A CHEMICAL COMEDY
IT was to be a grand reception and ball—the grandest and greatest ever given on board a warship. Society—official and civil—at Malta was invited, and dressmakers and tailors worked overtime preparing society for the event. Army men of the garrison, navy men of visiting warships, furbished up gold lace and discussed international etiquette; while bandmasters, ashore and afloat, contested for possession of the latest dance-music, and drilled their men mercilessly, in the hope of being chosen. There was reason for the hope. With the Argyll's large crew banished to boat-work or to the bowels of the ship, there was room on her spacious upper-decks for five hundred dancers, and much music would be needed. Even the crew that expected banishment caught the infection of preparation, and each individual sailorman, in off moments snatched from polishing the ship, polished himself in the hope of a station or duty which would make him a spectator of the ball. In this spirit, and to this end. Old Man Finnegan made himself a pair of white duck trousers.
Innocent and simple-minded as a child when sober, Finnegan was yet an expert with the needle, and he brought to the making of these trousers the skill and experience of thirty years in the service. When finished, and the starch scrubbed out of them, they were a garment to be proud of, a source of envy—stitched, starred, and crow-footed in silk—and, metaphorically speaking, white as the sins of a saved sinner. Filled with and inspired by the motion of Finnegan's attenuated legs, they even possessed a flowing and wavering grace of their own—a fluttering of light and shade and an interchange of indefinite lines of beauty, due no doubt to the extremely wide bottoms he had given them—wider than the regulations prescribed.
Such little vanities of dress, though sternly repressed in the younger men, were winked at in the older, and Finnegan's new trousers aroused disapproval in the mind of but one man—an unkind person named Thompson, the third master-at-arms—who had charge of the brig, and occasionally locked Finnegan therein. As he seldom met the old man when sober, he had formed an estimate of his character based wholly upon his aggressiveness and lack of reverence for petty officers when drunk, and his disapproval of the trousers was but part of a comprehensive disapproval of Finnegan. When he found him parading the berth-deck in his new vestments he was quick to report him to the officer of the deck for dressing contrary to regulation, and as quick to escort him into the official presence. Finnegan eyed his accuser reproachfully, and saluted the officer of the deck.
"Turn around," said the latter, as he critically studied the offending trousers. Finnegan turned slowly in his tracks, once, twice, three times, and was beginning the fourth turn when the officer halted him.
"Make them yourself?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," answered Finnegan. "Made 'em for the ball, sir."
The officer smiled and said: "A remarkably good fit—a workmanlike and a seamanly job. I see nothing wrong with the dimensions, Mr. Thompson"—this to the master-at-arms—"but I do see something wrong with your coat-buttons. One is a little out ot line. You'd better fix it."
The abashed petty officer departed, and the lieutenant said to Finnegan: "We will need a few neat and tidy men on the quarter-deck. Take care of those trousers," he said, "and perhaps we can use you at the ball."
"Thank ye, sir," answered the delighted old man. "I will, sir."
Now be it said that Finnegan was the last man on board to be useful at a ball. His appointment was merely one of the hundreds of small favors which the old man continually received from officers and men; but he went forward, rejoicing in the official endorsement of his trousers, and became in time so puffed up with pride that, forgetting the officer's injunction to care for them he gave away to less fortunate ship-mates all his older and now despised duck trousers, leaving the new ones all he had to wear whenever the officer of the deck decreed that white was to be the uniform of the day. This happened quite often before the day set for the ball, but Finnegan's luck stood by him up to within a week of this eventful occasion; then one day, boat-work being heavy, he was called to man an oar, with no time to change from dress-ducks to working-ducks, and, clad in his immaculate trousers, went ashore in a boat for a load of contributed fireworks from the torpedo station. Here his luck failed him; the sudden presence of the busy boat's crew somewhat disconcerted the working force at the station; regular work was interrupted and the attendant of a fuming bath of mixed acids left it unguarded for a few moments to wait upon the visitors. Finnegan, passing by at this time, with his evil star in the ascendant, must needs slip, stumble, and sit down in this bath of acids. He arose quickly, and yelled with pain as he burned his fingers on his dripping trousers; then they surrounded him.
"Three parts sulphuric," said the superintendent to the youthful officer in charge. "Get him aboard quickly, or it will skin him alive when it soaks through."
They stuffed the seat of the trousers with dry cotton-waste and pulled off to the ship, with Finnegan standing erect mourning the mishap to his vestments. But even so guarded, the acids got to work; they hoisted him up howling, and sent him to the sick-bay for treatment. He averred painfully that he "felt like he'd sot on a hot stove."
