“Why, Pigeon, how are you, old fellow! Who’d have thought of seeing you here?” exclaimed Jack.
Pigeon drew himself up. “You must have made a mistake; I—I don’t remember you,” he answered.
“Oh! but we do you, very well, at Eagle House. I’m Jack Rogers: here’s Murray. We two came together. You didn’t leave, either, before us,” said Jack. “Oh! you must remember all about it.”
“Ah! now I think I do,” replied Pigeon, extending the tips of his fingers. “There was another fellow went to sea at the same time. Paddy something—Oh! ye–es, I remember.”
“Ah! Paddy Adair, you mean. Poor fellow, he was lost in the Onyx,” answered Jack in a sad tone.
“Oh! I remember—he was always a harum scarum vagabond,” said Pigeon in a sneering way.
“He was as true a fellow as ever stepped!” exclaimed Jack indignantly. “If he were here, Pigeon, you would not speak so of him.” The bully, as usual, was silenced. It was not Jack’s way to cut anybody, but neither he nor Murray felt inclined to have any intimate conversation with their old schoolfellow. Still they could not help asking him about the school, and the various changes which had taken place since they left.
“Well, I’m glad it prospers,” exclaimed Jack. “It was a first-rate, jolly good school; there was no humbug about it. I spent many happy days there.”
Murray echoed these sentiments. Pigeon of course sneered, and observed that, “though there were a good many noblemen, and sons of gentlemen, there were a number of sons of merchants and city people.”
“Ah! that is just what there should be,” said Jack. “It is the very thing that keeps England so well together. When the gentle born you speak of find that the sons of city men are as gentlemanly, as clever, and as honourable as themselves, and can play cricket or leap-frog, or anything of that sort, perhaps better than they do, they learn to respect them, and treat them as their equals ever afterwards. That is one of the very things that made our school so good. We used to think of fellows, not for what they were, but for what they did—except, perhaps, a few miserable sneaks, who ‘carnied’ up to a fellow because he had a handle to his name.”
Pigeon did not respond to this sentiment, because he had been noted for doing the very thing that Jack reprobated.
Jack could not help describing Pigeon in the berth, and the general opinion was that he deserved to be well roasted while he remained on board—in other words, that he should be made the common butt, at which the shafts of their wits should be aimed.
They had plenty of opportunities of shooting the said shafts, for Pigeon exhibited an almost incredible amount of simplicity in all things connected with the sea. I do not mean to say, for one moment, that they were right in playing off their jokes on Pigeon. I have an especial dislike to practical jokes; and those I have generally seen carried out have been decidedly wrong, and very senseless and stupid, without a particle of wit.
They had not been long at sea when one night Pigeon was encountered walking the deck, and every now and then stopping and looking eagerly over the side.
“What do you see there?” asked Jack. “Anything out of the common way?”
“All those sparkles, what can they be?” exclaimed Pigeon, pointing to the flashes of phosphorescent light which played among the foam, dashed off from the sides, and which were seen in the wake of the vessel.
Hemming came by at the moment. He had taken an especial dislike to the bully. “Those sparkles! don’t you know what they are? I thought everybody did,” he observed in a tone of contempt. “Well, there’s a Russian fleet just gone up through the Straits, and every man, woman, and child aboard them smokes, from the admiral to the admiral’s baby, and those are the ashes out of their pipes and off the ends of their cigars. Why, that’s nothing to what you sometimes see. If we were close in their wake, there would be light enough for us to see to steer by.”
“Law, you don’t say so!” exclaimed Pigeon. “I should have thought the water would have put them out.”
“Not down in these latitudes. It’s too warm for that,” answered Hemming gravely.
Pigeon was seen, when he went into the gun-room, entering the remark in his notebook.
A few days after this Pigeon was walking the deck in solitary grandeur, when, as he passed the marine-sentry at the gangway, of course no notice was taken of him. Now he had observed that, on certain occasions, the sentry presented arms to the officers. This he had taken into his head was in consequence, not of their rank, but of their being gentlemen. He therefore thought that the same respect ought to be shown to him. Instead of complaining to the officers or to the captain, when he would have been well laughed at, he thought fit to take the law into his own hands, and, walking up to the sentry, soundly rated him for his want of respect.
“And who bees you?” asked the sentry, cocking his eye—he was a wag in his way; “do you belong to the horse marines, sir?”
“No, I do not; I am Mr Theophilus Pigeon, and you must treat me properly, or I shall report you.”
