"Trice up and lay out!"

By these being acted on, the wind was first "spilled" out of the three topsails, which were then lowered on the caps; and, the studdingsail booms being triced up to their usual place when not set, in the topmost rigging, the men were able to go out on the yards and commence reefing in earnest.

On the completion of this, the command was given to hoist away; whereupon the halliards were manned below and the topsails run up again.

"Trim sails!" sang out Commander Nesbitt as soon as he saw the middies and their men coming down from aloft. "Lee braces--brace up the yards!"

During all this time, though, the wind had been shifting to the westward and ahead; and, noticing the jib beginning to shiver and flap, the commander came to the fore again.

"Brace the mainyard sharp up!" he shouted; when, on the seamen at the bitts reporting that "the mark" was "down," or, in other words, that the yard had been braced up as far as it would go, the other yards were trimmed parallel and the active commander cried, "Belay the main brace!"

"By jingo, I think he might say 'splice the main brace' now, after all this jollification!" growled Mr Stormc.o.c.k, who had come up on the quarter-deck while the ship was thus being made snug for the night and left now under easy sail, consisting of the courses with reefed topsails and topgallants, as well as the jib and spanker and foretopmast staysail. "The poor fellows must be precious dry with all that cutting about up and down the ratlines, and I wouldn't mind a gla.s.s of grog myself."

"No, really, you don't mean that!" said Larkyns chaffingly. "Wouldn't you prefer a cup of tea, now?"

"Cup of tea be hanged!" rejoined the master's mate, angrily. "You youngsters of the present day are always thinking of your tea, like a lot of blessed old women! In my time, fellows at sea didn't go in for slops and mollycoddling, as all of you do now. By jingo, the gunroom might as well be turned into a nursery at once, with such a pack of children about!"

"At all events, we'd never be at a loss for a nurse, old chappie, with you aboard," said Larkyns, sn.i.g.g.e.ring. "Indeed, you'd make even a better one than we could get ash.o.r.e."

"Hey!" exclaimed Mr Stormc.o.c.k, a bit puzzled at this. "What do you mean?"

"I don't mean a dry nurse, you know, old chappie, though you said, you were 'dry' just now," replied Larkyns, laughing at his own joke. "Nor do I mean a wet 'un. No, old chappie, I mean a wetter-un, do you twig?"

"Phaugh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the master's mate, with a gesture of disgust, as he turned towards the binnacle to take the course the ship was steering, so as to lay it off on his chart and estimate the distance run and our probable position by dead reckoning. "A beastly pun like that is enough a make a fellow sick!"

"All right, old chappie, I'd better get out of your way, if that's the case," rejoined Larkyns, chuckling. "I'll go below and finish my tea, which I would certainly not have left behind me, with you about, had it been grog!"

With which parting shot at what was generally believed to be Mr Stormc.o.c.k's particular weakness, and one which had delayed his promotion, Larkyns hopped down the after-hatchway on his way to the gunroom, I following after him, nothing loth to have some little refreshment after my long stay on deck, this having made me hungry again.

Things were pretty quiet below, I found, most of the noisier spirits of the mess having eaten their fill and departed; and, fortunately, the gunroom steward had not forgotten us late-comers, there being plenty of the "water-bewitched" sort of beverage that goes by the name of "tea" on board ship, albeit we had to be content with an extra allowance of sugar in lieu of milk.

To make up for this, however, the good-natured Dobbs had thoughtfully reserved for the delectation of Larkyns and myself a fragment of some very stale cake, which, from the important air he a.s.sumed when presenting it to our astonished gaze, he evidently considered a great treat; and, I was really sorry at Larkyns making some unkind remark or other about Noah and the Ark in connection with this venerable dainty that, I'm sure, must have hurt the feelings of the steward, who meant to do us a kindness, no doubt, and, at all events, did his best!

At Four Bells, or six o'clock, I went on deck again with Mr Jellaby and the port watch, remaining on duty until the end of the second dog watch.

By that time, we were pa.s.sing the Bill of Portland, sailing close-hauled still down Channel on the starboard tack; but, I was so tired out that I could hardly keep my eyes open, only knowing what the quartermaster kindly told me, so on getting below again soon after Eight Bells, I turned into my hammock without troubling much at undressing, and was "as fast as a top" within less than a minute of reaching the steerage.

Next morning, on awakening, I was much surprised at everything being very quiet between decks, without any motion of the ship or rush of the water past her sides, and I wondered what had happened to cause this stillness.

On turning out, however, my wonder was soon allayed by discovering that we had made Plymouth during the small hours, and were now anch.o.r.ed in the Sound, midway between Mount Edgecombe and the breakwater.

I may add, that the mess table in the gunroom at breakfast clearly demonstrated our proximity to this very hospitable port, by the lavish abundance of milk and eggs, not to speak of bloaters and marmalade, so that even Tom Mills was satisfied.

