t of a reply from me, I said, "He'll have to change very much, sir.
He and I haven't been very friendly up to now, sir."

"Ah!" rejoined the instructor, "that don't count, my boy. The dearest
friend I have in the world at the present time was once my bitterest
enemy. He and I fell out about some trifle or other on joining the same
ship and never spoke a single word to each other throughout the whole
commission, though we were up the Straits at the time, and saw some
queer rigs there, I can tell you. We've often laughed over it together
since, and thought what fools we were."

"I don't think, sir," said I, "that Moses Reeks and I will ever be
friends, so far as I can see."

"Well, time will tell," observed my good-natured adviser, who was a man
like father, I saw, one always anxious to make the best of everything.
"None of us ever know what will happen in this life, especially with
sailor folk; and though you may think it difficult to `make a silk purse
out of a sow's ear,' for I can see, my lad, with half an eye that that
unfortunate yokel is of a different stamp to you, still I've known
stranger things occur. I wouldn't mind betting, if I ever did such a
thing, that one day you and he will be the fastest chums."

"Perhaps, sir," I answered, in a very doubting manner; and I couldn't
help adding, as I turned to go below to my dinner, if there should be
any left for me, the other fellows having pretty well done by this time,
"Some day, as father says, pigs may fly, sir!"

The instructor laughed.

"Your father, Tom Bowling," said he, giving me a friendly pat on the
shoulder as I went down the after-hatchway, "must be a knowing hand; and
I think, my lad, you take after him."

It being `pea doo and bolliky' day, my fast friend Mick, who, from his
highly developed instincts in the grub line, had been elected cook of
our mess on the lower deck, had saved me a good basin of soup and hunch
of bread, with which I managed to assuage the cravings of my appetite,
this having been accentuated not only by my long wait but by my exercise
aloft.

"Begorrah, Tom," said he, as he watched me tucking into the stuff with
great complacency, while the rest of the fellows were cleaning up the
mess-table and generally making things snug, "it's as good as aitin'
onesilf fur to say how ye git outside that pay-soup. An ould play-
acting chap I onst sayd a-swallerin' knoives an' sich loike onnatural
stuff, worn't a patch on ye, me hear