Chapter 7

Georgina, standing on tip-toe with excitement, suddenly emitted a shrill squeal of emotion. "Oh! there's Mr. Mainwaring in the first boat!"

"Who's Mr. Mainwaring?" inquired a small girl with a white bow over one ear, secretly impressed by Georgina's obvious familiarity with the inspiring figure in the stern sheets of the picket-boat.

"_Dear_ Mr. Mainwaring!" repeated Georgina under her breath, gazing rapturously at her idol.

White Bow repeated her query.

"He's--he's Mr. Mainwaring," replied Georgina. "My Mr. Mainwaring." Which is about as much information as any young woman may reasonably be expected to give another who betrays too lively an interest in her beloved.

The Torpedo Lieutenant waved his arm in a gesture of indiscriminate greeting, and the children responded with a fluttering of hands and dancing eyes. The steam pinnace was following hard in the wake of the picket-boat.

Jane, with the far-seeing eye of love, recognised the occupant instantly. "There's Mr. Standish," she said. "_My_ Mr. Standish!"

The nurse of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius James turned to the Providence that brooded over a small boy with a freckled face. "Did you ever hear such children?" she asked in an aside. "_Her_ Mr. Standish! That's the way they goes on all day!"

The other nodded. "Mine's like that, too; only it's our ship's Sergeant of Marines with him." Master Freckles's choice in the matter of an idol had evidently not lacked the wise guidance of his nurse.

The boats swung alongside in the calm waters of the basin. The Torpedo Lieutenant handed his freight of frills and furbelows to the Coxswain's outstretched arms. The small boys to a man disdained the helping hand, but scrambled with fine independence into the stern sheets.

"Sit still a minute." The Indiarubber Man counted. ". . . Eight--twelve! Hallo! Six absentees---- No, Corney, you can't steer, because I'm going to clap you all below hatches the moment we get outside." He raised his voice, hailing the picket-boat. "All right, Torps?" The Torpedo Lieutenant signified that they were all aboard the lugger, and off they went.

The nurses assembled on the end of the jetty waved their handkerchiefs with valedictory gestures; the wind caught their shrill farewells and tossed them contemptuously to where the gulls wheeled far overhead.

"My! Isn't it blowing!" said the small boy in freckles, indifferent to his nurse's lamentations of farewell. "Look at Nannie's skirts, like a balloon. . . ."

"Yes," agreed the Torpedo Lieutenant gravely. "It's what's called a typhoon. I've only seen one worse, and that was the day I sailed in pursuit of Bill Blubbernose, the Bargee Buccaneer."

Georgina cast him a glance of passionate credence.

"Oh!" gasped Freckles, "have you really chased pirates?" The Torpedo Lieutenant nodded. A certain three weeks spent in an open cutter off the coast of Zanzibar as a midshipman still remained a vivid recollection.

"Tell us about it," said the children, and snuggled closer into the shelter of the Torpedo Lieutenant's long arms.

The steamboats drew near the ship, and in the reeling stern-sheets of the steam-pinnace the Indiarubber Man stood holding two small figures by the collars--two small figures whose heads projected far beyond the lee gunwale. They were Cornelius James and the young gentleman whose valiant soul had yearned for shooting galleries and eke raspberry puffs. And, horror of horrors! the little girls were laughing.

The picket-boat had no casualties to report, and as she went plunging alongside, the Junior Watchkeeper (in sea-boots at the bottom of the ladder) heard the Torpedo Lieutenant say:

"We cut their noses off and nailed them to the flying jibboom."

"And what happened then?" gasped the enthralled Freckles as he was picked up and hoisted over the rail on to the spray-splashed ladder.

"And they all lived happily ever afterwards," murmured the Torpedo Lieutenant absently. "Come on, who's next? One, two, three--on the next wave. _Hup_ you go!"

At the top of the ladder to greet each small guest stood the mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius James. She had lunched on board with her husband and had spent the early part of the afternoon fashioning a garment for Father Neptune--

"That the feast might be more joyous, That the time might pass more gaily, And the guests be more contented,"

quoted the First Lieutenant with his twisted smile, as he tried it on.

