Читать книгу Under Sealed Orders - Lewis Anselm da Costa Ricci - Страница 5

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The twenty-four hours spent in what was technically known as “slinging his hammock” seemed to Nick an interminable period of time. It would not be possible to chronicle those hours in detail, nor to record Nick’s emotions, reflections, and apprehensions, and those of his companions, which were pretty much the same as his. They made the acquaintance of the Captain, and thought him the most alarming individual they had ever seen. He was tremendously dignified. His uniform was very smart and his cuffs very starched, his collar very high and his trousers very creased. He walked with a strut that somehow reminded Nick, frightened as he was, of a pouter pigeon.

He was strutting up and down the quarter-deck with a telescope under his arm when the Commander led them aft to be introduced. He halted, ignoring their salutes, and stood with his feet apart, apparently admiring the exquisite polish of his boots. Then he looked up and barked:

“Come to join my ship, have you? Had your bottoms beaten yet, what?”

Their dry lips shaped a negative.

“Oversight somewhere, Commander, what?”

“They’ve not been on board very long, sir.”

“Long enough. I got a dozen five minutes after I joined my first ship. Mast-and-yards Navy that was, young gentlemen. What?”

Ignorant that this slight mannerism of their Captain required no reply, they chorused a timid, “Yes, sir.”

“What d’you mean—yes, sir?”

Sheep turned crimson, and the other two grew pale.

“You, sir——” He addressed poor blushing Sheep. “How would you like to be in a mast-and-yards Navy?”

“Very much, sir,” hazarded Sheep desperately.

“No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t be able to sit down by now. The boy’s a fool, Commander. Take them away.”

The Commander motioned them forward. Captain Marmaduke Fitzhopkins resumed his promenade.

They were glad to escape to the chest flat where they changed their “bum-freezers” for monkey-jackets, shed their dirks, and made the acquaintance of the Marine Artilleryman who was to be their servant. His name was Capper, and if all three of them had been melted down and poured into Capper’s enormous tunic and trousers the combined resultant would have reached to Capper’s

He was tremendously dignified.

belt or thereabouts. He talked in an undertone impeded by some nasal obstruction, possibly adenoids. In all the years of their acquaintance Nick never grasped more than about one word in three of Capper’s confidences. When not talking, Capper snored audibly. They understood that in return for the sum of ten shillings per month Gunner Capper was prepared to keep their clothes tidy and their chests locked, to send their soiled linen to the laundry, and, what was even more important, he guaranteed to see that it came back. In practice he did much more: he adopted them. He sewed on their buttons and darned their socks. He defended their possessions against the marauding raids of other midshipmen, and his enormous hands revealed a curious, almost feminine, aptitude for folding away clothes neatly. He was a sorrowful man, with troubles at home. They were to learn about these in time, especially Sheep, who developed a fondness for retreating to the chest flat in the dog watches, opening the lid of his chest and subsiding into the interior with his legs dangling over the edge. At such times Capper would usually be seated on an adjoining chest, darning a sock or polishing a pair of boots, snoring to himself with gentle melancholy.

Cradock detailed them for their duties in the course of the forenoon. Nick was to be the Commander’s aide de camp.

“That means,” he explained, “that you turn out with the hands, the same as he does. You are with him whenever anything is going on. You run messages and all that sort of thing. If you keep your eyes open you’ll learn a lot.”

Nick found that he was also midshipman of the main-top division, and of the sailing pinnace. For a while he would understudy Giles, whose boat it was, but Cradock explained that he himself would shortly be taking his exams for Acting Sub-lieutenant, and that if he passed Giles would become senior midshipman and assume command of the steam pinnace. In consideration of his other duties Nick was excused watch-keeping in harbour.

Usher was detailed to understudy Carver in the first cutter, to be midshipman of the forecastle division, and to keep watch under a Lieutenant, whom they had not yet seen, referred to by Cradock as Peerless Percy.

Sheep found himself destined for the quarter-deck division, in sole charge of the whaler—“That means all the dirty work,” interposed Cradock—and when not otherwise occupied he would assist the Navigating officer; as such his official designation was “Tankie.”

When not actively employed in these duties, attendance at school would be required of them. The Naval Instructor was a small, dried-up officer with a rather sharp tongue and a sarcastic manner. The lobes of his ears were unusually long and he had a curious habit, when working out a problem in mathematics, of stuffing one or other of them into the hole of his ear. It did not remain there long, but gradually oozed out and resumed its normal position with a little flick. The name of this worthy was Mr. Poole, and under his tuition the midshipmen studied navigation, spherical trigonometry, and the less exalted approaches to higher mathematics.