“I thought as how you had drunk many a pint of Pigeon’s milk when you was a baby,” observed the marine with perfect gravity.
Pigeon’s measure had already been very accurately taken on board by the crew.
“Fellow, you are an impertinent scoundrel!” exclaimed Pigeon. “What’s your name?”
“Mum’s the word,” answered the marine with perfect gravity.
“Ah! you think I am not up to you, do you?” cried Pigeon, glancing at the marine’s musket. “I see it where you forgot that it was, ha! ha!”
It was some time before Pigeon could find the first lieutenant to make his report. In the meantime the sentries had been changed.
“I am sorry, Mr Pigeon, that you should have received any impertinence from any of the people on board,” said the first lieutenant kindly. “Can you describe the man?”
“Why, he had a red coat and white belt,” etcetera, etcetera.
“I am afraid that won’t help us,” said the first lieutenant, laughing.
“Ah! he thought himself very clever; but I know his name, I saw it on his musket. It was Tower!” exclaimed Pigeon triumphantly.
A general laugh followed this announcement, for Tower is the name engraved on all Government arms issued from the stores in that ancient fortress of London.
He used to find his way into the midshipmen’s berth and to make himself quite at home, occupying the space which, as Hemming observed, a better man might fill. Various devices were made to get clear of him. One of the officers had a horn with which he now and then startled the silence of the decks—a practice, by the by, rather subversive of discipline.
One day, while Pigeon was in the berth, the horn was heard to sound.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Hurra! the mail coach come in from Sicily,” exclaimed Jack, starting up and rushing out. “Come along, it’s a sight worth seeing. You’ll have letters by it to a certainty, Pigeon.”
Away rushed Pigeon up on deck, while Jack, amid the laughter of the rest of the occupants, returned to the berth. The captain and several of the gun-room officers were on deck when Pigeon made his hasty appearance, and hurried eagerly to the side.
“What is the matter, Mr Pigeon?” asked Captain Lascelles.
“The mail from Sicily! the mail from Sicily!” ejaculated Pigeon. “Has it gone? Am I too late to see it?”
Even the captain could not help joining in the laugh which was raised against the once dictatorial bully of little boys at school.
“Oh, you have not missed it!” said Mr Thorn. “Go down to the berth again, and say that we will call you when it heaves in sight.”
More mystified than ever, Pigeon returned to the berth, when he was welcomed with shouts still more vehement than those which had received him on deck. The place he had left was occupied, and no one offered to make room for him, or asked him to sit down—a pretty strong proof that he was not wanted. Such is the deserved fate of school bullies when they get into the world, and have their measures properly taken. Still the midshipmen had not done with him. Quirk, the monkey, had remained on his good behaviour, part and parcel of the crew. For the sake of the men, with whom he was a decided favourite; any slight misdemeanours which they could not contrive to hide were generally overlooked.
Quirk occasionally paid a visit to the midshipmen’s berth, where he sat up at table cracking nuts, “evidently under the impression,” as Jack observed, “that he is one of us.” Quirk had soon struck up a friendship with the bear, who was a very tame beast, and could play almost as many antics as he could, only in a more sedate way. Wherever Quirk went, Bruin would endeavour to follow; and one day, while the midshipmen were at dinner, the latter, led by the monkey, was seen approaching the berth. Nuts and biscuits were held out. They were easily tempted in. Room was made for them, and they were regaled to their hearts’ content on all the delicacies of the season which the men could produce.
“We’ll have them again, and we’ll have a friend to meet them!” exclaimed Jack.
“A bright idea!”
“Who?” was asked.
“Pigeon,” said Jack; and so it was settled.
That afternoon Mr Pigeon received a note, written on pink scented paper, to the following effect:—
“The gentlemen of the midshipmen’s berth request the pleasure of Mr Pigeon’s company at dinner, to meet two distinguished foreigners, in every way worthy of his acquaintance and friendship.”
Pigeon asked the gun-room officers whether he ought to accept the invitation.
“Certainly; it will be an insult if you don’t,” was the answer.
They might possibly have suspected that a joke was brewing, but they said nothing. The dinner hour on the next day arrived. The berth was kept as dark as possible; and when Pigeon presented himself at the door, he was ushered in in due form, and with unusual politeness handed to the upper end of the berth.
“Dinner!” cried the caterer. “Bear a hand, boy.”
The midshipman’s boy, who had been standing against the door, grinning from ear to ear, had to decamp.