The quarterdeck had been closed in with an awning and side curtains of canvas that made all within as snug as any nursery. The deck had been dusted with French chalk; bright-coloured flags draped the canvas walls; the band was whimpering to start.

Cornelius James and his fellow sufferer were not long in recovering from their indisposition; a glass of milk and biscuits soon restored matters to the normal, and together they sallied forth to sample the joys that had been prepared for them.

There were windsails stretched from the after-bridge to mattresses on the quarter-deck, down which one shot through the dizzy darkness to end in a delicious "wump" at the bottom. The after-capstan was a roundabout, with its squealing passengers suspended from capstan-bars. Each grim twelve-inch gun had a saddle strapped round the muzzle, on which one sat, thrilled and ecstatic, while the great guns rose slowly to extreme elevation and descended again to mundane levels.

There were pennies for the venturesome, to be extracted at great personal risk from an electric dip; in a dark casemate a green light shivered in a little glass tube; you placed your hand in front of it, and on a white screen a skeleton hand appeared in a manner at once ghostly and delightful. Cornelius James returned to the quarter-deck as one who had brushed elbows with the Black Arts. "But I wish I could see right froo my own tummy," he confided, sighing, to the First Lieutenant.

The First Lieutenant, however, was rather _distrait_; he glanced constantly upwards at the bellying awning overhead and then walked to the gangway to look out upon the tumbling grey sea and lowering sky. Once or twice he conferred with a distinguished-looking gentleman who had not joined in the revels, but, carrying a telescope and wearing a sword-belt, remained aloof with a rather worried expression. This was the Officer of the Watch.

"We'll furl it while they're having tea," said the First Lieutenant. "But how the deuce they're going to get ashore the Lord knows. I'll have to hoist in the boats if it gets any worse. Keep an eye on the compass and see we aren't dragging." The Captain came across the deck.

"You must furl the awning, Hornby; we're in for a blow." He looked round regretfully at the laughing throng of youngsters.

"Yes, sir. And I think we ought to send the children ashore while there's still time." As he spoke a wave struck the bottom of the accommodation ladder and broke in a great cloud of spray.

"Too late now, I'm afraid. They'll have to stay till it moderates. The wind has backed suddenly. Get steam on the boat-hoist and hoist in the boats. You'd better top-up the ladders. Pretty kettle of fish, with my wife and all these children on board."

3

Tea had passed into the limbo of things enjoyed, if not forgotten, and the guests had gathered in the after-cabin. "Children!" cried the mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius James, "a visitor has come on board to see you!" As she spoke, a gaunt apparition appeared in the doorway. He wore a gilt paper crown, and was dressed in a robe of the brightest green. Seaweed hung in festoons from his head and shoulders, oyster-shells clashed as he walked; in one hand he carried a trident, and on his back a heavy pannier. His legs were encased in mighty boots, a shaggy beard hung down over his chest; his eyes, sombre and unsmiling, roved over the assembled children.

There was a sudden silence: then the small girl with the white bow over one ear burst into tears. "Boo-hoo!" she cried. "Don't like nasty man," and ran to bury her face in her hostess's gown. Her fears were infectious, and symptoms of a general panic ensued. "I knew it," mumbled the visitor despairingly into his beard, "I _knew_ this would happen."

"Children, children, don't be silly--it's only Father Neptune. He's got presents for you all. Won't you go and say how d'you do to him! He's come all the way from the bottom of the sea."

Cornelius James pulled himself together and advanced with outstretched hand, as befitted the son of a post-captain on board his father's ship. "I know who you are," he asserted stoutly. "You're Father Christmas's brother!"

The First Lieutenant hastily accepted this new mythology. "Quite right," he replied with gratitude, "quite right!" Then, as if realising that something further was required of him, added in a deep bass voice:

"_Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum!_"

White Bow screamed, and even Cornelius James the valiant fell back a pace. Matters were beginning to look serious, when the Torpedo Lieutenant appeared, rather out of breath. "Sorry we had to rush away just now, but we had to furl the awning----" His quick eye took in the situation at a glance.

