Next morning, ere I seemed to have been asleep five minutes, it came
upon my dreams so suddenly, I was awakened by a terrible din of drumming
and bugling from the adjacent barracks close to the line of
fortifications which at that time enclosed Portsmouth--but whose moats
and ramparts were pulled to pieces, as I have already said, some few
years ago to make room for the officers' and men's recreation grounds
and gymnasium, with other modern improvements.
Then, I could hear the heavy tramp of men marching, followed by the
hoarse sound of words of command in the distance, "Halt! Front!
Dress!"
I assure you, I really thought for the moment that the long-talked-of
French invasion, about which I had been recently reading in my
historical researches, had actually come at last and that the garrison
had been hurriedly called to arms to resist some unexpected attack on
the town.
This reminiscence of my cramming experiences, mixed up in hotch-potch
fashion with the martial echoes that caught my ear from the banging drum
and brazen bugle, at once recalled the gruesome fact that this was the
eventful day fixed for my examination on board the _Excellent_; so,
dreading lest I should be late, I incontinently jumped out of bed in a
jiffy, proceeding; albeit unconsciously, to obey the last gruff order of
the sergeant of the guard, relieving the sentries.
This, as Dad subsequently explained, was the reason for all the
commotion, the sergeant parading his men as he came up to each "post" in
turn, with the usual stereotyped formula, "Halt! Front! Dress!"
Dear me! I did "dress;" though in rather a different sense to that
implied by the sergeant's mandate, huddling on my clothes in my haste so
carelessly that I broke the button off my shirt collar and put on my
jacket the wrong way!
All my hurry, too, was to very little purpose; for, when I reached the
coffee-room of the hotel below, after getting confused and losing my
proper course amongst the many intricate passages and curving corkscrew
staircases that led downwards from the little dormitory I had occupied
right under the tiles at the back of the building, I found that neither
Dad nor mother had yet put in an appearance for breakfast.
I was in such good time, indeed, that old Saint Thomas's clock in High
Street was only just chiming Eight; while the ships' bells over the
water were repeating the same piece of information in various tones and
the shrill steam whistle from the dockyard workshops hard by screeching
its confirmation of the story.
There was no fear of my being late, therefore; so, consoling myself with
this satisfactory reflection, I was making my way to the nearest window
of the coffee-room to look out on the harbour beyond as I had done the
evening before when, like as then, a big bouncing "Bang!" came from the
_Victory_, making me jump back and feel almost as nervous as poor mother
was on the previous occasion.
"Yezsir, court-martial gun, sir, aboard the flagship, sir," said the
wiry little cock-eyed head waiter, who was hopping about the room "like
a parched pea on a griddle," as dad expressed it, stopping to flick the
dust from the mantelpiece with his napkin as he replied to the mute
inquiry he could read in my glance. "Look, sir! They've h'isted the
Jack at the peak, sir, yezsir."
"Oh, yes, I see," said I, as if I had not observed this before and was
perfectly familiar with the signal. "I did not notice it at first."
"No, sir? W'y, in course not, sir, or else ye'd ha' known wot it were,"
answered the sly old fellow, ascribing to me a knowledge of naval
matters which he knew as well as myself I did not possess, thus
pandering, with the ulterior view, no doubt, of a substantial tip, to a
common weakness of human nature to which most of us, man and boy alike,
are prone--that of wishing to appear wiser than we really are!
"But, as I was a-saying only last night to Jim Marksby, the hall-porter,
sir," he continued, "court-martials, sir, isn't wot they used to was.
Lord-sakes! sir, I remembers, as if it were yesterday, in old Sir Titus
Fitzblazes's time, sir, when they was as plentiful as the blackberries
on Browndown!
"W'y, sir, b'lieve me or not if yer likes, but there wasn't a mornin'--
barring Sundays in course--as yer wouldn't hear that theer blessed gun
a-firin' for a court-martial, sir, j'est the same as ye heerd j'est now,
sir, yezsir! Ah, them was fine times, they was, for the watermen on
Hardway; for they usest to make a rare harvest a-taking off witnesses
and prisoners' `friends,' as they calls 'em, and lawyers and noospaper
chaps to the flagship, they did. The old chaps called the signal gun
`old Fitzblazes's Eight o'clock Gun,' sir. They did so, sir, yezsir!"
"Indeed, waiter?" said I, feeling quite proud of his thus speaking to me
as if I were a grown-up person. "But who was this gentleman, old Fitz--
what did you call him?"
"Old Sir Titus Fitzblazes, sir," glibly replied the coffee-room
factotum, flicking off a fly as he spoke from the table-cloth whereon he
had just arranged all the paraphernalia of our breakfast. "Lord-sakes,
sir, yer doesn't mean for to say, sir, as a well-growed young gen'leman
like yerself, sir, as is a naval gent, sir, as I can see with arf an
eye, haven't heard tell o' he? Well, sir, he were port admiral here,
sir, a matter of eight or ten year ago, sir, yezsir; and, wot's more,
sir, he were the tautest old sea porkypine ye'd fetch across `in a blue
moon,' as sailor folk say!
