Gil the Gunner - George Manville Fenn (people reading books .TXT) 📗

The good-byes were said, and I was sent off with a ringing cheer by my old companions. My luggage had gone to the ship days before, and I had only a couple of tin cases to take with me in the cab when I reached London and was driven to the docks. Here, after going astray several times, I at last found the great towering-sided Jumna, and went on board with my belongings.

Everything was in confusion, for provisions were still being taken on board along with passengers’ luggage; and it was some time before I could find any one in the busy crowd which thronged the deck, to show me my cabin, which, to my disgust, I found contained a second berth and several articles of luggage labelled, “Captain Brace, Calcutta,” and in smaller letters, “Cabin; wanted on voyage.”

“Not much room for two,” I thought, as my own luggage was brought in, and I found by the number of my berth that I was to sleep on the shelf-like bed above that on which a portion of the captain’s luggage lay.

Then, wondering what he would be like; whether he would be agreeable, or disposed to look down upon me as a boy, I went back on deck, and stood about watching the busy scene, and learning which was the quarter-deck, steerage, forecastle, and the like. By virtue of being an officer, I found myself at liberty to go where I pleased, and noted which were passengers and which were leave-taking friends.

Then I had a good look at the officers and sailors, many of whom were yellow-faced lascars with dark oily-looking eyes, whose whites seemed to have an opalescent tinge.

Every one was busy, and a good many of the dock-men were up aloft giving the finishing touches to the rigging, a great deal of which seemed to be new. But somehow, as an idler, I seemed to be in everybody’s way, and was constantly being requested to make way, or stand aside, or my leave was requested in tones rather insulting, as I thought then.

Suddenly I remembered that General Crucie had said that a draft of men was going out in the vessel, in charge of Captain Brace.

“I wonder where the men are,” I said to myself; and at last, as I had looked in vain for red or blue uniforms, I asked one of the sailors.

“Swaddies?” he said. “Oh yes. Forrard. There they are.”

He pointed toward the head of the vessel as he hurried off in answer to a shout from a red-faced man who was directing a gang of sailors hauling at something up aloft which he called a yard, and I went forward to have a look at the smart detachment of soldiers I was to help to command.

The illusion was soon swept away, for the detachment was composed of about fifty unhappy, thin-looking men in white flannel jackets, sitting about or leaning over the bulwarks, smoking and watching the dock quay where stood a group of slatternly-looking women, staring wearily at the ship; and now and then one of them would wave a hand or a handkerchief to the men in white flannel, a salute as often as not evoking no response, though sometimes a man would take off his ugly blue woollen forage-cap by the red worsted tuft at the top, give it a twist, and put it on again.

“This cannot be the detachment,” I thought, and then, thinking that the best way to know was to ask, I said to the nearest man—

“Would you mind telling me whether you belong to Captain Brace’s detachment?”

“What?”

A surly, half-insolent question in reply to mine, which I repeated.

“I dunno nothing about no ’tachments,” he growled.

“Well, are you in the service, and going out to India?” I said.

“I’ve took the shilling, and I’m going out to cholera borgus, if that’s what you mean. Don’t bother!”

“You’ll get yourself in for it directly, mate,” growled another of the men. “Can’t you see the gent’s a horficer?”

I felt better at this, but I was damped down directly, for my man I had spoken to growled out—

“Horficer? Well, all I can say is as he don’t look it.”

As the man turned away to rest his arms on the bulwark and refill his pipe, the second man saluted me.

“Yes, it’s all right, sir. We’re just down from Warley barracks, and we are going out as part of Captain Brace’s draft.”

I saluted and walked away, feeling in no wise proud of the men who would be partly under my charge. Physically, they were well-made fellows enough, but there was neither romance nor sentiment about them, and in the midst of all the bustle and confusion on board, with the decks literally swarming, I began to feel horribly lonely and depressed, and a sensation of home-sickness was coming on fast, till I told myself it was all nonsense, the home for which I was sickening was only the kind of school which for many months past I had been longing to leave, and that I should in all probability soon meet father, mother, and sister, as well as begin my career as a man.

