"Deformed!" I repeated. "What do you mean?"
"Why, if you haven't any nails in your boots, or shoes--it doesn't
matter which, but we'll say boots for argument's sake," said my
tormentor quizzingly--"it follows, naturally and logically, that you
have none on your toes! In which case, my poor young friend, you must
be suffering from a malformation of the feet; or, in other words, you
are deformed, according to Euclid, _quid demonstrandum est_, twiggy
vous?"
"Oh, yes, I see," said I, feeling rather nettled, I confess, at his thus
taking a rise out of me. "You think that funny, I suppose; but, I call
it both silly and vulgar!"
"`Silly!' `vulgar!' You very small fragment of impudence," rejoined
Larkyns, highly delighted at being thus successful in "pulling my leg"
and making me angry, "I'll have you keel-hauled for speaking so
disrespectfully to your superior officer, sir. Beg my pardon instantly,
or--"
What he would have done, however, in case of my non-compliance with his
imperative request remains a mystery to the present day; for, as at that
moment, the commander, who had been surveying the maintop from the
poop-rail above us, hearing my funny gentleman's voice, which he had
raised in speaking to me, called out to him--
"Below there," he cried--"Mr Larkyns!"
"Yes, sir," answered my "superior officer" humbly enough, touching his
cap and looking up at Commander Nesbitt. "Want me, sir?"
"Yes," said the other, "There's something wrong with the bunt of that
tops'l, I think. It does not appear to me quite ship-shape somehow or
other, Mr Larkyns. Go up to the maintop and see what's the matter with
it at once."
"Ay, ay, sir," replied my tormentor, springing nimbly into the rigging
and shinning up the ratlines almost as soon as the words were out of the
commander's mouth, "I'll see, sir."
I looked up at the moment, and, catching Commander Nesbitt's eye I'm
sure he gave a sort of sly wink, the which impressed on my mind the
conviction that he must have overheard our conversation and, wishing to
give Master Larkyns some employment for his spare time, had sent him
aloft on a wild-goose chase.
The topsail was stowed snugly enough, so, my friend the middy's missive
was set-off to his chaff at my expense.
This conviction was confirmed when the commander immediately afterwards
ordered me to go forwards and tell the boatswain to get the fish tackle
clear for hoisting in the lower deck guns as soon as they came alongside
next morning in the dockyard lighters.
The old _Candahar_, you must know, although she was described in the
"Navy List" of that day as a "two-decker," had really four decks--the
upper deck, main deck, lower deck and orlop deck.
The distinction of the designation lay in the fact that she carried guns
on two decks besides her upper one, the armament of which, as well as
that of her main deck had been got on board easily enough when she was
in harbour; but, as she was then lashed alongside the hulk and the lower
tier of guns had to be taken in through the ports, this operation could
not be very well managed until her broadside was clear of the hull of
the other ship, so that the cannon could be lifted out of the lighters
and swung inboard, without any intervening obstacle blocking the way and
possibly fouling the hoisting tackle and steadying gear, which was not
the case until we reached Spithead.
Even then, it was no trifling task swaying the heavy guns out of the
holds of the two lighters that brought them out to us early in the
morning from the gun-wharf, one of these craft coming under our mainyard
on either side; for, the guns were long thirty-two pounders, weighing
fifty-six hundredweight, or nearly three tons apiece, and, even after
they were hoisted up in mid air from the lighters they had then to be
hauled through one of the midship ports, mounted on their carriages and
run along the lower deck to their proper position, when the breechings
and side tackle had to be fitted before the job was completed.
It was accomplished in good time, however, much to our commander's
satisfaction; and, by the aid of the fish davit with its tackle and
another purchase, it did not take more than a couple of hours to ship
the whole thirty of these guns that comprised our lower deck armament.
What formidable weapons I thought them! But, they were only babies to
the big rifled breechloaders now in vogue; albeit they did tidy enough
work in the destructive line in their day, as the annals of our navy can
tell, and other nations have experienced to their cost both on land and
sea!
"Pretty little barkers, ain't they?" observed Mr Triggs, the gunner,
noticing me looking at these "long thirty-twos," as they were styled,
and wondering at the light and airy fashion in which the men handled
them, tossing them about like shuttlecocks, so it seemed to me. "They
can do more than bark; though, they can bite too, I tell ye!"
"Oh, yes, I quite believe that, Mr Triggs," said I, taking advantage of
the opportunity of giving a "snop" to Larkyns, who was also standing by
and, of course, grinning as usual. "Not all smoke and noise, like some
fellows' talk."
"No, that they ain't, except, in course, when saluting," replied the
gunner, who was a plain matter-of-fact man and did not see the drift of
my observation. "But, with a ten-pound charge, now, they'd make a
pretty fair hole in a six-inch plank, I tell ye."
"How many of them, Mr Triggs," I asked, "have we got on board?"
