"Go where you will," said Mr. Jope cheerfully, stepping to the ticket-office; "go where you will, and sail the high seas over, 'tis wonderful how you run across that excuse. Three tickets for the gallery, please; and you, Bill, fall alongside!" He linked an arm in the Major's, who feebly resisted.

"Lord love ye!" said Mr. Jope, "the lie's an old one; but a man that played up to it better in appearances I never see'd nor smelt!"

CHAPTER XIII.

A VERY HOT PRESS.

The performance of _Love Between Decks_ had reached its famous fourth act, in which Tom Taffrail, to protect his sweetheart (who has followed him to sea in man's attire), strikes the infamous First Lieutenant and is marched off between two marines for punishment.

This scene, as everyone knows, is laid on the upper deck of his Majesty's ship _Poseidon_ (of seventy-four guns), and the management, as a condition of engaging Mr. Orlando B. Sturge (who was exacting in details), had mounted it, at great expense, with a couple of lifelike guns, R. and L., and for background the overhang of the quarter-deck, with rails and a mizzen-mast of real timber against a painted cloth representing the rise of the p.o.o.p.

At the moment when our Major entered the gallery, the heated atmosphere of which well nigh robbed him of breath, Tom Taffrail had taken up his position on the prompt side, close down by the footlights, and thrown himself into att.i.tude to deliver the speech of manly defiance which provokes the Wicked Lieutenant to descend into the waist of the ship and receive the well-merited weight of the hero's fist. The hero, with one foot planted on a coil of real rope and one arm supporting the half-inanimate form of his Susan, in deference to stage convention faced the audience, while with his other arm uplifted he invoked vengeance upon the oppressor, who scowled down from the quarterdeck rail.

"Hear me, kyind Heaven!" declaimed Tom Taffrail, "for Heaven at least is my witness, that beneath the tar-stained shirt of a British sailor there may beat the heart of a _Man_!"--

As a matter of fact, Mr. Sturge was clothed in a clean blue and white striped shirt, with socks to match, white duck trousers no less immaculate, with a huge glittering bra.s.s buckle on the front of his belt, two buckles of smaller size but similar pattern on his polished dancing shoes, and wore his hair in a natty pigtail tied with cherry-coloured ribbon.

--"Hear and judge betwixt me and yonder tyrant! Let the storm off Pernambuco declare who first sprang to the foretop and thence aloft to strike t'gallant yards while the good ship _Poseidon_ careened before its hurricane rage! Ay, and when the main topm'st went smack-smooth by the board, who was it slid like lightning to the deck and, with hands yet glowing from the halliards, plucked forth axe and hewed the wreckage clear? But a truce to these reminders! 'Twas my duty, and, as a seaman, I did it!"

Here, having laid his tender burden so that her back rested against the coil of real rope, Mr. Sturge executed the opening steps of a hornpipe, and advancing to the footlights, stood swaying with crossed arms while the orchestra performed the prelude to his most celebrated song.

At this point Mr. Jope, who for some seconds had been breathing hard at the back of the Major's neck, clutched his comrade by the arm.

"You 'eard that, Bill?" he asked in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"Ay," answered Bill Adams. "He slipped down from the t'gallant yards by the halliards."

"Would ye mind pinchin' me?"

"Where?"

"Anywhere; in the fleshy part of the ham for choice; not too vigorous, but just to make sure. He come down by the halliards.

_Which_ halliards?"

"Signal halliards, belike. Damme, why not? Aboard a vessel with the decks laid ath'artships--"

"An' the maintopm'st went smack-smooth--you _'eard_ him? What sort o' spar--"

"Dunno"--Bill paused and audibly shifted his quid--"unless 'twas a parsnip. The mizz'n-m'st seems to have stood it, though her stays _do_ lead to a bra.s.s-headed nail in the scuppers."

