ease me best.

Every morning at eight o'clock we used to go up the rigging and practise
loosing and furling the sails, crossing the royal-yards, and making all
things snug before coming down on deck to our usual divisional
instruction.

On Mondays the whole forenoon was devoted to these evolutions, the sails
being set one after the other, topsails, topgallants, royals, and even
stu'nsails sometimes, besides the courses and headsails below; until,
often, the whole ship was piled with canvas as if she were fetching down
Channel on a cruise, her spars quivering with the strain frequently,
when we had the wind abeam from the southward and east'ard, and every
rope as taut as a bar of iron!

We used to work our way from the lower yards to the dignity of the upper
by rotation more than through any special smartness and activity; and I
know I was as pleased as Punch when it came to my turn to be an `upper-
yard boy.'

I was never so happy as when aloft; and many a time up there of a
morning have I gazed out to seaward, looking over Southsea beach and the
boats clustered in the fairway, that seemed but little dots from the
height where I was, to the open stretch of water beyond Spithead and
Saint Helens, that seemed to draw my heart to it like a magnet, making
me long to leave my present stay at home surroundings and sail away and
away on the boundless deep.

This desire of mine was gratified in part after I had been serving for
nine months as a second-class boy, and passed satisfactorily through all
my drills and instructions; when Mick and I got promoted.

Strangely enough, my chum the Irish lad proved himself, landsman though
he had been before and never having even smelt the sea prior to his
coming to Portsmouth, quite as expert as myself after a short stay
aboard the training-ship; though I had been associated with ships and
seafaring folk from the time I drew my first breath, and indeed, like
all the Bowlings, as I told you at the beginning of my yarn, was born
with the taste for `the briny,' the feeling being inherent to my blood.

It strikes me, though, that my sister Jenny had something to do with
this.

Mick heard her say the first day when I first took him home with me to
visit father and mother at Bonfire Corner, that she loved sailors, and
wondered how any young fellow could possibly care for anything else,
when he had a chance of going afloat and serving his Queen and country,
and fighting the battles of