r was
explaining, drawing down on my joker the wrath and outspoken opprobrium
of that officer.

`Ugly' noted this, and in his turn bided his time.

The watch was dismissed, and the `stand by' had been bugled before
quarters, preparatory to our being dispersed for dinner; when `Ugly'
nudged me as we passed up the hatchway together, coming much closer to
me than I liked, the very touch of the unclean brute being obnoxious to
me.

"Wot d'yer mean by comin' the barney over me and a-makin' that codger of
a kinstructor bullyrag me afore all the t'other chaps fur?"

"What do you mean, Reeks?" said I, in reply to this, returning his nudge
with a good dig from the bony knob of my elbow in his ribs, and knocking
the wind pretty well-nigh out of him. "You jumped on poor Mick
Donovan's bare foot this morning, and now you try to shove me!"

"Oh!" he exclaimed, as we emerged on the upper deck, where our division
had by now already partly assembled on the starboard side, forward;
"that be it, mister?"

"Yes," said I, as I slipped into my place near Mick, "that's it!"

After `divisions,' when the other boys were rushing down below to their
messes to dinner, the bugle-call for which was braying out its cheerful
sounds, I stopped behind on the upper deck, as did "Ugly."

"Sure an' what are ye stoppin' fur, Tom, mabouchal?" said Mick to me in
surprise. "Begorrah, I can smill the mate alriddy, an', faith, the
praties, too! I can say their smilin' faces bickonin' to me an' sayin',
`Coom an' ate me!'"

"I'm not coming yet," I replied, in a more serious tone than Mick
evidently expected. "I've got some business with this chap here."

`Ugly' overheard me, as I intended he should.

"Hay," said he, "did yer speak to Oi?"

"Hay is meant for horses and asses," I answered drily, with a grin; "and
if you be one of them latter, as I think, and so does Mick here I know,
why, I did refer to you!"

"Want ter fight?"

"Yes," I said, launching out my fist straight towards his bullet head
and giving him a cropper on the mouth that sent him tumbling backwards
on the deck, all of a heap; "I do."

`Ugly' rose slowly to his feet, his face streaming with blood; and he
was just about making a rush at me like a mad bull at a gate, while I
put myself in a posture of defence in proper pugilistic fashion, when an
interruption, though but of a temporary character, came to these
proceedings.

The ubiquitous Larrikins was the intervener.

"Lo