href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@45914@[email protected]#i-gave-the-first-a-blow-on-the-point-of-his-jaw">"I gave the first a blow on the point of his jaw"

"I dodged to the rear of the first wagon"

Mr. Bostock takes Command

The effect of the Shell

Scrambling down the Mountain Side

CHAPTER I

Ordered to Santa Cruz

Written by Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson, R.N.

Only eight months ago Ginger Hood and I had been midshipmen aboard the old Vengeance, and of course had spent most of our time, in her, trying to get to windward of her sub, pull his leg, and dodge any job of work which came along. Now the boot was on the other leg, for we were sub-lieutenants ourselves—he in the Hercules, I in the Hector, with gun-rooms of our own to boss, and as we'd only been at the job for a month, you can guess that we hadn't quite settled down yet, and felt jolly much like fish out of water.

The Hector and Hercules were two big armoured cruisers, as like as two peas, and they had come straight out from England to Gibraltar to work up for their first gunnery practices. For the last ten days they had been lying inside the New Mole waiting for a strong south-easter to blow itself out, and we had taken the opportunity of trying to make our two gun-rooms friendly; for, as a matter of fact, they hated each other like poison, his mids. taking every opportunity of being rude to mine, and mine to his. These rows were always reported to us, and if we hadn't been such chums, I do believe that we, too, should have fallen out. If a Hercules mid. came aboard the Hector on duty, my chaps would let him wear his legs out on the quarterdeck for hours sooner than ask him down below, and you can guess that they were just as kind aboard the Hercules if any of my mids. had to go aboard her. I had sixteen of the beauties in my gun-room to look after, and Ginger had fifteen; if his were more bother to him than mine were to me, I don't wonder he thought that his hair was turning grey. Never did they meet ashore without a free fight or some trouble or another cropping up. The row had started on board the Cornwall, where they had all been together as cadets, over some wretched boat-race. The winning crew had used racing oars, which the second boat's crew either hadn't had the savvy to get, or didn't find out till too late that they might have used. However it was, there had been a glorious row at the time, and as some of my mids. had pulled in the losing boat and some of Ginger's in the winning one, both gun-rooms still kept the feud going.

Ginger and I thought that the best way to patch up their quarrel was to make them play matches against each other, and this we had done—'soccer,' hockey, and cricket on the dockyard ground, and a 'rugger' game on the North Front.

There wasn't the slightest improvement. I had jawed my chaps till I was tired, and Ginger had jawed his, without the least effect; and now they'd just spoilt what might have been a grand game of hockey by squabbling all the time, claiming fouls, and 'sticks,' and nonsense like that, every other minute.

The game had been so unpleasant that Ginger and I were thankful when it was finished, slipped on our coats and watched our two teams quarrelling and taunting each other as they left the ground in two separate groups.

'Look at the young fools, Billums!' Ginger said angrily. 'Did you ever see anything so perfectly idiotic?'

'Come along up to the Club,' I said savagely. 'We'll have some tea. It makes one feel perfectly hopeless. I'd like to cane the whole crowd of them.'

Up we went together, and found the Captains and a number of the ward-room fellows from the two ships lying back in the wicker chairs on the verandah, basking in the sun and waiting for afternoon tea. As we came up the steps, they sang out to know which gun-room had won.

'Hercules won, sir,' I told our Skipper, Captain Grattan. 'Won by four to two.'

'Tut, tut, boy! What's that now? Still one game ahead, ain't you?'

'No, sir, we're all square.'

'Well, beat 'em next time, lad.'

A jolly chap our Skipper was—short and plump and untidy, with a merry twinkle spreading over his funny old face, all wrinkled up with the strain of keeping his eyeglass in place. Everybody knew him as 'Old Tin Eye,' and he was so jolly unaffected that nobody could help liking him.

As we leant our hockey sticks up against the railings and sat down in the corner, we could hear him chaffing Captain Roger Hill, the tall, thin, beautifully dressed Skipper of the Hercules, and could jolly well see by the way he fidgeted in his chair that he didn't like it a little bit. Old Tin Eye would call him 'Spats,' and he didn't like it in public, and squirmed lest we inferior mortals should hear of it. I don't suppose he knew that nobody ever did call him anything but 'Spats.' You see, he never went ashore without white canvas spats over his boots, and they were very conspicuous.

Our Fleet Surgeon, Watson—a morose kind of chap—and Molineux, the Fleet Surgeon of the Hercules, stopped talking 'shop' to ask Ginger how many goals he'd scored (Ginger was the terror of his team); and Montague, our Gunnery Lieutenant, and Barton, their gunnery-man, left off talking about the coming gun-layers' 'test' to ask us if the gun-rooms had made up their row.

'No such luck, sir,' we said. 'They're worse, if anything.'

Whilst we were having our tea, one of the Club 'boys' brought along the little Gib. paper, and of course our Skipper had first turn.

'Cheer up, Spats, old boy!' he sang out loudly enough for every one to hear—he loved tormenting Captain Roger Hill; 'there's trouble in Santa Cruz again. Old Canilla, the President, has collared half-a-dozen Englishmen belonging to the Yucan Rubber Company, and won't give 'em up. If you've got any shares in it you'd better sell them.'

'Hello,' I sang