The Honour of the Flag | Page 6

any supper?"
"Well, Peter," answered old Joe, "I've bin a-turning of it over in my
mind, and spite of his 'rageous conduct I dunno, after all, that it would
be right to let him lie all night without a bite of something. Call Bob."
This man, whose surname was Robins, arrived. Joe told him to get a
lantern and cut a plate of beef and bread and mix a small mug of rum
and water.
"Ye can tell the little chap, Bob," said old Joe, speaking with one eye
shut, "that we're only a-feeding of him up so as to get more satisfaction
out of his hexecution to-morrow morning. You can say that sailoring is
a rather monotonous life, and that if he'll die game we shall all feel
obliged for the hentertainment he'll afford us."
Whether Bob Robins communicated this speech to Sloper I cannot say.
It is certain, however, that he took the lantern and the tailor's supper
into the hold and stood over the little man whilst he ate and drank.
When the retired tailor had finished his repast he asked Robins if he
was to be kept locked up in that black hole all night without anything to
lie on but shingle.

"What did you fire at us for?" said Bob.
"I never fired at you. I was firing for my own diversion," answered Mr.
Sloper.
"D' ye load with stones for your divarsion, as ye call it?" said Bob.
"There was no stones when you came along," cried the tailor. "Why did
you aggrevate me by firing in return?"
"What did you want to fire at all for?" said Bob, almost pitying the
trembling little creature as he showed by the lantern light in the cutter's
small black hold.
"I was celebrating a hanniversary," answered Mr. Sloper, who
maltreated his h's as badly as old Westlake.
"And what sort of a hanniversary calls for gun firing?" said Bob,
holding up the lantern to the tailor's face.
"It was the hanniversary of my wife's death," said Mr. Sloper, "and a
day of rejoicing with me and my friends."
Bob, who himself was a married man, loving his wife and two little
girls with the warm affection of the genuine sailor's heart, looked for
some moments speechless with disgust at the white shadowy
countenance of Mr. Sloper, and without deigning another word, rose
through the hatch, which he carefully secured, and then went aft to old
Joe and Plum to report what had passed.
"Smite me," cried the old man-of-warsman, after listening to Bob; "but
if this was furrin parts instead of Lunnon river, poisoned if I wouldn't
yard-arm the little faggot in rale earnest. What! make a joyful
hanniversary of his wife's death, and fire off guns that the whole
blooming country may know what a little beast it is. Sit ye down, Bob,
there's a glass--help yourself. This is what we mean to do," and he
forthwith related his scheme for the morning to Robins and Plum.

They smoked hard and roared out in great peals of laughter. The
bulkheads of a little ship such as the Tom Bowling are not, as may be
supposed, of very formidable scantling; there is no doubt that Sloper in
the hold heard these wild shouts of laughter which the muffling of the
bulkhead and his own terrors would render awful to him, and we may
be sure that as he lay in the blackness harkening to those horrid notes of
merriment, he feared and perspired exceedingly.
Somewhere at about eight o'clock next morning the Tom Bowling was
got under way, and when all hands had breakfasted, Joe Westlake took
the tiller, and Plum, Robins, and Tuck went to work to construct the
machinery for the retired tailor's execution. They filled a big tub with
water and covered it loosely with a tarpaulin. Close against this tub
they placed a three-legged stool; alongside this stool upon the deck was
a tar-bucket with a tar-brush sticking up in it; they also procured and
placed beside this tar-bucket a piece of rough iron hoop. At the time
that these preparations were completed the cutter was running through
the Warp, which is some little distance past the Nore Light. The river
had widened into the aspect of an ocean, and over the bows of the craft
the water stretched boundless and blue as the horizon of the Pacific.
They opened the hatch and brought the tailor on deck. Needless to say,
he had not slept a wink all night. Who, accustomed to a feather-bed,
could snatch even ten minutes' sleep when his couch is Thames ballast?
Sloper's eyes were bloodshot, and his countenance haggard. He looked
inconceivably grimy and forlorn, and Bob Robins felt sorry for the little
creature till he recollected on a