joined the service, I
tell you."

"Ah, you jist wait then," said he, taking this observation of mine for a
fresh lead. "I wer' out once, I tells yer, in the brig when the sea wos
mountings 'igh, an' the wind--Lor'! Yer shood 'a 'errd it blow! It
took the mizzen to's'le right clean out of 'er; an' there wos four on us
at the wheel, ay, 'sides old Jellybelly."

"Why," I exclaimed, "who is he?"

"The quarter-master, in course," rejoined Larrikins indignantly. "Where
wos yer raised not fur to know that afore? He allers goes by that name
aboard ship, as everybody knows."

He was proceeding to tell me some thrilling and highly adventurous
experiences he had had in the Channel and off the Isle of Wight, out on
the autumn cruise in the training-brig, when the bugle sounded, and the
boys all mustered at quarters before turning in for the night.

Staying on the upper deck for a time, Mick Donovan and I witnessed the
mad race which presently took place on the order being given to sling
hammocks; each boy scurrying to the nettings and hurrying below, hammock
under arm, to rig up the same in the billet allotted to him on the lower
deck.

Ere long, the idea struck both Mick and myself, almost simultaneously,
that it was high time for us to think of our sleeping accommodation for
the night; and so, we hurried down at the tail end of the crowd of other
fellows, to seek the aid of our old friend the master-at-arms, the `Deus
ex machina' of our hopes and fears.

Our new hammocks had been left in the police office of the ship under
his immediate eye; so, on ascertaining the doubt that harassed our minds
anent the night-lodging question, the `Jaunty,' as heretofore, solved
the difficulty at once by saying that we were to sling our hammocks on
the middle deck, adjacent to the mess-place where we had dined and
supped so sumptuously. Just then, as luck would have it, Larrikins, our
old cicerone, came up abreast of where we were standing.

"Hi there!" sang out the master-at-arms. "Come and show these boys how
to sling their hammocks."

"Yes, sir," replied Larrikins, with a scrape and a touch of his cap.
"Werry good, sir."

So saying, he set about knotting the lanyard of Irish Mick's hammock;
and, after slinging it from the hooks in the deck beams, over the mess-
table where the famished lad had enjoyed such a rare `tuck out' that
day, Larrikins went on to explain how the blankets should be `tucked in'
to the frail structur