“You were slack attending belly-muster for the third time running——”[1]
“I swear——”
“You’d better not. You’ll get six more for swearing——”
“Ow!”
“Don’t make such a rux....”
“Ow!”
“If you yell you’ll get double.”
“Ow!”
“That’s for being slack. Now the other hand.... That’s for ’nerving’” (modernised = swanking) “with your thumbs in your beckets——”
”
“Ow!”
“Shut up! Stick your knuckles out properly.”
“I swear I didn’t—ow!... Good night.”
. . . . .
Memories, ah, memories! Haphazard but happy as only the far-off things can seem,{46} half revealed through the mists of years. Grim old cradle of the Eternal Navy, there lies on my desk a blotting-pad hewed from your salt timbers; it may be that some whimsical ghost strayed out of it to provoke these random recollections. Does it, I wonder, ever unite with other ghosts from chiselled garden-seat or carved candle-stick, and there on the moonlit waters of the Dart refashion, rib by rib, keel and strake and stempost, a Shadow Ship?
{46}
And what of the Longshoremen Billies that plied for hire between the shore and the after-gangway—Johnnie Farr (whom the Good Lawd durstn’t love), Hannaford of the wooden leg, and all the rest of that shell-backed fraternity? Gone to the haven of all good ships and sailormen: and only the night wind, abroad beneath the stars, whispers to the quiet hills the tales of sharks and pirates and the Chiny seas that once were yours and ours.
Prev.
Back
Top