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They were called on deck, and came promptly, led by William Kingsbury, the boatswain's mate. Long shall I remember the cheering sound of his stentorian voice, which resembled the roaring of a lion rather than that of a human being, when he told them: 'D n their eyes, to put their best foot forward, as there was one side of the ship left yet."
The coolness displayed by them could not be surpassed by any old veterans our chief boatswain's mate apparently in his glory. "Sponge!" "Load with cartridge!" "Shell-fire seconds!" "Runout!" "Well, down compressors!" "Left, traverse!" "Well!" "Ready!" "Fire!" "That's into you!" "Damn you! that kills your pig!"
Pickle, "You see, brother," said he, "I make good the old saying; we sailors get money like horses, and spend it like asses: come, Pipes, let's have the boatswain's whistle, and be jovial."
Banks compounded for himself and party, and Cook also seems to have got off, but the others were hauled up to the end of the main-yard on a boatswain's chair, and then at the sound of the whistle dropped into the sea, an operation repeated three times. Cook says the "ceremony was performed to about twenty or thirty, to the no small diversion of the rest."
"I can't tell exactly, but I am satisfied that more than two thirds of the whole crew will stand out." "I don't know about that." "I know that every fellow in the ship is mad because the trip to the Rhine is given up; and I think that at least two thirds of them are mad enough to do something about it. I should not be surprised if not a single fellow answered the boatswain's call."
Our fellows have a little business in Paris and Switzerland, and we shall attend to it in a week or two. There goes the pipe. Mind your eye, Sheffield." The boatswain's call sounded through the ship, and officers and crew hastened to their stations. The malcontents in the ship were, apparently, the most zealous seamen on board.
MacMasters made it plain to the boatswain's mate that apprentice seaman Morgan had saved him, as well as the rest of the ship's company, from disaster, and Hansie Hertig grinned broadly. "That Whistler he can do something besides make tunes with his mouth, eh?" he observed.
We pulled cheerily up to Kingston, and, landing at the Wherry wharf, marched along the hot dusty streets, under a broiling sun, Captain Transom, the other Lieutenant, and myself, in full puff, leading the van, followed by about fourteen seamen, in white straw hats, with broad black ribbons, and clean white frocks and trowsers, headed by a boatswain's mate, with his silver whistle hung round his neck as respectable a tail as any Christian could desire to swinge behind him; and, man for man, I would willingly have perilled my promotion upon their walloping, with no offensive weapons but their stretchers, the Following, claymores and all, of any proud, disagreeable, would be mighty mountaineer, that ever turned up his supercilious, whisky blossomed snout at Bailie Jarvie.
It contained three bunks, two of which were hidden from view by neat cretonne curtains. "That was my poor young mate's bunk," he said sadly, "and the other was the boatswain's. Now, will you please pass these up on deck?" From a locker he took out a dozen or more of ale, two bottles of spirits, and a number of tins of beef, sardines, etc., together with an ample supply of biscuit.
The Arno rolled through the town, but no music trembled from balconies over its waters; it gave only the busy voices of sailors on board vessels just arrived from the Mediterranean; the melancholy heaving of the anchor, and the shrill boatswain's whistle; sounds, which, since that period, have there sunk almost into silence.
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