Mr Midshipman Easy (22 page)

“I do think myself, sir,” replied Jack, with great modesty, “that I am not yet quite perfect.”

“Well, then, Mr Jolliffe will teach you; he is the most competent in this ship: the sooner you ask him the better, and if you learn it as fast as you have Spanish, it will not give you much trouble.”

Jack thought the advice good; the next day he was very busy with his friend Jolliffe, and made the important discovery that two parallel lines continued to infinity would never meet.

It must not be supposed that Captain Wilson and Mr Sawbridge received their promotion instanter. Promotion is always attended with delay, as there is a certain routine in the service which must not be departed from. Captain Wilson had orders to return to Malta after his cruise. He therefore carried his own despatches away from England—from Malta the despatches had to be forwarded to Toulon to the admiral, and then the admiral had to send to England to the admiralty, whose reply had to come out again. All this, with the delays arising from vessels not sailing immediately, occupied an interval of between five and six months—during which time there was no alteration in the officers and crew of his Majesty's sloop
Harpy.

There had, however, been one alteration; the gunner, Mr Minus, who had charge of the first cutter in the night action in which our hero was separated from his ship, carelessly loading his musket, had found himself minus his right hand, which, upon the musket going off as he rammed down, had gone off too. He was invalided and sent home during Jack's absence, and another had been appointed, whose name was Tallboys. Mr Tallboys was a stout dumpy man, with red face, and still redder hands; he had red hair and red whiskers, and he had read a great deal—for Mr Tallboys considered that the gunner was the most important personage in the ship. He had once been a captain's clerk, and having distinguished himself very much in cutting-out service, had applied for and received his warrant as a gunner. He had studied the “Art of Gunnery,” a part of which he understood, but the remainder was above his comprehension: he continued, however, to read it as before, thinking that by constant reading he should understand it at last. He had gone through the work from the title-page to the finis at least forty times, and had just commenced it over again. He never came on deck without the gunner's
vade mecum
in his pocket, with his hand always upon it to refer to it in a moment.

But Mr Tallboys had, as we observed before, a great idea of the importance of a gunner, and, among other qualifications, he considered it absolutely necessary that he should be a navigator. He had at least ten instances to bring forward of bloody actions, in which the captain and all the commissioned officers had been killed or wounded and the command of the ship had devolved upon the gunner.

“Now, sir,” would he say, “if the gunner is no navigator, he is not fit to take charge of his Majesty's ships. The boatswain and carpenter are merely practical men; but the gunner, sir, is, or ought to be, scientific. Gunnery, sir, is a science—we have our own disparts and our lines of sight—our windage, and our parabolas, and projectile forces—and our point blank, and our reduction of powder upon a graduated scale. Now, sir, there's no excuse for a gunner not being a navigator; for knowing his duty as a gunner, he has the same mathematical tools to work with.” Upon this principle, Mr Tallboys had added John Hamilton Moore to his library, and had advanced about as far into navigation as he had in gunnery, that is, to the threshold, where he stuck fast, with all his mathematical tools, which he did not know how to use. To do him justice, he studied for two or three hours every day, and it was not his fault if he did not advance—but his head was confused with technical terms; he mixed all up together, and disparts, sines and cosines, parabolas, tangents, windage, seconds, lines of sight, logarithms, projectiles, and traverse sailing, quadrature, and Gunter's scales, were all crowded together, in a brain which had not capacity to receive the rule of three. “Too much learning,” said Festus to the apostle, “hath made thee mad.” Mr Tallboys had not wit enough to go mad, but his learning lay like lead upon his brain: the more he read, the less he understood, at the same time that he became more satisfied with his supposed acquirements, and could not speak but in “mathematical parables.”

“I understand, Mr Easy,” said the gunner to him one day, after they had sailed for Malta, “that you have entered into the science of navigation—at your age it was high time.”

“Yes,” replied Jack, “I can raise a perpendicular, at all events, and box the compass.”

“Yes, but you have not yet arrived at the dispart of the compass.”

“Not come to that yet,” replied Jack.

