Chapter III “Any Spot on Earth Is a Home for the Brave.”
About a week after this, rather a crack little cruiser was lying with steam up, or fires alit anyhow, in Plymouth Sound. Long, low, rakish she was, and looked just the craft to go anywhere and do anything, howsoever daring.
Kep Drummond stood gazing at her from the Hoe.
There was a sailor sitting on the end of a bench near by, and him Kep addressed. “What ship is that, mate?” he said.
“That is the Breezy, my son. She sails to-morrow.”
“Do you belong to her?”
“Not I. Just come from China station.”
“I think I should like to sail in that craft. There is a bit of romance about her, lying with her bowsprit pointing to the breakwater. I like her looks, and what a lot of boats are passing to and fro. How had I best get on board?”
“Why, with a shore-boat, of course. You don’t imagine, do you, that they would call away the first whaler for a kinchin like you, though you do look pretty fit.”
“Well, anyhow, I’m going to join that ship and sail in her.”
The seaman laughed aloud.
“As what?” he asked. “Second lieutenant, paymaster, or what? Mebbe you’d like to take command of her. I’m sure you have only to wire the Admiralty to get appointed right away.”
Kep’s eyes were riveted on the Breezy, and he was all a-quiver with a new-born excitement.
“How old are you, sonny?”
The man now laid a kindly hand on his shoulder.
“Fourteen and begun again.”
“Run away from your parents, haven’t you?”
“That’s my business, matey.”
“Well, but take a man-o’-war sailor’s advice. Don’t go on board the Breezy; if you do, you’ll get copped and sent home again. And it is there you should be. If I did my duty now——”
“Come and have a pint, Jack.”
“Oh, I’m nothing loath,” said Jack.
“Then we can yarn about it,” said Kep.
They were soon seated in the parlour of an inn, where Jack seemed to be well known. There was a foaming tankard in front of the sailor and one by Kep, which he pretended to sip, but fought shy of.
Kep told Jack little bits about himself, but no more than Jack could conveniently swallow.
“Have you been much abroad, sir?” said Kep. The “sir” almost stuck in the boy’s throat, but then, this man had many stripes on his sleeve, and Kep thought it as well to err on the safe side.
“Been kicked about a lot, sonny, if that’s what you mean. I’m eight and twenty, and next commission may be my last—”
“Why, you think you’ll be drowned then?”
“No, no, lad, only if I do two years more, my time will be about up, but I’ll join on again, ’cause I dearly love the sea. I say, young fellow, you’re not drinking yours.”
“Never meant to. Ordered it for company’s sake.”
“Thought so. There’s a pal o’ mine in the bar, he could let daylight inside that tankard if your lordship will allow me to call him in.”
“Certainly—delighted.”
The pal, a young man, clean-shaven and very baggy about the lower garments, did let daylight into the tankard after nodding frankly to Kep.
The boy had heard of boozing kens, and he wondered if he was in one now. Anyhow, he believed he could take care of himself.
A buxom middle-aged landlady presently came in, and Jack said something to her in an undertone. She smiled most pleasantly, and patted Kep’s hand. “Poor boy!” she said, “nothing must come over him then.”
Kep called for more stout all round, and threw down a sovereign. But this fresh supply stood for some time untouched, for the lads of the Royal Navy are not now what they were in the days of Dibdin.
“I’ll call Katie, my daughter,” said the landlady, “as I must attend to duty. Katie dear, come this way.”
Kep thought he had never seen so winsome a girl before and he asked her to have something, but she took positively no notice.
Only a minute after, she pulled Kep on to her knee.
“The sweet little lamb,” she said, “and oh, the black eyes of him. Jack, he is his mother’s wopsy-popsy, I’ll bet.”
“What—how—why,” the boy cried, wriggling away from her. “Can’t you see I’m a man? Fourteen and began again?”
But Katie soothed him. “I’m sure you’d like a cup of tea,” she said.
Kep would.
Yet he had some suspicions that if this were in reality a boozing den, the tea might be drugged, and that being hocussed, he might be robbed. But one look at sweet Katie convinced him that his suspicions were really unmanly.
“You’ll sleep here to-night, won’t you?” she said.
“Yes, if they don’t keep me on board the Breezy.”
Jack roared with laughter and Katie couldn’t help joining in.
“I think,” said Jack, “that even the first lieutenant has been appointed, and they will have to dispense with your services, sonny. Why didn’t you ’phone to the Port Admiral, and say you were coming?”
“You funny boy!” said Katie. “But how much money is in that purse of yours, that makes your trousers pocket bulge out so?”
“Oh, enough to pay for the tea, twenty times over.”
“Why dear, I don’t mean that,” and the girl reddened a little.
“Well,” she added, “you’ll count all your gold out there on the table, and give it to my mother except just a handful of silver. She’ll give you a receipt for it, and you’ll come back here to sleep.”
Kep looked at Jack, and Jack nodded. Then the boy counted his gold and notes out as innocently as a boy of nine might have done, and Mrs. Monck, the landlady of the Blue Ensign, took it in charge.
Jack told him he would meet him here again that evening, told him also where to charter a shore-boat.
