At this point Mowett was called away, much against his will, and while Rowan and Martin and even the purser and master's mates eagerly questioned Hairabedian, Mr. Allen leant over towards Stephen and said 'Who is this Byron they are always talking about?'
'He is a poet, sir,' said Stephen, 'one that writes excellent doggerel with flashes of brilliant poetry in it; but whether the poetry would flash quite so bright were it not for the contrast I cannot tell: I have not read much of him.'
'I like a good poem,' said Mr Alien.
Jack coughed; the talk died away; and filling his glass from one of the fresh decanters he said 'Mr Vice, the King.'
'Gentlemen,' said Mr Adams, 'the King.'
After this they drank to the Dromedary, to the Surprise, and to wives and sweethearts, and Jack said to Mr. Allen 'If you like a poem, sir, you have come to the right shop. Both my lieutenants are capital poets. Rowan, tip the captain your piece about Sir Michael Seymour's action, the first one. Start in the middle, so as not to be too long.'
'Well, sir,' said Rowan, beaming upon MrAllen, 'it was the one with the Thetis, you know.' And without the least change in his conversational tone he went on
'I do declare
Such a hard engagement has not been known for many a year.
At seven in the evening the battle it begun,
And lasted many hours before it was done.
Great numbers there was wounded, a many too was slain,
While the blood from off the decks did change the watery main.
Three hours and twenty minutes we held this dreadful fray,
We lashed her fast unto us, she could not get away;
Many times they tried to board us, but we drove them back so fast ?
Although they were so numerous, we made them yield at last.
Then down she hauled her colours, no longer could she fight;
Our British tars they gave three cheers all at this noble sight.
We took possession of her without any more delay,
And sent her into Plymouth Sound then, my boys, straightway.
Great store of artillery, ammunition too likewise,
One thousand barrels of flour to our tars become a prize.
She was bound out to Martinico, the truth I do declare,
But in the night we met her and stopped her career.'
Mowett came back during the last lines, and seeing his look of fairly well disguised disappointment Jack said to Mr. Allen, 'My first lieutenant's poems are equally appreciated, sir, but they are in the modern taste, which perhaps you may dislike.'
'No, sir, not at all, ha, ha, ha,' said Allen, now strikingly red in the face and very apt to laugh. 'I like it of all things.'
'Then perhaps you would give us the piece about the dying dolphin, Mr Mowett,' said Jack.
'Well, sir, if you insist," said Mowett eagerly; and having explained that this was part of a poem about people sailing in the Archipelago he began in a hollow boom
'The sailors now, to give the ship relief,
Reduce the topsails by a single reef;
Each lofty yard with slackened cordage reels,
Rattle the creaking blocks and ringing wheels,
Down the tall masts the topsails sink amain,
And soon reduced, assume their post again.
And now, approaching near the lofty stern
A shoal of sportive dolphins they discern.
From burnished scales they beamed refulgent rays,
Till all the glowing ocean seemed to blaze.
Soon to the sport of death the crew repair,
Dart the long lance, or spread the baited snare.
One in redoubling mazes wheels along,
And glides, unhappy! near the triple prong..."
Stephen's mind wandered back to Laura Fielding and his perhaps untimely, unnecessary, foolish, unprofitable, sanctimonious chastity; and he was brought back to the present only by the applause that greeted the end of Mowett's recitation. Above the general noise rose Mr. Allen's strong sea-going voice now free from the genteel restraint of some decanters back: he said that although the Dromedary could not return the compliment in kind, having no gentlemen of equal talent aboard, she could at least reply with a song, good will supplying what it might lack in harmony. 'Ladies of Spain, William,' he said to his mate, beat three times on the table, and together they sang
'Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish ladies,
Farewell and adieu all you ladies of Spain,
For we've received orders to sail for old England
And perhaps we shall never more see you again.'
Almost all the hands knew the song well, and they joined in the chorus with splendid conviction:
'We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors,
We'll range and we'll roam over all the salt seas,
Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England-
From Ushant to Scilly 'tis thirty-five leagues.'
Then the captain and his mate again:
'We hove our ship to when the wind was sou'west, boys,
We hove our ship to for to strike soundings clear,
Then we filled our maintopsail and bore right away, boys,
And right up the Channel our course we did steer.'
Far below, in the midshipmen's berth, the excluded youngsters began the next verse before the gunroom, and their pure voices sang
'The first land we made is known as the Dodman,
Next Rame Head near Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight..."
But Stephen's most valuable recollection of the dinner was Hairabedian's delighted face, his twinkling eyes, and his counter-tenor soaring above the thunder, declaring that he too, like a true British sailor, should roam over all the salt seas.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Dromedary was running before the wind, so directly before the wind that there was scarcely a breath of air on deck nor a whisper in the rigging: a silent ship, apart from the run of water down her side and the creak of her masts and yards as she pitched on the gentle following swell. Silent, in spite of the tight-packed crowd of men on her quarterdeck, for the Dromedary had rigged church.
She was quite used to doing so, since she often carried soldiers from one place to another, and soldiers were more often provided with chaplains than sailors; her carpenter had turned the capstan just abaft the mainmast into a perfectly acceptable desk, and her sailmaker had turned a spare piece of number eight canvas into a surplice that would have graced a bishop. Mr Martin had taken it off in preparation for his sermon, and in the attentive, respectful silence he was now looking at a little paper of notes. Jack, sitting in an elbow-chair beside MrAllen, saw that he meant to give them something of his own rather than read from Dean Donne or Archbishop Tillotson according to his usual modest custom, and that the prospect made him anxious.
'My text is from Ecclesiastes, the twelfth chapter, the eighth verse: Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity,' the chaplain began, and in the pause that followed his auditors looked at him with pleased expectation. The wind was fair; the ship had been sailing at a steady five to six knots ever since they left Malta, with a few fine points of eight and nine, and Jack, whose dead reckoning and observations agreed closely withAllen's, confidently expected that they should make their landfall that forenoon: he had quite ceased urging the ship on by a continual effort of will and an unreasonable contraction of his stomach muscles, and now, as he disposed himself to listen to Mr Martin, he was aware of a fine bubbling excitement in the background of his mind, very much like that of his much younger days. The men too were in a happy mood: they were dressed quite as fancy as the Dromedaries; Sunday pork and duff were not much above an hour away, to say nothing of their grog; and it was pretty general knowledge that the Red Sea might hold some kind of a plum.
'When I repaired aboard the Worcester at the beginning of my naval ministry,' went on Mr Martin, 'the very first words I heard were "Sweepers, sweepers there."