“Are you aware that a ship sailing describes a parabola round the globe?”

“Not come to that yet,” replied Jack.

“And that any propelled body striking against another flies off at a tangent?”

“Very likely,” replied Jack; “that is a
‘sine'
that he don't like it.”

“You have not yet entered into
‘acute'
trigonometry?”

“Not come to that yet,” replied Jack.

“That will require very sharp attention.”

“I should think so,” replied Jack.

“You will then find out how your parallels of longitude and latitude meet.”

“Two parallel lines, if continued to infinity will never meet,” replied Jack.

“I beg your pardon,” said the gunner.

“I beg yours,” said Jack.

Whereupon Mr Tallboys brought up a small map of the world, and showed Jack that all the parallels of latitude met at a point at the top and the bottom.

“Parallel lines never meet,” replied Jack, producing Hamilton Moore.

Whereupon Jack and the gunner argued the point, until it was agreed to refer the case to Mr Jolliffe, who asserted, with a smile, “That those lines were parallels, and not parallels.”

As both were right, both were satisfied.

It was fortunate that Jack would argue in this instance: had he believed all the confused assertions of the gunner, he would have been as puzzled as the gunner himself. They never met without an argument and a reference, and as Jack was put right in the end, he only learnt the faster. By the time that he did know something about navigation, he discovered that his antagonist knew nothing. Before they arrived at Malta, Jack could fudge a day's work.

But at Malta Jack got into another scrape. Although Mr Smallsole could not injure him, he was still Jack's enemy; the more so as Jack had become very popular: Vigors also submitted, planning revenge; but the parties in this instance were the boatswain and purser's steward. Jack still continued his forecastle conversations with Mesty: and the boatswain and purser's steward, probably from their respective ill-will towards our hero, had become great allies. Mr Easthupp now put on his best jacket to walk the dog-watches with Mr Biggs, and they took every opportunity to talk at our hero.

“It's my peculiar hopinion,” said Mr Easthupp, one evening, pulling at the frill of his shirt, “that a gentleman should behave as a gentleman, and that if a gentleman professes opinions of hequality and such liberal sentiments, that he is bound as a gentleman to hact up to them.”

“Very true, Mr Easthupp; he is bound to act up to them; and not because a person, who was a gentleman as well as himself, happens not to be on the quarter-deck, to insult him because he only has perfessed opinions like his own.”

Hereupon Mr Biggs struck his rattan against the funnel, and looked at our hero.

“Yes,” continued the purser's steward, “I should like to see the fellow who would have done so on shore; however, the time will come when I can hagain pull on my plain coat, and then the insult shall be vashed out in blood, Mr Biggs.”

“And I'll be cursed if I don't some day teach a lesson to the blackguard who stole my trousers.”

“Vas hall your money right, Mr Biggs?” inquired the purser's steward.

“I didn't count,” replied the boatswain magnificently.

“No—gentlemen are habove that,” replied Easthupp; “but there are many light-fingered gentry about. The quantity of vatches and harticles of value vich were lost ven I valked Bond Street in former times is incredible.” “I can say this, at all events,” replied the boatswain, “that I should be always ready to give satisfaction to any person beneath me in rank, after I had insulted him. I don't stand upon my rank, although I don't talk about equality, damme—no, nor consort with niggers.”

All this was too plain for our hero not to understand, so Jack walked up to the boatswain, and taking his hat off, with the utmost politeness, said to him—

“If I mistake not, Mr Biggs, your conversation refers to me.”

“Very likely it does,” replied the boatswain. “Listeners hear no good of themselves.”

“It appears that gentlemen can't converse without being vatched,” continued Mr Easthupp, pulling up his shirt collar.

“It is not the first time that you have thought proper to make very offensive remarks, Mr Biggs; and as you appear to consider yourself ill-treated in the affair of the trousers—for I tell you at once that it was I who brought them on board—I can only say,” continued our hero, with a very polite bow, “that I shall be most happy to give you satisfaction.”

“I am your superior officer, Mr Easy,” replied the boatswain.

