as
lightly as he could make it, "there's some sort o' circumbendibus
between this here arm of yourn and the spoilt face of that there joker
I've jist sent to the sick-bay. Thomas Bowling, Esquire, I fancy you'd
better foller him there, my boy."

Of course, I obeyed this command, a ship corporal's word, whether
jocular or not, being as good as an order and regarded as law on board
the training-ship.

Nothing was said, though, to either of us regarding our recent fight,
nor any embarrassing questions asked, when we reached the sick-bay.
Trimmens, the sick-berth steward, on the contrary, never moved a muscle
of his mahogany face when `Ugly' said that he had knocked his head
against the hatchway, and I told a `banger' by volunteering the
statement that I had broken a plate on the mess-table, and one of the
pieces had run into my arm. The wound in my side, which was really only
a scratch, I never mentioned to any one, not even to Mick, who thought,
and to this day knows nothing to the contrary, I believe, that I had
guarded off `Ugly's' thrust, and had been only stabbed in the arm.

Our injuries not being sufficiently serious to put either of us in the
sick-list, `Ugly' and I were sent back, after being lotioned and
`dressed' by Trimmens, to rejoin our division, then at their
`instruction drill' on the lower deck, and engaged making what are known
to those learned in the arts of the sea as `bends and hitches.'

To explain these properly to a landsman, I would say, for the sake of
easier comprehension, that the theory of a `bend' is based on the good-
natured truism contained in the old adage, `One good turn deserves
another'; while a second proverb, `Safe bind, safe find,' will equally
justify the existence of the `hitch'; but if the inquirer be not
satisfied with either of these definitions or explanations, whichever
term he may choose to apply to them, I can only advise him to follow
Captain Cuttle's injunction and `overhaul his Church catechism.'

To drop joking, all of us new hands were taught our work as well as
sailors could teach us, which was so effectually done that what we once
learnt we never forgot; this work being to treat ropes and rigging as if
they were reasoning and responsible beings, and to be capable of making
fast or letting loose, whensoever it so pleased us, anything under the
sun, from knotting a reef point to parbuckling a cask--a dodge by which,
I believe, Admiral Rodney, or Abercromby, or s