'Oh, here you are again, you young scapegrace,' said she, 'I wonder what Aunt S- would say if she knew that you came into our cabin every day to eat oranges and read Sir Walter Scott.'
'What, indeed!' thought I, but I did not say so. 'This is such an interesting tale,' I said, 'we had just got to the scene in Whitefriars where Nigel kills Captain Culpepper.'
'Really!' exclaimed Henrietta, maliciously, 'I thought it must be very exciting, for you all look quite flushed with the recital.'
This was so palpable a hint that I took an early opportunity to beat a retreat.
A few days afterwards I was proceeding to enter the quartergallery as usual, and watched for the roll of the ship to swing myself into it, when lo! I found myself in the lap of the virtuous Henrietta, who was performing a very natural office of nature there, and did not the least expect an intruder from the seaboard. So imagining me to be some dreadful kind of merman, she began to sing out like a stuck pig.
In a moment, and before I could extricate myself from the extremely delicate position in which I found myself, appeared Mrs S-, her lean demure daughter, the Misses N-l, Lucy and Fanny, and, oh! confusion worse confounded, the charming stewardess, Mrs Fraser. I was so completely overwhelmed by such an array, that without thinking what I was doing, I sprang at once out of the quarter-gallery into the sea. Being a good swimmer, and the ship being becalmed at the time, the only injury I sustained was a good ducking and the chance of being devoured by a shark, who made for me with great rapidity, but I dived under the ship's bottom, and coming to the surface on the starboard side, seized a rope which the seamen threw to me upon the cry of 'Man overboard', and was hauled on deck before the monster of the deep could catch me.
As soon as I had changed my clothes, I received a polite message from the captain that he would like to say a few words to me in his cabin. So thither I went.
The captain (who after all was in the right), gave me a tremendous wigging, 'You must know, sir, that I consider all the young ladies on board this ship under my especial protection, and I cannot allow any gentleman, however young he may be, to enter their cabins, least of all in the clandestine manner you have attempted to do.'
''Pon my life, captain, I'm very sorry,' said I, 'if I have infringed any of your rules, I beg to offer my apologies, I'm sure.'
'All right, my boy,' cried old A-ll, softened at once, 'you are a nice little lad, but remember that if your peccadillo should be worked up into a scandalous story, it might seriously compromise those young ladies' reputations, and what is worse, spoil their market.'
'Quite so,' said I, 'I fully see the force of your reasoning. It shall not occur again.'
'That's a good boy,' said the hearty old skipper, shaking me by the hand with a vigour that numbed the digits for half an hour and brought the tears to my eyes with pain, 'you'll do; you're not a bad sort, I see; pity your friends didn't make a sailor, instead of a soldier, of you!'
And so the matter ended.
A few days afterwards, the calm still continuing, the captain ordered the planks to be slung over the ship's side, and half a dozen men were set to scrape the sides, remove the seaweed and brighten up the copper a bit. Now this is a job that Jack has a mortal aversion to, and with reason, for while his head is exposed to the vertical rays of a tropical sun, his feet are ever and anon immersed in the briny element at the risk of being snapped hold of by the sharks! So poor Jack was not in the best of humour. Now it happened that an old weatherbeaten tar, while scrubbing the ship's side immediately below the quartergallery that had been the scene of my escapade, was suddenly startled by a most unseemly explosion above him which sounded amazingly like a rousing fart. As a natural consequence Jack cast his eyes aloft, and beheld a pair of enchanting white buttocks and a hairy cunny, such as had not blessed his sight since
The last time he parted at Wapping Old Stairs
With Sally …
But just as he was admiring these symmetrical proportions, there came unfortunately another explosion, immediately followed by a round shot which hit poor Jack in the eye.
'Damn my bloody eyes!' cried the tar apostrophising, I presume, the offended organ of vision, and being armed with a boat-hook to steady himself withal, he inverted it, and gave a thrust with the butt end, with so sure an aim that he effectually stopped the vent of the gun that had shot him. There was a screech, of course, and the insulted fair was rescued from her perilous situation, Dr Porteus being called in to examine the wound.
A report having been made to the captain, the following amusing dialogue ensued.
Captain on the poop, leaning over the starboard side: 'Hullo, you fellow down there.'
'Aye-aye, sir.'
'What are you up to you rascal?'
Jack: 'Scrubbing the ship your honour.'
Captain: 'But what have you been up to with that boat-hook?'
Jack: 'Holding on, your honour.'
Captain: 'Holding on, you damned tailoring son of a b-h! What have you been doing to the girl?'
Jack: 'Blasted b-h sh-t in my eye, your honour.'
Captain: 'No reason, you son of a sea cook, that you should b-r her with the boat-hook.'
As this elegant conversation was carried on in a loud tone of voice, it was of course heard by everyone on board, and considered a capital joke by all but the sufferer, who I lament to say was poor Mrs Fraser, who, alas! had already had quite enough of the 'butt end of the boat hook' before she came aboard.
I must confess, however, that it so disgusted me that I could never poke her again. The idea of so sweet a creature etc., etc., quite cooled my amorous inclinations. I was voluptuous but not dirty, and that shot which hit poor Jack in the eye had quite denuded me of my ardent passion for Mrs Fraser's charms.
She, however, got plenty of poking from the mates of the ship, from the officers who were passengers on board and, I believe (but 'tell it not in Gath, repeat it not in the streets of Ascalon'), from the captain.
Three weeks after we arrived at Madras, all the Misses W-r were married; start not, courteous reader, and do not condemn such a statement as improbable; I assure you on the honour of a gentleman it is the truth. Henrietta married Captain F- of the — th Light Cavalry; Lucy espoused Captain O- of the same regiment, brother of the Earl of O-w, of Clan-n Park, in the county of G-, while Fanny the little filly of fourteen, was led to the hymeneal alter by the eccentric Lieutenant E-, whose greatest ambition was to 'fuck a lady'.
And so I lost sight of the darlings and proceeded to join my regiment.
'Oh, it's all damned fine,' I hear some fellow exclaim, 'but you don't expect us to believe all this,'
''Pon my soul,' says I in reply, ''tis true as the — ' 'Gospel', I was going to add, but feeling how very little guarantee of truth there is in the comparison, I will say, as true as women have cunts — a fact the most captious will not dispute.
CHAPTER 2
I had not been two days at the cadets' quarters at Fort St George, when I was ordered to do duty pro tempore with the — th Regiment at Vepery, a suburb of Madras, and I joined accordingly.
There being a suite of rooms to let in the mess house, I preferred taking them to going into cantonments; they were only 50 rupees a month (?2 10s. 6d.).
Now it happened that the bungalow adjoining the mess house was an establishment for young ladies — i.e., 'half caste' young ladies. Now these, 'nut-brown maidens' (as Thompson, the poet, I think it is, calls them) were accustomed to bathe naked in a lake (tank is the Indian word), before sunrise, which tank had been constructed in their compound (anglice, garden) for that purpose, and it also happened that my dubash (i.e. butler), who, par parenthesis, had a keen eye for his master's intrigues, had advised me of the fact.