“I only asked a question,” said Tommy, in his squeaky voice; “and I put it to Oswald, and not to you.”
“How dare you speak to me in that fashion?” exclaimed Voules, about to give the small midshipman a box on the ear.
“You’d better let him alone!” cried Paddy Logan, jumping up. “I appeal to Ludlam, who allows no bullying in the berth. Because you have had the honour of staying at Elverston Hall, you fancy you can exhibit your airs to us, but you are mistaken, my boy, as much as Oswald was when he first joined.”
Voules retorted, and Paddy and he would soon have come to blows, had not Ludlam interfered, and by the exercise of the authority he maintained in the berth, restored order.
This scene took place on the first evening that the members of the berth all met together.
The frigate was now standing down between the mainland and the wooded shores of the Isle of Wight. Calshot Castle—then held as a fortress, with a governor and a garrison—was seen on the right. On the left hand was the little town of Cowes, surrounded by woods, among which, here and there, a few cottages peeped out. Then Lymington became visible on the Hampshire shore, and, beyond it, the long shingly beach of Hurst. Many eyes on board were turned in that direction. Lord Reginald and Voules, using their spy-glasses, thought that they could catch a distant view of the hall, while forward, Dick Hargrave, Ben, and several other men were turning their gaze on well-known spots. Dick felt more sad than he had done since he came on board. He was thinking how anxious his father, mother, and poor Janet would be about him; even should Mrs Simmons have conveyed his message to them, they would only know that he had been carried off in the tender, and would remain ignorant of the ship on board which he had been sent. He had not written, for he possessed neither pens, ink, nor paper, and would have found it a difficult matter to indite an epistle with the uproar going on around him. Poor Dick gazed on until the tears came to his eyes. Though it was greatly owing to his own fault that he was being carried away from home and those he loved, he was not the less to be commiserated. While he thus stood, scarcely conscious of what was going on around him, Lord Reginald, who had been sent forward with a message to the third lieutenant on some duty, passed him.
“What makes you stand idling there, boy?” exclaimed the midshipman, looking at him as if he had never seen him before, giving him a blow with the end of a rope. “You have no business on deck; go and attend to your duty below.”
Dick’s first impulse was to raise his arm to defend himself. It was with difficulty he could refrain from retaliating.
“I have no duty that I know of to attend to, and I have a right to look towards yonder shore, which neither you nor I may see for some time to come,” he answered. “What! You are a sea lawyer, are you?” exclaimed Lord Reginald, angrily, Dick’s words adding intensity to the vindictive feelings he already entertained towards him.
“I’ll report you to the first lieutenant, and he’ll soon find means to make you mend your manners.”