“Hillo you, what’s the fare to the Breezy?”
“Three bob to you, cap’n.”
“Take ye for ’arf,” cried another.
“Jump in,” said Kep.
The men jumped in and off they pulled. There was a rudder, and Kep took the tiller.
“Been at this game before, young sir?”
“I know what a boat is.”
“Be ye a-goin’ to join, sir?”
“Don’t know yet. Going to see the first officer.”
“Humph! well, that means the commander or first luff. The Breezy is a warship.”
The way Kep steered that boat along-side the Breezy—sta’board side mind you—was a source of great fun to some middies.
“Admiral’s sweep, by Jove! Why, he thinks himself quite a little toff. Wonder who the devil he is?”
“Couldn’t say, I’m sure. May as well have sideboys, anyhow.”
And down the steps the side-boys rattled and handed Kep the pipe-clayed ropes.
He was half-way up, when the man hailed, “Am I to wait, sir?”
“Er—um—you may as well, I think.”
The side-boys were caught on the giggle and Kep frowned at them.
He saluted the quarter-deck as if to the manner born.
“What—er—can I do you for, youngster?” This from the midshipman of the after watch.
“I want to see the commander or Captain.”
“Neither on board. Here comes the second lieutenant.
“Hullo, my lad”—he wasn’t much more than a lad himself—“have you friends on board?”
“Soon will have, I hope, sir. I want to join the service, and this ship. Rather like the looks of her.”
The middies pulled their handkerchiefs out, and seemed strangely convulsed. The officer raised his eye-brows, but appeared much amused.
“Come down to the ward-room, my boy,” he said. “There is really nobody on board, yet. Sit down. You are smartly dressed, is your father a gentleman?”
“Yes, and all my forefathers, and I’m a gentleman myself.”
“Undoubtedly, but you’ve run away from home, haven’t you? What is your father’s name?”
“Not over anxious to divulge, sir,” replied Kep.
“Well, what name do you sail under?”
“Not particular. Call me Mr. Bowser.”
“Well, Master Bowser, you say you are desirous of doing us the honour of sailing with us. May I presume to ask in what capacity?”
Kep jumped up.
“You are making fun of me, poking fun at me,” he cried, now furiously red in the face.
“Sit down, you spitfire, and don’t be a little fool, else, but there! now calm yourself and answer my question. What use do you think you’d be on H.M.S. Breezy?”
“Oh, I’m so willing, sir! I can be anything, or do anything. Could take charge of a watch or my turn at the wheel, or help the cook, or clean the boots. I can reef and steer, and box the compass, splice the main-brace, or work out the reckoning or——”
“Suppose, now, our captain were taken ill?”
“Oh, sir. I could soon learn to do the simple duties of a Naval Captain.”
“Is there any other capacity in which you could serve?”
“Oh yes, I can speak six or seven languages fluently, and I could play on this little pipe while the sailor men danced.”
The lieutentant was more amused than ever. He wanted a little fun, anyhow.
“Play something to me.”
“What shall it be? Nocturne, Sonata, Valse, or, just name your opera. Come, here is a little bit of Wagner.” The officer leaned back in his chair, really or truly delighted.
“Why,” he said, “you are—why you are a juvenile freak. Come on deck with me.”
“Quartermaster, just take this lad forward, and he’ll play you a hornpipe.”
He did. Kep played, and didn’t the men dance too. It was half an hour of the best fun ever seen on board a man-o’-war.
Then the young lieutentant gave the boy ginger wine, grapes, and much good advice, and bade him be sure to go home to his parents.
No, Kep had not succeeded in joining the Breezy, but he really had made an impression on board, and those who met him would not soon forget him.
The boy did not go directly back to the Blue Ensign. The day was very beautiful and though already far spent there was plenty of time of stroll around and see things.
Now Plymouth down by the docks is always a busy place. It was ten times more so just at present, for complications had once more arisen betwixt this country and Russia. Since the close of the terrible war against the Japs, the Russians appeared to be intriguing very much in European politics. She desired a war with Britain, she longed to invade India, but the trouble was that unless supported by another power there was little chance of her being able to regain her lost prestige.
Be that as it may, orders had only a few days before Kep’s arrival been received at Plymouth dockyards that make things hum, as the saying is, and the lad wondered a good deal at all he saw in the dockyards. A swarm of bees about to swarm could not have been more busy and bustling.
The tall policemen who guarded the gates eyed everyone who sought entrance with considerable suspicion unless wearing the king’s uniform, and even Kep came in for his share of this.
“Are you a young officer, sir?” said one, as the lad essayed to pass in, just as coolly as if the place were all his own.
“Halt! Are you a young gentleman, sir?”
Kep smiled his blandest, though with a slight air of hauteur in his manner.
“I hope so,” he replied emphatically.
The policeman touched his hat.
And an Irish marine who was doing sentry-go, seeing this, shouldered arms as he passed, and Kep returned the salute with a flourish of his hand capwards as he had seen real officers do on the street, when the blue-jackets saluted.