"Hallo! old chap," he cried, and smote the dejected Father Neptune on the back. "I _am_ delighted to see you! How are all the mermaids and flying-fish? Bless my soul! what have you got in this pannier--dolls . . . lead soldiers, air-guns! I _say_----"

The children rallied round him as the children of another age must have rallied round Saint George of England.

"Don't like nasty old man," repeated White Bow, considering the First Lieutenant with dewy eyes. "Nasty cross old man." The visitor from the bottom of the sea fumbled irresolutely with his trident.

"Is it really Father Christmas's own brother?" queried a small sceptic, advancing warily.

"Of course it is! Look here, look at all the things he's brought you," and in an undertone to the First Lieutenant, "Buck up, Number One, don't look so frightened!" They unslung the pannier and commenced to unpack the contents; the children gathered round with slowly returning confidence, and by twos and threes the remainder of the hosts returned from the upper-deck.

"Why aren't they all wet if they've come from the bottom of the sea?" demanded Freckles the materialist. "Why isn't Father Christmas's brother wet?"

They looked round in vain. Father Christmas's brother had vanished.

At that moment the Captain entered and sought his wife's eye. For a few moments they conferred in an undertone; then she laughed, that clear confident laugh of hers with which they had shared so many of life's perplexities.

"Children!" she cried, "listen! Here's an adventure! We've all got to sleep on board to-night!"

"Oh, mummie!" gasped Georgina with rapture, "how _lovely_!" This was a party, and no mistake. "Can I sleep in Mr. Mainwaring's cabin?"

"And can I sleep in Mr. Standish's cabin?" echoed Jane earnestly. "And we needn't go to bed for hours and hours, need we?" chimed in Cornelius James.

"Where are they to sleep?" asked the Captain's wife, turning to the Torpedo Lieutenant with laughter still in her eyes. "I never thought of that. One always has spare rooms in a house, but a battleship is so different. . . ."

"It's all right," he replied. "I've arranged all that. There are a lot of people ashore: the children can use their cabins, and some of us can sling in cots for the night. They'll have to wear our pyjamas. . . . But I don't know about baths----"

"I think they must have plenary absolution from the tub to-night." She glanced at the tiny watch at her wrist. "Now then, children, half an hour before bed time: one good romp. What shall we play?"

"Oranges and lemons," said Georgina promptly, and seized the Indiarubber Man's hand.

"I don't know the words," replied her partner plaintively; "I only 'knows the toon,'" as the leadsman said to the Navigator.

So the children supplied the words to the men's bass accompaniment; the Captain and his wife linked hands. The candle came to light them to bed; the chopper came to chop off a head; and at the end a grand tug-of-war terminated with two squealing heaps of humanity in miniature subsiding on top of the Young Doctor and the A.P.

Then they played "Hunt the slipper," at which Torps, with his long arms, greatly distinguished himself, and "Hide the thimble," at which Double-O Gerrard, blinking through his glasses straight at the quarry without seeing it, was hopelessly disgraced. "General Post" and "Kiss in the Ring" followed, and quite suddenly the mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius James decreed it was time for bed, and the best game of all began.

The Captain's wife gathered six pairs of vasty pyjamas over her arm. "I'll take the girls all together and look after them in my husband's cabin," she said. "We'll come along when we're ready. Will you all look after the boys?"

Freckles fell to the lot of the Junior Watchkeeper; David, specialist in raspberry puffs, had already attached himself to the Indiarubber Man. The A.P. found himself leading off a young gentleman with an air-gun which he earnestly desired as a bed-fellow. The remaining two, red-headed twins who had spent most of the afternoon locked in combat, were in charge of Torps and the Young Doctor.

"Where's Cornelius James?" asked the First Lieutenant suddenly. "What a day, what a day!" A search party was promptly instituted, and the Captain's son at last discovered forward in the Petty Officers' mess. Here, seated on the knee of Casey, his father's coxswain, he was being regaled with morsels of bloater, levered into his willing mouth on the point of a clasp knife, and washed down by copious draughts of strong tea out of a basin.

"I went to say 'Good night' to Casey," explained the delinquent as he was being led back to civilisation, "and Casey said I ought to be hungry after mustering my bag this afternoon. What does that mean?"

"I shouldn't listen to everything Casey tells you," replied the First Lieutenant severely.