Just then my attention was taken up by an angry encounter. Three men were brought on board, almost dragged, and thrown down, and it did not need a second thought to grasp the fact that they were sailors who had been spending their advance-money at one of the public-houses which swarmed about the docks.

All at once one of them, as he lay upon the deck, began to sing, and this brought out a smart-looking officer in uniform.

“Here, get these pigs below,” he cried angrily; and half a dozen of the sailors crossed to one side, returned with a coil of rope, fastened it round the waist of one of the last-comers, and then seizing him, trotted forward, dragging him along the deck to an open hatchway, where he was unceremoniously lowered down; one sailor followed to unfasten the rope, which was hauled up, and the other men were hauled to the hatchway and lowered in turn.

“That’s the way to serve them,” said the officer to me sharply. “Some time before they get drunk again.”

He nodded shortly and went aft, while, feeling disgusted with the rough scene, I made my way aft too, and came upon quite a crowd of people, evidently friends of the passengers, bidding good-bye, many of them with tears.

“This is cheerful,” I thought, and then by an absurd change of feeling, I was hurt because there was no one to bid good-bye to me.

“Confound it all, sir, do get out of the way, please!” said another officer sharply.

I gave him a resentful look, and backed out of his way into somebody else’s, sending a man who was carrying part of a passenger’s luggage staggering, so that he caught the corner of a trunk sharply against an officer’s shoulder, with anything but a pleasant result for the burdened man, who recovered himself, and hurried to the cabin stairs, while, after apologising to the officer, I followed the man, meaning to go up on the poop deck.

But the staircase was full of people, and I dived under to go below and find my cabin, which I now resentfully remembered was not mine.

“Never mind, I’ll go and sit down till dinnertime,” I thought. “I suppose there will be some dinner some time.”

I went along by the row of cabin doors, and found that I was on the port instead of the starboard side; and, crossing over, I found the right cabin at last, seized the handle sharply, for a man was coming along with more luggage, and, turning the fastening, I was about to dive in, but the door was fast, and a quick, authoritative voice cried from within—

“Well, what is it?”

“Open this door,” I said as sharply, for I felt irritated at being shut out of my place of refuge from the noise and misery of the deck.

There was the sound of a bolt shooting back, the door was thrown open, and I was face to face in the dim light with a tall, dark, youngish man, whose expression was stern and severe in the extreme.

“Well, sir,” he said shortly, “what is it?”

“What is it?” I cried angrily, with a sharp look at my luggage. “What are you doing here? Why is this door fastened?”

He looked at me quite fiercely for a few moments, and then his face softened a little, and he smiled, but it was a cold, wintry sort of facial sunshine.

“Ah, I see,” he said, “you are Mr Vincent, I suppose?”

“Yes, I am, sir, and that is my luggage. What then?”

“Only that my name is Brace, and I suppose we are to be fellow-passengers.”

“I—I—beg your pardon,” I stammered, with my face turning scarlet.

“There is no need,” he said coldly. “Perhaps it was my fault for fastening the door.”

He turned away, stooped down to a trunk in which glistened a bunch of keys, turned the lock, and then altered his mind and unlocked the trunk, and took out his keys.

“No,” he said rising, “there will be no need for that.”

He turned coldly, and went out of the cabin, leaving me with the sensation that I had behaved rudely and insolently to an officer who was my superior, and under whose orders I supposed I was to be.

“Nice beginning,” I said to myself, and I sat down on one of my own trunks, feeling anything but comfortable, as I came to the conclusion that I had made an enemy who would pay me handsomely during the voyage.

“This is a happy sort of place,” I muttered, as I sat listening to the banging of cabin doors and shouting of people for stewards and others, and angry complaints about being kept waiting; and all the time there was a stamping, tramping, and rattling going on overhead that was maddening.

And there I sat, gazing dreamily at the little round pane of glass which lit the cabin, till I grew so hot and weary of the stuffy little cupboard of a place, that I got up and went on deck again, to find that the great vessel had been cast loose, and that hawsers and capstans were being used to work us out of the dock.

We were already some little distance from