Of all the children who swarmed on deck to the distraction of (at least) the unmarried officers of the regiment, he had been the noisiest and the merriest.

He made fancy ships in corners, to which he admitted the other children as fancy passengers, or fancy ship's officers of various grades.

Once he employed a dozen of us to haul at a rope as if we were "heaving the log." Owing to an unexpected coil, it slackened suddenly, and we all fell over one another at the feet of two young officers who were marching up and down, arm-in-arm, absorbed in conversation.

Their anger was loud as well as deep, but it did not deter Arthur Curling from further exploits, or stop his ceaseless chatter about what he would do when he was a man and the captain of a vessel.
He did not live to be either the one or the other.

Some very rough weather off the Cape was fatal to him at a critical point in his illness.