Apart from these studies there would be, of course, systematic instruction in gunnery and torpedo, rifle and cutlass drill, seamanship, electricity, and a course of engine-room watch-keeping.

Nick, when Cradock had finished an outline of all these activities that would ultimately fit him for a commission in the Royal Navy, wondered when they went ashore. He made a tentative inquiry.

“On make-and-mend afternoons and Saturday afternoons in harbour when you aren’t watch-keeping,” was the reply. “Actually, you don’t get ashore an awful lot, but there’s leave home of course. A month in the year—more if you’re lucky.”

Nick had a feeling that he would like to start his leave immediately. His home, the old grey house in a Cheshire valley that he had left the previous morning, seemed as remote as Timbuctoo and his life there to belong to some previous existence.

When Cradock had finished detailing them for their future duties he took them for a tour of the ship. With the exception of the midshipman of the watch the others were at school. The hands were variously employed, the majority polishing bright-work till it winked in the sunlight and shone like burnished gold. Some armourers had spread a tarpaulin on the deck and were dismantling and greasing the breech-mechanism of one of the guns. From the blacksmith’s forge came the clang of a hammer on metal. On the forecastle a party of young seamen were being instructed in cutlass drill by a gunner’s mate, lunging and parrying imaginary blows and looking rather hot and bored.

“Are they sharp?” asked Sheep, indicating the unwieldy weapons with their curved steel hilts.

“Not in peace time,” replied Cradock. “But on some stations like the East Indies, where there’s gun-running and slave-raiding, they are sharpened, of course.”

They followed him on to the bridge where the signalmen were pacing up and down in pairs, their telescopes under their arms and their eyes roving about the harbour. A couple were squatting cross-legged in the lee of the chart-house, mending flags, which billowed in folds of red, yellow, and blue bunting all round them; a short, thick-set man in the uniform of a chief petty officer stood with his hands on his hips, watching them with a glum face.

“There you are, Mr. Cradock,” he said when he saw the senior midshipman, “that’s the damage you young gentlemen did to my flags at signal exercise this morning. If I had my way I’d have the lot of you up here helping to mend them, ’stead of going ashore on a make-and-mend afternoon.”

“It was blowing a bit,” protested Cradock, “and they kept fouling the stays. And, after all, we were first ship—first ship in the whole Fleet, Morrissy.”

“So you did ought to be, Mr. Cradock. So you——” The Chief Yeoman, for this was the rank of the speaker, suddenly broke off and bawled, “Up answer! Where’s your eyes, you pack of crawling lubbers? D’you want our pennants at every masthead in the fleet? Home for the blind, that’s where you ought to be, not signalmen of the forenoon watch aboard of the Vengeance.”

At his shout “Up answer!” Nick observed a curl of bunting appear above the bridge of the flagship. Long before the flags had bellied out in the wind a signalman had jumped at the halliards—almost at the first sound of the Chief Yeoman’s voice—and hoisted the answering pennant. The rest of the Chief Yeoman’s remarks were delivered to the backs of the two individuals, one of whom had his glass to his eye and the other a slate and pencil in his hand. A black and white semaphore on the Flagship’s bridge began to wave its arms. “Flag to Vengeance,” the man with the telescope read aloud, “Commander-in-Chief requests——” But they never heard the rest of the message because Cradock led them into the chart-house where they found the Navigating Officer correcting charts. Cradock introduced them to him, and indicated Sheep as his future “Tankie.”

“Can you make cocoa?” he asked earnestly. He had a long black beard and twinkling grey eyes. “Cocoa, sir?” echoed Sheep.

“Yes, cocoa. Stuff you drink. It’s a great art. Go away and study it.”

Cradock subsequently explained that one of the “Tankie’s” duties at sea consisted in brewing cocoa during the night watches for the Navigator’s consumption. “I don’t know why Navigators are so fussy about cocoa,” he said, “but they’re all the same. I’ll show you how to make it. Ogilvie likes it frothy.”