“Yes, by the rules of the service; but you just now asserted that you would waive your rank—indeed, I dispute it on this occasion; I am on the quarter-deck, and you are not.”

“This is the gentleman whom you have insulted, Mr Easy,” replied the boatswain, pointing to the purser's steward.

“Yes, Mr Heasy, quite as good a gentleman as yourself although I av ad misfortunes—I ham of as old a family as hany in the country,” replied Mr Easthupp, now backed by the boatswain; “many the year did I valk Bond Street, and I ave as good blood in my weins as you, Mr Heasy halthough I have been misfortunate—I've had hadmirals in my family.”

“You have grossly insulted this gentleman,” said Mr Biggs, in continuation; “and notwithstanding all your talk of equality, you are afraid to give him satisfaction—you shelter yourself under your quarter-deck.”

“Mr Biggs,” replied our hero, who was now very wroth, “I shall go on shore directly upon our arrival at Malta. Let you and this fellow put on plain clothes, and I will meet you both—and then I'll show you whether I am afraid to give satisfaction.”

“One at a time,” said the boatswain.

“No, sir, not one at a time, but both at the same time—I will fight both, or none. If you are my superior officer, you must descend,” replied Jack, with an ironical sneer, “to meet me, or I will not
descend
to meet that fellow, whom I believe to have been little better than a pickpocket.”

This accidental hit of Jack's made the purser's steward turn pale as a sheet, and then equally red. He raved and foamed amazingly, although he could not meet Jack's indignant look, who then turned round again.

“Now, Mr Biggs, is this to be understood, or do you shelter yourself under your
forecastle?“

“I'm no dodger,” replied the boatswain, “and we will settle the affair at Malta.”

At which reply Jack returned to Mesty.

“Massa Easy, I look at um face, dat fellow Eastop, he no like it. I go shore wid you, see fair play, anyhow—suppose I can?”

Mr Biggs having declared that he would fight, of course had to look out for a second, and he fixed upon Mr Tallboys, the gunner, and requested him to be his friend. Mr Tallboys, who had been latterly very much annoyed by Jack's victories over him in the science of navigation, and therefore felt ill-will towards him, consented; but he was very much puzzled how to arrange that
three
were to fight at the same time, for he had no idea of there being two duels; so he went to his cabin and commenced reading. Jack, on the other hand, dared not say a word to Jolliffe on the subject; indeed there was no one in the ship to whom he could confide but Gascoigne: he therefore went to him, and although Gascoigne thought it was excessively
‘infra dig.'
of Jack to meet even the boatswain, as the challenge had been given there was no retracting: he therefore consented, like all midshipmen, anticipating fun, and quite thoughtless of the consequences.

The second day after they had been anchored in Valette harbour, the boatswain and gunner, Jack and Gascoigne, obtained permission to go on shore. Mr Easthupp, the purser's steward, dressed in his best blue coat, with brass buttons and velvet collar, the very one in which he had been taken up when he had been vowing and protesting that he was a gentleman, at the very time that his hand was abstracting a pocket-book, went up on the quarter-deck, and requested the same indulgence, but Mr Sawbridge refused, as he required him to return staves and hoops at the cooperage. Mesty also, much to his mortification, was not to be spared.

This was awkward, but it was got over by proposing that the meeting should take place behind the cooperage at a certain hour, on which Mr Easthupp might slip out, and borrow a portion of the time appropriated to his duty, to heal the breach in his wounded honour. So the parties all went on shore, and put up at one of the small inns to make the necessary arrangements.

Mr Tallboys then addressed Mr Gascoigne, taking him apart while the boatswain amused himself with a glass of grog, and our hero sat outside teasing a monkey.

“Mr Gascoigne,” said the gunner, “I have been very much puzzled how this duel should be fought, but I have at last found it out. You see that there are
three
parties to fight; had there been two or four there would have been no difficulty, as the right line or square might guide us in that instance; but we must arrange it upon the
triangle
in this.”

Gascoigne stared; he could not imagine what was coming.