"That's what daddy says sometimes," observed Cornelius James. "But I like Casey awfully. Better'n Nannie. He taught me how to make a reef-knot, an' I can do semaphore--the whole alphabet . . . nearly."

"Here we are," interrupted his harassed mentor, stopping before the door of his cabin. "This is where you've got to sleep." He lifted his small charge on to the bunk. "Now then, let's get these shoes off. . . ."

The flat echoed with the voices of children and the sounds of expostulation. The Marine sentry (specially selected for the post "on account of 'im 'avin' a way with children," as the Sergeant-Major had previously explained to the First Lieutenant) drifted to and fro on his beat with a smile of ecstatic enjoyment on his faithful R.M.L.I. features. For some moments he hovered outside the Junior Watchkeeper's cabin. There were indications in the conversation drifting out through the curtained doorway that all was not well within. At length Private Phillips could contain himself no longer. "Better let me do it, sir. Bein' a married man, sir, I knows the routine, in a manner o' speakin' . . ." he said, and plunged into the fray.

"Oh, is that you, Phillips?" the relieved voice of the Junior Watchkeeper was heard to say. "I can't get the lead of this infernal rice-string--don't wriggle, Jim--it's rove so taut. . . ."

"What '_normous_ pyjamas," said Cornelius James, suffering himself to be robed in his night-attire. The operation was conducted with some difficulty because of the sheathed sword which the visitor had found in a corner of his host's cabin and refused thereafter to be parted from. "Have you ever killed anyone with this sword?" A blustering sea broke against the ship's side and splashed the glass of the scuttle with spray. "Hark at the waves outside! Can't I have the window open? Shall I say my prayers to you?"

"No," replied the First Lieutenant, with a little wry smile, as the shadow-fingers of the might-have-been tightened momentarily round his heart. "No, I think you'd better wait till Mummie comes." Shrill voices and peals of laughter sounded outside. "Here she is now."

He stepped outside, and met the mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius James at the head of her flock.

"Here we are," she exclaimed, laughing. "But, oh, Mr. Hornby, our pyjamas are so _huge_!"

"So are ours," said the First Lieutenant, and stooped to gather into his arms a pathetic object whose pyjama coat of many colours almost trailed along the deck. "Cornelius James wants you to go and hear him say his prayers. . . . I will find sleeping quarters for this one."

Ten minutes later the last child had been swung into its unaccustomed sleeping quarters; the twins in adjacent cabins had ceased to hurl shrill defiance at each other; and silence brooded over the flat. By the dim light of the police-lamp Private Phillips paced noiselessly up and down on his beat, and the mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius James passed softly from cabin to cabin in that gentle meditation mothers play at bedtime.

On her way aft to the after-cabin she met the Torpedo Lieutenant. "The children all want to say 'Good night' to you," she said softly. "Only don't stay long. They are so excited, and they'll never go to sleep." Of all the men on board the Torpedo Lieutenant's heart was perhaps nearest that of a child. He tiptoed into the cabin-flat and drew the curtain of the nearest cabin.

"Who's in here?"

"Me," said a small voice. Torps approached the bunk. "Who's 'me'--Georgina?"

"Yes. Goodnight, Mr. Mainwaring."

"Good night, shrimp," replied her idol, submitting to the valediction of two skinny arms twined tightly round his neck. "Good night, and sweet dreams. . . . No, I can't tell you stories to-night; it's much too late. . . . Lie down and go to sleep."

In the next cabin, the sound of deep breathing showed that the small occupant had passed into dreamland. It was Freckles. Jane remained awake long enough to kiss his left eyebrow and was asleep the next instant. White Bow also was asleep, and nearly all the remainder drowsy. Cornelius James, clasping the First Lieutenant's sword, however, remained wide-eyed. "I'm so firsty," he complained plaintively.

"That's called Nemesis, my son," said Torps, and gave him to drink out of the water-bottle. "Fank you," said Cornelius James, and sighed, as children and dogs do after drinking.

"Good night, Corney. . . . Now you must go to sleep and dream of bloaters. Oh, aren't you really sleepy? Well, if you shut your eyes tight perhaps the dustman won't see you," and switched out the light. As he was leaving a drowsy voice again spoke out of the darkness.

