CHAPTER III.

IN THE GUNROOM MESS--THE GREAT WAR GAME.

"Though careless and headstrong if danger should press, And rank'd 'mongst the free list of rovers, Jack melts into tears at a tale of distress, And proves the most constant of lovers,

"To rancour unknown, to no passion a slave, Nor unmanly, nor mean, nor a railer; He's gentle as mercy, as fortitude brave, And this is a true British sailor."--DIBDIN.

The gunroom of the _Agamemnon_ was right aft and beneath the wardroom, and a big empty barn of a room it was, with a large table athwartships, which was made to be removed at a moment's notice. There were ports in the place, and guns too; very little light, very little air, and about twenty junior officers of all sorts and sizes, from the youngest middy--quite a child--to the tall ungainly form of the surgeon's mate. There were seats and lockers and coils of rope and a shockingly bad odour, which seemed to be a compound of tar, bilge water, stinking fish, and Stilton cheese.

Tom was horrified at seeing huge cockroaches inches long running about the lockers and bulkheads, and even over the biscuits in the trencher that stood on the table.

Mr. Merryweather had shown Tom in here without much ceremony.

"Gentlemen," he said, "here is Mr. Bure, a new messmate, son of the late Commander Bure, R.N. Some of you will perhaps put him up to the ropes"; and away went Merryweather.

Put him up to the ropes indeed! Why, the first thing Tom did was to tumble over a coil of that commodity.

"Look out, awkward!" cried one middy.

"Keep your head up and you'll never die," said another.

Tom stood still for about a minute till he became accustomed to the dim light. Then he was about to step forward and seat himself, when the midshipman whom Mr. Merryweather had ordered to see his chest on board stepped forward to meet him.

He lifted his cap.

"I'm Lord Raventree, Mr. Bure," he began.

"Belay your jawing tackle," shouted a mate, "I want to read. What, d' ye think Bure cares if you were twenty lords rolled into one?"

"You hold your peace, Selby. I'm talking to a gentleman, and not to you."

"Now, sir," he continued, turning once more to Tom, "I believe I owe you an apology, and I make it."

"But for what, Lord Raventree?" said Tom, much puzzled.

"I insulted you with my eyes, on the poop."

"Sit down, Cockie. Hit him with a bit o' biscuit, somebody."

"Now I apologise; but if you'd rather fight I'll meet you at Tunis with pistols."

"I've always fought with fists," said Tom boldly, "and as I'm the challenged I've got the choice. I have heard it said this was the rule."

"Sir, fists are not weapons. I've always fought with pistols."

"Fiddlesticks!" cried someone derisively.

Tom turned quickly to the speaker, and won all hearts by saying right merrily:

"Well, I don't mind fiddlesticks. Will you be my second, sir?"

"With pleasure," cried young Fraser. "Fiddlesticks are good enough for Raventree anyhow. The last time he fought a duel it was with his feet against the usher, when he was being birched at school."

The laugh was against his lordship now.

"I won't fight with fiddlesticks. This is an innovation. A _reductio ad absurdum_. I am sorry to say that there is an absence of moral tone about the mess that----"

What else he would have said may never be learnt, for the surgeon's mate entered at that moment.

He looked from one to the other of the would-be belligerents, and seemed at once to note how the land lay.

"Cookie at it again?"

"Cockie should be cobbed," suggested someone.

"No," said the medico, "we won't cob Cockie. Desperate diseases need desperate cures. If, my Lord Raventree, you won't round in the slack of your cockiness, we'll make you fast to a rope and tow you astern for a minute and a half."

"Cockie on the end of a cable! Ha! ha!"

"Cockie on the end of a lanyard!"

"Or a bit o' spunyarn! That would be strong enough to hold Cockie."

The entrance of some of the servants with the evening meal of salt meat and biscuits put an end to the squabble. But Tom Bure had learned a lesson even this early. He had found out that the gun-room mess was in reality a little republic. That self-assertiveness or cockieness would not be tolerated at any price, but that merit and modesty would be fully appreciated if they went hand-in-hand, and, moreover, that good-nature and a merry temper would go far to make any member of the mess a favourite.

