Old England.

The remark was a chance one; but, though Mick must have heard Jenny say
a good many other things, for he was often at our house afterwards,
being generally in the habit of accompanying me home when I had leave to
go, he never forgot those words and somehow or other seemed to strive
his best to reach Jenny's ideal.

So, you see, smart seaman though I fancied myself to be even at that
early age, I had to look out lest I should be supplanted by my own chum;
for no sooner did I get the start of him in one thing than he would
fetch alongside of me and be working ahead before I well knew where I
was, the `owdacious young beggar,' as father dubbed him, becoming
actually a `royal-yard boy' the following week to myself, while both of
us, as I have said, were made first-class boys together.

Unfortunately, this was during the winter months; and, as the training-
brig _Martin_, which is attached to the _Saint Vincent_ as a sea-going
tender in order to cruise about in the Channel to give the boys
practical experience of their profession--like a frolicsome chick
hanging round a broody old hen that won't leave her nest--does not go
out of harbour till the spring, Mick and I were unable for some time to
take advantage of the grand privilege of our rise and really go to sea.

We thought the blissful period would never come.

But `it's a long lane that knows no turning'; and, winter ebbing away
into the flood of spring anon, we, with some ninety and nine other
youngsters of the same standing, set sail one fine April morning from
Portsmouth Harbour, the _Martin_ slipping her buoy abreast of Blockhouse
Fort, and standing out into the Solent under easy canvas, with a fair
wind from the nor'-east.

A hundred boys are always taken at a time for a month's cruise in the
brig, the lot being accompanied by some of the smartest seamen belonging
to the complement of the mother training-ship, so that they have every
opportunity of picking up now the nautical knowledge necessary to make
them worth their salt, in reference both to seamanship and gunnery.

We had a pretty fair knock-about time in the Channel, running down to
Plymouth and back, having a `sojer's wind,' one that was fair both ways,
out and home again; and, though, from this fact, we necessarily made an
easy passage of it, some of the boys were woefully seasick, many of them
never having been at sea before.

Notably among these was Mick.

"Bedad!" moaned he, leani