THE FRENCH INSTRUCTOR.
SINGAPORE in the year 1919 was a very important naval station. During
the last six or seven years it had undergone great changes. The
practical abandonment of a powerful war-squadron on the China
Station, owing to the understanding with Japan, had led to a decline
in the greatness of Hong-Kong as a base. And what Hong-Kong had lost
Singapore had gained--with compound interest. Henceforth that little
island at the extreme south of the Malay Peninsula was to be the
greatest British naval station on the portals of the Pacific.
Additional docks, capable of taking the largest battleships afloat,
had been constructed, with smaller basins for submarines, of which
twelve of the "C" class and six of the "D" type were stationed there.
Bomb-proof sheds for seaplanes had been built, and the whole defended
by modern forts armed with the most up-to-date and powerful guns.
At half-past eight on the morning following the event recorded in the
first chapter a signal was made from the dockyard to the flagship of
Rear-Admiral Maynebrace. It read: "Commander-in-Chief to 'Repulse':
French instructor will proceed on board at four bells. Please send
boat to meet him at Kelang Steps."
The receipt of this message was duly acknowledged and then
communicated through the manifold yet proper channels to the
gun-room, where the midshipmen received it with ill-concealed
disgust.
They had planned a picnic along the well-kept country road that,
fringed on either side by unbroken avenues of fruit-trees and
luxuriant palms, led to the lofty Who Hen Kang. There they had hoped
to revel in the gorgeous glades, eating pine-apples and coco-nuts
till the services of the sick-bay staff might have to be called into
requisition. The prospect, ignoring the consequences of their
injudicious appetites, was most alluring; till almost on the eve of
the anticipated picnic came this disconcerting message that the
French instructor was about to come off to the ship.
French lessons with the temperature at ninety-eight in the shade!
This ordeal was sufficient to crush even the resistance of a
punch-ball, let alone a dozen irresponsible midshipmen.
Such terrors did not exist for Rear-Admiral Maynebrace. He had
forgotten all the foreign languages that had been dinned into his
head forty years ago, and since the King's Regulations say nothing
about flag officers polishing up their French, Maynebrace felt no
qualms. As it happened he had an invitation to meet the Governor.
With due ceremony the Admiral was piped over the side and his
motor-pinnace landed him at the Kelang Steps. Somehow there was no
conveyance in waiting, not even a rickshaw, so Maynebrace and his
flag-lieutenant had to walk.
On his way through the dockyard the Admiral's attention was directed
towards an individual who, even amidst the quaintly-costumed
inhabitants of Singapore, looked singularly bizarre.
The person who attracted the notice of the mighty Maynebrace was
tall, inclined to corpulence, and bowed in the shoulders. His
sun-dried face was partly concealed by a bristling black moustache
and an imperial. His hair, or at least what was visible outside a top
hat of wondrous style, was grey.
A white waistcoat, buttoned almost to bursting strain over his
_embonpoint_ and fitting where it touched elsewhere, was cut deeply
at the throat, revealing a wide, turned-down collar and an enormous
red silk tie. His frock coat was of a late nineteenth century
pattern; while his trousers, baggy fore and aft, were at one time
"white ducks": now they were saffron colour. Sky-blue socks and brown
canvas shoes completed the extraordinary "get-up."
As this remarkable personage passed the Admiral he hesitated a
moment, then removing his "stove-pipe" made a most elaborate bow, a
compliment that Maynebrace returned by stiffly bringing his right
hand up to the edge of his white-covered peaked cap.
"Rummy codger," remarked the Admiral.
"It's the French instructor, I believe, sir," said the
flag-lieutenant.
"H'm! fancy that on board my ship!"
"Regulations, sir; paragraph 574d says: Whenever practicable
instruction in French is to be given to midshipmen by French
instructors domiciled in British ports."
"Well, well. Thank goodness I'm not a midshipman," ejaculated
Maynebrace, as he frantically signalled to a passing rickshaw-man.
Whatever opinion the Frenchman had of Rear-Admiral Maynebrace he
wisely kept it to himself, and trotting along with short jerky steps
he reached the place where the gig from H.M.S. "Repulse" awaited him.
The coxswain could scarce suppress a grin as the instructor stepped
into the stern sheets. His surprise was still greater when the latter
took the yoke-lines and gave the order to "Pull you to ze ship!"
Bending their backs to the supple ash oars the boats crew made the
gig dart rapidly through the water. Some of them, possibly, wondered
what order the grotesque object in the stern-sheets would give as the
boat ran alongside the flagship. As a matter of fact he gave none,
but pulling at the wrong yoke-line he made the light gig collide bows
on with the accommodation ladder, jerking the rowers backwards off
their thwarts, and causing himself to sit ungracefully upon the
gratings.
