could not remember. The lieutenants, he said, were very nice fellows, though they had their peculiarities. None of the officers were Irishmen, consequently I had been dubbed Paddy.
Chapter Six.
I commence my naval career.
The morning came. My chest and my other strat things had been carried down in a cart to the river, where they were shipped on board a shore-boat. As we walked along following it, my uncle, after being silent for a minute, as if considering how he should address me, said: “You have got a new life before you, away from friends, among all sorts of characters,—some good, it may be, many bad or indifferent, but no one probably on whom you may rely. You will be placed in difficult, often in dangerous situations, when you’ll have only yourself, or Him who orders all things, to trust to. Be self-reliant; ever strive to do your duty; and don’t be after troubling yourself about the consequences. You will be engaged in scenes of warfare and bloodshed. I have taken part in many such, and I know their horrors. War is a stern necessity. May you never love it for itself; but when fighting, comport yourself like a man fearless of danger, while you avoid running your head needlessly into it. Be courteous and polite, slow to take offence,—especially when no offence is intended, as is the case in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred where quarrels occur. Remember that it always takes two to make a quarrel, and that the man who never gives offence will seldom get into one. Never grumble; be cheerful and obliging. Never insist on your own rights when those rights are not worth insisting on. Sacrifice your own feelings to those of others, and be ever ready to help a companion out of a difficulty. You may be surprised to hear me—an old soldier and an Irishman—talking in this way; but I give you the advice, because I have seen so many act differently, and, wrapped up in intense selfishness, become utterly regardless of others,—reaping the consequences by being disliked and neglected, and finally deserted by all who were their friends. There’s another point I must speak to you about, and it’s a matter which weighs greatly on my mind. Example, they say, is better than precept. Now your father has set you a mighty bad example, and so have many others who have come to the castle. Don’t follow it. You see the effect which his potations of rum shrub and whisky-toddy have produced on him. When I was on duty, or going on it, I never touched liquor; and no man ever lost his life from my carelessness, as I have seen the lives of many poor soldiers thrown away when their officers, being drunk, have led them into useless danger. So I say, Terence, keep clear of liquor. The habit of drinking grows on a man, and in my time I have seen it the ruin of many as fine young fellows as ever smelt powder.”
I thanked my uncle, and promised as far as I could to follow his excellent advice.
As we reached the water-side, my uncle stopped, and putting one hand on my shoulder and taking mine with the other, looked me kindly in the face.
“Fare thee well, Terence, my boy,” he said; “we may not again meet on earth, but wherever you go, an old man’s warmest affection follows you. Be afraid of nothing but doing wrong. If your life is spared, you’ll rise in the profession you have chosen, second only in my opinion to that of the army.”
I stepped into the boat, and the men shoved off. My uncle stood watching me as we descended the stream. Again and again he waved his hand, and I returned his salute. He was still standing there when a bend of the river shut him out from my sight. I was too much engaged with my thoughts to listen to what the boatmen said, and I suspect they thought me either too dull or too proud to talk to them. As we pulled up on the larboard side, thinking that I was now somebody, I shouted to some men I saw looking through the ports to come down and lift my chest on board, though how that was to be done was more than I could tell. A chorus of laughs was the reply.