I led the way towards the forecastle of the old ship, where the high
bulwarks, I saw, would screen us well from observation; although the
place, of course, was on the open deck, and visible from aloft, had
anybody been there on the look-out, anxious to take a peep at us.
In the old days, indeed, had this rencontre between `Ugly' and me then
took place, we might have fought in an enclosed arena; for the _Saint
Vincent_, I have been told, when she was first built, was fitted with a
poop and topgallant-forecastle, and went to sea with them, but Admiral
Sir Charles Napier, who was then commodore of the Channel Squadron, and
hoisted his broad pennant in her, found the ship so top-heavy when under
his command that he reported her to be unseaworthy on his return to
Spithead with the fleet, the result of which was that she lost her poop
and topgallant-forecastle; hence `Ugly' and I had now to fight under the
eye of the circling seagulls, always on the wing, screeching round the
old training-ship in their plaintive fashion, and diving ever and anon
into the tideway to pick up scraps that were chucked overboard by our
comrades, more sensible than us, down below at their dinners!
The deck was quite clear, the only person visible being the captain of
the afterguard, who was taking a snooze on a pile of canvas and old
sails that were stowed in a heap close by the main bitts; so, acting
under the chaperonage of Larrikins, who officiated as bottle-holder,
`Ugly' and I stood up, facing each other with our fists doubled, ready
for action, in a nice little open space that seemed to have been left
especially for the purpose between the heel of the bowsprit and the
knight-heads.
One of the other first-class boys had stopped up to see the fun in
addition to Larrikins, and he now offered himself as second to `Ugly,'
while Mick, of course, he being really the main cause of the quarrel,
naturally came forward as mine.
"Now, gents," cried Larrikins, seeing my antagonist and myself were duly
prepared, "yer can bergin the puffomince as soon as yer likes!"
Before waiting even for this mandate, `Ugly' made that mad-bull rush at
me which he had contemplated in the first instance at the commencement
of hostilities; but having had some considerable previous experience in
the use of those weapons of attack and defence alike, with which a
beneficent nature has so thoughtfully provided menfolk, from many a
rough and tumble fight on Common Hard with the mudlarks and other idle
scamps frequenting that place, who used to be always playing pranks with
father's wherry, trying to steal anything they could lay hold of, should
we leave her for a minute alone, I had no difficulty in avoiding the
onslaught of my opponent.
I kept my right hand well up on guard, across my chest; and, my left
fist being extended, I caught my gentleman a pretty tidy blow under the
chin that floored him as quickly as before.
"Bedad, Tom, ye had him there!" cried Mick, dancing round me in ecstasy,
while `Ugly's' second was picking him up. "Jist giv' him a onener in
his bread-basket, me jewel, an' ye'll finish him!"
This was not so easy a matter, however, as my chum supposed; Moses Reeks
being of that bulldog nature, as his looks testified, that would not
give in until thoroughly licked.
"Steady there," cautioned his second, trying his best to prevent him
from continuing his foolish mode of plunging attack; but the pig-headed
chap would persist in continually rushing in on my guard, and getting
knocked down as regularly, time after time, without his having a chance
of landing a blow at me, his fists ever whirling about aimlessly, and
being easily avoided by myself. "Keep yer bloomin' dukes out straight
in front of yer, silly! 'It 'im in the heye, I tell yer! Wy, yer
lettin' 'im 'ave hit hall 'is own way!"
"Blatheration!" cried Mick, my champion, quite as energetically, in
counter encouragement to me. "Go for him, Tom; go straight for him
agin! Faith, me jewel, you'll lave him soon so as how his blessed own
mother, bad cess to her, wouldn't know him, sure as me name now's Mick
Donovan!"
Urged on in this fashion on either side, we went at it hammer and tongs,
`Ugly' getting more cautious from his repeated familiarity with the deck
planking, and fighting more scientifically after the first two or three
rounds.
The consequence of this was that he got in one or two nasty blows with
his sledge-hammer fists on the side of my head, which made my ears ache,
besides giving me a fine black eye on the port side.
He could not manage to land me a facer, however, straight out, try all
that he could; and presently, on my feeling particularly `riled' by a
backhanded clout he succeeded in landing on my cheek, I drew out my
left, and, driving it home forwards with all my strength, let him have
it straight on the nose.
"Faith, ye tapped his claret for him that time, mabouchal; it's stramin'
out all over the dick."
