nt
to the youngest midshipman, all were bawling at the top of their voices,
issuing and repeating orders; but there were two persons who out-roared
all the rest, the boatswain and the boatswain's mate. They were proud
of those voices of theirs. Let the hardest gale be blowing, with the
wind howling and whistling through the rigging, the canvas flapping like
claps of thunder, and the seas roaring and dashing against the bows,
they could make themselves heard above the loudest sounds of the storm.

At present the boatswain bawled, or rather roared, because he was so
accustomed to roar that he could speak in no gentler voice while
carrying on duty on deck; and the boatswain's mate imitated him.

The first lieutenant had a good voice of his own, though it was not so
rough as that of his inferiors. He made it come out with a quick, sharp
sound, which could be heard from the poop to the forecastle, even with
the wind ahead.

Jack, Tom, and Bill looked at each other, wondering what was next going
to happen. They were all three of about the same age, and much of a
height, and somehow, as I have said, they found themselves standing
close together.

They were too much astonished, not to say frightened, to talk just then,
though they all three had tongues in their heads, so they listened to
the conversation going on around them.

"Why, mate, where do you come from?" asked a long-shore chap of one of
the whitey-brown-faced gentlemen.

"Oh, I've jist dropped from the clouds; don't know where else I've come
from," was the answer.

"I suppose you got your hair cropped off as you came down?" was the next
query.

"Yes! it was the wind did it as I came scuttling down," answered the
other, who was evidently never at a loss what to say. "And now, mate,
just tell me how did you get on board this craft?" he inquired.

"I swam off, of course, seized with a fit of patriotism, and determined
to fight for the honour and glory of old England," was the answer.

It cannot, however, be said that this is a fair specimen of the
conversation; indeed, it would benefit no one were what was said to be
repeated.

Jack, Tom, and Bill felt very much as a person might be supposed to do
who had dropped from the moon. Everything around them was so strange
and bewildering, for not one of them had ever before been on board a
ship, and Bill had never even seen one. Having not been much accustomed
to the appearance of trees, he had some idea th