CHAPTER FORTH-ONE




HOW SIR ROGER BLOXAM REPUDIATED A NAVAL CAREER.





   Carissima, do not fret; I shall not be horridly technical. I hardly know the difference between a midshipmate and a stopcock. My aquatics have been mostly on Cam and Indus. I can tell a brig from a schooner if I am drunk enough; and I know that once aboard a lugger, the girl is mine. I often recognise nautical words, such as fore-top-mizzen-spanker and taffrail-boom and trysail and careen and rum, but I'm not sure of the meaning of any but those `terms of endearment common among sailors' which, oh well! We must do our little best. We must bring a whiff of salty spindrift across the bows of our novellissim; bos'un, pipe all hands! Half-a-gale o' wine nor'nor'east and a pint to the nor'ard. Typhoon off the port quarter, sir! `Bout ship, lads, hearty, yo-heave-ho! Ay, ay, sir! Quartermaster, heave the lead! Ay, ay, sir! One-and-a-half, one, mark six, one and eleven three, by God, she's struck! We're sinking by the poop! Mr. Carpenter, sound the fo`mast! Ay, ay, sir. Cyclone from sou'sou'west right of the larboard quarter. B'gosh, the barometer's dropping. 29,28,27 -- glory be, it's gone to zero. Oh! cracked the glass -- may be we'll live through it then! Man the pumps, lads! Yo-heave-ho! We're in the doldrums, and the ship's in stays. Put out the best bower, and lower the yawl! Ay, ay, sir! Run up the pennant to the fore halyards! Ring astern! Stand by to repel boarders! Our cutlasses! Ay, ay, sir! Show the dirty swabs etcetera etcetera!


   Oh, I suppose it could be done; but please God it never shall be: simply rotten, showing off, what? Per Bacco, a straight narrative style is bad enough. In fact, between you and me, Lavinia, darling, it may be that some of our nautical writers conceal a certain disability in this respect by overloading their frigates with all that ship Ahoy stuff, eh?


   So -- driven by the mephitic blast of the Simoom, Her Majesty's Ship `Electric Eel' plunged through the ruddy foam of the Red Sea. ``Suez!'' cried the lookout suddenly; ``Suez Canal!''


   Devil take you all, my darlings! I'm not going to bother to finish this rotten chapter. It's obviously meant to lead up to a feeble joke about naval affairs being too shallow for a man of Sir Roger's penetraton. Let's get on to something jolly --  why not the story of the Whistling Coon?