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When they did come out they had to fight; and how can you expect a sea-sick man to fight? But I was talking of that chum of mine, Greville. He was the coolest hand I ever came across. Once he and I when we were mids, you know had to go down by rail from Genoa to Spezia
I was walking the deck at the time chatting with young Marchmont, one of the two mids sent on board by the admiral, and, upon this report being made, the lad volunteered to go aloft and investigate. A couple of minutes later the active youngster was on the royal-yard, peering out eagerly ahead and to windward, with one hand shading his eyes to ward off the glare of the sun.
Domingo, and a month afterwards returned to Port Royal, where we found the dignity ladies looking as blooming as black roses, and as it was understood that we were to be paid prize money, a general invitation was given to all the wardroom officers to a grand ball two days after our arrival; for be it known to you, gentle reader, that humble mids are never invited to dignity balls of the first class, which are given by the mustees and quadroons.
In the mean time, one of the mids, who happened to be thrusting his head forward after the investigating manner of this enterprising class of officers, said apart to the captain, "Why, sir, they wear national cockades!" "I looked at one of their hats more steadfastly," says Captain Hood in his narrative, "and by the moonlight clearly distinguished the three colours."
The two men, after staring at each other for a moment, uttered the words, "Jim!" "Bill!" and then, springing forward, each grasped the hand of the other. Two brothers had met! The three mids remembered that Bill had told them of a brother, who, when last heard from was a slave somewhere in the Saara, and they needed no explanation of the scene now presented to them.
I began to think I should be the first, when on the following day I was unshipped, for two others came on board by some years my seniors. The captain also sent four young mids on board and the Admiralty two oldsters, one of whom was a sprig of nobility.
"You're a lucky dog, Chester!" exclaimed young Harvey; "you seem to have dropped plump into the skipper's good books all at once. It is not often that we mids are honoured with an invitation to the cabin-table, I can tell you." "You know as well as I do that he is invited into the cabin to-night, in order that the skipper may give him a good wigging for that boarding business yesterday.
The young one moved about quick on his pins for a moment, and then, it was so quick that you could scarce see how it was done, he gave a sort of bound, and hit out with his right, and the next moment Condor was on his back. "I never saw such a clean, knock-down blow in all my life. The mids, they all cheered, and it was plain enough to see which way their 'pinions went.
So ludicrous did it seem that the three "mids", disregarding all ideas of danger, broke forth with one accord into a strain of loud and continuous laughter. They had all seen camels, or pictures of these animals; but never before either a camel or the picture of one with a sailor upon his back.
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.
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