"Beg pardon, sir," apologised Dobbs, the gunroom steward, who from his comical little screwed-up eyes and manner must have been first cousin to my old friend the waiter at the "Keppel's Head," noticing the disdainful expression with which Tommy Mills continued to glance round the empty table, seeking in vain something appetising in the way of food for his hungry eye to rest upon,--"Beg pardon, sir, but the b.u.mboat woman didn't come off this morning. Sunday, you know, sir."

"That's all gammon, steward," said Master Tommy, still looking about here and there and finding nothing but a desert of empty dishes and dirty plates. "You ought to have sent one of the ship's boats ash.o.r.e if you didn't have enough on board for everybody in the mess. Our steward in the _Ill.u.s.trious_ always kept a good look out and sent himself for them when the things were not brought off in time. Why didn't you do the same?"

"I'm sure I'm werry sorry, sir," answered Dobbs, humbly, awed by the way in which little Tommy spoke to him; for my old comrade, I noticed, had lost none of his cheek since our separation, and now put on the air of a post captain at the least. "Begging y'r pardon, sir, but getting ash.o.r.e from Spithead, with a northerly wind a-blowin', ain't quite so easy as landing from Point and you're moored over against Blockhouse Fort!"

"That may be, but it's none of my business," said young Mills, loftily, waiving Dobbs's plea aside as a mere trivial matter. "I want some breakfast. What have you at all fit for a christian to eat? I see nothing here, nothing at all."

"Got some werry nice cold 'am, sir, in my pantry," cried Dobbs, with effusion, at this opening, glad of having something he could offer.

"Shall I cut you a plate o' that, sir--just try a wee bit off the knuckle end, sir?"

"All right, if there is nothing else, but I suppose it will be all bone and gristle, or as hard as a cat-block," replied Tommy; heaving a most portentous sigh of disappointment, though winking slily to me to show that he was only 'putting all this on' to astonish the other fellows, who were gazing at him with open mouths in wonder at his a.s.surance and grand seigneur manner. "You may get me a couple of eggs, also, while you're about it, steward. Mind they're fresh and have no chickens in them; I don't like poultry in the morning so early!"

Of course there was a loud guffaw at this, the three purser's clerks, who were eating bread and b.u.t.ter at the lower end of the table, not daring to put in a word of objection to the fare, seeming to enjoy the joke mightily.

Not so, however, Dobbs.

"Werry sorry, sir, but there's no heggs," he replied to this somewhat imperative order from Master Tommy, looking absolutely crestfallen at having thus to confess the shortcomings of his commissariat. "The caterer of the mess, sir, forgot to horder 'em, sir."

"No eggs!" cried Tommy, in the tone of tragic denunciation which Cicero might have used when exposing the iniquities of Cataline. "This is really impardonable!"

"Never mind, sir," hastily whispered Dobbs, holding out a gleam of hope, as he thought, "we'll get some at Plymouth as soon as we anchor in the Sound, sir. You shall get some there, sir, never you fear, sir."

"Plymouth? Why, I may lose the number of my mess myself long before I ever reach there!" said Tommy, contemptuously. "A caterer who forgets to provide eggs for the mess ought to be keel-hauled! Who _is_ the caterer, steward?"

"Mr Stormc.o.c.k, sir."

"Oh, indeed! Stormc.o.c.k, eh?" repeated little Mills, making me choke with suppressed laughter. "Then you can tell Mister Stormc.o.c.k, with my compliments, that unless he looks after the mess catering better, he'll precious soon find himself in foul weather with me!"

"Highty, tighty, my young bantam!" cried out the gentleman in question, the master's mate, a thick-set, full-grown fellow, old enough to be Tommy's father, who happened to be stretched at full length on one of the lockers at the further end of the gunroom, and was roused from his nap on hearing his name mentioned. "You seem to have a pretty considerable stock of impudence of your own for so young a shaver, and crow so loudly you must want to have your comb cut, I think!"

"Not to-day, thank you, sir, all the same," answered Master Tommy, demurely, but with a grimace that made us all laugh. "If I'm a shaver, of course I can cut it myself, can't I?"

"Hang me, but you _are_ a cheeky young beggar, the cheekiest we have on board, I think, and that's saying a good deal!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the other, utterly dumbfounded at his effrontery. "What are you rowing the poor steward about, eh?"

"Nothing--only I thought we might have had a better spread for breakfast than I see on the table as we're not yet at sea, that's all!"

