The Honour of the Flag | Page 2

of
his life. From which it is to be assumed that Sloper and his wife had not
lived together very happily. But though the Whitechapel County Court
records have been searched and inquiries made in that part of London
where Sloper's shop was situated, it has not been discovered that Mrs.
Sloper's end was hastened by her husband's cruelty; that, in short, more
happened between them than constant quarrels. Yet it must be said that
Sloper behaved as though, in truth (as the old adage would put it), his
little figure contained no more than the ninth part of a soul, when he
mounted his guns and rudely and noisily triumphed over the dead
whom he perhaps might have been afraid of in life, and coarsely

emphasised with blasts of gunpowder his annual joy over his release.
Now in the east end of London, not above twenty minutes' walk from
Sloper's old shop, there lived a sailor, named Joseph Westlake. This
man had served when a boy under Collingwood, had smelt gunpowder
at Navarino under Codrington, had been concerned in several dashing
cutting-out jobs in the West Indies, and was altogether as hearty and
worthy a specimen of an old English sailor of the vanished school as
you could ask to see.
He had been shot in the leg; he carried a great scar over his brow; he
was as full of yarns as a piece of ancient ship's biscuit of weevils; he
swore with more oaths than a Dutchman; sneered prodigiously at steam;
and held the meanest opinion of the then existing race of seamen, who,
he said, never could have won the old battles which had been the
making of this kingdom, whether under Howe's or gallant Jervis's, or
the lion-hearted Nelson's flag.
The country had no further need of his services on his being paid off
out of his last ship, and he was somewhat at a loss, until happening to
be in the neighbourhood of Wapping, and looking in upon an old
shipmate who kept a public house, he learnt that a lawyer had been
making inquiries for him. He called upon that lawyer, and was
astounded to hear that during his absence from England a fortune of
£15,000 had been left to him by an aunt in Australia.
Joe Westlake on this took a little house in the Stepney district, and
endeavoured to settle down as an east-end gent; but his efforts to ride to
a shore-going anchor were hopeless. His mind was always roaming. He
had followed the sea man and boy for hard upon fifty years, and the cry
of his heart was still for water--water without rum!--water fresh or salt!
it mattered not what sort of water it was so long as it was--water.
So as Joe Westlake found that he couldn't rest ashore he looked about
him, and, after a while, fell in with and purchased a smart little cutter,
which he re-christened the Tom Bowling, out of admiration of the song
which no sailor ever sang more sweetly than he. It was perfectly
consistent with his traditions as a man-of-wars man that, having bought

his little ship, he should arm her. He equipped her with four small
carronades and a pivoted brass six-pounder on the forecastle. He then
went to work to man her, but he did not very easily find a crew. Joe
was fastidious in his ideas of seamen, and though some whom he cast
his eye upon came very near to his taste, it cost him a great deal of
trouble to discover the particular set of Jacks he wanted.
Three at last he found: Peter Plum, Bob Robins, and Tom Tuck. Joe
was admiral; Plum, coming next, combined a number of grades. He
was captain, first lieutenant, and boatswain. Robins was the ship's
working company, and Tom Tuck cooked and was the all-round handy
man of the Tom Bowling.
It was Mr. Joe Westlake's intention to live on board his cutter; he
furnished his cabin plainly and comfortably, and laid in a plentiful
stock of liquor and tobacco. As he was to cruise under his own flag,
and was indeed an admiral on his own account, he conferred with his
first lieutenant, Peter Plum, on the question of a colour: what
description of flag should he fly at his masthead? They both started
with the understanding that nothing under a fathom and a half in length
was worth hoisting. After much discussion it was agreed that the device
should consist of a very small jack in the top corner, and in the middle
a crown with a wooden leg under it--the timber toe being in both
Westlake's and Plum's opinion the most pregnant symbol of Britannia's
greatness that the imagination could devise.
Within a few months of his