mess appointed yet. "Not many gits
sich a chance on first j'ining!"

"Why?" asked I--"how's that?"

"It's pay-day to-day, being Thursday; and so you'll have roast mutton
and gammy duff for dinner, let alone your pay, mate."

"I don't fancy any of us will get fat on our pay," said I, with a grin,
in response to his chaff. "But, what's `gammy duff'--I never heard tell
of such a thing before?"

"Plum puddin', with raisins in it, stoopid," he quickly sang out, we
darting off, on catching sight of our friend the ship's corporal, who
just then popped his head out of the office to see how we were getting
on. "I means a puddin', Johnny Green, with as many `gammies' as the
boys don't `sneak' when the cook's working up the duff!"

CHAPTER FOUR.

I AM "CUT DOWN IN MY PRIME."

After dinner, which, by the way, my friend Mick Donovan appeared to
enjoy mightily, not having had a decent meal for more than a month past,
as he confessed to me afterwards, the bugle loudly sounded the
`assembly,' when all the boys below came rushing up the hatchway near
us, trooping onwards by the ladder above to the upper deck. They
jostled and shoved past each other, I thought, as if Old Nick were after
them, none wishing to occupy the unenviable position of last man, or
rather boy.

There wore eight other new boys in addition to us three, the latest of
the novices, who had joined the ship that morning; and, although we all
rose up from the mess-table, where we had very satisfactorily polished
off our dinners in company, the lot of us hung together about the spot,
not knowing what to do, or where we should go.

We were, besides, pretty well confused with all the bustle and hurry,
and scurry catch-me-who-can business, going on around us.

It seemed, indeed, to bewilder even `Ugly,' free and easy chap as he
appeared to be.

Our friend the master-at-arms, however, solved the difficulty for us
before we were many minutes older, as you will see.

"Ha, my lads!" said he, advancing towards us from the office with the
glass windows, through which he could overhaul all that was going on on
deck, and where he probably had been enjoying his own meal on the quiet;
"got through your dinners, eh?"

"Yes, sir," we shouted in chorus, Mick Donovan adding a very appropriate
grace, which most of us had forgotten. "Thanks be to God, yer 'anner!"

"Ah, I needn't have asked the question," said the `Jaunty' to this,
glancing meaningly at the empty p