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Updated: June 26, 2025
Taking up a splint, he bestowed a few hearty cuts with it on his bare body, and then, telling him to jump up and slip on his clothes, he sent him up on deck to attend to his duty. Poor Gipples would gladly have hid himself away; but he was watched, and started from deck to deck till he had resumed the charge of his powder tub. Meantime Paul Pringle was keeping an anxious eye on True Blue.
After this, when Gipples came to himself, Sam administered a severe lecture to him for his cowardice. "But you, Sam you're afraid, I'm sure, Sam," whimpered the culprit. "No, I not afraid," he answered indignantly; "but why for I go lose my head or arm, when I get noding for it? I am paid to play the fiddle and help the cook. I do my duty and keep out of harm's way.
The only person missing at his mess was Gregory Gipples; and this convinced Tim Fid that he must have thrown himself overboard. True Blue and Harry Hartland, however, differed with him, and argued the point. "If he was such a coward and so afraid of shot, surely he would not deliberately go and destroy himself," said they.
As Captain Brine watched the receding frigate, he could scarcely persuade himself that she would not again bear down upon him. On she stood farther and farther off she got, till her hull sank beneath the horizon, and her courses, and then her topsails, and finally her topgallant-sails and royals, were hid from sight. Fid, Hartland, and others carried poor Gipples below.
This was soon accomplished; and there, sure enough, black as a sweep from the coal dust, and bruised with the logs, lay not the ghost of Gipples, but Gipples himself, terribly frightened with the idea that he was looked-for only that he might be drawn forth to be punished. "Oh, lagged lagged!" he exclaimed bitterly. "I'll not do it again indeed I won't, your worship. Just let me off this once.
"Well, I do think it's a shame we small chaps, as have never done anybody any harm, should be made to sit here to be shot at by them Monsieurs out there that I do," continued Tim Fid. "For my part, I do think that the Captain ought to let us little ones go down and stow ourselves comfortably away in the hold. Don't you, Gipples?"
Just then a puff of smoke was seen to proceed from one of the retreating frigate's after-ports, and the next instant poor Gipples was spinning along the deck, shrieking out with terror and pain. Out of all the crew, in spite of the heavy fire to which the corvette had been exposed, he and another poor fellow were the only men hit. This shot seemed a parting one of revenge.
True Blue, thus appealed to, was nothing loth to join in trying to increase the evident terror of Gipples. "Oh, as to that, I've heard tell how these powder tubs on which we are made to sit sometimes catches fire and blows the fellows on them like sky-rockets into the air," remarked Billy, laughing. "Mind, it's what I've heard tell of, though I never saw it.
He's stowed his fat carcase away somewhere down in de hold. Let's you all and me go and look for him, and we soon rouse him up like one great rat with rope's end." "Set a thief to catch a thief!" whispered Harry to Fid. "I thought he would know where Gipples was likely to be found." Sam had been known on more than one occasion to stow himself snugly away during action.
You, Gipples, are paid to be shot you must stay where the shot comes, or you not do your duty. There all de difference." "Then I'll try and get a rating where I needn't stop and be shot!" cried Gipples, as if a bright idea had seized him. "If I can't, I'll cut and run. I can't stand it that I can't."
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