s on one
side, and with the great basins of water choked with shipping, all
apparently in the most inextricable confusion, till we reached a great
loftily masted ship and passed up the sloping gangway on to her deck.

Here every one was busy--officers, sailors, dockmen; hatches were off
and bales of lading and stores were being lowered down, and we were just
standing together looking out for some one to show us our quarters and
to carry down our chests, when the warning shouts came from aloft, and
we had so narrow an escape of being laid low.

CHAPTER TWO.

No one paid any more attention to us, and we still stood looking about,
with my companion more helpless than myself, in spite of his having been
to sea before, still wanting to get out of the rain and save my new
clothes, I began to exert myself, with the result that at last I found a
sailor who told me where I could find the steward.

That functionary was too busy, he said, but at the sight of a shilling
he thought he could spare a minute, and at the end of five we two damp,
miserable, low-spirited lads were seated on our sea-chests in a little
dark cabin, after doubling up our mackintoshes to make dry cushions for
the wet seats.

There was not much room, our chests doing a good deal towards filling up
the narrow space, and hence our knees were pretty close together as we
sat and tried to look at each other, not at all an easy job, for the
round window was pretty close to the great stone wall of the basin, and
a gangway ran across from the wharf up to the deck, shutting out the
little light which would have come in if the way had been clear.

"Cheerful, ain't it?" said my companion.

"It's such a horrid day," I said.

"Beastly. It always is in London. Ain't you glad you're going to sea?"

"Not very," I said, after a pause. "It'll be better when it's fine."

"Will it?" said my companion, mockingly. "You'll see. I don't know how
a chap can be such a jolly fool as to go to sea."

"Why, you went!" I said.

"Yes, I went," grumbled my companion; "but of course I didn't know."

"Did you go out in this ship?"

"Course I didn't, else I should have known where our bunks were. My
last voyage was in the Hull."

"Oh!" I said, looking at him as one of great experience; "and did you
go your other voyages in the Hull?"

"What other voyages?"

"That you went."

"Who said I went any other voyages? I don't brag. I only went that
once, and it was en