"In a gale off Pernambuco . . . 'twas his duty, and as a seaman he did it," quoted Mr. Jope in a low voice thrilled with awe. "Bill, we must 'ave him. If he did but 'alf of it, we must 'ave him. In them togs, aboard the _Vesuvius_ now . . . Lord love me, he's dancin'!"

"Ay, and he's going to sing."

"_Sing!_"

"Mark my word, he's going to sing," repeated Bill Adams with confidence; and, sure enough, Mr. Sturge stepped forward and with a reproachful glance at the empty Royal box uplifted his voice:

"When honest Jack across the foam Puts forth to meet the Gallic foe, His tributary tear for home He wipes away with a Yow-heave-ho!

Man the braces, Take your places, Fill the tot and push the can; He's a lubber That would blubber When Britannia needs a _Man_!"

"S'help us, Bill, what are they doing _now_?" gasped Ben Jope, as two groups of seamen, one at either wing, took up the chorus; tailing on to a cable and heaving while they sang.

"Fishin' the anchor," said Bill pensively; "_that's_ what they're doin'. She carries her catheads amidships. The ship's all right, once you get the hang of her."

"Bill, we _must_ 'ave him!"

"Hush it, you swab! He's beginning again."

"But when among the heaving clouds, Aloft, alone, with folded arms, He hangs _her_ portrait in the shrouds And feeds on Susan's glowing charms, To th' horizon Soft his sighs on Angel wings the zephyrs fan, While his feelings, Deep revealings, Prove that Jack remains a _Man_!"

"'Ear that, Bill?"

"O' course I 'ears it. Why not? I _knew_ there was something funny wi' them shrouds. They carries the family portraits on 'em--it's all right, I tell you."

"But 'feeds,' he said."

"Meanin' the picter; though maybe they sling the meat-safe there as well. They _ought_ to."

"They _couldn't_!"

"Why not? Well, then, p'raps they strikes it now and then _in_ a gale--off Pernambuco--along wi' the t'gallant yards. Stow yer talk, Ben Jope, and let a man listen."

The audience encored Mr. Sturge's song vociferously; and twice he had to repeat it before they would suffer him to turn again and defy the still scowling Lieutenant.

"Ay, sir; the British seaman, before whose collective valour the crowned tyrants of Yurope shrink with diminished heads, dares to proclaim himself a _Man_, and in despite of any petty tyrant of the quarter-deck. Humble his lot, his station, may be. Callous he himself may be to the thund'ring of the elements or the guns of his country's foemen; but never will he be found irresponsive to female distress in any shape or form. Leftenant Vandeloor, you have upraised your hand against A Woman; you have struck her a Blow.

In your teeth I defy you!" (Frantic applause.)

"My word, Bill, the Duke ought to been here to 'ear that!"

"But why isn't he here?" asked the Major.

"Well," answered Ben Jope slowly, with a glance along the crowded gallery and a wink at Bill Adams (but the Major saw neither the glance nor the wink), "to-night, d'ye see, 'twouldn't ha' been altogether the thing. He's not like you and me, the Duke isn't.

He has to study appearances."

"I should have thought that, if his Royal Highness studied popularity, he could scarcely have found a better occasion."

"Look here," put in Mr. Jope sharply, "if the Duke chooses to be drunk to-night, you may lay to it he knows his business. And look here again; I took you for a victim o' misfortun', but if so be as you're startin' to teach the R'yal family tact, w'y, I changes my opinion."

"If I could only find my friend Basket, or get a message taken to him," ingeminated the Major, whose teeth were chattering despite the tropical atmosphere of the gallery.

"Eh? What's that you're sayin'?" the seaman demanded in a sudden sharp tone of suspicion. "If there's a friend o' your'n in the gallery, you keep by me and point him out when the time comes.

I ain't a-makin' no promise, mind; no more than to say it may be the better for him; but contrariwise I don't allow no messages, and you may belay to that!"

"But my friend is not in the gallery. He has a reserved seat somewhere."