“Before the soup comes, Mr Pigeon, let me introduce our other guests—Señor Don Bruno, who is on your right side, and Monsieur de Querkerie, whom you will find on your left. Manners make the man, and as their manners are unexceptionable, I hope that you will consider them as men, and treat them, as men should men, with due civility.”
The screens by the side of the berth were at this instant withdrawn, when Pigeon beheld a bear sitting on one side of him, and a monkey on the other, both dressed with huge shirt-collars, large ties, and broad ribbons across their breasts. Astonishment, rage, and fear struggled within him for the mastery.
“Don’t be alarmed at their looks, my dear sir,” said Hemming. “There are no better behaved gentlemen on board. Allow me to help you to soup. Rogers, you take care of Monsieur de Querkerie; Thompson, see to Don Bruno.”
This was a necessary caution, for the monkey gave signs that he was about to thrust his paw into Pigeon’s plate, which act would have belied the assertion just made in his favour, and would certainly not have been pleasant to the human guest. Bruin, who had a handful of hard biscuit before him to munch, was behaving himself very well. Hemming kept serving out the soup with the greatest gravity amid roars of laughter, not a little increased by Pigeon’s perplexed countenance. What to do he could not decide. He felt that a joke was being played off on him, but he was too much afraid to resent it, or to show his indignation, and therefore he did the very best thing he could have done under the circumstances, he went on eating his soup without speaking. All might have ended well had not Quirk, not understanding fully the proprieties of the dinner-table, darted out his paw and seized a lump of potato from the soup plate. Pigeon could not stand this, but shoving the defiled plate from him, he made a dash with his spoon at Quirk’s face, almost knocking some of his teeth down his throat. The monkey retaliated, and not without Jack’s utmost exertions could quiet be restored; I will not say peace or harmony, because that was out of the question.
“I beg pardon, Mr Pigeon, we thought you might like the companionship of our foreign guests, as you are supposed to have some qualities in common,” said Hemming in a grave tone. “But as you do not appear to admire their society, pray remove to the other side of the berth, where you will be more at your ease.”
Pigeon was glad enough of an excuse to get away, but he was puzzled to settle whether it was safer to pass the bear or the monkey. At length he decided to get behind the former. At that moment Bruin took it into his head to lift up his huge back, and catching poor Pigeon between the legs, he sent him right into the middle of the table, with his head into the soup dish; while Quirk, delighted at the opportunity, caught hold of his heels, and, getting a kick, sprang in revenge on the part of his body most exposed to attack, which he bit till the wretched victim roared with pain, and Jack had by main force hauled him off. Hemming and Murray, with others: as soon as their laughter would allow them, dragged Pigeon off the table, apologising with tears in their eyes for the mishap which had occurred. Pigeon’s first impulse was to roar out for a basin and towel to wash off the soup from his face; and when his features were made clean, though earnestly pressed to come back, nothing could persuade him to take his seat till Bruin and Quirk were removed from the berth. In truth the mess were not sorry to get rid of them, for to more than one sense they were somewhat unpleasant companions. All things considered, it was voted that Pigeon had really behaved very well, and the lesson he had received did him a great deal of good, and while he remained on board he seemed to think very much less of himself. I cannot defend the conduct of Hemming or Jack, or anyone concerned in the affair; but my belief is that had Pigeon not spoken disparagingly of Adair, whose memory Jack and Murray so fondly cherished, the trick would not have been played. Malta was visited, so were the Ionian islands; and the frigate clove through the waters of the Levant.
“A sail in sight to leeward, sir,” said Jack, entering the cabin, cap in hand, one afternoon, while the captain was at dinner.
“What does she look like?” asked Captain Lascelles, applying his table-napkin to his mouth, and finishing his glass of wine as a man does when he has to move in a hurry, while he fumbles in his waistcoat-pocket for his toothpick case.
“The first lieutenant thinks her a heavy frigate, or a line-of-battle ship,” answered Jack, “and she is not English.”
In a moment the captain was on deck, and taking an earnest look at the stranger through his telescope. At that period all captains of English men-of-war had received orders to be very circumspect with regard to their conduct towards French ships, for there was no doubt that France was seeking cause by which she might pick a quarrel with England. The Racer had now been cruising for some time, and Captain Lascelles could not tell whether the stranger in sight might or might not prove an enemy with whom he might speedily be engaged in deadly strife. The wind was from the north, and the African coast—a thin blue line—was rising to sight in the horizon. The helm was instantly put up, and all sail made in chase.
