y. Hadn't they better pass their `bag
and hammock' while waiting for their rig, instead of loafing about here?
Mr Gadgett, the bo'sun, was complaining just now of their taking up
all the fairway of the deck, and told me I must get rid of them from
here somehow or the other!"

"All right," responded the seaman-instructor to this suggestion of the
master-at-arms; and, turning to us, he said, "Take up your hammocks, my
lads, and follow me down to the lower deck. You'll have a practical
lesson in seeing how your shipmates do it, lads. We're just in time!"

We were, barely so; for, as we passed down the hatchway from the middle
deck to the lower region he had previously indicated, it was hard work
for us to shove by the surging crowd of boys who were hurrying up, each
with his hammock neatly made up and lashed in the regulation form, to be
stowed in the nettings on top of the bulwarks amidships the upper deck,
according to nautical routine.

Some, however, were slower at the work, and, taking stock of these, in
obedience to the instructor's orders, I got a very fair notion of how
the thing was done; the more especially, as father had shown me the way
he used to lash up his hammock in the old days when he was at sea, by
the aid of a biscuit bag and a piece of string.

But our instructor was not satisfied by our now having mere ocular
demonstration and doing nothing further; not he. On the contrary, he
took us up to make another requisition on the ship's steward for our
regular kit, which was promptly served out to us; and all the morning,
after a good breakfast, which made Mick Donovan open his eyes wider than
ordinarily and stare like a stockfish, consisting as it did of cold salt
pork and bread, with some splendid hot cocoa, that was more like
chocolate, and such as he had never tasted before, we were kept hard at
it till the `assembly' was bugled out before dinner--going through the
details of `bag and hammock drill' seriatim, from the initiatory stage
of plaiting the ends of the `nettles' to lashing it up with the
specified number of turns.

We new boys returned to Number 52 Mess on the middle deck for dinner,
when `cooks to their messes' was sounded.

Our meal this day, it being a Friday, was of a different kind, though
quite as substantial as we had experienced on the previous day; a well-
piled plate of beef and potatoes being allotted to each of us by the
presiding genius of the galley, the sight of which vi