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Updated: July 27, 2025
"How can you expect any piece of machinery to go well, so damnably knocked about as a midshipman is?" replied our hero. "Very true, Jack; but sometimes you don't keep any time, for you don't keep any watch. Mr Asper don't wind you up. You don't go at all." "No; because he allows me to go down; but still I do go, Ned." "Yes, to your hammock it's no go with old Smallsole, if I want a bit of caulk.
Now, sir," said Jack, "I have read them over till I know them by heart, and there is not one word of mastheading in the whole of them." Here Jack took the articles out of his pocket, and unfolded them. "Will you go to the mast-head, sir, or will you not?" said Mr Smallsole. "Will you show me the mast-head in the articles of war, sir?" replied Jack; "here they are."
His spirit in not submitting to, and meeting Vigors when he had hardly recovered from his severe prostration of sea-sickness, had gained him with the many respect, and with all, except his antagonist and Mr Smallsole, goodwill.
Mr Smallsole was undecided; the gun fired was not a heavy one, and so Mr Jolliffe remarked; the men, as usual, anxious for the attack, asserted the same, and Mr Smallsole, afraid of retreating from the enemy, and being afterwards despised by the ship's company, ordered the boats to weigh their grapnels. "Stop a moment, my lads," said Jack to his men, "I've got a bite."
Sawbridge thought so, too but both agreed that Jack's rights of man were in considerable danger. The day before the ship sailed, the captain and Mr Asper dined with the Governor; and as there was little more to do, Mr Sawbridge, who had not quitted the ship since she had been in port, and had some few purchases to make, left her in the afternoon in the charge of Mr Smallsole, the master.
When Jack heard Captain Wilson's orders that they were to lie at anchor till daylight, he had sent down Mesty for fishing-lines, as fresh fish is always agreeable in a midshipman's berth: he and Gascoigne amused themselves this way, and as they pulled up the fish they entered into an argument, and Mr Smallsole ordered them to be silent.
Mr Smallsole has behaved tyrannically and unjustly; he punished the lad for no crime; so that between the master and me, I am now on the horns of a dilemma. If I punish the boy, I feel that I am punishing him more for my own fault and the fault of others, than his own.
"What are you doing here, sir?" cried Mr Smallsole to our hero. "Nothing at all, sir?" replied Jack. "Then I'll give you something to do, sir. Go up to the mast-head, and wait there till I call you down. Come, sir, I'll show you the way," continued the master, walking aft. Jack followed till they were on the quarter-deck.
Mesty agreed with Jack that this was the ne plus ultra of navigation: and that old Smallsole could not do better with his "pig-yoke" and compasses. So they shook a reef out of the top-sails, set top-gallant-sails, and ran directly down the coast from point to point, keeping about five miles distant.
Jack made an oration, which lasted more than half an hour, in which all the arguments he had brought forward to Jolliffe in the preceding chapter were entered fully into. Mr Jolliffe was then examined, and also Mr Smallsole was interrogated: after which the captain and the first lieutenant were left alone.
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