They were sorry to leave the upper deck and the sunlit panorama of the Fleet and harbour, to explore between decks. Cradock explained that it was most important for Nick to learn the geography of the ship in the shortest possible time, in order that he might take messages for the Commander at a flying rush by the quickest route. He led them through the mess-decks, where the mess tables and stools were ranged in rows along the ship’s side, with the men’s ditty boxes and sennet hats in racks overhead. The basins out of which they ate their food and drank their tea and their grog, the tin mess-kettles in which their food was fetched from the galley, and served as wash-tubs for the mess gear and the men themselves, were all scrubbed and polished and burnished to a pitch of spotless perfection. In each mess a hand was peeling potatoes for dinner, which would presently be taken to the galley and cooked.

They dived down into dim store-rooms beneath the lowest mess-deck, each in charge of a seaman who looked much older and more knowing than any of the men on deck. They were the Yeomen of the Boatswain and the Carpenter, the Gunner and the Engineer, and Nick thought their store-rooms more fascinating than anything he had seen. They all had burnished steel decks and little mats inside the doors, and were ornamented according to the individual tastes of the custodian. The Gunner’s Yeoman had arranged a trophy of armourer’s tools on a shield, and hung it on the bulkhead. The Carpenter’s Yeoman had burnished all his axes and arranged them in a pattern. The Boatswain’s Yeoman, whose store was full of cordage and blocks and shackles, things difficult to arrange in a pattern, had photographs of his wife and children standing on bins of tallow, holystone, and caustic soda. Best of all they liked the victualling store-rooms, full of chests of tea, sacks of peas and beans, casks of salt beef and pickled pork, cases of biscuit, and bags of flour, and impregnated with a rich, spicy, and rather heady smell that had something to do with rum.

They worked aft gradually, visiting the submerged torpedo flat on the way, till they came to the officers’ cabins, the ship’s office, and the wardroom. Inside the ship’s office they caught a glimpse of Freyer, writing in a ledger beside a Chief Writer, who was calling out a succession of numbers in a monotonous voice.

They returned to the gunroom in time for dinner, feeling very hungry and rather bewildered with all they had seen. Lascells, the Sub, was there consuming a glass of Marsala with the Assistant Engineer, and for the first time he deigned to acknowledge the existence of the newly joined midshipmen.

Cradock introduced them in turn, and Mr. Lascells held out a limp hand. He was a tall young man with hock-bottle shoulders, and a very long neck.

“You are uncommonly lucky,” he said to them. “You are three uncommonly lucky warts, ain’t they, Daunton?”

The Assistant Engineer, who looked a good deal older than Lascells and had a grumpy manner, said in a very deep gruff voice that it all depended.

“And why are you lucky—eh?” demanded Mr. Lascells. He eyed them in turn. Sheep began to blush.

“Hang it, Daunton, they don’t know. They haven’t realized yet.”

“They will,” said Mr. Daunton in non-commital tones.

“Don’t you know,” hectored Lascells in his rather high voice, “that you have come to the smartest cruiser in the Navy, commanded by the finest Captain who ever flew his pennant? If you don’t know this, I shall have to take steps—ha!—steps to bring it to your notice. Shan’t I, Daunton?”

“They’ll tumble to it,” grumbled Daunton in a bored voice. “Any of you like to sell me five shillings of your wine bills?”

“Certainly,” said Usher politely, not very sure what this meant, but anxious to propitiate the grumpy individual.

“All right. Pay you at the end of the month. José!” he bawled.

The Maltese appeared.

“Bring two glasses of Marsala and put them down to——” He eyed Usher gloomily. “What’s your tally?”

“Usher.”

“Down to Mr. Usher.”

Cradock reappeared and asked Daunton if he would conduct the new midshipmen round the engine-room after lunch. Daunton said he was blowed if he would, but having consumed a second glass of Marsala he changed his mind and said he would take them down and souse them in the bilge, which remark caused Lascells immense diversion.

Further pleasantries of this sort were cut short by the invasion of the mess by the other midshipmen, and the appearance on the sideboard of a huge smoking cottage pie. Little Freyer crept in with a smear of ink over his left eyebrow, and they all sat down to dinner. The cottage pie was followed by a jam roll, and when that was finished Mr. Daunton intimated that he proposed to sleep for an hour, after which he would personally conduct the three warts round the engine-room, the stokehold, the bunkers, and the bilge. He then extended himself at length on the settee, Lascells followed suit on what remained of the settee space, and the midshipmen were free to dispose themselves where and how they liked for the remainder of the dinner hour.

