Mastheaded.
The frigate was not yet ready for sea, and I had therefore time to pick up some scraps of nautical knowledge, to learn the ways of the ship, and to get a tolerable notion of my duties. I quickly mastered the rules and regulations of the service, a copy of which Jack Nettleship gave me.
“Stick by them, my lad, and you can’t go wrong; if you do, it’s their fault, not yours,” he observed.
“But suppose I don’t understand them?” I asked.
“Then you can plead in justification that they are not sufficiently clear for an ordinary comprehension,” he answered. “I do when I make a mistake, and old Rough-and-Ready is always willing to receive my excuses, as he can’t spell them out very easily himself, though they are his constant study day and night. Indeed, I doubt if he reads anything else, except Norie’s Navigation and the Nautical Almanack?”
Nettleship showed me a copy of the former work, and kindly undertook to instruct me in the science of navigation. All day long, however, he was employed in the duties of the ship, and in the evening I was generally sleepy when it was our watch below, so that I didn’t make much progress. Though I got on very well, I was guilty, I must own, of not a few blunders. I was continually going aft when I intended to be going forward, and vice versa.
The day after I came aboard I was skylarking with Tom Pim, Chaffey, and other midshipmites (as the oldsters called us), when I told them that I would hide, and that they might find me if they could. I ran up the after-ladder, when seeing a door open, I was going to bolt through it. Just then a marine, who was standing there, placed his musket to bar my way. Not wishing to be stopped, I dodged under it, turning round and saying—
“Arrah, boy! don’t be after telling where I’m gone to.”
The sentry, for such he was, not understanding me, seized hold of my collar.
“You mustn’t be going in there, whoever you are,” he said in a gruff tone.