Lord Raventree, or Cockie, as he was often called for short, sometimes put "side" on. Consequently he was knocked down and jumped upon. Figuratively speaking, I mean. Knocking a man down and then jumping on him is a good (?) old English custom which still prevails in England. In Lancashire, and some portions of the Midland counties, the trick is performed literally and physically by the rougher and probably more honest classes. In polite society it is done just as often, only figuratively and not physically, and hurts quite as bad.

There were several men in this mess, and they ruled their juniors in various ways. Sometimes by rule of thumb, sometimes by rule of thump. Two or three masters' mates, well grown specimens; two doctors' mates, one Scotch, one Irish, who were constantly engaged in verbal battle, banter, or learned discussion, but who stuck together like amalgamated bricks in the cockpit, and liked each other very well on the whole; several hairy midshipmen, whom the Lords Commissioners had forgotten to promote because they lacked landed interest to push them into prominence, and one middy--two-and-thirty years of age--with silver hairs among the gold of his temples, O'Grady to name. He had crept in through the hawse-hole, but would no doubt be a lieutenant before the war was over. A mixty-maxty kind of a mess you will observe, not burdened with any very embarrassing amount of etiquette, but right as well as rough. Hearts of Oak in fact, for these were the days when true courage, manliness, muscle, dash, and go were appreciated to their fullest extent. There was honesty in the mess also--and it is a rare thing to find much of this in our day--honesty and fair play, so that even a lord or a prince had as good a chance of becoming first favourite in the gun-room, if he behaved like a man, as the humblest laird's or parson's son.

When Tom Bure joined the service it would have been difficult to say who was favourite, or a favourite. Perhaps honest O'Grady was as much respected as anyone.

Hoste, afterwards Sir William, was a member of the mess, a thoughtful and undoubtedly clever young officer. Josiah Nisbet also, a midshipman and stepson to Nelson. This young fellow was really brave, or "plucky," which is more of a midshipman's adjective than "brave" is; but at this time, at all events, he was quiet and unobtrusive. He was a modest lad, and Bure quite took to him. Perhaps Josiah felt that, being so nearly related to his captain, he was right in keeping himself in the background to some extent.

Tom did not quite like Hoste. The young gentleman did not say much, it is true, but, like Paddy's parrot, it was evident that he was thinking all the more on this account.

Well, this first night had not passed away before Tom found that he had made several friends. O'Grady took him very much in tow, for example; the butcher's assistant--I beg his pardon, the Scotch surgeon's mate--drew Tom out, called him greenhorn in a friendly way, laughed at his innocence and at nearly all he said, and finished by ordering him off to his hammock. This he did also in a roughly, friendly way.

"Here, Master Griff," he said, "we've had enough of you. Bear up for your hammock. Daddy O'Grady'll put you up to the ropes."

"_Mister_ O'Grady, if ye plaze," said the quondam bo's'n, laughing.

"Let's call you Daddy," said the surgeon's mate. "You're no so vera mickle older than mysel', but it sounds so friendly like."

"Troth, then, it's little I care, my valiant Scot, what I'm called so long's I'm not called down to the cockpit when you've got your big apron on."

Josiah went with Daddy O'Grady, and the surgeon's mate bade Tom good night in a very friendly way--for _him_.

"Good-night, laddie. Say your prayers, and there's no fears o' ye. Have ye a Bible in your kist? Weel, read a bittock ilka nicht o' your life. Then kneel down aside your kistie (sea chest) and commend yoursel' to Him that hauds (holds) us a' in His ban's. Man, you'll sleep like a tap aifter that. I like't your bearing the nicht in the mess. Keep it up, lad. Be friendly wi' all, be ower free wi' nane. And never be cockie. A cockie younker soon gets the starch ta'en oot of his frills in oor gunroom. Aff wi' you."

* * * * *

Nelson's ship, in which we now find our little hero, was bound for Tunis to join Commodore Linzee, and a very pleasant trip or outing it proved to be. Neither the word trip nor outing is a very warlike one, I grant you, reader; but it suits this voyage to Tunis admirably. They had fine weather all the way, and never a single adventure worthy of the name, so had there been ladies on board it would have been a very pretty picnic. Nelson had been sent to the court of the barbarous Dey of Tunis, to endeavour, by means of his sweet persuasive tongue to get his Highness, or Celestiality, or whatever he called himself, to kick the French out of Tunis.

"A most cruel and blood-thirsty nation," said Nelson.

"Do you know," said the Dey, "I like them all the better for that?"

"Why," continued Nelson, "they have killed their lawful king!"

