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At all events there will be no harm in making your preparations; the captain is pretty certain to take you." Still on my bare feet, I hurried forward and found the boatswain. "That you, Mr Futtock?" I inquired, as I made out his burly form. "Ay, ay, Mr Fortescue, it's me, right enough," was the answer. "I presoom, sir, it's another boat job, eh? You heard that bell?"
I got to the futtock shrouds, and there I stopped, for I saw him myself, a palish boy, with a jerk of thin hair on his forehead; I'd have known him anywhere in this world or t'other. I saw him just as distinct as I see you, Tom Brown, sitting on that yard quite steady with the royal flapping like to flap him off.
He will practise him a good deal upon the "shrouds," so as to accustom his feet and fingers to the "ratlines" and other ropes, and will even permit him to pass a number of times through the "lubber's hole," instead of forcing him to climb back downwards by the "futtock shrouds."
The skipper took me, as he generally did, in his own boat, but the other three mids. were left on board the Psyche to keep Mr Purchase company. For the rest, Nugent, the master's mate, went with the first lieutenant, while Peter Futtock, the boatswain, accompanied the third lieutenant in the pinnace.
"That answer, Billy Pantry," said the Captain, "for a lubber that knows not the difference between the futtock shrouds and Jacob's ladder, and whose head is so little and his paunch so big, is what my old schoolmaster called a Lucy Lucy damn the other part of the name there I miss stays, by Neptune! anyhow, it begun with a Nat, but there was more of it." "Natwood," suggested Billy Pantry.
The light from my lantern seemed no more than a sickly yellow glow against the gloom, and higher, some forty or fifty feet, and a few ratlines below the futtock rigging on the starboard side, there was another glow of yellowness in the night. Apart from these, all was blackness. And then from above high above there wailed down through the darkness a weird, sobbing cry.
The skipper was then hanging as he best could to the mizen rigging; Lewis had his arms tightly locked on the port side round the futtock shrouds, and was cowering to get clear of the scourging wind. There was a wild shriek forward. "Water, skipper!" Lewis looked up. There it was, as high as the mast-head, compact as a wall, and charging with the level velocity of a horse regiment.
The man with the blue-lights followed, and also vanished from view. On the port side, and more directly above me, the Skipper's feet were just stepping out of the futtock shrouds. At that I made haste to follow. Then, suddenly, when I was close under the top, there came from above me the sharp flare of a blue-light, and almost in the same instant, Tammy's went out. I glanced down at the decks.
"At all events, a sailor's blood runs in your veins, my lad; and, as you're such a good climber and know your way up the ratlines, just go up now and show that lubber of a greenhorn how to get up the futtock shrouds without tumbling, and so over the masthead."
A few trials of this kind will take away the giddiness felt on first mounting to a high elevation, and thus a boy may safely be denied the use of the lubber's hole, and may be sent up the futtock shrouds, and after that the topgallant shrouds, and so on to the royals, if there be any on the ship, and by thus gradually inducting him into the art of climbing, he will get over the difficulty without dread and without peril for both of these may be encountered in first climbing to the upper rigging of a ship.
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