Hardly had my chum made this observation, so highly expressive of his
unconcealed delight, ere `Ugly,' wiping away the blood from his face
with the sleeve of his jumper, and clutching hold of the lanyard round
his neck, to the end of which his knife was attached, made a spring at
me from the knee of his second, where he had sat dazed for half a
moment, giving vent to a cry that was more like the howl of a wild
animal than anything else.
I put up my hands mechanically, though I had hardly then imagined he
would have come so soon at me again; intending, however, more to guard
his attack than hit him any blow, for I really thought he had received
quite enough punishment already.
But he beat down my guard as easily as if my arms really had been made
of pipeclay, and then I felt a stinging sensation through one of these
and my left side, just as if I had run foul of a jelly-fish when
swimming off the `Hot Walls,' as I have done sometimes when bathing.
"Begorrah, the thafe's stabbed ye!" exclaimed Mick, putting his arms
round me as I fell back. "Whare now is ye hoort, Tom, alannah?"
"Oh, it's nothing," I said with a laugh, as soon as I got back my
breath, which had been knocked out of me by the rush `Ugly' made, the
knife having only grazed my ribs, while it had given an ugly gash to my
arm; though, probably, had I not guarded the blow, the sharp weapon with
which my antagonist had only been supplied, like the rest of us, that
very morning, would as likely as not have `settled my hash,' as father
used to say. "Pray don't make a fuss of it, Mick, or any of you
fellows. It will all rub off when it's dry!"
Larrikins and the other first-class boy had meanwhile collared `Ugly'
and taken the knife from him, to prevent his doing any further mischief
with it; and, as fighting was prohibited on board, and they might
possibly have been brought up on the quarter-deck as accomplices, should
the affair get wind and come to the notice of the ship's police, the
two, who no doubt were old and tried hands at the game, thought it best
to take my advice and `keep the matter dark,' as they said.
"I doesn't like that yere knifin', though," said Master Larrikins, when
Mick had bound up my arm with his handkerchief, taking it off his neck
for the purpose; and we had all turned to sneak below out of observation
before `quarters' should be sounded and the fellows come tumbling up
from dinner, `Ugly' concealing his battered face by dragging down his
cap over his eyes, and pulling up his collar as if he had toothache,
which no doubt was not very far from the truth. "Don't yer try on that
yere bloomin' game agin, you Reeks, I tell yer, my joker, or else yer
'ad better git yer coffin ready afore yer comes aboard this ship. Lor'!
W'y, if the `Jaunty' or `Jimmy the One' knowed it, yer'd be strung up
at the yard-arm this very minnit!"
The incident, however, passed off without notice from the authorities;
although the news of our encounter, with its almost tragic finale, got
about amongst the boys, most of the well-conducted of whom gave `Ugly' a
wide berth in consequence, the poor beggar being shunned thenceforth by
all but the ne'er-do-wells of the ship, that is, until the circumstance
became gradually buried in the past through the pressure of more
prominent events.
We managed, combatants and seconds alike, not forgetting the director-
in-chief of the fight, Master Larrikins, to reach the sanctuary of the
lower deck unseen by any of the ship's corporals, or `crushers,' as
Larrikins facetiously called them.
Not only this; through that wily individual's artful manoeuvring and
pathetic appeal to the gods of the cook's galley, we also contrived to
get some dinner, which, indeed, was particularly grateful to all of us
after our exertions.
The meal this day, being a Wednesday, consisted, for a change, of salt
pork and pea-soup; `pea doo and bolliky,' as it is styled in _Saint
Vincent_ slang.
"Faith, it smills good," exclaimed Mick, with a loud and prolonged sniff
of enjoyment, on the friendly Larrikins anon placing a bowl of the
steaming compound under his nose on the mess-table. "A'most as good as
tay, begorrah!"
"Ga-a!" cried our caterer. "Only a Paddy wud say that!"
"Bedad, I don't say much differ," said Mick, after quickly gulping down
the contents of his bowl with great gusto and much apparent inward
satisfaction. "Pay-soup an' tay soup--sure, they bees as loike as two
pays!" This certainly seemed a very logical deduction; but, before we
could argue the point out, or indeed laugh at Mick's Irish way of
putting it, the bugle sounded again for `divisions.'
As we all scrambled up the after-hatch, the ship's corporal, Brown, who
had helped me to sling my hammock again after I had been cut down the
first night I was on board, a very decent man altogether, stopped
`Ugly,' who was on his way up ahead of me.