"Of these long 'uns?" he said, patting one affectionately on the breech
as he spoke. "Well, we've jist fifteen here a-port and fifteen
a-starboard, which makes thirty in all on this deck. A power o' metal,
I tell ye!"
"Oh, I know that," said I. "But I mean how many of the same sort."
"There ain't any more of the same sort, I tell ye, but what you sees,"
rejoined the gunner a bit crossly. "The guns as is on the main deck and
upper deck are all short thirty-two's; and, they're thirty too, o' them
on the main, and twenty-two on the upper deck. They all of 'em carries
the same weight of shot, though not such heavy guns as these, being only
forty-five hundredweight each."
"There, young Vernon, you can put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
chimed in Larkyns, at this juncture, making a face behind the gunner's
back, which, had he seen it, might have altered the opinion that worthy
presently expressed of the speaker. "That's `the long and the short of
it,' as Mr Triggs has so eloquently explained!"
"Thank you, Mr Larkyns, for the compliment," said the gunner, taking
the remark as a tribute to his conversational ability. "I allers tries
to explain myself as well as I can. Is there anything more you'd like
to know, Master Vernon? I'm allers pleased to instruct any of you young
gentlemen when you asks civilly!"
"You spoke just now of a ten-pound charge," I answered. "I suppose you
mean of powder without the shot?"
"That's not _charged_," put in Larkyns, grinning. "The shot is given in
`free, gratis, for nothing,' as Paddy said."
"Yes, Master Vernon," replied the gunner, taking no notice this time of
Larkyns or his interpolation. "These here guns take a full charge of
ten pounds of powder for long range, and redooced charges of six and
eight pounds; whilst the charges of them on the main and upper deck are
either six or eight pounds, as the case might be, according to the
service required."
"It must take an awful lot of powder for all the eighty-four guns,
besides the shot and shell!"
"You can bet on that," replied Mr Triggs, moving towards the side and
looking through the port in the direction of the harbour. "We carries
about a hundred rounds of each charge for every gun; or, something like
ninety tons for our whole armament. That's what it takes."
"Ninety tons of gunpowder!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "Do you mean
that we've got to take such a quantity as that on board?"
"Of course I do; I always says what I means and means what I says,"
rejoined Mr Triggs, somewhat snappishly again, as if tired of the long
string of puzzling questions with which I was now bothering him, like I
used to do my dear old Dad. "By Jingo! I'm blessed if there it ain't
a-coming off now, I tell ye!"
"Coming off," I repeated. "Where?"
"There, booby," said Larkyns, slewing me round and shoving my head right
out of the port.
"Can't you see the powder hoy, there to your right, passing Blockhouse
Fort, at the mouth of the harbour?"
"That one flying the red flag, eh?"
"Yes, my dear Squaretoes; but we don't call a burgee a flag aboard
ships."
"I wish you would not call me Squaretoes, Larkyns," said I, peevishly,
for he hurt me, squeezing my neck in his tight grip, holding me out of
the port as if I were a kitten, so that I could not turn my head round.
"I hate nicknames. Do leave me alone, please!"
"Ah, would you, now!" he exclaimed in reply, as I tried to wrench myself
free. "Don't cry, my little pet, you haven't got your mammy here to
mollycoddle you!"
"Let me go, Larkyns, you're choking me," I gasped out, wriggling
violently and kicking out behind. "I'll hurt you if you don't loose me;
I will, indeed!"
He wouldn't release me yet, however, seeing I was out of temper; and,
some of the other middies not on duty gathering round, it being their
watch below, egged Larkyns on, suggesting that as I seemed to think
myself such a "big gun," I ought to be sponged and loaded and run out.
This humorous advice was immediately acted upon, a couple of the gang
laying hold of my legs in spite of my kicks, while another assisted
Larkyns, my tormenter; and the mischievous lot swung me backwards and
forwards in and out of the port, until nearly all my clothes were pulled
off my back and I hadn't a sound button left to my jacket.
I felt hot all over; and was in a fine rage, "I tell you," as the gunner
used to say.
Mr Triggs, meanwhile, had gone up the hatchway to see about getting on
board his ammunition, the vermilion-painted powder hoys I had observed
in the distance at the mouth of the harbour being now nearly alongside
the ship; and, all of a sudden, as my reckless shipmates were pulling me
almost to pieces between them in their mad prank, there came a cry from
the deck above, "Stand clear, below there!"
At the same instant, a coil of rope whizzed by the port-hole out of
which my body projected, the bight of it narrowly escaping my head in
its downward descent, wetting my face with the spray it threw up as it
splashed into the water right under me.
I could not restrain a shriek of alarm; and, wriggling more violently
than before in the hands of those holding me as I tried to release
myself, I managed somehow or other to jerk away from their grasp,
sending them all sprawling backward on the deck inboard, while I shot
out of the port like a catapult, tumbling headlong into the sea as if
taking a header after the rope!