It would be impossible to give an account of all the minor adventures I met with in the Mediterranean; but such as I can I will narrate. Captain Poynder was very anxious to make his midshipmen gentlemen, and to give us a knowledge of polite literature, as well as to instruct us in navigation and seamanship. Accordingly he got a Maltese on board to teach us Italian. Poor Signor Mezzi had never, I believe, been at sea before; and though we tried to make him comfortable, and Dicky Sharpe generally resisted the temptation to play him tricks—for he was certain to be cobbed by the oldsters if he did,—I fear that his life was far from a pleasant one. When we had completed our refit, and had stowed away a supply of provisions, despatches were sent on board, and we were ordered to proceed to Tripoli and Tunis. We made a very quick passage to Tripoli, which is the capital of the most easterly of the Barbary States. It boasts of a castle and port, and has a large harbour, defended by a moat and batteries, capable of containing a considerable fleet of merchantmen. We remained there a very short time, so I do not remember much about the place, nor exactly for what purpose we went there. There is another town of the same name in Syria, and they are often confounded. Leaving Tripoli, we made sail for Tunis. It was on this trip, if I remember rightly, that a circumstance occurred, which for some time appeared wrapped in mystery. The adventure of the rib-bone, in which Dicky Sharpe played so prominent a part, will be remembered. Since that time, Ichabod Chissel, the carpenter, had led his unfortunate boy, Bobby Smudge, a very dog’s life. I fully believe, however, that Master Smudge richly deserved every rope’s-ending he got. He was always dirty: he loved dirt, and nothing could keep him clean. His honesty also was doubtful. While in Malta harbour, some of our plate had disappeared. Our boy accused Bobby of taking it, though he denied this, and, to our surprise, confessed that he knew where it was.
“Why, do you see, sir,” he said to Stallman, who sat as judge on his trial, “it somehow or other got into my tub of hot water, and I never knowed it; and when I went to heave the water overboard, I then see’d the glitter of it in the sea, as it sunk to the bottom.”
The defence was ingenious, and as there was no witness to prove to the contrary, Bobby escaped punishment on that occasion; though, as he had been seen in deep confabulation with an ill-looking Jew a short time afterwards, suspicion went much against him. From bad, things grew to worse with Bobby Smudge. Not a day passed, scarcely an hour, that he did not taste the flavour of a rope’s-end—most frequently bestowed by his master, the carpenter.
“You will be the death of me, I know you will, Master Chissel,” he groaned out one day, when his castigator was even severer than usual. “I’ll go and drown myself, that I will, if this goes on much longer—you’ll see if I don’t. I won’t stand it, that I won’t;” and he blubbered as few have blubbered before.
“You will, will you, you young scamp?” exclaimed the carpenter, seizing a rope’s-end. “Take that, then, and remember, when you come back from the drowning of yourself, I’ll give you six times as much.” And poor Bobby got it worse than ever.
I think Chissel was very wrong in the way he treated the poor wretch. Had he been tolerably kind and considerate, he might, I am certain, have worked on his good feelings, and certainly have improved him; but the unhappy lad had from his earliest days been so constantly knocked about, and so accustomed to receive more kicks than halfpence, that all his better feelings had been pretty well beaten out of him.
It so happened that one evening, as the ship was running pretty fast through the water, and as darkness was coming rapidly on, a loud splash was heard alongside, and that cry, so startling to a seaman’s heart, was raised—“A man overboard!”
“Silence, fore and aft,” sang out Captain Poynder, who at the same moment appeared on deck. “Does anybody see him?”
There was no answer.
“Does anybody hear him?”