ur berth
is in the forepeak, you will understand; and Jim and the cook will find
you work enough. You don't expect to be idle?"

"No, sir," said Peter, "I came to learn to be a sailor."

"They will teach you, and fast enough, too, with a rope's-end if you
don't look sharp about you," said the captain, with a laugh, "and soon
make you dip your hands in the tar-bucket and swash-tub. Have you got
any working duds with you?"

"I don't know what duds mean, sir," answered Peter.

"Not know what duds mean, and you a sailor's son, as you tell me?
Clothes, to be sure," cried the captain, laughing again.

"I have got another suit for Sundays, when I go to church, sir,"
answered Peter.

The captain and old Jim laughed in chorus at the reply.

"We have no Sundays aboard here, and don't carry church steeples at our
mast-heads," cried the former, again laughing at his own wit as he
considered it.

He and his mate were in a merry mood, for they had just had one
successful voyage, and as the weather was fine they hoped to make
another. The captain himself had taken a parting-glass or two with his
friends on shore. So little Peter found him and his mate in their best
humour.

"Do you hear, boy?" cried the captain, seeing that Peter did not move;
"go forward and see what they have got for you to do."

Peter did not know where forward was, but observing the direction in
which the captain was looking, supposed it to be at the other end of the
ship.

"I left my bundle down-stairs there, sir; shall I take it with me?" he
asked.

Again the captain and mate laughed. Of course they felt their
superiority to the poor ignorant little shepherd-boy.

"We have no down-stairs here, no more than we have Sundays; but your
bundle is not to stop in my cabin, I should think. Get it and take it
with you."

Peter, having got his bundle from below, went forward, accompanied by
old Jim.

"Now, lads," said the latter to the four unkempt beings who formed the
crew of the _Polly_, "here is a boy for you, and just see he don't go
overboard or run away; the skipper is tired of getting lads to do your
work."

The men looked at little Peter and grinned. "Now, boy," said old Jim,
turning to Peter, "come below and I'll show you your berth. You must
keep your eyes wide open, or may be you will not see it."

The mate descended through a small hatchway by an upright ladder into a
dark place, where Peter, as he was bid, followed him. He co