"We'll throw in alphabetical order," he announced. "You first, then me, then Quinn. Here you are."
He tossed the dice-box to Barry, who put his palm over the open top and shook the dice heartily before setting the box down on the slanting table-top. Cocker leaned across to peer at the little ivory cubes as they came to rest.
"Nine!" he shouted. "A stout try, Charles-but there's room for me."
He shook the box and thumped it down.
"Pipped me by one," Barry said cheerfully, passing the dicebox to Septimus. "You'll need luck to beat ten, Quinn."
Septimus nodded. He was not interested in luck. He gave the box a quick twirl and set it down. Cocker and Barry craned their heads to look into it, and Cocker swore loudly.
"There's the devil's own luck for you!" he growled. "Double six! Well, pay up and stake again."
He and Barry pushed their stakes towards the winner, and Septimus, displaying no satisfaction at winning fifteen shillings and sixpence, was just gathering up the coins when the wrathful red face of the First Lieutenant appeared without warning from the shadows.
The three midshipmen all scrambled to their feet (Cocker, in spite of his boasted sea experience, banging his head on the low deck-beams) and stood as stiffly as the lurching of the ship would allow.
"Hah!" barked Mr. Pyke with satisfaction. "Caught red-handed, I think. Until eight bells of the afternoon watch you were to study. How, may I ask, does it come about that I find you gaming?"
"Because the ship-noises prevented us from hearing you coming, sir," answered Cocker brazenly.
From anyone else such impertinence would have met with the First Lieutenant's heavy-handed retribution. As it was Fitzroy Cocker, Pyke merely snorted.
"Hah! And whose idea was this piece of disobedience?" he demanded.
No one answered this time. Pyke's bulging blue eyes turned to Septimus Quinn, whose fingers were still on the coins.
"There's no need to tell me," he barked accusingly. "Mr. Midshipman Quinn has been winning, I see. I'll wager a guinea he knows how to turn the dice, and I'll wager another one that he started the game. Pipe down, you, sir!" he added fiercely as Charles Barry tried to protest. "I shall ask Mr. Quinn some questions, and we will see if he can answer them. Now, Mr. Quinn!"
"Now, sir," said Septimus politely. Pyke's red face went a shade redder.
"Attend to me!" he rasped. "And answer correctly or it'll be the worse for you. A vessel in latitude 44 degrees and 30 minutes north, longitude 9 degrees 36 minutes west-course south by west-where is she and where's she heading? Quick, now!"
Now it so happened that Septimus had taken the trouble to find out certain facts from Mr. Preece the gunner's mate, and these facts were the very ones mentioned by Pyke. He answered like lightning.
"Position, forty miles nor'west of Cape Ortegal, sir. Heading to
round Cape Finisterre on the Galician coast."
"Hah!" The First Lieutenant tried to conceal his disappointment by barking another question. "Then what else d'ye know about this vessel?"
"She is the frigate Althea," replied the midshipman. "Thirty-eight guns, Captain Sainsbury." And now it was that he made the mistake of being too clever. "Carrying a reefed topsail on the fore," he added deliberately, "which, in this gale, is bad seamanship."
Fitzroy Cocker said afterwards that he thought Lieutenant Pyke would have an apoplexy. Certainly that officer's face went a deep purple, and for a second or two he was unable to speak.
"You-you confounded impertinent pup!" he burst out at last. "I'll-by heaven, I'll teach you! Bad seamanship! What do you know about it?" He stopped suddenly and his glaring eyes narrowed. "I'll send you somewhere where you can learn a little more seamanship, Mr. Septimus Quinn. To the mainmast-head!"
It was not an uncommon punishment for midshipmen to be "mastheaded" -sent to the top of the ship's mainmast to stay there until they were told to come down. But to send a boy there in a full gale, with the ship lying over on her side and the masts swooping and rearing before the gusts, was an almost unheard-of thing. Both the older midshipmen looked shocked, and Cocker even began a stammering protest which a glare from the First Lieutenant instantly silenced. As for Septimus, he took off his spectacles and put them into their case, trying hard not to show his dismay.
"That was an order, sir!" roared Mr. Pyke. "Up to the masthead with you, and step lively or I'll have you in irons!"
"Aye aye, sir!" said Septimus smartly, and made for the companionway leading to the deck.
As he passed Barry, he felt something pushed urgently against him, and grasped it. It was Barry's tarpaulin coat.
Lieutenant Pyke followed him on deck without another word, and turned his back on Septimus to go to the quarterdeck. The midshipman wriggled into the waterproof jacket before crossing the slippery deck. To gain the weather bulwarks he had to claw his way up a slope of wet planking against repeated showers of spray, and when he climbed into the mainmast rigging-where horizontal rope "ratlines" between the straining stays of the mast made a precarious ladder-a positive spout of sea water lashed him from head to foot and would have soaked him to the skin had it not been for Barry's tarpaulin coat. Flattened against the rigging by the wind, he began to climb.
With the frigate heeled over at so steep an angle, the first part of the climb was not particularly difficult. The mainmast was leaning away from him, so that the ascent of the shrouds was not so steep as it would have been if she had been on an even keel. But the fury of the gale, and its hundreds of deafening voices, was bewildering. The great mainyard was braced round, and although the mainsail was double-reefed its big curve of canvas was trembling and thundering as if it would tear itself away at any moment. Every rope in the network of cordage that supported the Althea's three masts sang shrilly with its own particular note, and the din of the seas against her wooden hull added a deeper note to the chorus.
Septimus did not hesitate, in such weather, to use the "lubber's hole" when he came to the maintop-the wooden platform from the edges of which ran the shrouds supporting the upper part of the mast. The frigate's topmen, the chosen seamen who could go aloft in all weathers to reef or furl sails, disdained this easy way cut in the platform, and would always climb over its edge by means of the futtock-shrouds, hanging on with their backs turned to the deck far below. But Septimus was not a topman. As Mr. Pyke very well knew, this manker-like climbing in the srider's-web of the rigging was the one thing Septimus most disliked.
On the reeling planking of the maintop he paused for breath, with his arms hugging the big mast itself. The mast was groaning like a monster in pain, and he could feel its vibration under the force of the wind. But he felt certain that Lieutenant Pyke was watching him, and his pride would not let him pause too long. Setting his teeth, he swung himself round on to the shrouds again and fought his way upward.
The long ladder of rope was not at all steady. It slackened a little as the Althea rolled, then tautened suddenly again with a horrible creaking noise. Septimus was jerked and swung as he clutched and grabbed and clutched again, and he was exceedingly frightened, though he refused to admit it in his mind. Up, and up, and up, with the wild swerving of the mast growing ever more violent. It seemed a very long time before he got his weary hands over the topsail yard and somehow hauled himself on to it, to sit with his short legs dangling over the long spar and his arms clasped tightly round the topmast.
For a moment he stayed like that, with his eyes shut. The mast was like a bucking horse under him, trying to throw him off. Remembering that the three midshipmen had been wearing tarpaulin coats when last Mr. Preece instructed them in rope-splicing, he contrived to feel in the pocket of Barry's coat. As he expected, the fathom of light line used for splicing practice was coiled up in the pocket. Perched as he was, it was a perilous business getting the rope out and uncoiled, and when he did succeed in freeing it the wind streamed it out horizontally and all but snatched it from his hand. With infinite care he pushed one end of the line through the stout leather belt he wore and managed to lead it round the mast. A moment later he had joined the ends with a reef knot and was lashed securely to the mast.