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"Yes, it is," said Gertie; "you know angels are good." "Well, and ain't you good?" demanded the signalman, filling his mouth with a potato. "Mother says I am, and I feel as if I was," replied Gertie with much simplicity, "but you know angels are very very good, and, of course, I'm not near so good as them."
For let us bring the matter down from the abstract to the concrete: if a dreadful railway accident is caused through the momentary mental lapse of a signalman who has been overtaxed by excessive working hours, how is the responsibility God's? It obviously belongs to those who imposed a task involving the safety of human lives on a man who was not in a fit condition to fulfil such a duty.
He searched along the shore and found the dead body of the captain, and a piece of splintered spar seven or eight feet long, on which the cabin boy had come ashore. The 'Ecliptic', with her cargo and crew, had completely disappeared, while the signalman, near at hand, slept peacefully, undisturbed by her crashing timbers, or the shouts of the drowning seamen.
"Carry on!" sang the bugle; and the ship's company, their animation suspended while the colours crept up the jackstaff, proceeded to "breakfast and clean." The signalman whose duty it was to hoist the Ensign at 8 a.m. turned up the halliards to his satisfaction, and departed forward in the wake of the band. The Captain had "cleaned" already, and his breakfast was on the table in his fore-cabin.
In short, he was a Leading Signalman of His Majesty's Navy. His name I need not mention. To his friends he sometimes answered to "Nutty," but more often to "Buntin'."
Now, hoist the answering pennant; though, I suppose we'll have to wait another month of Sundays for their longitude. No, by Jove! Messieurs les Francais are a trifle quicker this time. `F N J' and `G V L. How do you make them out, signalman? See if you can be as smart again as you were just now."
He seized the war-signal code and ran upstairs to the bridge, shouting to the signalman: "Signal to Corregidor: 'War-signal code, important communication." Then he himself, hastily turning over the leaves of the book, called out the signals and had them hoisted. Then he shouted to the man at the helm: "Tell them not to spare the engines."
I've a great mind to put you in the list for disrespectful conduct to your superior officer! What did you say?" "The Ruby, sir," repeated the signalman, as tenderly now as a sucking dove. "It's the gallant little Ruby sure enough, sir."
It was my middle watch, and I was signalman at the time, so of course I had no time to take a caulk if I was inclined. When my watch was over I could not go down to my hammock, so I kept the morning watch too, as did most of the men on board: as for Nelson, he walked the deck the whole night, quite in a fever.
With the help of the other bluejackets who had come ashore with us in the second cutter, the ring which the signalman suggested was at once formed, our chaps artfully manoeuvring so as to shut out all the black and coloured gentry who instantly flocked to the scene of action, the news of the fight having got abroad in some mysterious way or other.
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