omething in connection with Sheerness and the
Isle of Sheppey, and a light house on top of a church--I'm sure I can't
recollect what it was all about--I made a stumble forward and nearly
fell on my face on the deck, dead beat.

"Poor little chap, you're tired out," said the first mate
sympathisingly, putting his arm round me and holding me up; "and when a
fellow's tired out, the best thing he can do is to turn in!"

"Eh, sir," said I sleepily. "Turn where?"

"Turn in, my boy," he replied laughing. "Go to roost, I mean. To bed--
if you understand that better."

"But where shall I go, sir?" I asked, catching his meaning at last.

"Come along and I'll soon show you," he answered, taking me down the
poop ladder to the after-deckhouse, and hailing the steward to show a
light: "There!"

It was a little narrow box of a cabin with four bunks in it, two on one
side running athwart the deck and two fore and aft. The ends of these
crossed each other, and they looked exactly like shelves in a cupboard;
while, to add to the effect and trench on the already limited space of
this apartment, the floor was blocked up by two other sea-chests besides
my own, and a lot of loose clothes and other things strewn about.

The two bottom bunks were already occupied, Jerrold and Sam Weeks
snoring away respectively in them; and one of the two upper ones was
filled with what looked like a collection of odds and ends and crockery
ware.--This was the situation.

What was I to do?

I looked at Mr Mackay appealingly.

"Well, Graham," he said in answer to my look, "you must make the best of
a bad job. These two fellows have turned in first, so, as you're the
last comer you've only got Dobson's choice in the matter of bunks--that
top one there, which seems a little less crowded than the other, or
nothing."

"I'm so weary," I replied, "I can sleep anywhere. I don't mind."

"Then, in you go," cried he, giving me a hoist up, while he covered me
over with a blanket which he pulled off young Weeks, that worthy having
with his customary smartness appropriated mine as well as his own. "Are
you all right now?"

"Yes--th-ank you," I answered, closing my eyes; "g-ood night, sir."

"Good night, my boy."

"Goo-goo-oo-ah!" I murmured drowsily, falling asleep in the middle both
of a yawn and of my sentence, only to wake again the next moment--it
seemed to me--from a horrible dream, in which I was assailed by a crowd
of savages, who were dan