He was quite recovered in a few days, but the trousers were not. Where the acids had touched they were stained in ineradicable yellow. He scrubbed them with hot fresh water and salt-water soap—as strong an alkali as is convenient to use; he rendered them clean, but they were still yellow. Excepting the scornful master-at-arms, the whole ship's company under the rating of warrant-officer offered sympathy and advice. Finnegan tried all the remedies—caustic soda, wood-ash lye, lime-water, and ammonia. Nothing availed—the yellow spot remained, and he disconsolately adopted the last advice given and painted them with a mixture of precipitated chalk and alcohol, obtained from the apothecary's clerk. This succeeded, and he proudly took his position on the quarter-deck on the day of the ball, with his trousers glistening in all their pristine purity.
His duties were nominal—merely to stand by the flagstaff at the taffrail and answer salutes of passing craft, while the quartermaster who should have attended to this was stationed at the gangway. All boats were in service, passing back and forth from the ship to the landing-stage, and soon the deck was filled with laughing, dancing humanity, which enjoyed itself to the utmost with only an occasional glance and thought for the quiet, benign old sailor who stood at the taffrail. But he thought steadily of these people, and of the good times they were having, and the good things that were being handed around to them by a corps of shore waiters. He was getting very tired, standing so long in one place, and could not be blamed for wanting a stimulant; nor could the shore waiter, who obeyed his order for "straight whisky and a leetle water on the side," be blamed for serving him, for he did not know, and Finnegan spoke with authority. It did the old man good, and in time he ordered more, and then more, and still more of the intoxicant, to the result that when the fun and laughter were at the highest his stability was at its lowest, but his intelligence was still sufficient to provide for the future. He bravely ordered a whole bottle, which, being oval in cross-section, he easily squeezed into the seat of his trousers—the best hiding-place under the circumstances.
But the waiter thought it a little irregular, and spoke to the caterer who employed him. This functionary inspected Finnegan, and spoke to an officer—it happened to be the one who had placed Finnegan there—and the officer came, and saw, and spoke to the third master-at-arms, who happened to be at hand. Mr. Thompson approached Finnegan, waving his baton officiously.
"Come!" he said, sternly, as he collared the old man. "Come—out o' this with you! Who gave you the right to get drunk on the quarter-deck?"
"Not drunk, Misher Thompson—jess 'joyin m'shelf," protested Finnegan.
Those nearest began to be interested, and a few ladies moved away. Mr. Thompson was wisely and justly disposed to forestall further embarrassment; he swung Finnegan around at arm's-length and gave him a sharp spank with his baton.
There was a dull, puffing report—something like the cough of a pneumatic tube—a faint cloud of smoke in the air, the rattling of a bottle on the deck, and an aged sailor racing forward through the astonished throng of guests, yelling incoherently and holding his hand where the seat of his trousers should be, but was not—this section of the rear elevation being replaced by an equal expanse of still intact blue flannel underwear. Leaving behind him a trail of sparks and thinning smoke, the human comet disappeared into the superstructure, while Mr. Thompson, his eyes bulging from his head, followed with the unbroken bottle.
Officers and guests—among the latter the superintendent of the torpedo station—crowded below, and found Finnegan backed up against a bulkhead, surrounded by questioning shipmates. He was sober now, but shocked almost out of his faculties. He could only stammer, "He shot me—he shot me, an busted the bloomin' bottle."
"But I didn't shoot him," said the master-at-arms, holding up the bottle. "And I didn't bust the bottle. This one dropped out, and it must ha' been something else; but there's no broken glass around." They examined the vacancy in the trousers. The edge of the cloth was seared by flame, and a few sparks still smoldered.
"Are you the man who sat down in the dipping-tub ashore at the station? " asked the superintendent.
"Yes, sir," answered Finnegan.
"Same trousers?"
"Yes, sir."
"What did you do to them? Try to scrub the yellow out of them? "
"Yes, sir. Scrubbed wi' everything, but couldn't get em white, an' so I painted 'em."
"Scrubbed with soda?" asked the superintendent, a grin coming to his face.
"Yes, sir; an' soap an' lime-water, an' then I had to paint 'em wi' chalk-paint."
The superintendent turned to the master-at-arms. "Did he have that bottle tucked into his trousers?"
"Must have, sir. Everything carried away all of a sudden, and it fell out. I just hit him a light tap."
The superintendent sat down on a convenient bench, uttering strange, explosive sounds. It was some moments before these sounds began to take on the pitch and timbre of laughter, and some moments later when he could speak intelligibly. Then he gasped between paroxysms: "Every detail followed out—soaking in acids, scrubbing with soda, rinsing well, undoubtedly all free acids expelled, lime-water and precipitated chalk. Gentlemen, he turned the seat of his trousers into gun-cotton, and it exploded when struck."
But this did not impress Finnegan. While he lived he regarded the master-at-arms as an enemy who had attempted his life.