things were made right in this respect; and,
having satisfactorily passed `bag and hammock drill,' the test of our
novitiate, I and my fellow-unfortunates became not only clad like our
fellows, but were enrolled amongst the rest of the second-class boys,
and appointed to our proper place in the ship.

My number being 2799, through some occult system of nautical numeration,
I was detailed to the `Third,' or second starboard, division of the
ship's company; so I joined mess Number 38, which was on the port side
on the lower deck, the first one aft of the schoolroom.

I also proceeded a day or two after, being thenceforth regarded as a
neophyte no longer, to take part in all the regular drills of the ship,
and one morning, subsequent to breakfast, underwent that rudimentary
stage of seamanship styled `boxing the compass'--though I might have
really told the painstaking instructor, who painfully and ploddingly
laboured to instil the cardinal points into my head as if I were an
ignoramus, that I not only knew the `lubber's point' probably as well as
he did, but could, on a pinch, have conned the ship in and out of
Portsmouth Harbour!

This `boxing the compass' business, though, brought me to loggerheads
with that brute `Ugly' somehow or other, strangely enough.

I don't know how it was, but from the moment, I believe, I first cast
eyes on his singularly unprepossessing face, Moses Reeks had been my
special antipathy!

It was not so much that he said anything to me or of me, as from the
fact of his always `putting it on' poor Mick Donovan, for whom I
entertained as great a liking as I disliked the other.

`Ugly' was always snarling at my chum, and ever giving him a chance kick
or blow, should he be able to do so unobserved and without being
directly taxed with it; though, of course, he would deny it if observed
by any of the other boys, being an unmitigated liar, in addition to
having a sour and vindictive disposition.

That very morning I noticed him deliberately stamp on poor Mick's bare
toes with all the weight of his big heavy foot, as we were coming down
the hatchway from early `divisions'; and when I spoke to him about it he
said coldly he "hadn't done nuthin' of the sort!"

I knew this was an untruth; but I bided my time, judiciously watching
for an opportunity to pay him out.

This came sooner than I expected; for during our compass lesson I
managed to get him into a fog about the points which the instructo