"What did the Buccaneer say when you nailed his nose to the flying jibboom?"

"Please make me a good boy," replied Torps, somewhat at random.

"Oh, same's I do," said Cornelius James.

"More or less; isn't that sword very uncomfortable?"

But no answer came back, for Cornelius James, the hilt of the sword grasped firmly in two small hands, had passed into the Valhalla of Childhood.

VIII

THE MUMMERS

The sun had not long set, and its afterglow bathed the bay in pink light. It was a land-locked harbour, and the surface of the water held the reflections of the anchored Battle-fleet mirrored to its smallest detail. So still was the evening that sounds travelled across the water with peculiar acute distinctness.

On the quarter-deck of the end ship of the lee line a thousand men were trying to talk in undertones, lighting and relighting pipes, rallying their friends on distant points of vantage, and humming tunes under their breath. The resultant sound was very much like what you would hear if you placed your ear against a beehive on a summer day, only magnified a million-fold.

The ship's company of a super-Dreadnought, and as many men from other ships as could be accommodated on board, were gathered on the foremost part of the quarter-deck, facing aft. They sat in rows on mess stools, they were perched astride the after-turret guns, on the shields of the turrets, clinging to rails, stanchions and superstructure, tier above tier of men clad in night-clothing--that is to say, in blue jumper and trousers, with the white V of the flannel showing up each seaman's bronzed neck and face. Seamen and marines all wore their caps tilted comfortably on the backs of their heads, as is the custom of men of H.M. Navy enjoying their leisure. Above them all the smoke from a thousand pipes and cigarettes trembled in a blue haze on the still air of a summer evening.

They were there to witness an impromptu sing-song--a scratch affair organised at short notice to provide mirth and recreation for a ship's company badly in need of both. It was a ship's company hungry for laughter after endless months of watching and waiting for an enemy that was biding his time. Their lungs ached for a rousing, full-throated chorus ("_All_ together, lads!"). They were simply spoiling to be the most appreciative audience in the world.

On the after-part of the quarter-deck a stage had been hurriedly constructed--a rude affair of planks and spars that could be disposed of in a very few moments if necessity arose--that supported a piano. A canvas screen, stretched between two stanchions behind the stage, did duty as scenery, and afforded the performers a "green-room"--for, of all the ritual connected with appearing upon a stage, the business of "making-up" lies nearest to the sailor's heart. Provide him with a lavish supply of grease-paint, wigs, and the contents of the chaplain's or the officer of his division's wardrobe, and the success or otherwise of his turn, when it ultimately comes, matters little to the sailor-man. He has had his hour.

In front of the stage, a little in advance of the men, rows of chairs and benches provided sitting accommodation for the officers. They came up from dinner, lighting pipes and cigars, a full muster from Wardroom, Gunroom and Warrant Officers' Mess. The Captain came last, and his appearance was the signal for a great outburst of cheering from the closely packed audience. They had been waiting for this moment. It gave them an opportunity of relieving their pent-up feelings; it also gave them a chance to show the rest of the Fleet their attitude towards this Captain of theirs.

It was something they were rather proud that the rest of the Fleet should see.

Moreover, the rest of the Fleet, leaning over the forecastle rails and smoking its evening pipe, did see, and was none the worse for it.

A man might have been excused if he betrayed some self-consciousness at finding himself thus suddenly the cynosure of a thousand-odd pair of eyes whose owners were doing their best to show him, after their fashion, that they thought him an uncommonly fine fellow. The atmosphere was electrical with this abrupt, boyish ebullition of feeling. Yet the Captain's face, as he took his seat, was as composed as if he were alone in the middle of his own wide moors. He lit a pipe and nodded to the Commander beside him to signify that as far as he was concerned the show could start as soon as they liked.

All happy ships own a sing-song party of some sort or another. It may be that the singers are content to sit pipe in mouth in the lee of a gunshield and croon in harmony as the dusk settles down on a day's work done. Other ships' companies are more ambitious; the canteen provides a property-box, and from a flag-decked stage the chosen performers declaim and clog-dance with all the circumstance of the drama.