In the Ranks of the C.I.V. | Page 2

which was to last for a week, and kept me in constant attendance
on the horses down below; so that I might just as well have been in a
very stuffy stable on shore, for all I saw of the run down Channel. My

duty was to draw forage from the forward hold (a gloomy, giddy
operation), be responsible with my mate for the watering of all the
horses in my sub-division--thirty in number, for preparing their feeds
and "haying up" three times a day, and for keeping our section of the
stable-deck swept and clean. We started with very fine weather, and
soon fell into our new life, with, for me at least, a strange absence of
any sense of transition. The sea-life joined naturally on to the
barrack-life. Both are a constant round of engrossing duties, in which
one has no time to feel new departures. The transition had come earlier,
with the first day in barracks, and, indeed, was as great and sudden a
change, mentally and physically, as one could possibly conceive. On
the material side it was sharp enough; but the mental change was
stranger still. There was no perspective left; no planning of the future,
no questioning of the present; none of that free play of mind and will
with which we order our lives at home; instead, utter abandonment to
superior wills, one's only concern the present point of time and the
moment's duty, whatever it might be.
This is how we spent the day.
The trumpet blew reveillé at six, and called us to early "stables," when
the horses were fed and watered, and forage drawn. Breakfast was at
seven: the food rough, but generally good. We were split up into
messes of about fourteen, each of which elected two "mess orderlies,"
who drew the rations, washed up, swept the troop-deck, and were
excused all other duties. I, and my friend Gunner Basil Williams, a
colleague in my office at home, were together in the same mess. Coffee,
bread and butter, and something of a dubious, hashy nature, were
generally the fare at breakfast. I, as stableman, was constantly with the
horses, but for the rest the next event was morning stables, about nine
o'clock, which was a long and tedious business. The horses would be
taken out of their stalls, and half of us would lead them round the
stable-deck for exercise, while the rest took out the partitions and
cleaned the stalls. Then ensued exciting scenes in getting them back
again, an operation that most would not agree to without violent
compulsion--and small blame to the poor brutes. It used to take our
whole sub-division to shove my roan in. Each driver has two horses.

My dun was a peaceful beast, but the roan was a by-word in the
sub-division. When all was finished, and the horses fed and watered, it
would be near 12.30, which was the dinner-hour. Some afternoons were
free, but generally there would be more exercising and stall-cleaning,
followed by the afternoon feeds and watering. At six came tea, and then
all hands, including us stablemen, were free.
Hammocks were slung about seven, and it was one of the nightly
problems to secure a place. I generally found under the hatchway,
where it was airy, but in rainy weather moist. Then we were free to talk
and smoke on deck till any hour. Before going to bed, I used to write
my diary, down below, at a mess-table, where the lights shot dim rays
through vistas of serried hammocks, while overhead the horses fidgeted
and trampled in their stalls, making a distracting thunder on the iron
decks. It was often writing under difficulties, crouching down with a
hammock pressing on the top of one's head--the occupant protesting at
the head with no excess of civility; a quality which, by the way, was
very rare with us.
Soon after leaving the Bay, we had some rough weather. "Stables" used
to be a comical function. My diary for the first rough day says:--"About
six of us were there out of about thirty in my sub-division; our sergeant,
usually an awesome personage to me, helpless as a babe, and white as a
corpse, standing rigid. The lieutenant feebly told me to report when all
horses were watered and feeds made up. It was a long job, and at the
end I found him leaning limply against a stall. 'Horses all watered, and
feeds ready, sir.' He turned on me a glazed eye, which saw nothing;
then a glimmer of recollection flickered, and the lips framed the word
'feed,' no doubt through habit; but to pronounce that word at all under
the circumstances was an effort of heroism for which I respected him.
Rather a lonely day. My co-stableman curled in a