Here are one or two
exhibits that come to hand at once. First, there's those big guns
which it ain't safe to fire nohow, and which, if you do load with half
a charge, crack, bend, and get sent back to be "ringed" up, whatever
that means, and are not safe, even for a salute, ever afterwards.
Then, in another case, they might show a foot or two of that blessed
boiler-piping which is always leaking, or splitting, or bursting, just
when it shouldn't. In a third they might display a chop that had been
cooked from lying exposed in one of those famous stokeholes where
the poor beggars of sailors are expected to pass their time without
getting roasted too. Then there might be, as a sort of prize puzzle,
a plan of these here recent manoeuvres, with the Umpire's opinion
of the whole blessed jumble tacked on to it. Then, to enliven the
proceedings. Lord GEORGE might take his turn with the rest of the
Admiralty Board, and give us, every half hour or so, a figure or two
of the Hornpipe, just to let the public see that they have got some
sort of nautical "go" about them to warrant them in drawing their big
screw. Bless you, _Mr. Punch_, there's lots to make an Exhibition of
at Chelsea next year if you come to calculate. Leastways that's the
opinion of your humble servant and admirer,
A TAX-PAYING LANDLUBBER.
* * * * *
ON GUARDS!
THE BAD FORM OF THE PAST.
[Illustration]
There he stood in his evening dress, with a half-smoked cigarette
between his lips.
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