The Captain leaves Mr. Wemple in his despair and walks by us. We boys ain't been assigned to divisions yet so we're just standing in our kip between the two cannons, our blankets and gear in a pile behind us. We're tryin' to look military and stand up straight and all with our fists down to our sides and we hopes the Captain goes right by us, being not worthy of notice, but it don't happen.
He turns and puts his baleful eye upon us and our kip. We cringes.
"Good God!" he roars, and I about wets me pants. "These boys are filthy and this is a sty! Take them out and hose them off right now! I'll not have them at Church looking like this! They are an abomination!"
He's got a voice like thunder and damnation and he seems right steamed about our natural squalor, and I'm tremblin' away, shakin' on me pins and tryin' not to faint from fear when he looks at me and his gaze goes over me shorn head and his eyes widen.
"And carbolic soap, too!" he shouts. "This one has lice, by God! Lice! And on my ship!"
Well, of course I have nits, thinks I through all my fear and confusion. It's summer, ain't it?
The Bo'sun herds us out directly, himself in no fine mood, thinkin' that we're the ones to blame for his low standin' in the Captain's eyes and I reckons he's right, but right now I'm not thinkin' of the Bo'sun's station in life, I'm thinkin' of how I'm gonna be discovered in the most humiliatin' way, all starkers out there on the deck to the hoots and cries of all till they puts me overboard. I've heard they have put girls over the side as they're supposed to be bad luck and I hopes they at least gives me a barrel to cling to and, Oh, dear God, please.
We go in a miserable lot out to the deck where there's a long canvas hose hung on a rack on the bulkhead. I look at the others: Davy, Benjy, Tink, and Willy just look scared as they doff their shirts and drop their pants. Jaimy looks humiliated beyond all thought and I am terrified beyond all hope.
I hears some men down below pushin' on the pump and it's makin' its whooshin' noise and the hose is startin' to swell and thicken. Then I notice that Davy is holding his hands down to his lower belly with his shoulders hunched against what he knows is the comin' blast of cold water. The others are doin' the same.
Quick as I can I whips off me vest and shirt and rolls 'em up with me shiv inside and throws 'em aside and that don't matter none 'cause from the waist up me and the boys are all the same. Then I drops me pants and quick gets me hands up in front like I'm freezin' like Davy and then the water hits me from behind and I am freezin'. I squeals just like the others and then someone gives me a piece of soap, somethin' I ain't never seen since That Dark Day, and I takes it and rubs it around and gets up some suds and that covers me up in the right spot and it don't matter that me tail is showing, 'cause me buttocks is just as thin and starved as the rest.
The Bo'sun sprays us off one last time to get rid of the soap and warns us to stay clean or next time he'll tie a line around our ankles and keelhaul us and won't that scrub our nasty little hides clean, bouncin' along the barnacle-covered bottom of the ship till we're pulled up on the other side, maybe drownded, maybe dead, maybe not, but bloody and clean for certain.
I grabs me bundle of clothes, holds it in front of me as if for warmth, and runs to a rope locker and gets on me pants. Then I walks back out and, more slowly, put on my shirt and vest.
I am not yet undone.
***
Then we have Church. They set up this box thing all covered with fancy rope work on the front edge of the quarterdeck, which is a raised deck at the rear end of the ship. The quarterdeck is where the Officer of the Watch stands, lookin' up at the set of the sails and givin' orders to the sailor at the huge wheel that steers the ship. That's also where the Captain and Master and wheelman are found during a fight. Me, too, I finds out later.
We all stand down below on the main deck. The weedy little clerk what was on the dock the first day turns out to be a preacher, too, and after a few songs and some prayers, he gets up behind the box and tells us what rascals we all are, and how Jesus wants us to turn to the right path, and I think as how I always turn to the path that will most likely get me out of a scrape and I hopes that's the path he means.
Then we have some more prayers, which are powerful deep and solemn, and then some more songs. I finds I knows some of the words from when my mother used to sing 'em, like "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow," so I sings them.
Then after the preacher steps down, the Captain steps up and reads the Articles of War, which lays out all the crimes we could be up to and how they're all punishable by death. Grim stuff, and I 'specially don't like the sound of some of them 'cause I think I could be guilty of them, and then I thinks of poor Mary Townsend and the hangman on her shoulders and I thinks it'd be the Bo'sun on my shoulders and then I tries not to think of that no more.
Chapter 9
The Dolphin
Sir, HMS Dolphin is a forty-four-gun frigate and a man-of-war in His Britannic Majesty's Royal Navy! She is two hundred and four feet in length and is forty-three feet wide at the beam. She carries twenty twenty-four-pound guns on either side and two nine-pound guns forward and two aft! She can carry provisions for four hundred and seventy-five men for one full year, and her present complement is four hundred and five officers and men! HMS Dolphin is commanded by Captain Stephen Locke, Sir! God Save the Ship, God Save the Service, and God Save the King!"
I have been told to memorize this.
My Duties
I am ready to do my duty, but I finds out it ain't just one duty, it's a lot of 'em, each accordin' to the situation. What the ship is doin', like.
