FullReads

CHAPTER 2.

NOTES FROM MY LOG.

The capstern went round with a merry tune–the boatswain’s whistle sounded shrilly along the decks with a magic effect–the anchor was hove up–the sails were let fall and but a few minutes had passed, after the captain gave the word of command, before the ship, under a wide spread of snowy canvas, was standing down the Solent towards the Needle passage. It was a lovely summer’s day, the sky was blue and so was the water, and the land looked green and bright, and the paint was so fresh, and the deck so white, and the officers in their glittering uniform had so polished an appearance, and the men in their white trousers and shirts with worked collars and natty hats, looked so neat and active as they sprang nimbly aloft, or flew about the decks, that I felt very proud of the frigate and everything about her, and very glad that I had come to sea. To be sure matters below were not quite in the same order just then. Still prouder was I when we saluted the Queen, who was at Osborne–firing away first on one side and then on the other, with a flash and a roar, and a huge puff of smoke. We passed out at the Needles with the cheese-like castle of Hurst and its red ninepin-looking lighthouses on our right, and a little further to the west on our right with the high cliffs of Alum Bay striped curiously with coloured sand and three high-pointed rocks, wading out into the sea, as if wanting to get across to the north shore. These are the Needle rocks. We had run the high white cliff at the west end of the island out of sight before dark, and that, except a thin blue tint of land away to the north-east, was the last I saw of the shores of dear old happy England. I daresay others felt as I did, but we all had so much to do that we hadn’t time to talk about it. Dickey Snookes had been to sea already for a few months, and of course knew a great deal more than I could–at least he said that he did, and on the strength of it offered to tell me all about everything. I thought I saw a twinkle in his eye, but his eyes always are twinkling, so I did not suspect him of intending mischief. We had some vegetables for dinner–some carrots and turnips–and he asked me if I knew where they grew? I said in some garden, I supposed. “Of course, young ‘un,” he answered. But you wouldn’t suppose we had a garden up in our foretop, where we grow all sorts of greens and other things. You have not found your way there, I suspect. I told him that I had not, and he said that I must go up there that very afternoon with him, and that he would introduce me to the head-gardener, who was always up there looking after the gooseberry bushes. I knew that this was a joke, but still I wanted to see what he meant. I said that I was ready at once, but he kept putting me off; and whenever he saw me going up the rigging he always got some one to send for me or to call me, so that it was quite late in the day before I succeeded in getting into the shrouds. The sun had now gone down, the sky was overcast, and the sea had a leaden gloomy look–there was a swell also, and the ship rolled so much from side to side, that, as I looked up and saw the mastheads forming arches in the sky, I could not help fancying that I should be sent off when I got up there like a stone from a sling, or an ancient catapult, right into the water. The idea made me hold on very tight, let me tell you; yet, as it would never do to give it up, on I went with my teeth pretty closely clenched, and my eyes fixed on the top, which seemed to grow farther and farther away from me, like Jack’s bean-stalk. At last I got up just under the top. There are two ways of getting on to it. One is by going along some ropes, called the futtock shrouds, when one hangs very much as a fly does crawling along the ceiling. I didn’t like it, being up there all alone in the gloom, for it was very different to climbing an apple-tree or the oak-tree at the bottom of the lawn, with our nest on the top of it, where you and I used to sit and smoke cane cigars, and fancy ourselves Istelson and Collingwood. It wasn’t pleasant going along the futtock shrouds, and still less getting round them outside into the top, for as the ship rolled it felt as if the mast was coming right down on the top of me. I waited, however, holding on as a cat does to a bough when you shake it, till the ship rolled over the other way, and then up I sprang easily enough, and there I saw Dickey Snookes and Polly and My Lord all standing by the side of the captain of the top, and grinning from ear to ear, as if they had some very good joke in hand. At first I thought that the captain of the top was a very important person, but I soon found that he was only one of the seamen who is more active and smarter than the rest, and takes command of those aloft. “Here comes Midshipman Green,” they all exclaimed, as they saw my head appearing between the topmast shrouds. When I stood in the top they all insisted on shaking hands with me, pinching my fingers terribly. “And so you want to see our garden up here,” said Snookes; “you’re the greenest thing we’ve got in it just now, let me tell you–ha! ha! ha!”