My First Cruise

My First Cruise, by W.H.G.
Kingson

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Title: My First Cruise and Other stories
Author: W.H.G. Kingson
Illustrator: Anonymous
Release Date: October 17, 2007 [EBook #23068]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FIRST
CRUISE ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

My First Cruise
and other stories

by W.H.G. Kingston.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER 1.
NOTES FROM PRINGLE RUSHFORTH'S SEA LOG.
A LETTER TO BROTHER HARRY, AT ETON.
It has become a reality, dear Harry. I feel very strange--a curious
sensation in the throat, just as if I was going to cry, and yet it is exactly
what I have been longing for. You know better than any one how I had
set my heart on going to sea, and yet I thought that I should never
manage it. But, after all, here I am, really and truly a midshipman; at
least a volunteer of the first class, as we are called now. The first time I
put on my uniform, with my gold-band cap and dirk, I could not help
every now and then looking at the gold lace on my collar and the
buttons with the anchor and crown, and very pretty and nice they
looked; and I do believe that this half-reconciled poor mamma, and
Fanny, and Mary, and dear little Emily to my going when they saw me
with them on. I'll tell you how it all happened. Uncle Tom came to stay
with us. He had been at the Hall a week when, the very day before I
was to go back to school, while we were all at breakfast, he got a long
official-looking letter. No sooner had he torn it open and glanced at its
contents, than he jumped up and shook papa by the hand, then kissed
mamma, exclaiming, "They do acknowledge my services, and in a
handsome way too, and they have appointed me to the Juno intended
for the South American station; the very ship I should have chosen! I
must have Pringle with me. No nonsense, Mary. He wants to be a sailor,
and a sailor he shall be. He's well fitted for it. I'll have no denial. It's
settled--that's all right." (I had been telling him the day before how
much I wanted to go to sea.) He carried his point, and set all the
household preparing my kit, and then posted off for London, and rattled
down to Portsmouth to hoist his flag. He is not a man to do things by
halves. In three days I followed him. The ship was nearly ready for sea.
Most of the officers had joined. There was only one vacancy, which I
got. Another captain had been appointed, who had been superseded,

and he had selected most of the officers. Many of my messmates are
good fellows, but of others the less said about them the better, at least
as far as I could judge from the way they behaved when I first went into
the berth. We carry thirty-six guns. There is the main deck, on which
most of them are placed, and the upper deck, which is open to the sky,
and where all the ropes lead, and where some guns are, and the lower
deck, where we sleep in hammocks slung to the beams, and where our
berth is; that is the place where we live--our drawing-room, and parlour,
and study, and anything else you please. There is a table in the centre,
and lockers all round, and if you want to move about you have to get
behind the other fellows' backs or over the table. Under it are cases and
hampers of all sorts, which the caterer has not unpacked. He is an old
mate, and keeps us all in order. His name is Gregson. I don't know
whether I shall like him. He has been a great many years a midshipman;
for a mate is only a passed midshipman who wants to be a lieutenant,
but can't. He has no interest--nobody to help him on--so there he is
growling and grumbling from morning to night, declaring that he'll cut
the service, and go and join the Russians, and make his country rue the
day; but he doesn't, and I believe he wouldn't, if they would make him
an admiral and a count off-hand. My chief friend they call Dicky
Snookes. His real name, though, is Algernon Godolphin Stafford, on
which