Great Britain. Royal Navy -- Fiction; Seafaring life -- Fiction
Coming into Gibraltar for a week-end, John played in a cricket
match, in which, for lack of training, the batting was poor and the
bowling without sting. Gunroom Evolutions had long begun again. Krame
had forgotten the incident of the “minor defects,” and the junior
midshipmen were Warts without cease. In Tetuan Bay the natives ashore
appeared, to those who watched them through telescopes, to be carrying
on warfare. There were rifle flashes and smoke, and bodies of men
moving hastily hither and thither. No one cared very much. To the
midshipmen it meant something to record in the personal log-books they
submitted each Sunday morning to the Captain....
It was in Tetuan Bay, too, perhaps during the warfare, perhaps during
some other similar week after peace had been declared, that the ship’s
company bathed--the officers from the starboard after gangway, the
men for’ard from the port lower boom. John, as midshipman of the
watch, was on the quarter-deck, watching the clock for the time at
which he should recall the men from the water by ordering the bugler
to sound the “Retire.” Suddenly, on the port quarter, he caught sight
of the unmistakable fin. Sharks were not then to be expected in that
part of the world. He looked again, this time through a telescope.
“Quartermaster, what do you make of that?”
The Quartermaster borrowed the telescope. “Yessir. Shark, sir.”
John wheeled round. “Bugler! Sound the ‘Retire’ and sound the ‘Double.’
Go on sounding it until you are sure that all men in the water have
heard. Sound it first to the officers on the starboard side....
Boatswain’s-mate! Go and pipe by the lower boom: ‘Shark on the port
quarter. All hands return to the ship.’ Warn the boat.”
John called for a megaphone and summoned courage to address the
Commander, who, in the water, was very much like the rest of mankind.
It was bad enough to have sounded the “Retire” at him.
“Commander, sir!”
The Commander, much to John’s surprise, held up his hand to show he had
heard, just as John himself, had he been away in a boat, would have
held up his hand to indicate attention to the Commander’s orders.
“Shark on the port quarter, sir!”
The Commander raised himself an instant from the water and made a
funnel of his hands. “Get the men out,” he shouted, and swam towards
the ship. The other officers followed him. He met John on the top of
the gangway.
“Like shouting at the Commander?” he demanded.
John had not liked it. He had thought twice about doing it, but it had
seemed inevitable. Apparently he had done wrong. “I thought, sir----”
he began.
The Commander grinned and shook the drops from him. “Go on, boy. I’m
not an ogre. You did quite right. Very smartly, too.”
III
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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