The Captain inspects the division next to us and says something sharp to the midshipman in charge of that division, Mr. Wemple, fourteen years old if he's a day, and Mr. Wemple turns bright red but keeps his head up 'cause hangin' your head ain't allowed in officers, even if they want to do it and I can tell Mr. Wemple really wants to do it and crawl away and hide but instead he says, "Yes, Sir, beggin' your pardon, Sir, I'll see to it right away, Sir."
I dares to steal a look at Captain Locke out of the corner of me eye. He's got the grandest uniform of any of the officers, with a jacket of the deepest blue velvet and shiny gold buttons and gold swabs on his shoulders and pants just the creamiest white with nary a spot on 'em. He's got gray hair under his fine cockaded hat and a long nose and the fiercest eyes under his craggy brows and a mouth that looks like it could snap an unlucky ship's boy in half. I starts quiverin' to be standin' so close to such a man, a man who could have me poor self pitched over the side and suffer nothin' for it.
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
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.
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.