RASTUS VISITS H.M.S. FREE

Waipa Post, Volume V, Issue 212, 13 May 1913, Page 3

RASTUS VISITS H.M.S. FREE

My ship came home the other day, and as I got a chance to go down to see it without havin’ to pay, J starts off on Thursday before daylight with all the girls and boys in the country—leastway those that got up early enuf. Some of ’em was telling me they got up the day before to go. No wonder the poor little beggars sat still for six hours in the train, they was just glad of a rest, and they couldn’t move much any way, each one was a human sardine but somehow, apart from circum- ~ stances, we’ve got the best bunch of kiddies in the Dominion and the very best school-master too. I’ll bet my own bottom dollar he’s got more grey hairs in his head since one visit to H.M.S. as the boys call her. We’ve got something to be proud of in the whole jolly lot of them, committee, teachers, and kiddies. Well to make a short story longer, for I’ve only just got started, we reached Auckland after taking aboard other loads of kiddies and guardians until we nearly burst our tyres with the load, and the old engine had to go on its lowest gear up some of the hills near town. But that was nothing to the crowd on the ferry boat. They was hanging over the sides, and sitting on the fence, and holding on to the ladders and standing all over the roof of the blamed thing, we couldn’t see each other for strangers—people i to the right and people to the ; left, on top, below, on the starboard and the larboard, and the sign board. I dunno how they could tell what was carrying us along, for it was all covered up with people and kiddies. Presently we got on terra —no I mean ferro firma —our own H.M.S., just a great big chunk of ( 24 carat iron. We could see nothing but iron with holes in it, and how the jolly thing holds the , air to keep it floating I dunno, there’s nothing to stop the air going out and lettin her down, but I’m forgettin, she’s not an air-ship. As soon as we’d climbed off the ferry boat and up the cliff we see that the rest of Auckland had got ahead of ; us. I thought the whole Waikato was on the train and the whole of Auckland on the ferry boat, but the whole jolly island was on H.M.S. We knew we was on the ship because there wasn’t any buildings in sight. I elbowed, and shoved, and squeezed, and riggled, and got on me toes and some other fel- , lows’ toes too numerous to mention, took over ostrich feathers and round fur bellows, and dodged hat pins. Altogether I • had the most perilous time of my life looking for the murderous 1 guns, and when I found them ! they was quieter and peacefuller : looking than our town clock. A sailer feller was moving his chin up and down and turning a motor car wheel around, and the old gun ris her nose in the air : and flung her stern around, and then came back for us, and I thought she’d crush me and I dodged and ran my head into a 1 chunk of armour plate as big as the new bank, then there was a clammer and a clank and a roar 1 and sizzle and off she went again, and then I found out the sailqr fefler was shouting at the crowd, and pretending to knock the top of Rangitoto. Then they : put us thro’ a sausage machine i that dumped us in the cellar, and : I saw a lot of sacks that I thought was others like me all done up ready for the freezer. But they was only the sailors’ swags, and we’d come down a port hole in the roof out of the fighting top on to the 9th storey up. I’m glad I was a little chap for I saw some of my lanky mates dodging the decorations on the ceilings. I’ll bet Mr de Ridder didn’t design them low ceilings. Just as we were getting used to the smell and hardness of things they let us down lower and I felt a breeze coming from north, and south and over head all at once. _ It was the wind from the freezing chamber what keeps her cool in the tropics. Out of that we gets down some iron fretwork into the engine room. There they’d got a lot of machinery for delivery to somewhere else I guess. It was packed in tight so it wouldn’t move when the ship rolled. It must a been for some I other ship for it was more than they had room for. We got lower and lower till I begins to think we ought to take off outboots reddy for the mud on the bottom of the harbour, but the lower we went the more summery it got, leastways, as far as heat goes. The sailors was bareiooted and sweating in the basement. Well, all this time I was among strangers, all to once I saw a little white-haired chap come out from under something , and disappear with some others A— after him. I don’t know where \ they came from or where they 1 went, I never saw them again till the next day in our little old A village. I heard after they’d crawled right through the bowels of the ship and one of them got L /stuck in its appendix and had to be pulled out by sailor men. Another boy got headed of climbing up to see what was in the bird cage up in the sky. I thought it was a bird cage till a feller explained it was what they used to talk to England with about the weather and such like. Well, I says to myself, I’d better get home, or I’ll be living all over the world at once instead of out on my town section in Te Awamutu. Them fellers on the ship can say

how-de-do to their girls in London or throw a bit of iron at a feller in Pukekohe and chase a motor car and catch it, that is, if it could swim. I did’nt see the bull dog, but I saw the chain he’s tied up with. They fix him in the front of the ship so’s the enemy can see him and be frightened. I see Sir Joseph has got his name put on the H.M.S., but he’s changed his initials to O. N. I dunno what he did that for, but I suppose it is not his fault, but was done by the painter like he does when he puts H.M. in front of the king. It must mean Our Noble Ward. It’s strange how some fellers gets all the glory and others pays for it. Well, I think I got a good solid ship for my money. She won’t burn and she won’t break, but I’m afraid all the air will leak out of her if they don’t keep them fans going, and she’ll sink. ’ Bout midnight I got home again, tired and weary and jolly well muddled up with what I'd seen, and trying to find a use for all them engines and lamps and wires and chains and slabs of iron. There was only one comfortable place on that old ship, and that was the captain’s room. When Igoto be a H.M.S. sailor I’ll pick the captain’s job. He’s all right too. I reckon he’s valuable too, for he’ve got an iron box on the top of the mast where he goes out of the fighting so’s he can see what he can do without being hurted. But I’d sooner be a cook in a territorial camp than an admiral in a fight at sea, for a cook would be safer in spite of that iron safe on the mast.