"Oh, that's all, is it, young gentleman?" cried the master's mate, not liking to hear his catering criticised so frankly. "I'm sorry you didn't let us know we had a lord coming aboard; for, if we had heard in time, we'd have hired a French cook and laid in every delicacy you could desire. By jingo! when I was a youngster and joined my ship for the first time, I remember, I was glad enough to get a mouthful of salt junk and hard tack, without any of your bloaters and marmalade and foreign kickshaws--ay, and thought myself doocid lucky, I can tell you, if I didn't get a thrashing from one of the oldsters in the mess, if I grumbled, to make me relish my grub the better. Things are coming to a pretty pa.s.s nowadays for a young jackanapes to growl about his vittles and call his seniors to account!"

"Pardon me, sir, but my name is Tom Mills, not 'Jack Napes,'" said my cheeky chum, with meek subservience; and, turning then to Dobbs, he called out, "a cup of tea, please, steward, with plenty of milk in it."

"Werry sorry, sir, but there ain't no milk," replied Dobbs, still more apologetically, at this further demand which he was unable to supply, as if he grieved from his inmost heart thereat. "Mr Jones 'as 'ad the werry last drop, sir."

"We'll send ash.o.r.e for a cow for you, Master Impudence," put in Mr Stormc.o.c.k, ironically, before Tom could say anything. "Just wait a bit for your breakfast till we can get it off. Dobbs, you know the sort of cow the young gentleman wants--one with an iron tail!"

"Did I ever tell you that yarn about a cow we had on board the _Duke_, eh?" observed a tall gentleman with long whiskers, regular "weepers" of the Dundreary type, who was seated on another locker at the after end of the gunroom, right opposite to the irascible master's mate. "I mean the cow old Charley Napier took with him in his flagship when we went up the Baltic?"

"Good Lord! Jones, don't get your jaw tacks aboard now," cried Mr Stormc.o.c.k, as I p.r.i.c.ked up my ears on hearing the name of Sir Charles Napier, Dad's old captain. "We've heard that yarn of yours three times at least since we started fitting out; and, I'm hanged if it'll stand telling again!"

"Oh, very well, then," said the whiskered gentleman in a displeased tone. He wore a plain undress sort of uniform, I noticed, and Dobbs, the steward, told me he was the paymaster's a.s.sistant and kept the ship's books; though, he messed in the gunroom with all the midshipmen and cadets, like the master's mate, both of them seeming to my mind far too old to a.s.sociate on such a footing with a parcel of boys like ourselves. "I may as well spare my breath to cool my porridge! I a.s.sure you, Mr Stormc.o.c.k, I have no wish to bore you."

"Do tell us about the cow, sir," I interposed anxiously, afraid he would not continue his story. "I have often heard Dad, I mean my father, speak about Admiral Napier; and, I saw him myself when I was in London last summer. It was he who got me my nomination for a cadetship."

"Ah, then you know what a queer old customer he is?" went on Mr Jones, evidently mollified by the interest I took in his yarn. "It isn't much of a story, as Mr Stormc.o.c.k appears to think; but, if you care to hear it, I'll tell you all about it."

"I do care, sir," I replied, "very much indeed, sir."

"Well, then, youngster," he proceeded, "the Baltic fleet was lying at Spithead, where we mustered, you must know, before sailing up the North Sea; and one fine day, when we were about to weigh anchor for the Queen to review us as she pa.s.sed us in the royal yacht, up comes the dockyard tug alongside, with 'Sally,' that was the admiral's daughter, bringing along with her the old ship's cow and pigeons and a lot of other stock he had ordered from his place t'other side of Portsdown Hill on the road to Petersfield, 'Merchiston Hall,' I think he called it, or some other Scotch name sounding like that."

"Oh, yes," put in Mr Stormc.o.c.k, satirically--"I recollect it all quite well. Heave ahead, my hearty!"

The a.s.sistant-paymaster, however, took no notice whatever of the interruption, pursuing the even tenor of his narrative.

"The admiral had the cow and stock taken in; but just as his daughter Sally was coming across the gangway, he ordered her back, for the royal yacht was now coming up. 'Stop where you are, Sally!' he shouted out from the p.o.o.p. 'Stop, Sally, stop!' bawling out the words so loudly that you could have heard him in Common Hard, for he had a powerful pair of lungs had Old Charley, and could raise his voice above a gale.