“This is all very sweet,” thought Kep, though the fact was that he was sailing under false colours, for the policeman’s “young gentleman,” really meant “junior officer,” although it ought to have struck him as strange that even a naval cadet, if appointed, should be marching through the dockyard in mufti. And this incident, trifling though it appears, pleased Kep. It proved that he looked a little gentleman, and not a second-class boy, nor shop-keeper’s apprentice out for a day.
But everybody was not quite so polite to our little hero, for during his peregrination he happened to stumble against a red-faced pompous looking old officer, and made bold to salute.
This officer was in uniform and stopped to eye Kep for a moment.
“Hillo! young fellow, who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“Just having a look around, sir.”
“Cool. You don’t belong to the service?”
“No, sir. That is not yet.”
The officer laughed.
“Here is sixpence for you,” he said. “I rather like a cheeky boy. Yonder is a gate, they’ll let you out and they shouldn’t have let you in. Go and buy buns.”
Poor Kep reddened to the roots of the hair. He took the coin, though it seemed to burn his fingers and marched on towards the gate.
A bo’s’n’smate accosted him next. “What ho! younk, whither away? What’s your tally?”
“I’m only just a little boy going to buy buns,” said Kep, and they parted.
The first thing he did, when he emerged, was to give that sixpence to a small gutter-snipe girl. She examined it wonderingly.
“’Taint a reel un, is it boss?”
“Yes, quite, go and buy buns for yourself.”
“Well, you be a softy, anyhow,” she cried and darted off, shrieking with delight. And, next moment, Kep ran right up against Jack himself.
“Come to bring you back home, sonny,” said the kindly fellow. “Make sure, you know, that you don’t fall into mischief.”
About two hours after this, Kep might have been seen in the tap-room of the Blue Ensign piping to a lot of jolly young sailors, as he stood on the top of a table. A position, which I must admit was a trifle infra dignitate—beneath the dignity—of Keppel Drummond, only son of a lord of a manor. But Kep enjoyed it and so did the blue-jackets.
Well, Kep had supper with the landlady, Katie and Jack, in the cosy bar parlour, quite a private party, be assured, and a very merry one as well. This happened after ten o’clock, when the house was shut up for the night.
To have seen Kep now, and heard his ringing laughter, as Jack spun his droll service yarns, you could scarce have believed that he had any sorrow at all at his heart. He did have though, and it is not easy to forget so happy a home as that which he had just forsaken, only care lies lightly on the shoulders of a lad of fourteen. He compounded with his conscience, moreover, by promising to write nice letters home the very next morning.
He bade his friends good-night at last, and was shown up to his little room, a bit rough, perhaps, but everything as sweet and clean as new silver.
Never a dream, and it was far into the morning before the sun shimmering in through the window awoke him, and soon he was down to breakfast. There came word now that the Breezy was off, and so she was. Jack and Kep started for the Hoe to see her sail past.
And Kep sighed. How he would have liked to be on board that low long craft. Not perhaps so poetic-looking was she as a ship under sail with every inch of canvas set to woo the wind, but her build and shape, and clean cut bows suggested terrific force, terrible possibilities.
The variegated flutter of her signal flags as she flew through the blue water, her great white ensign floating astern, and the sweet music of her band playing, “Good-bye, sweetheart, good-bye,” everything about her in fact, thrilled poor Kep till the tears filled his eyes.
They watched her getting smaller and smaller as she went stretching seawards. Yes, and many more than they were watching her, for when our sailors leave their native bonnie British shores, they leave many a tearful face and many a breaking heart behind them.
There was more of sadness in Kep’s breast as he walked back to the Blue Ensign than he had ever felt since the day his mother died.
He would work some of that off, however, by writing to his sister, and his father, to say nothing of the good old priest and Duncan Rae. He had much to write about to Madge, and, indeed, he felt somehow as if years had elapsed since he had sat beside her on the green cliff-top.
The landlady of the inn vouchsafed to Kep some very good advice. He must, she said, go back to his parents—Kep had not told her his story—there was nothing else for it.
Kep patted her white podgy hand, and thanked her. “Your advice, mammy,” he said, “is very excellent in its way, but it is advice of the feminine gender, and I shall go to sea, whatever happens. I shall not return home until I can do so with honour. My proud father shall never have to say that his son is unworthy of his grand old name.”
“And you really will go,” said Katie mournfully.
“I must, Katie, but cheer up, my dear. O’er many seas and lands I’ll roam. Yet the heart of your sailor shall ever be true, and when my wanderings are over, I’ll return to Merrie England and marry my Katie.”
This wasn’t bad for a boy of fourteen, was it?
“Well, go if you must,” said the landlady, “where are you bound to?”
“Yes,” said Jack, “what is your next port, sonny?”
“I shall consider. Have you a Bradshaw, Katie?”
He opened the book at random, at the place where it tells one of steamers that sail away to every part of the known world. It opened at Southampton.
He closed his eyes now fast and hard, and stuck a pin into one of the pages. It struck the West Indies.
Even Jack, old sailor though he was, was taken aback at the boy’s boldness.
“I shall go there!” he said. “My dear and charming Katie,” he added heroically, “Any spot on earth is a home for the brave.”