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Those were the days of bloods when an officer and a gentleman went as a matter of course to all the cockpits and gaming houses, the night clubs and rings sacred to the "fancy"; when it was still the thing for a gentleman to spend his nights in drinking champagne and playing practical jokes that were forgiven him as a high-spirited young man who must sow his wild oats and garnish each word of conversation with an oath.
The rain was still falling in torrents, but their rubber coats kept them fairly dry, and the canvas aprons buttoned tightly over the cockpits, prevented the canoes from filling. At last, when both lads were quite in despair, a flash of lightning revealed the tent a few yards to the left, rising and falling with the waves.
Everything was made snug beneath the hatches, except the two guns, which were too long to go under the decks, and had to be carried in the open cockpits. "Camp No. 13, at the head of Lodore," as it is entered in my journal, was soon hidden by a bend in the river.
Being a fiesta, the town was full of natives from the provinces, all smartly dressed and all beaming with good-natured curiosity at the advent of two and a half American women, the only Americanas most of them had ever seen, and quite an escort gathered around us as, accompanied by the officers of the post and those from the ship not otherwise engaged, we walked down the dusty streets toward the cockpits, where in honour of the day there was to be a contest of unusual interest.
It constitutes a source of municipal income, the right to open cockpits being annually conceded to the highest bidder by the various municipalities. Raffles and lotteries are also permitted by law, being subject to taxation by the municipalities, and in one or two cities there are municipal lotteries.
If I am not mistaken, his first ascension was at the aërodrome of Compiègne. At that time the comfortable cockpits of the modern airplanes were unknown, and the passenger was obliged to place himself as best he could behind the pilot and cling to him by putting his arms around him in order not to fall, so that it was a relief to come down again!..."
"Cocking mains, my dear," corrected the Colonel, and then kept on, earnestly, to Anita. "Yon can scarcely imagine the horrors of a cockpit. The poor gamecocks, with cruel spurs upon their feet, tearing each other to pieces, and blood and feathers all over the place." "You seem wonderfully familiar with cockpits," remarked Mrs. Fortescue.
"That's a grand suggestion!" "That beats them all!" "But, gentlemen," cried Don Custodio, in answer to so many exclamations, "let's be practical what places are more suitable than the cockpits? They're large, well constructed, and under a curse for the use to which they are put during the week-days.
A still duskier place is this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled planks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft's cockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored old ark rocked so furiously.
When the country was ringing with the tidings of Sir George Barclay's conspiracy for the assassination of William III, it was impossible not to hope that Sedley's boastful tongue might have brought him sufficiently under suspicion to be kept for a while under lock and key; but though he did not appear at Fareham, there was reason to suppose that he was as usual haunting the taverns and cockpits of Portsmouth.
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