"Lord love ye!" said Mr. Jope, "the lie's an old one; but a man that
played up to it better in appearances I never see'd nor smelt!"
CHAPTER XIII.
A VERY HOT PRESS.
The performance of _Love Between Decks_ had reached its famous fourth
act, in which Tom Taffrail, to protect his sweetheart (who has
followed him to sea in man's attire), strikes the infamous First
Lieutenant and is marched off between two marines for punishment.
This scene, as everyone knows, is laid on the upper deck of his
Majesty's ship _Poseidon_ (of seventy-four guns), and the management,
as a condition of engaging Mr. Orlando B. Sturge (who was exacting in
details), had mounted it, at great expense, with a couple of lifelike
guns, R. and L., and for background the overhang of the quarter-deck,
with rails and a mizzen-mast of real timber against a painted cloth
representing the rise of the poop.
At the moment when our Major entered the gallery, the heated
atmosphere of which well nigh robbed him of breath, Tom Taffrail had
taken up his position on the prompt side, close down by the
footlights, and thrown himself into attitude to deliver the speech of
manly defiance which provokes the Wicked Lieutenant to descend into
the waist of the ship and receive the well-merited weight of the
hero's fist. The hero, with one foot planted on a coil of real rope
and one arm supporting the half-inanimate form of his Susan, in
deference to stage convention faced the audience, while with his
other arm uplifted he invoked vengeance upon the oppressor, who
scowled down from the quarterdeck rail.
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