"Hallo!" he said. "What's the matter with your face, boy?"
"I dunno," replied my late antagonist, trying vainly to hide the effects
of my fists with the sleeve of his blue jumper. "S'pose I run agin
summat a-comin' downstairs jest now!"
The sun, though, streaming down through the open hatchway, handicapped
all the yokel's attempts of concealment; and Mr Brown looked at him
with a quizzical expression on his face and a comical twinkle in his eye
that spoke a volume without words!
"It strikes me, young man," he said, with his broad good-humoured grin,
"that theer `summat' you knocked against must have been moving round you
pretty smart! Bless me, if it ain't fetched you one on your booby hatch
and another on the conk, and bottled up your peepers as well! What's
your name, boy?"
"Mo--ses," drawled out `Ugly' slowly, the poor beggar having a
difficulty in speaking, caused by the blow I first gave him on the
mouth, which accentuated his provincial pronunciation, "Re--eeks, zur."
"Oh!" ejaculated ship's corporal Brown. "Then, Mr Moses Reeks, you'd
better go to the sick-bay and see the doctor."
`Ugly' backed down the hatchway to comply with this order, as we were
just then ascending from the middle deck; and, from his withdrawing his
intervening figure, I became disclosed to view.
My arm, which had swollen up, and necessitated my putting it in a sling,
at once attracted the observation of the corporal.
"I say, youngster," he said, arresting my footsteps in like fashion,
"why are you bandaged up? What the--ah, what does this hanky-panky
mean?"
"I--I--I," I stammered, not knowing what to reply to this, as I did not
like to tell him a barefaced lie in cold blood offhand-- "I've hurt my
arm, sir."
"A-ah!" breathed out Mr Brown significantly; adding, after a pause,
"You're Tom Bowling, ain't you?"
"Yes, sir," I said; "that's my name."
"Well, it strikes me, Thomas Bowling," said he drily, in the chaffy sort
of way he adopted sometimes when hauling any of us `over the coals' for
some offence, performing his duty ever of guardian of the peace as
lightly as he could make it, "there's some sort o' circumbendibus
between this here arm of yourn and the spoilt face of that there joker
I've jist sent to the sick-bay. Thomas Bowling, Esquire, I fancy you'd
better foller him there, my boy."
Of course, I obeyed this command, a ship corporal's word, whether
jocular or not, being as good as an order and regarded as law on board
the training-ship.
Nothing was said, though, to either of us regarding our recent fight,
nor any embarrassing questions asked, when we reached the sick-bay.
Trimmens, the sick-berth steward, on the contrary, never moved a muscle
of his mahogany face when `Ugly' said that he had knocked his head
against the hatchway, and I told a `banger' by volunteering the
statement that I had broken a plate on the mess-table, and one of the
pieces had run into my arm. The wound in my side, which was really only
a scratch, I never mentioned to any one, not even to Mick, who thought,
and to this day knows nothing to the contrary, I believe, that I had
guarded off `Ugly's' thrust, and had been only stabbed in the arm.
Our injuries not being sufficiently serious to put either of us in the
sick-list, `Ugly' and I were sent back, after being lotioned and
`dressed' by Trimmens, to rejoin our division, then at their
`instruction drill' on the lower deck, and engaged making what are known
to those learned in the arts of the sea as `bends and hitches.'
To explain these properly to a landsman, I would say, for the sake of
easier comprehension, that the theory of a `bend' is based on the good-
natured truism contained in the old adage, `One good turn deserves
another'; while a second proverb, `Safe bind, safe find,' will equally
justify the existence of the `hitch'; but if the inquirer be not
satisfied with either of these definitions or explanations, whichever
term he may choose to apply to them, I can only advise him to follow
Captain Cuttle's injunction and `overhaul his Church catechism.'
To drop joking, all of us new hands were taught our work as well as
sailors could teach us, which was so effectually done that what we once
learnt we never forgot; this work being to treat ropes and rigging as if
they were reasoning and responsible beings, and to be capable of making
fast or letting loose, whensoever it so pleased us, anything under the
sun, from knotting a reef point to parbuckling a cask--a dodge by which,
I believe, Admiral Rodney, or Abercromby, or some other hero, during the
times of the wars, contrived to drag one of his ship's guns to the top
of a lofty mountain guarding the entrance to Castries, the harbour of
Saint Lucia, which was by this means captured from its French
possessors, and is now numbered with the rest of our West Indian
colonies.
This, however, is a `knotty' point.