Nick, Sheep, and Usher joined Freyer on the booms and fed Gregory. Freyer told them about the Paymaster, who sounded a trifle eccentric. He was for ever counting his money, but it never came to the same total twice. There was either too much or too little. When there was too much he was delighted, and used to come into the office where Freyer and the Chief Writer worked, rubbing his hands and cracking jokes. When there was too little he used to get very depressed, and Freyer and the Chief Writer had to go along to his cabin and help him to count it all over again. “It’s really awfully silly,” said Freyer, “because there can’t be either too much or too little. It must be the same amount as he shows in his cash account.” When Freyer and the Chief Writer between them had got the money counted so cleverly that it was exactly right, the Paymaster shut himself up in his cabin and played the penny whistle to himself, lying flat on his bunk.

“Sounds a bit mad,” commented Usher. Freyer said he thought everybody in the Navy that he had come across was a bit mad. He added doubtfully that he hadn’t had a very large experience, and perhaps should not form hasty judgments.

“The Commander isn’t mad,” objected Nick promptly. “He’s a ripper.”

Freyer agreed. “There are, of course, exceptions,” he said in his grave old-fashioned manner.

Mr. Daunton awoke from his siesta even more grumpy in manner than before. He led them in silence down a steel ladder to the port engine-room, and indicated the cylinders, piston rods, and crossheads. “Triple expansion,” he grumbled, “see?”

“No,” said Sheep boldly, and blushed.

Daunton eyed him doubtfully. “Means steam exerts its power in three stages before exhausting to the condenser. You’ll learn all about that when you do your engine-room watch-keeping.”

He led the way to a stokehold. One of the furnaces was alight to provide steam for the dynamo. The others were black and cold. Two bearded stokers with ragged vests and fearnought trousers leaned on their shovels watching them. Opposite the furnaces yawned the opening to the coal bunkers.

“You can take a spell here when we get to sea,” said Mr. Daunton, “stoking one of the furnaces. Make you glad to get back to mother.” At a nod from the speaker one of the stokers threw open the door of the furnace, and they caught a glimpse of the white-hot hell of the interior. The heat seared their faces. “You try a four-hour trick in front of that,” said their guide grimly. The two stokers grinned reassuringly. They had hardly any teeth, but were big brawny men with muscles like prize-fighters. “We’ll send ’em down here during a full-power trial, eh, Murphy?”

“That’ll larn ’em, sor,” said the bigger of the two men.

“I’m going to do a job of work now that I am here,” said Daunton when they returned to the engine-room. “The engineers are the only people who ever do any work in the Navy, don’t forget that, see?”

His manner was so morose and gloomy that they decided he was speaking seriously, and all three promised earnestly not to forget his words.

“Well, hop off out of it,” said Mr. Daunton, and they retreated hastily to the gunroom.

After tea Nick wrote to his mother. He said:

“Darling Mother,

“We had cottage pie and jam roly-poly pudding for lunch. Could you please send me a pot of jam. All the others have pots of jam. One eats pickled cabbage on his bread. Everything is all right so far and I think——”

Here Nick paused and stared into vacancy for some time.

“I am going to like it all very much. The Commander is a ripper and so is the senior midshipman. We have been slinging our hammocks all day but to-morrow we start work. I am Commander’s doggie. He is a ripper. Don’t forget the jam, and give my love to Father and Ethel.

“Your loving son, “Nick.

“P.S.—Black currant jam.”

Again Nick stared into vacancy for a long time. Then he sighed deeply, crossed out “black currant” and substituted “strawberry.”

And that was all his sorrowing family had to satisfy the yearning of maternal, paternal, and sisterly hearts, when in due course the letter reached Cheshire.

Lascells was dining with the Captain that evening, so Daunton presided morosely over the gunroom dinner, and as soon after the meal as they could decently slip away, they retired to the chest flat. The midshipmen’s hammocks were slung in rows from the beams overhead. There was very little light and less ventilation, but they were glad to undress and turn in. Nick went to sleep almost at once, but a couple of hours later was awakened by somebody bumping against his hammock and a voice he recognised as Lascells’s talking very loudly.

“He’s mashed on my sister—ha! ha! ha! Fancy anybody wanting to marry Clara. Fancy having your Captain for a brother-in-law. I say, what a joke——”

“Shut up, don’t make so much noise,” said a voice Nick did not recognise. “Sit down and I’ll pull your boots off.”

“Don’t want my boots off. Going to turn-in in my boots. All the Lascells turn-in in their boots. Old family custom. He doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for. Ha! ha! Clara!”

“Shut up, you fool!” There was more laughter and noisy argument, and the voices grew confused and far away. Nick sighed and went to sleep again.