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Updated: June 27, 2025
He looked up with his face covered with soap-suds and they laughed into each others' eyes. Breakfast in the Gunroom was, to employ a transatlantic colloquialism, some breakfast. Then pipes and cigarettes appeared from lockers, and the temporarily-closed flood-gates of conversation reopened.
"No, sir, no; it is one of the gunroom pigs that we shipped at Halifax three cruises ago; I am sure I don't know how he survived one, but the seamen took a fancy to him, and nicknamed him the Purser. You know, sir, they make pets of any thing, and every thing, at a pinch!" Here John Crow drew the carcass from the hog pen, and sure enough a shot had cut the poor Purser's head nearly off.
He had already fixed four spans of nine-inch hawser to the sides of the makeshift, two fastened to tackles, which led into the gunroom ports, and were housed taut these kept the lower part of the makeshift close to the stern post and two, to which guys were now fixed and led through the aftermost ports on to the quarter-deck, where luff-tackles were attached to them, by means of which the makeshift was to be worked as a rudder.
Not being wanted any longer on deck, and the crisp, bracing sea air giving me a good appetite, I hurried down the hatchway to join my messmates in the gunroom, mindful by my morning's experiences of the disadvantage of being late for meals. Quick as I was, I found the majority of the other fellows not on duty had already forestalled me, chief among these early birds being my chum, Tom Mills.
So he fired at close range, wiped the prints off the Colt with an oily rag, put it in Lane Fleming's right hand, put the rag in his left, grabbed up the Leech & Rigdon, and scuttled back to his bathroom, deadlatching and shutting the gunroom door as he went out. This last, of course, was a delaying tactic, to give him time to establish his bathtub alibi." He lifted the cocktail glass to his lips.
Astern of them was the picket-boat, a graceful feather of spray falling away on either side of the stem-piece. A concourse of Wardroom and Gunroom officers had crowded into her bows, and the Commander, purple with emotion, bellowed incoherencies through a megaphone.
The fire in his gunroom was surreptitiously kept up to serve for the vigil, which I ardently desired to share.
He turned and looked on board at the various lights, faintly-seen, with the result that his eyes were rested, while he listened to the monotonous talking of the watch and an occasional burst of laughter from the gunroom, or the regular murmur from the forecastle. Then he watched shoreward again for the faint golden flash made by the paddles of Ngati's canoe.
"There would be no difficulty about that," interposed Mr Stormcock; "you could tell him the commander gave it to you, for you said just now he was the cause of all the row, you know." This made us both laugh, and dinner being now ready, Ned Anstruther and I went into the gunroom together as soon as I had completed my interrupted toilet.
Three of the American skippers had been quartered on the gunroom mess, and they were all at table. Snuff, snuff, smelled one, and another sniffled, "Gunpowder, I guess, and in a state of ignition." "Will you not send for the gunner, sir?" said the third. Splinter did not like it, I saw, and this quailed me. The captain's bell rang. "What smell of brimstone is that, steward?"
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