Salt Water | Page 5

passed, to me, a very interesting time at Portsmouth. We constantly visited the dockyard, which was my delight. He took me over the Victory, and showed me the spot where Nelson fell; and with old associations many a tale and anecdote which, long since forgotten, now returned to his memory, he poured into my eager ear.
Some people declare, and naval men even do so, that there's no romance in a seafaring life--that it's all hard, dirty, slaving work, without anything to repay one, except prize-money in war time and promotion in peace. Now, to my mind, there's a great deal of romance and chivalry and excitement, and ample recompense in the life itself; and this Larry, who ought to have known, for he had seen plenty of hard service, had himself discovered. It is that some do not know where to look for the romance, and if found, cannot appreciate it. The stern realities of a sea life--its hardships, its dangers, its battles, its fierce contests with the elements, its triumphs over difficulties--afford to some souls a pleasure which ignobler ones cannot feel: I trust that my adventures will explain what I mean. For my own part, I can say that oftentimes have I enjoyed that intense pleasure, that joyous enthusiasm, that high excitement, which not only recompenses one for the toil and hardships by which it is won, but truly makes them as nothing in comparison to the former. All I can say is, let me go through the world sharing the rough and the smooth alike--the storms and sunshine of life; but save me from the stagnant existence of the man who sleeps on a feather bed and always keeps out of danger.
CHAPTER TWO.
DON THE TRUE BLUE--ROMANCE OF THE SEA--LARRY AND HIS WIFE.
My uniform was to be made at Portsmouth. Of course I felt myself not a little important, and very fine, as I put it on for, the first time, and looked at myself in the glass, with my dirk buckled to my side, and a round hat with a cockade in it on my head. We were sitting in the coffee-room, waiting for dinner, on that eventful day, when a number of youngsters belonging to a line-of-battle ship came into the inn. They had not been there long, when the shiny look of my new clothes, and the way I kept handling my dirk, unable to help looking down at it, attracted the attention of one of them.
"That's a sucking Nelson," he exclaimed, "I'll bet a sixpence!"
"Hillo, youngster! to what ship do you belong?" asked another, looking hard at me.
"To the Serpent cutter," I answered, not quite liking the tone in which he spoke.
"And so you are a cutter's midshipman, are you?" he asked. "And how is it you are not on board, I should like to know?"
I told him that the cutter was away, and that I was waiting for her return.
"Then I presume that you haven't been to sea at all yet?" observed the first who had spoken, in a bland tone, winking at his shipmates, with the intention of trotting me out.
I answered simply that I had not. Larry, I must observe, all the time was sitting silent, and pretending not to take any notice of them, so that they did not suspect we belonged to each other.
"Poor boy, I pity you," observed the young gentleman, gravely, and turning up his eyes. "I'd advise you seriously to go back to your mamma. You've no idea of all the difficult things you'll have to learn; of which, how to hand, reef, and steer isn't the hundredth part."
"In the first place, I have not a mamma to go to," I replied, in an indignant tone; for I did not like his mentioning her, even. "And perhaps I know more about a ship than you think of."
"You! what should you know about a ship, I should like to know?" exclaimed the midshipman, contemptuously.
"Why, I know how to gammon a bowsprit," I replied, looking at him very hard. "I can work a Turk's-head, make a lizard, or mouse a stay--can't I, Larry?" I asked, turning to the old sailor. "And as for steering, I've steered round Kilkee Bay scores of times, before you knew how to handle an oar, I'll be bound--haven't I, Larry?"
The old man, thus appealed to, looked up and spoke. "Faith, you may well say that same, Master Neil; and proud am I to have taught you. And I'll just tell you, young gentlemen, I'll lay a gold guinea that Master D'Arcy here would get the rigging over the mastheads of a ship, and fit her for sea, while either of you were looking at them, and thinking how you were to sway up the topmasts. No offence, you know; but as for gammoning--I