The Honour of the Flag | Page 6

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 sudden the man's reason for letting off his cannons. Tuck took the helm, and old Joe with a solemn countenance and slow gait rolled forward to where the apparatus was stationed.
"Now, you see your fate," he exclaimed, lifting up his eyes as though he beheld a rope with a noose dangling from the masthead, "and since no good can come of cautioning a corpse, why then, sorry I am that there are n't a company of people arter your kind assembled aboard this craft to witness the hexecution of my sentence upon ye. Last night I heard that the reason of your firing off