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Nor is it easy, by this west-country quay, to profit by a conscience which is willing to allow some shameless idleness. I began talking, before the books were even unpacked, with some old acquaintances by the water-side. Most disquieting souls! But I cannot blame them. They have been obliged to add gunnery to their knowledge of seamanship and navigation.
Sometimes he would even take the blame for this upon himself, and give me a 'wigging' in private, which was my severest punishment. He taught me the ropes, and explained the elements of seamanship. If it was very cold at night he would make me wear his own comforter, and, in short, took care of me in every possible way. Poor Jack! I never had a better friend; and I loved him then, God knows.
He was on the point of asking his servant, unacquainted though he was with seamanship, to be the third man in the boat; but the latter, anticipating his intention, had made haste to betake himself away. To venture out into this roaring darkness, with no beacon to guide them, and scarcely a landmark discernible, was indeed to tempt Providence.
But along with all this physical exuberance and needless assumption of many of the duties of a foremast hand, Pellew possessed to a very remarkable extent that delicate art of seamanship which consists in so handling a ship as to make her do just what you want, and to put her just where she should be; making her, to use a common sea expression, do everything but talk.
The boats in water too deep for anchorage were caught in the powerful eddies and their captains had to show their best seamanship while they steamed back and forth. The battle between ship and shore went on for a long time. It seemed at last to the watching Union soldiers that the fire from the lower line of batteries was diminishing. "We're making some way," said Warner.
It was certainly a most unexpected denouement to the ordeal we had expected when sending in our names, both of us thinking we would have had to pass some stiff grind in seamanship and other naval acquirements, similar to the examinations we used to undergo on board the old Saint Vincent; and as we now were rated really as seamen, with the pay of one shilling and threepence a day, instead of sevenpence, besides having all the dirty work of the ship taken off our hands, Mick and I considered ourselves in clover, as you may readily imagine!
The next day every boy was kept so busy that he had no time to grumble. The instructors attended to the lessons in the steerage with one watch, while the other was on deck acquiring seamanship. In the course of the month, as the boys learned their duties, and the capabilities of each were ascertained, they were assigned to their stations in the various evolutions required in working the vessel.
To the Queen's glorious naval-commanders, to the dauntless mariners of England, with their well-handled vessels; their admirable seamanship, their tact and their courage, belonged the joys of the contest, the triumph, and the glorious pursuit; but to the patient Hollanders and Zeelanders, who, with their hundred vessels held Farneae, the chief of the great enterprise, at bay, a close prisoner with his whole army in his own ports, daring him to the issue, and ready to the last plank of their fleet and to the last drop of their blood to confront both him and the Duke of Medina Sidona, an equal share of honour is due.
The ship has been so frequently described, that most people know what she is like, as we do who have seen her. We should have known her to be the Alabama if we had boarded her in the midst of the ocean, with no one to introduce us to each other. Her guns alone are worth going off to see, and everything about her speaks highly for the seamanship and discipline of the commander and his officers.
Beside that, I wished to be ``equal to either fortune, and to qualify myself for an officer's berth, and a hide-house was no place to learn seamanship in.
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