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Updated: May 1, 2025
Of course Adams and Larkyns and Popplethorne had to scramble up to their posts in the mizzen and main and foretops, much to my admiration and envy; for, being only a cadet, I was not allowed to go aloft except for drill, and then only under special supervision, as I will presently tell.
At the door of the dormitory stood a tall, cadaverous-looking man of some fifty years or thereabouts whom I had not before seen. To him Tom now briefly introduced me in the most laconic fashion. "New boy, Mr Smallpage," he said. "Oh, new boy Leigh, I suppose, eh?" replied this gentleman in an absent sort of way "Is he in your charge, Larkyns?"
But, Larkyns and myself were both deceived, this sudden quiet on the part of the enemy being really a ruse; for, hardly had the column reached firm ground than the hitherto silent batteries all at once burst into a sheet of flame, pouring shot and shell, jinghal balls, rifle bullets, in fact every variety of deadly missile known in war, on the heads of our devoted men, at such close quarters, too, that not one in three escaped the avalanche of destruction!
What he would have done, however, in case of my non-compliance with his imperative request remains a mystery to the present day; for, as at that moment, the commander, who had been surveying the maintop from the poop-rail above us, hearing my funny gentleman's voice, which he had raised in speaking to me, called out to him "Below there," he cried "Mr Larkyns!"
Master Larkyns knew as well as myself that if the tragic result of their skylarking should get wind and reach the ears of Captain Farmer, he and his brother mids would have a rough time of it, and probably all be had up on the quarter-deck. "All serene, Vernon, I under-constubble," he softly whispered back to me, in our gunroom slang.
"Oh, stow all that! May I call you Martin?" "By all means," said I, gladly; "there's nothing I should like better." "All right then, that's agreed. My name is Tom Larkyns, and you may call me Tom, if you like." "May I?" I asked, deferentially, proud of his condescending to be on such cordial terms with me. "Won't it sound too familiar?" "Nonsense," said he, laughing cheerily.
There were Larkyns and Ned Anstruther, both of whom, like myself, had passed through the chrysalis stage of midshipmen and came within the category of oldsters, the one with a banjo, and the other handling a broken-down concertina, very wheezy about the gills; with little Tommy Mills, who was only a "midshipmite" still, in every sense of the word, accompanying them with a rattling refrain from a pair of ivory castanets which he had purchased for a paper dollar in a curio shop at Canton.
"I say, Larkyns," I asked, in an undertone of my friend the senior mid, as a string of square flags went up on our side a yellow on top, a red square with a yellow cross in the middle, and a white flag with a blue centre the lowermost "what does our signal mean, eh?"
However, this second missile had the desired end of sending us off; and so we left Master Larkyns to enjoy his repose undisturbed any longer by our chatter. "Rouse out, port watch and idlers!
"`B L K, sir," replied the yeoman of signals and Larkyns in one breath; and the former, running his fingers over the pages of the signal book, which Commander Nesbitt had returned to his custody, soon found that the interpretation of the flags thus clustered was, "We have passed a wreck, but were unable to stand by to see if any survivors were aboard her."
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