"Ahem!" said the Dey. "Pray tell me, Captain Nelson, if it be true that the English never killed their king."

This settled it, and Nelson rejoined his fleet, and was shortly sent to the coast of Corsica with a small squadron, to co-operate with General Paoli, who was the leader of the insurgents in that island.

Now, dear reader, I know that cut-and-dry history is quite as unpalatable to the young taste as physiology or any other ology--_i.e._ to the average taste. Still, a little of either is at times necessary to make sense of a story, and now-a-days especially, everybody wants to know the reason why of everything. Verily our private soldiers and common sailors, as they are irreverently called--just as if any sailor could be common--fight all the better when they know what they are fighting for.

Why, then, it may be asked, did the British want to banish the poor nincompoops of Frenchies from Corsica? For this reason: _We_--the British nation--found it necessary to have the command of the Mediterranean. It gave us the command of Egypt, and Egypt is the key to other countries that our enemies even then were throwing sheep's-eyes upon. Toulon would have suited us nicely.

Pray cast your eagle eye, reader, on a map of the Levant and see where Toulon lies; also Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Alexandria, and that nasty little--but handy--hole of a Tunis.

A great war game was just commencing; the French had mighty armies and a great navy, as well as mighty commanders and admirals on their side of the board, and we had----well,

"Our ships were British oak, And hearts of oak our men."

Our first move, however, did not turn out trumps. Our first move had been to send Lord Hood out to blockade Toulon with his squadron, which, by the way, was none too big for anything. And just before Tom Bure was taken on board the _Agamemnon_ from the saucy _Yarmouth Belle_, a very wonderful thing had taken place. Briefly it was this, France being divided against itself, the southern half wished to become a separate republic under English protection, and so Hood had not been long in front of Toulon with his lads in blue before, in the name of the French king, Louis XVIII., Toulon was delivered up to him, ships and all.

"What an event," writes Nelson to his wife, "this has been for Lord Hood! Such an one as history cannot produce its equal, that the strongest place in Europe, with twenty-two sail-of-the-line, should be given up without firing a shot! It is scarcely to be credited."

Hood, who was at this time along with the Spanish fleet, landed fifteen hundred men to man the forts; and Naples and Britain being then for political reasons hand and glove, the king offered to send six thousand men to Toulon to assist in holding it. Hood, however, had demanded ten thousand. And these would have been few enough to defend the royalists in Toulon against the number and fury of the republicans who marched against it.

The British, however, were before very long obliged to evacuate Toulon, and I think there is no more awful page in history than that which describes this evacuation--the blowing up of the arsenals, the burning of the ships of war.

Sir Sidney Smith acted on that awful night with a bravery that amidst the fearful surroundings was like that of a demon.

"It was a rehearsal," I make one of my heroes in another book* say, "of all the glories and all the horrors of war combined in one long act.

* _For England, Home, and Beauty_. Same publishers.

"I must be brief," he adds, "the recollection is not one of unmitigated pleasure.

"The thousands of galley slaves, then, got free at last. Sidney had not the heart to think of them perishing in the flames.

"They got free, soon after the night became almost as bright as day with the glare of fires that rose up simultaneously in all directions, such fires as I never witnessed before, and have little desire ever to see again. Many of the stores were of a most combustible nature, and every now and then the explosion of a magazine seemed to rend the heavens and the earth, increasing the fierceness of the fires tenfold, by scattering blazing brands and rafters in all directions, and blowing down the walls of the buildings already in flames, thus admitting the air.

"In the midst of all this there were the constant cannonade of the fire-ships, the guns of which being heated went off, the wild screams of the murdering galley-slaves, and the songs and shouts of the soldiers.

"But more of fearful and awful took place before the work was finished, and even bold Sir Sidney was staggered at the terrific forces he had let loose, when first one powder-ship and then another blew up.

"The fire storm was everywhere--on earth, in air, and sea. Beams of fiery wood and showers of sparkling, crackling timbers dropped hissing into the water on every side.

"The sight displayed the magnificence of warfare on a scale perhaps never before witnessed. But, alas! its horrors were there also; for the slave-fiends had possession of the town, and were committing the most frightful atrocities. I must not describe what I saw and heard, but the shrieks of men and women will ring in my ears till my dying day."

* * * * *

The next card then played by the British in this war game was Corsica, and this proved a good one.