for Her
Majesty's Service; and that these aspirants for naval fame and glory
number altogether ten thousand, such being really the quota of young
boy-sailors provided for in the Admiralty estimates and added to the
Navy every year.

Thinking thus, I rather lagged behind my comrades in going up the
hatchway, only just succeeding in the nick of time in getting into my
proper place forward on the starboard side of the ship as befitted my
station; and where, being ahead of the line, I had a good view, while
the inspection lasted, of the scene of my fight with `Ugly.'

The boys were all drawn up in two long double rows facing each other,
the ranks stretching away from where Mick and I stood near the knight-
heads, to right abaft the mainmast; the first and third divisions, which
together comprised the starboard watch, being on the right-hand side of
the deck looking towards the bows, while the port watch was on the left,
of equal strength and similarly stretched out--the watch stripes on the
right or left arm, as the case might be, telling any chap who might
chance to lose his latitude to which side he properly belonged.

I had already, of course, seen the imposing display which this muster of
the boys on the upper deck invariably presented; but never before had I
taken such stock of its various details.

However, before I could come to any conclusion in the matter, revolving,
as I did, more things than I have yet spoken of in my busy brain, which
seemed `all wool-gathered' this morning, as father would have said had
he been there and seen me star-gazing all round the compass, the boy-
bugler on the bridge, who "had a purty foine chake of his own," as Mick
observed to me on noticing his puffed-out mouth, blew a resonant blast.

It was the `disperse.'

Hi, presto!

As if by magic, the imposing array of `sucking bluejackets' whom I had
just been gazing upon with a sort of personal admiration from the fact
of my being one of their number, an admiration which was tempered by a
slight feeling of awe of the discipline that controlled them, melted
away almost noiselessly, like those Arabs who `folded their tents'
according to the poem, the boys being all in their bare feet, and their
patter along the deck and down the hatchways not making any sound above
a faint shuffling; and soon this was drowned by the eldritch screeching
of our friends the seagulls circling round on the wing in their wonted
manner, and poising themselve