Considering his corpulence the instructor picked himself up with
agility and, not waiting for the boat to be brought properly
alongside, made his way from thwart to thwart, gaining the foot of
the accommodation-ladder by way of the bows of the gig.
At the head of the ladder he was met by the Officer of the watch.
Greatly to the latter's disgust the instructor committed a most
heinous offence: he spat upon the sacred precincts of the
quarter-deck and coolly threw his cigarette end upon the snowy
planks!
So flabbergasted was the duty-lieutenant that he said not a word, and
before he could recover his composure he was anticipated by
First-lieutenant Garboard.
Garboard was an officer who owed his position to influence rather
than to merit. He shone in the reflected light of his parent, Sir
Peter Garboard, till lately Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth.
He was one of those officers, luckily becoming rarer, who believe in
cast-iron discipline amounting almost to tyranny. He would bully and
brow-beat at the ship's-police when there were not enough defaulters
to do the odd jobs requisitioned by the commander. When the childish
punishment known as 10_a_ (which consisted of compelling blacklist
men to stand on the lee side of the quarter-deck from 8 to 10 p.m.,
to have their meals under the sentry's charge and to be deprived of
grog and tobacco) was abolished, Garboard, then a junior lieutenant,
asserted that the Service was going, to the dogs. He was never
happier than when bully-ragging the men of his watch, under the plea
of efficiency.
Wishing to air his French the first lieutenant remarked: "_Il fait
très chaud, monsieur._"
The instructor whisked off his stove-pipe hat and bowed
ceremoniously.
"Show?" he repeated. "_Oui_, ver' fine show," and looked about him as
if he expected to see a floating Agricultural Hall.
"Blockhead!" muttered the discomfited Garboard as he beat a retreat,
signing to a quarter-master to take the Frenchman below to the
midshipmen's study.
The dozen disconsolate youngsters were already mustered, and awaited
with no great zest the arrival of their instructor; but their apathy
changed when the Frenchman appeared. They seemed to scent a lark.
But they were sadly mistaken if they hoped to rag that oddly-garbed
individual.
"Sit you down," he said sternly. "Sit you down. You tink I haf not
imparted ze instruction to ze midsheepmens before, eh? You make great
mistake. Ze first zat acts ze light-headed goat he go in ze capitan's
report: zen, no leave for a whole veek."
Taking up a piece of chalk the instructor wrote in a firm hand:--
"_Mon frère a raison, mais ma soeur a tort._"
"Now, zen," he continued, "zat young zhentleman with ze red hair. How
you translate zat, eh?"
Mr. Midshipman Moxitter's particular weakness was French translation.
It had caused him hours of uneasiness at Osborne and Dartmouth. By a
succession of lucky shots he had foiled the examiners and had managed
to scrape through in that particular subject.
Upon being asked to translate the sentence, Moxitter stood up,
squared his shoulders, and said solemnly:--
"'My brother has reasons that my sister's a tart,' sir."
A roar of laughter, audible even in the captain's cabin, greeted this
information. The rest of the midshipmen nearly succumbed to apoplexy,
while even the Frenchman was obliged to pull out his pink silk
handkerchief and press it tightly to his face.
"We vill not dispute ze point, monsieur," he said after an awkward
pause. "Ze affairs of your family are of no concern to ze rest of ze
class, mais you are a good-for-nothing rascal, I say. If you no
better are at ze rest of ze work on ze sheep zen I say you are a
young rotter."
For the full three-quarters of an hour the instructor bullied and
badgered the midshipmen in a manner that outvied Lieutenant
Garboard's treatment of the men. They had to submit: the alternative
of having their leave stopped by the captain put all idea of
resistance out of their heads. Finally he made each midshipman write
in bold characters, "_Mais, que je suis sot,_" and sign this
humiliating confession.
Gathering up the papers the instructor went on deck.
"Will you take any refreshment before you leave?" asked the officer
of the watch.
"No, sare, with many tanks. Permit me: my card."
The lieutenant took the proffered piece of pasteboard, and watched
the Frenchman go over the side. The coxswain of the gig had been
previously cautioned not to allow the instructor to handle the
yoke-lines again.
As the boat headed for Kelang Steps the officer of the watch glanced
at the instructor's card. It was written in a flowing hand:--
"_Jean le Plaisant, professeur de litérature et des langues,
Singapore._"
The second time the officer of the watch looked at the piece of
pasteboard more intently. He even tilted his cap on one side and
scratched his closely-cut hair.
"Fetch me the French dictionary from the wardroom," he ordered, and
the quarter-deck messenger hastened to carry out his instructions.
Seizing the book the lieutenant hurriedly turned over the pages, then
looked dubiously at the retreating gig, now out of hailing distance.
"H'm," he muttered. "I'll speak to the commander. By Jove! I
will."