mell
of salt water and tar; while his face was like a piece of pickled beef
covered with a quantity of hair that resembled spunyarn more than
anything else, being as stiff and wiry as an untwisted rope.

Old Oakum, however, was a thorough sailor, every inch of him, and he
taught me much more than I had learned on board the _Illustrious_, not
only in "knotting and splicing" and other things.

Under this worthy's guidance I practised the "goose step" of going
aloft, as it might be described by a drill sergeant, the mizzenmast
being placed at our disposal every fine afternoon, and it was pretty
nearly good weather all the time of our passage southwards, to learn the
art of reefing and furling sails and to send down or cross upper yards;
so that we became in the end almost as expert as our tutor, the old salt
one day telling Tommy Mills and myself that we took in a royal "as good
and better as any two able seamen could a done it, blow me!"

It was not "all work and no play," either, for we had plenty of fun and
skylarking down in the gunroom; making the oldsters there, like Mr
Stormcock and the assistant-paymaster, Mr Fortescue Jones, frequently
wish they, or rather that we, had never been born to come to sea to
torment them.

The very duty of the ship itself was an endless source of occupation and
amusement to us, the commander keeping the men "at it" continually from
sunrise to sunset, until he had so licked us all into shape that we were
the smartest ship's company afloat, I think; for the discipline was such
that the old _Candahar_ might have been four years in commission instead
of the brief three months that had elapsed from our hoisting the pen'ant
to our casting anchor in Simon's Bay, a port to the eastward of the
"Stormy Cape," where our men-of-war usually moor.

Here, we remained for ten days to refit, setting up our lower rigging,
which had got very slack through the heat of the Tropics, and taking in
fresh provisions and water, besides all of us having a run ashore to
shake the reefs out of our legs.

All the men, too, were allowed leave by watches each day of our stay,
and few took advantage of the licence to misbehave themselves although
temptation enough was thrown in their way by the hospitable inhabitants.

Amongst these few, I am sorry to say, Corporal Macan distinguished
himself, falling a victim to his "ould complaint," by coming aboard on
the second day after our arrival in a state of glorious in