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There will be many scores of bluejackets and private soldiers, a hundred training-ship lads, fifty of the Legion of Frontiersmen, and a number of volunteers all in full uniform. There will be a tremendous number of society people, but the mass will be leavened, and I should say one-half the people will be middle-class folk. For to-night, no tickets have been issued.
"Oh yes, Bowling; you can't get out of it," he said in a firmer voice, and the old pleasant smile I recollect when he gave me that half-crown in his cabin on board the old training-ship that I spoke of at the beginning of my yarn. "I saw you quite plainly, my lad, as you rushed up to my succour when those Arabs nearly settled me.
Thomas Bowling, Esquire, I fancy you'd better foller him there, my boy." Of course, I obeyed this command, a ship corporal's word, whether jocular or not, being as good as an order and regarded as law on board the training-ship. Nothing was said, though, to either of us regarding our recent fight, nor any embarrassing questions asked, when we reached the sick-bay.
In the old days, indeed, had this rencontre between `Ugly' and me then took place, we might have fought in an enclosed arena; for the Saint Vincent, I have been told, when she was first built, was fitted with a poop and topgallant-forecastle, and went to sea with them, but Admiral Sir Charles Napier, who was then commodore of the Channel Squadron, and hoisted his broad pennant in her, found the ship so top-heavy when under his command that he reported her to be unseaworthy on his return to Spithead with the fleet, the result of which was that she lost her poop and topgallant-forecastle; hence `Ugly' and I had now to fight under the eye of the circling seagulls, always on the wing, screeching round the old training-ship in their plaintive fashion, and diving ever and anon into the tideway to pick up scraps that were chucked overboard by our comrades, more sensible than us, down below at their dinners!
When school was over, and the bugle, that ever-sounding bugle, rang out the call for `divisions' presently, we all bustled up, of course, to the upper deck, and, whether it was from the schoolmaster's observation or what, I'm sure I can't say, I was struck by the wonderful lot of fine fellows we had on board the training-ship: all wearing the same smart bluejacket uniform, men and boys alike, and all ready, I believe, even us youngsters who had but just joined the service, to go anywhere and do anything for the sake of the Queen God bless her! aye, and to battle likewise for the old flag and the old country that has had the command of the seas for a thousand years so father says!
Weston came to see me the other day at Dartmouth, where our training-ship Albion lies, and he was so charmed by the old town with its carved and gabled houses, and its luxuriant gardens rich with pale-blossomed laurels, which no frost dwarfs, and crimson fuchsias gnarled with age, and its hill-embosomed harbour, where the people of all grades and ages, and of both sexes, flit hither and thither in their boats as landlubbers would take an evening stroll that I felt somewhat justified in the romantic love I have for the place.
He bragged in self-defence, in challenge of the formidable equipment of his rival. And how interested she was! How well she understood his case that it was better than the swellest training-ship to make your own way by your own exertions, and splendid to have done so much while still on the right side of thirty. So much! He had done more than that he had been a husband and father at twenty-one.
Tom Spink and Buckwheat are serfs and nothing else. Henry, the training-ship boy, occupies an anomalous classification. He is of our kind, but he can scarcely be called even a cadet of our kind. He will some day win to us and become a mate or a captain, but in the meantime, of course, his past is against him. He is a candidate, rising from the serf class to our class.
A tearing long course it was to be, too, and pretty close on five miles: start from near-abouts where the training-ship lays now, down to a mark-boat somewheres off Torpoint, back, and finish off Saltash Quay.
Nearer and nearer we got into the coast, all hands pulling with a will; Larrikins, who was stroke, giving the fellows a touch of his old style when he rowed in the captain's gig of the training-ship; the whaler, with the middy in command, running us hard, though, and the second cutter labouring up astern.
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