dark as the inside of
a hat, and undeniably stuffy.

Yet to me, in my first flush of enthusiasm, it appeared eminently cosy:
and the six midshipmen of the _Melpomene_--Walters, de Havilland,
Strangways, Pole, Bateman, Countisford--six as good fellows as a man could
wish to sail with. Youth, youth! They had their faults: but they were
all my friends till the yellow fever carried off two at Port Royal;
and two are alive yet and my friends to-day. I tell their six names over
to-day like a string of beads, and (if the Lord will forgive a good
Protestant) with a prayer for each.

Our next business was to become acquainted with the two marines who had
carried our chests below, and who (as we proudly understood) were to be
our body-servants. We were on deck again, and luckily out of hearing of
our fellow-midshipmen, when these two menials came up to report
themselves: and Hartnoll and I had just arrived at an amicable choice
between them.

"Here, Bill," said the foremost, advancing and pointing at me with a
forefinger, "which'll it be? If you _don't_ mind, I'll take the
red-headed one, to put me in mind o' my gal."

So on the whole we settled ourselves down very comfortably aboard the
_Melpomene_: but the ship was not easy that day as a society, nor could
be, with her commanding officer pacing to and fro like a bear in a cage.
You will have seen the black bear at the Zoo, and noticed the swing of his
head as he turns before ever reaching the end of his cage? Well just so--
or very like it--the _Melpomene's_ first lieutenant kept swinging and
chafing on the quarter-deck all that afternoon--or, to be precise, until
six o'clock, when Captain Suckling came aboard in a shore-boat, and in his
shore-going clothes.

He was a pleasant-faced man; clean-shaven, rosy-complexioned, grey-haired,
with something of the air and carriage of a country squire; a
pleasant-tempered man too, although he appeared to be in a pet of some
sort, and fairly fired up when the first lieutenant (a little
sarcastically, I thought) ventured to hope that he had been enjoying
himself.

"Nothing of the sort, sir! It's the first--" Captain Suckling checked
himself. "I was going to say," he resumed more quietly, "that it's the
first prize-fight I have ever attended and will be the last. But in point
of fact there has been no fight."

"Indeed, sir?" I heard the first lieutenant murmur compassionately.

"The men did not turn up; neither they nor