He did not have the heart to take another rise out of the irascible caterer, Mr Stormc.o.c.k; while, as for Plumper, the senior mate, I never saw a chap eat in my life as he did.

An ostrich of the most enterprising digestion, or the boa-constrictor at the Zoological Gardens who recently swallowed its messmate in a weak moment, would neither of them have been a match for the fat little gourmand, who made even Dobbs stare at his efforts in the knife-and-fork line.

We stopped at Plymouth for some four-and-twenty hours, shipping supernumeraries and taking in surplus stores.

After which, weighing anchor again, we worked out of the Sound, having to tack twice before clearing the breakwater; and, resuming our pa.s.sage we pa.s.sed the Lizard the same afternoon, being some ten or twelve miles to the southward of the Bishop's Rock in the Scilly Isles at midnight.

I noticed the bright, star-like light of the latter, low down on the horizon, away on our weather quarter, only just dimly discernible in the distance through the haze, when I came on deck for the middle watch, the lighthouse looking to me as if twinkling to us a last farewell from home and the land we had left, never, perhaps, to see again.

But, although we made fair enough progress, we were not able to preserve as straight a course as Captain Farmer and the master would have liked to have done.

The wind was continually on the shift and trying to head us, thus causing us to keep the ship away and steer more to the southward; instead of making all the westering we could when leaving the channel, so as to give Cape Ushant, with its erratic currents and treacherous indraught, as wide a berth as possible--the French coast being a bad lookout under one's lee at any time!

However, we had to make the best we could of the wind we had; and by noon next day, when Mr Quadrant took the sun, having all of us round him on the p.o.o.p, cadets as well as midshipmen, on the alert to watch for the dip and mark off the angle on our s.e.xtants, we were found to be in lat.i.tude 48 degrees 50 minutes North, and longitude 7 degrees 35 minutes West, showing that we had run some two hundred miles or so since leaving Plymouth Sound.

After observing the sun's alt.i.tude, we were supposed to work out the reckoning for ourselves independently of each other; though, when the master sent us down to the gunroom to do this, the lazy hands amongst us, who were by a long way in the majority, cribbed from those who were readier at figures, like Larkyns and Ned Anstruther, both of whom arrived at the same result as Mr Quadrant, ay even in a shorter time, handing in their papers for inspection before I had well-nigh begun mine.

"Here, Vernon, take my log and copy it out," cried Larkyns, seeing me somewhat puzzled over the calculations I was making by the aid of a fat volume of logarithm tables and Roper's "Navigator"; "you look considerably fogged, old chappie, by the cut of your jib."

"No thank you," I replied, all on my mettle, determined not to be beat.

"I want to try and make it out by myself, so that I shall know how to do it next time."

"Bravo, youngster," put in Mr Stormc.o.c.k. "That's the only way to become a good navigator. Fudging your reckoning will never teach you how to work out your alt.i.tudes; you stick to it, my boy, and do it on your own hook."

Nor did the master's mate content himself with merely giving me this sound advice; for, sitting down by my side, he overhauled my figures and, being an expert mathematician, soon put me in the right road to arriving at a solution of my difficulties.

Really, he explained the various steps necessary in order to work out the reckoning in such a simple way that I understood it thoroughly; learning more in this one lesson from Mr Stormc.o.c.k than I had done, I think, during the three months that I had studied navigation while on board the training-ship _Ill.u.s.trious_.

I learnt even yet more.

That was, not to judge by appearances and form hasty conclusions as to the character of my messmates; as, up to the moment of his coming thus to my aid, I had always considered Mr Stormc.o.c.k an ill-tempered and soured man--whereas I now saw he was at bottom a good-natured fellow and one ready enough to help another when opportunity offered!

It was a lesson which, like the one he had just taught me in navigation, I never forgot.

Towards sunset that afternoon, when we were entering the Bay of Biscay, the lookout man on the foretopsail yard hailed the deck.

"Sail in sight, sir!" he sang out loudly. "She's on our port bow, sir."

"All right," answered the officer of the watch, Mr Jellaby, who was up on the p.o.o.p and I below on the quarter-deck at the time; and then, turning to the yeoman of signals, he cried, "Signalman, a vessel's in sight on our port bow, go and look at her and see what she is."

"Ay, ay, sir," replied the seaman, putting his telescope to his eye; when, scanning in the direction pointed out to him, he soon made out the ship. "She appears like a strange man-of-war, sir."

"Very well," said Mr Jellaby. "Watch her till you can make her out perfectly."

In another minute or two, the signalman made the result of his second scrutiny known.

"She's a French man-of-war and is making for Brest, I think, sir."

"Ah!" exclaimed "Joe," having a look at her, too, with his binocular.

"Hoist the ensign!"

This was done; but, the stranger made no sign, until, gradually approaching each other all the while, she was about three miles off, when she displayed the gallant tricolour flag of France.

"Signalman," sang out Mr Jellaby on seeing this, "Dip the colours!"