"Yezsir, I've heerd when he were commodore on the West Coast, he used
for to turn up the hands every mornin' regular and give 'em four dozen
apiece for breakfast, sir!"
"Good gracious me, waiter!" I exclaimed, aghast at this statement.
"Four dozen lashes?"
"Yezsir. Lor'! four dozen lashings was nothink to old Sir Titus, for he
were pertickeler partial to noggin', he were, and took it out of the men
like steam, he did!
"The ossifers, in course, he couldn't sarve out in the same way, not
being allowed for to do so by the laws of the service, sir; but he'd
court-martial 'em, sir, as many on 'em as would give him arf a chance,
and the court-martial gun used for to fire in his time here as reg'lar
as clock-work every mornin' at eight, winter and summer alike, jest the
same as when the flag's h'isted at sunrise, yezsir!"
"What an old martinet he must have been!" I said in response to this.
"Perhaps, though, the poor old admiral suffered from bad health, and
that made him cross and easily put out?"
"Bad health, sir? Not a bit of it!" exclaimed my friend, the waiter,
repudiating such an excuse with scorn. "It were bad temper as were
_his_ complaint.
"Lord-sakes, though, sir, he were bad all over, was Sir Titus; ay, that
he were, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. As bad as
they makes 'em!
"W'y, he 'ad the temper, sir, of old Nick hisself, ay, that he had!
"I don't mean the Czar of Roosia, sir. Don't you run away with that
there notion! No, sir, I means the rale old gent as ye've heerd tell
on, wot hangs out down below when he's at home and allers dresses in
black to look genteel-like. Wears top-boots for to hide his cloven
feet, sir, and carries a fine tail under his arm with a fluke at the end
of it, same as that on a sheet-anchor--ah, yer knows the gent I means,
sir!
"Well, yezsir, old Sir Titus wer him all over and must ha' been his
twin-brother; barring the tail, the admiral being shaky about the feet,
too, and his boots a'most as big as the dinghy of that sloop. They wos
like as two peas, sir, old Nick and he!
"Lord-sakes, though, yer must have heerd tell of him, sir, a young and
gallant naval ossifer like yerself, 'specially that yarn consarnin' him
and the washerwoman as was going into the dockyard one mornin' when he
were a-spyin' round the gates?"
"No, waiter, I never heard the old gentleman's name before you told it
me," I replied, curious to learn some further disclosures concerning so
celebrated a character. "What was this story?"
"W'y, sir, it's enuff a'most for to make a cat laugh, sir," he said with
a snigger, which he immediately flicked away, as it were, with his
napkin, resuming his whilom solemn demeanour. "It happen'd, if yer must
know, sir, in this way, sir, yezsir.
"Old Blazes--that wer the name he allers went by in the yard--was
a-hangin' round the main gate a-lookin' out for to see who comes along,
w'en all of a sudding he spies this good woman as was a-takin' in the
clothes from the wash for Admiralty House.
"That were where, yer knows, sir, he himself lived with Lady Fitz, close
by the College and jest to the right as yer goes in the yard?
"Lord-sakes, sir! The old admiral thinks he'd made a fine haul and that
the woman were a-smuggling in sperrits or somethin' `contraband,' as
they calls it, for the sailors who is allers stationed round the
commander-in-chief's office; and so, he orders her for to turn out her
big baskets there in the gateway afore all the grinning policemen and
men who was jest a-comin' into the yard.
"Ye never see such a show, sir in all yer born days; and the beauty on
it were that as he was in the middle of it sir, overhaulin' all the
things from the wash, and a-pokin' 'em about with his gold-headed stick
and turnin' over the ladies' fal-de-rals and all sorts of women's gear
that they don't like men for to see, sir, up comes Lady Fitzblazes
herself, a-going out for a walk.
"Seein' what he were after, she axes him wot he means by treating her
clothes like that there.
"Lord-sakes, sir, if he were old Nick, she had a temper, too, and were
as fiery as a she-tiger cat, she were; and, wot between the two, there
was then--Breakfast, sir? Yezsir, comin', sir!"
The wiry little cock-eyed waiter rushed off, with his napkin over his
shoulder, as he uttered the last words; and, wondering what had caused
him to break off so unexpectedly in the middle of his yarn, apparently
just when he was approaching the most interesting part of it, I turned
my head and saw mother and Dad were within the coffee-room, having
entered the doorway just behind me.
"Hullo, Jack!" said my father, "what was that waiter chap yarning about?
You seemed very much taken up with what he was saying."