George Henty - By Conduct and Courage - A Story of the Days of Nelson

As they mustered on deck the captain’s eye ran with a keen scrutiny over them. A slight smile crossed his lips as he came to the two boys.

“That will do, Mr. Ayling; they are not a bad lot, taking them one for all, and there are half a dozen men among them who ought to make first-rate topmen. I should say half of them have been to sea before, and the others will soon be knocked into shape. The two boys will, of course, go into the same mess as the others who have come on board. One of them looks a very sharp young fellow.”

“He has been rather specially passed down, sir. He belonged to one of the most noted smuggling villages on the Yorkshire coast, which is saying a great deal, and he struck against smuggling because some lady in the place told him that it was wrong. Of course he drew upon himself the enmity of the whole village. The coast-guard stopped a landing, and two or three of the fishermen were killed. The hostility against the lad, which was entirely unfounded, rose in consequence of this to such a pitch that he was obliged to take refuge in the coast-guard station. I hear from the captain of the Hearty that the boy has been far better educated than the generality of fisher lads, and was specially recommended to him by the officer of the receiving-ship.”

“Is there anything extraordinary about the other boy?”the captain asked with a slight smile.

“No, sir; I believe he joined chiefly to be near his companion, the two being great friends.”

“He looks a different kind of boy altogether,” the captain said. “You could pick him out as a fisher boy anywhere, and picture him in high boots, baggy corduroy breeches, and blue guernsey.”

“He is a strong, well-built lad, and I should say a good deal more powerful than his friend.”

“Well, they are good types of boys, and are not likely to give us as much trouble as some of those young scamps, run-away apprentices and so on, who want a rope’s end every week or so to teach them to do their duty.”

The boys were taken down to a deck below the water-level, where the crew were just going to begin dinner. At one end was a table at which six boys were sitting.

“Hillo, who are you?” the eldest among them asked. “I warn you, if you don’t make things comfortable, you will get your heads punched in no time.”

“My name is William Gilmore, and this is Tom Stevens. As to punching heads, you may not find it as easy as you think. I may warn you at once that we are friends and will stick together, and that there will be no punching one head without having to punch both.”

“We shall see about that before long,” the other said.“Some of the others thought they were going to rule the roost when they joined a few days ago, but I soon taught them their place.”

“Well, you can begin to teach us ours as soon as you like,”Tom Stevens said. “We have met bullies of your sort before. Now, as dinner is going on, we will have some of it, as they didn’t victual us before we left the cutter.”

“Well, then, you had better go to the cook-house and draw rations. No doubt the cook has a list of you fellows’ names.”

The boys took the advice and soon procured a cooked ration of meat and potatoes. The cook told them where they would find plates.

“One of the mess has to wash them up,” he said, “and stow them away in the racks provided for them.”

“Johnson,” the eldest boy said to the smallest of the party,“you need not wash up to-day; that is the duty of the last comer.”

“I suppose it is the duty of each one of the mess by turn,”Will said quietly; “we learnt that much as we came down the coast.”

“You will have to learn more than that, young fellow,” the bully, who was seventeen, blustered. “You will have to learn that I am senior of the mess, and will have to do as I tell you. I have made one voyage already, and all the rest of you are greenhorns.”

“It seems to me from the manner in which you speak, that it is not a question of seniority but simply of bounce and bullying, and I hope that the other boys will no more give in to that sort of thing than Stevens or myself. I have yet to learn that one boy is in any way superior to the others, and in the course of the next hour I shall ascertain whether this is so.”

“Perhaps, after the meal is over, you will go down to the lower deck and allow me to give you a lesson.”

“As I told you,” Will answered quietly, “my friend and I are one. I don’t suppose that single-handed I could fight a great hulking fellow like you, but my friend and I are quite willing to do so together. So now if there is any talk of fighting, you know what to expect.”

The bully eyed the two boys curiously, but, like most of the type, he was at heart a coward, and felt considerable doubt whether these two boys would not prove too much for him. He therefore muttered sullenly that he would choose his own time.

“All right! choose by all means, and whenever you like to fix a time we shall be perfectly ready to accommodate you.”

“Who on earth are you with your long words? Are you a gentleman in disguise?”

“Never mind who I am,” Will said. “I have learnt enough, at any rate, to know a bully and a coward when I meet him.”

The lad was too furious to answer, but finished his dinner in silence, his anger being all the more acute from the fact that he saw that some of the other boys were tittering and nudging each other. But he resolved that, though it might be prudent for the present to postpone any encounter with the boys, he would take his revenge on the first opportunity.

As the conflict of words came to an end, a roar of laughter burst from the sailors at the next mess-table.

“Well done, little bantam!” one said; “you have taken that lout down a good many pegs, and I would not mind backing you to thrash him single-handed. We have noticed his goings-on for the past two or three days with the other boys, and had intended to give him a lesson, but you have done it right well. He may have been on a voyage before, but I would wager that he has never been aloft, and I would back you to be at the masthead before he has crawled through the lubbers’ hole. Now, my lad, just you understand that if you are ready to fight both those boys we won’t interfere, but if you try it one on one of them we will.”

The boys’ duties consisted largely of working with the watch to which they were attached, of scrubbing decks, and cleaning brass-work. In battle their place was to bring up the powder and shot for the guns. On the second day, when the work was done, Will Gilmore went up to the boatswain.

“If you please, sir,” he said, “may I go up the mast?”

The boatswain looked at him out of one eye.

“Do you really want to learn, lad?”

“I do, sir.”

“Well, when there are, as at present, other hands aloft, you may go up, but not at other times.”

“Thank you, sir!”

Will at once started. He was accustomed to climb the mast of John Hammond’s boat, but this was a very different matter. From scrambling about the cliffs so frequently he had a steady eye, and could look down without any feeling of giddiness. The lubbers’ hole had been pointed out to him, but he was determined to avoid the ignominy of having to go up through it. When he got near it he paused and looked round. It did not seem to him that there was any great difficulty in going outside it, and as he knew he could trust to his hands he went steadily up until he stood on the main-top.

“Hallo, lad,” said a sailor who was busy there, “do you mean to say that you have come up outside?”

“Yes, there did not seem to be any difficulty about it.”