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Bill and Tommy Rebow sprang up the mizen rigging, as they were both in the mizen-top, and were soon lying out on the mizen-topsail yard. They were both in high spirits, feeling up to anything at the moment. One of the older topmen was in the lee-earing. Bill was next to him. Tommy came next. Suddenly the ship gave a tremendous lurch. There was a cry.
Such performances exemplify the ideals that still obtained were in full force in the navy as first I knew it. In the ship in which the gunner and I were then serving, it was our common performance to "Up topgallant-masts and yards, and loose sail to a bowline," in three minutes and a half from the time the topmen and the masts started aloft together from the deck.
The sight of these adventurers, slowly and cautiously mounting the rigging, acted very much, on the scattered topmen, in the manner that the appearance of so many flies, in the immediate vicinity of a web, is known to act on their concealed and rapacious enemies. The sailors aloft saw, by expressive glances from them below, that a soldier was considered legal game.
"All ready for letting fall, sir," the middy stationed in the foretop was the first to sing out. This was Dick Popplethorne, a smart lad, who prompted the topmen under his charge to emulate his ready example, so as to get ahead of the others. Larkyns at the maintop was a good second, while Adams at the mizzen was the last; the officer of the watch, on hearing his hail, reporting "All ready!"
I could not stand this; for I and another of the topmen, generally the smartest, had hurt our hands, and ought not properly to have gone aloft at all. "How dare you strike me, Captain Swales?" I exclaimed. "I paid you a sum for my passage, as also to learn seamanship, and not to be treated as a slave." It was the first time I had replied to him.
"Pipe watch to set starboard topmast and to'gallant stu'ns'ls!" "Ay, ay, sir," replied the boatswain's mate from his post by the after-hatchway; and, almost in the same breath, his piercing shrill whistle was heard, followed by his hoarse shout repeating Mr Bitpin's gruff command. "Watch set starboard topmast and to'gallant stu'ns'ls!" "Topmen aloft!" "Jiggers at the tops'l lifts!"
Two topmen were swept out of the maintop by the wreckage in its descent, and terribly one of them fatally injured, and there were a few minor damages, which, however, were quickly repaired.
It was clearly understood that I was either to be drowned or was to break my neck; for the latter I took my chance pretty fairly, going up and down the rigging like a monkey. Few of the topmen could equal me in speed, still fewer surpass me in feats of daring activity.
Jack had to confess that in his zeal he had gone beyond his duty, and that, instead of remaining at his station in the top, he had been attempting to do work which ought to have been performed by one of the topmen. "You were wrong, as you will see, Rogers," remarked Captain Lascelles.
All the ducks and geese were dead, the eggs and crockery all broken, the grocery almost washed away; in short, as O'Brien observed, there was "a very pretty general average." Mr Falcon was still very angry. "Who are the men missing?" inquired he of Swinburne, the coxswain, as he came up by the side. "Williams and Sweetman, sir." "Two of the smartest topmen, I am told.
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