Our powder was next taken on board, with a further supply of stores, and more midshipmen. Among the latter, who should climb up the side but my quondam friend Dicky Sharpe. He did not see me, as I was aloft at the time, and before I came on deck, he and his traps had gone below. When my watch on deck was over, I descended to our berth, where I found him busily employed in cramming his new messmates, and endeavouring to raise himself to a high position in their estimation.
“You see, my good fellows, it isn’t everybody has got a Minister for a cousin, and a Lord of the Admiralty for an uncle,” he remarked in a consequential tone, as I got to the door of the berth.
“And I don’t think you have either, Dicky, my boy,” said I, laughing. “But I am very glad to see you, notwithstanding; but don’t be after bamboozling us jolly greens now.”
At first he attempted to look very indignant at the attack made on his veracity; but no sooner did he recognise me than his good feelings got the better of his love of trying to make himself of importance; and jumping up, he seized my hand and wrung it warmly.
“Why, D’Arcy, is it you yourself, indeed?” he exclaimed. “I am delighted to find you here, I am indeed. Why, messmates, if it hadn’t been for D’Arcy I should have been food for fishes; I should, on my word. Think what a loss the service would have had.”
A loud laugh from all hands followed this remark, though I verily believe Dicky spoke in all gravity; but the fact that I had been the means of saving his life thus came out. It raised me, I had afterwards reason to know, in the good opinion of all on board; and Dicky himself gained many friends by the feeling way in which he spoke of it. I was very soon seated alongside him in the berth, and our tongues were rattling away as fast as they could wag.
Dicky’s propensity to brag, amusing as it was to others, was continually getting him into scrapes. We had an old mate, Adam Stallman by name, who was proportionably as tall, grave, and silent, as Dicky was little, merry, and loquacious.
One day Dicky having thrown a biscuit at me, which, unfortunately, hit Adam’s nose, the latter looked at him sternly.
“Sharpe, you are small,” he exclaimed; “but cobbing was invented to make midshipmen grow, and I intend to make you grow.”
“Then, faith, Stallman, I suspect your mother began cobbing you as soon as you were born,” answered the undaunted Dicky.