Almost in the same breath, too, he sang out to the wives and friends of the sailors who had come out from Portsmouth to wish them good-bye, 'Now, all you women and people there! go aboard the tug with my darter, and when Her Majesty has pa.s.sed you may come back again.' Of course, they all cleared out at once, the master-at-arms and his corporals a.s.sisting them over the side; but when they were all comfortably landed on board the tug, she steamed off right away for the harbour, with a long string of wherries and sh.o.r.e boats pulling like blue n.i.g.g.e.rs after her, the men in them swearing like anything at being cheated of their fares. We all the while were getting up anchor and in another minute or two were under weigh. Captain Gordon, who was the admiral's flag captain, spoke to him about the poor watermen and b.u.mboat women being robbed of their money by our starting so suddenly; but he could get no satisfaction from old Charley. 'b.u.mboat women be hanged!' was all he said. 'Let 'em take their payment out of the fore tops'l, and the main topgallant s'l shall be witness to the bargain!' With that, he orders the men, who were muttering to be piped down."

"But the cow, sir," said I, on the paymaster's a.s.sistant thus coming to a conclusion, without alluding to what I considered the princ.i.p.al point of his story. "You haven't told us yet about that, sir."

"Oh, yes, I forgot," said he. "It was a fine beast, I remember, one of the red Alderney breed. Well, this cow was first stowed away in a pen the admiral had rigged up for her on the starboard side of the main deck, forrud; but on the gunner objecting to the mess the animal made there, she was then shifted to the port side, in the middle of the mess deck of the foretopmen. Here, too, she was found such a nuisance that the hands in a very short time determined to get rid of her as quickly as they could, either by fair means or foul; and, of course, they managed this right enough. Let sailors alone for that!"

"But, how did they manage it, sir?" asked Tommy Mills, who appeared to take as much interest in the narrative as myself. "Did they kill her, or chuck her overboard?"

"They did neither directly; but, indirectly, I may say they did both,"

answered Mr Jones, enigmatically, smiling and pulling his long whiskers caressingly through his fingers, as if particularly proud of these hirsute adornments. "The fact was, the unprincipled scoundrels gave her alternately buckets full of dry biscuit-dust and water which so inflated the poor beast that she became the size of a balloon in less than a week; and, if she had not through this been suffocated, she would of course have burst from the 'abnormal expansion!' That is how our doctor, old Nettleby, the same we've got on board here now, described it to the admiral when he was sent to inspect the cow, when the butcher reported her dead."

"What did the admiral say, sir, when he heard this?"

"Oh, he stormed and let fly a volley of picturesque language," replied Mr Jones to this inquiry of mine; "but what could he do? 'Throw her out of the bow port,' he said to the gunner, who pitched a yarn about it being the foretopmen who had done the fell deed. 'I don't know whether its your foretopmen or maintop-men that are to be blamed for it, and I don't care; but, you've stopped my milk between you, and I'm hanged if I don't stop your grog!'"

"And did he, sir?" asked little Tom Mills. "Did he stop their grog for it?"

"No," replied Mr Jones. "He was too good-natured an old chap for that."

"More than you were half-an-hour ago," observed Mr Stormc.o.c.k, sarcastically, rising up from his rec.u.mbent position. "You didn't think of the fellows coming down from their watch on deck, when you drained off the last remains of the milk, eh? Yes, my joker, you left this cheeky youngster here to go without any in his tea, making him think of home and his mammy! yes, all through your selfishness."

"Now, really, Stormc.o.c.k," expostulated the paymaster, "upon my word I didn't think of that, or I wouldn't have been so greedy. Really, now, upon my honour!"

Just then, the boatswain's call was heard ringing through the ship, and the drummers began beating to quarters, which made us all jump up.

"By jingo, I wonder what's in the wind now!" exclaimed Mr Stormc.o.c.k, making a grab at his sword-belt, which he had unfastened for comfort after his breakfast, laying it alongside him on the locker while taking his snooze. "It's always 'All hands,' or 'Quarters,' or the 'Fire Bell,' or something! I was just thinking of going into my cabin and having a fair lay off the land till noon, for there's nothing for me to do on deck; when here comes this hanged rattle of the drum, confound it, to upset my caulk. A fellow can't call his soul his own aboard ship--a sailor's life's a dog's life, by jingo!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE CHAPLAIN MAKES A MISTAKE, AND WE MAKE SAIL.

"Ah! my little friend, here you are, I see, in your proper place," said Commander Nesbitt kindly to me, on my ranging myself by his side on the p.o.o.p, where he was standing with the captain; for, being his special messenger, or aide-de-camp, so to speak, although it was not really my watch on deck again till late in the afternoon, I thought on hearing the drummer beat to quarters that I ought to go to him at once. "Every man to his station is the rule on board ship. That is only how order and discipline can be carried out with such a large company to deal with!"