rgue the point out, or indeed laugh at Mick's Irish way of
putting it, the bugle sounded again for `divisions.'

As we all scrambled up the after-hatch, the ship's corporal, Brown, who
had helped me to sling my hammock again after I had been cut down the
first night I was on board, a very decent man altogether, stopped
`Ugly,' who was on his way up ahead of me.

"Hallo!" he said. "What's the matter with your face, boy?"

"I dunno," replied my late antagonist, trying vainly to hide the effects
of my fists with the sleeve of his blue jumper. "S'pose I run agin
summat a-comin' downstairs jest now!"

The sun, though, streaming down through the open hatchway, handicapped
all the yokel's attempts of concealment; and Mr Brown looked at him
with a quizzical expression on his face and a comical twinkle in his eye
that spoke a volume without words!

"It strikes me, young man," he said, with his broad good-humoured grin,
"that theer `summat' you knocked against must have been moving round you
pretty smart! Bless me, if it ain't fetched you one on your booby hatch
and another on the conk, and bottled up your peepers as well! What's
your name, boy?"

"Mo--ses," drawled out `Ugly' slowly, the poor beggar having a
difficulty in speaking, caused by the blow I first gave him on the
mouth, which accentuated his provincial pronunciation, "Re--eeks, zur."

"Oh!" ejaculated ship's corporal Brown. "Then, Mr Moses Reeks, you'd
better go to the sick-bay and see the doctor."

`Ugly' backed down the hatchway to comply with this order, as we were
just then ascending from the middle deck; and, from his withdrawing his
intervening figure, I became disclosed to view.

My arm, which had swollen up, and necessitated my putting it in a sling,
at once attracted the observation of the corporal.

"I say, youngster," he said, arresting my footsteps in like fashion,
"why are you bandaged up? What the--ah, what does this hanky-panky
mean?"

"I--I--I," I stammered, not knowing what to reply to this, as I did not
like to tell him a barefaced lie in cold blood offhand-- "I've hurt my
arm, sir."

"A-ah!" breathed out Mr Brown significantly; adding, after a pause,
"You're Tom Bowling, ain't you?"

"Yes, sir," I said; "that's my name."

"Well, it strikes me, Thomas Bowling," said he drily, in the chaffy sort
of way he adopted sometimes when hauling any of us `over the coals' for
some offence, performing his duty ever of guardian of the peace