Before we left Singapore, we got the English papers with the accounts of
all our fighting, and I was awfully proud to see my name in among the
severely wounded, and rather expected that they would make a great fuss
of us all at Portsmouth. They didn’t, however, and when I went ashore
to give "Blucher" a run, and got out of the dockyard gates on to the
"Hard", I was disappointed that people didn’t take the least notice; you
know the funny sort of feeling one has. I kept on thinking whether any
of them had an idea that I had been the captain of the junk _Sally_, and
had been all that terrible night in the walled house.
Wasn’t it strange for Mr. Hobbs and Sally to turn up there whilst we
were paying off? A lot of our chaps think that she’s "spoony" on
Captain Marshall, but I rather think that she’d be "spoony" on anyone
who was tall and good looking—if he took any notice of her.
Mr. Travers thinks so too, because I heard him tell Captain Marshall so;
but he only "hee-hawed", and said something about "sour grapes".
She was jolly smartly rigged out, and Webster said she looked a perfect
"knock out"; and she came down into the gunroom one afternoon with
Captain Marshall, and, I suppose, had forgotten about poor old Withers,
because she wanted to play the piano. Mr. Langham sent for the armourer
to force the lock, and it was Miller who came, and she recognized him,
and asked him if he remembered carrying her across the garden in that
walled house. He got frightfully red and out of breath, and scratched a
lot of veneer off the piano.
Mrs. Lester came to stay at Portsmouth, and was jolly nice to me. She
came so that the Chinese gun could be properly presented to her, and the
men were awfully pleased.
You remember Martin, the marine, and how he had made me so tired by
telling me so often about having tried to save my life. Well, this had
taught me not to remind people about things like that, so I never even
led up to it; but Mrs. Lester said awfully jolly things about my having
shot that brute. She had brought messages from my mother and Nan, and
from lots of people; but my mother couldn’t come herself, because she
couldn’t afford to, and I had to wait to see her till we "paid off", and
I went on leave.
I did go to see Mrs. Scroggs and all Scroggs’s children. She had come to
live quite close to Portsmouth, and Sharpe, the petty officer, came with
me, and we had a very "weepy" time, because she was so miserable, and
cried a great deal, and said that it was awfully hard to make both ends
meet on her pension, even with what we had subscribed. The children
were all growing up, and wanting boots and things, and had most
tremendous appetites.