If it's just regular sailin', I helps out Mr. Tilden, the Professor, whose job it is to teach the midshipmen—which are apprentice officers—like, in readin' and arithmetic and science and the classics, whatever they are. In helpin' Professor Tilly, as everyone is soon callin' him, but not to his face, I sets up the table in the morning with the writin' slabs and chalks and gets the midshipmen somefhin' when they wants it durin' class, like water and such, and I cleans up after they leaves, and they generally leaves a mess, the pigs.
The Professor tells me another of my jobs is to clean up me ... my way of speaking. He says a lad what can ... who can read as well as me shouldn't talk like a guttersnipe, so I resolve to clean up my mouth. I find it's almost easy to talk in the right way, as that's the way we did it in our rooms before That Dark Day, and I only picked up the other way of talking later with the gang, who I hope are all right, guttersnipes or not. I notice, though, that I fall back into the street way of talkin' and thinkin' if I'm excited or fearful, which is a lot of the time. Which way will win out when I grow to be a lady—if I grow to be a lady—I don't know.
I also have other chores, like helpin' with the morning scrubbin' of the decks, which is almost fun, all of us grindin' down the decks with the holystones and sand and makin' them gleam all white and new, and cleanin' the head, which ain't fun at all. Then, too, Benjy and I, being smallest, got to crawl down in the big cooking cauldrons after the feedings to clean them out with scrapers and it's powerful suffocatin' work, since we're headin' south and it gets warmer every day. But we manage to pick up a bit of extra grub from the cook for our trouble, so it ain't so bad.
If we Beat to Quarters, which means we're gettin' ready to fight or practice at it, then I've got to do the beatin'. On the drum, that is, which I keep in the kip, and which I must run to as fast as I can when I hear the alarm. The other boys are all powder monkeys, which means they run back and forth durin' a battle carrying heavy sacks of gunpowder to the guns. Being the smallest, I get the drum, which is fine with me. I put on the drum with leather straps what go 'round my shoulders so that the drum hangs at my waist and then beat upon it with these two sticks, which sets up a fine rum-tum-tum and tells all the men to get to their battle stations. The Bo'sun Mate's pipin' and his club help get them there, too. Whilst I'm doin' all this whackin' at the drum, I'm headin' for the quarterdeck where the Captain and First Mate and Master stand bellowin' out orders. Then I'm to stand in front of the Captain and, though I dread bein' so close to such awful majesty, I've got to look up at his face, and if he says, "Fire!" I've got to beat on the drum again as loud as I can so's the gunners'll know. Dreadful scary stuff, but I like it, in a way. There's a show-off part of my nature that comes out when I'm in the center of things, and I know I must try to control it for the sake of The Deception, but sometimes it runs away with me.
In all the other special happenin's, like pullin' up the anchor and gettin' the ship under way, I stay on the bridge, but when the call, "Away, the Boarding Party!" goes out, I'm to drop the drum and with every other man on the ship, 'cept for the Captain, wheelman, and Master, grab a cutlass from the rack and get ready to jump across to the enemy ship that we're pullin' up next to and take her by force of arms.
I'm hopin' we meets a timid sort of enemy.
The Watches
In addition to everyone's daily duties, we stand watches, one in three, which means that one third of the entire crew—officers and men and boys—is up on deck throughout the day and night, ready to fight or handle what else might come along till the rest of the crew is rousted out of their hammocks or from their daily work to help 'em. I don't mean people like Tilly or the doctor or the deacon, no, they get to sleep through the night, the sods, I mean the regular officers and seamen. And ship's boys.
The Captain don't stand watches, neither, but his cabin's right below the quarterdeck and there's a shiny brass speakin' tube right next to the wheel that goes down to above his sleepin' head, and if the Officer of the Watch calls down to him with somethin' on his mind, the Captain is up on the deck in a moment, his nightgown and nightcap blowin' in the wind. The Officer of the Watch had better have a good reason to call him, though, as the Captain's mood don't improve with bein' awakened out of a sound sleep, I've noticed.
The watches rotate, like one night I'll have the Evenin' Watch, which is eight o'clock in the evenin' to midnight, and the next night I'll have the Midwatch, which is midnight to four in the mornin', and the next night it'll be the Four to Eight in the mornin'. I stand my watches back by the quarterdeck and my job is usually fetchin' coffee and food for the Officer of the Watch and wakin' up people and runnin' any errands that need to be run.
Jaimy and I are in the same watch section, I made sure of that with a little cajolin' of the Master-at-Arms who's in charge of who's in what watches, and sometimes we meet and talk and sometimes we just sit there and watch the stars wheeling about the heavens. I like that a lot, I do.
The Midshipmen
The midshipmen are a sorry lot. There are ten of them and they are some of them the sons of Royal Navy officers that the Captain has taken on as a favor to teach them the ways of the Service and the sea, and they are some of them the sons of rich men who have bought their sons a place aboard. One such is Midshipman Bliffil, and he is the reason they are a sorry lot, as from the first day out he has bullied them without mercy, and their spirits suffer. He is the oldest of them and he's big and not bad to look upon, handsome even, if not for the cruelty in his eyes and the sneer that's always on his lips except when he's toadyin' up to the officers. He is brutal as a sledgehammer, and I'm afraid of him and I try to steer clear of him. Bliffil rides them all, but he 'specially torments Mr. Jenkins, the one next senior to him. Poor Mr. Jenkins seems helpless before him.