've only to say so, and we'll enter you aboard the
_Rainbow_!"

I told the tall sailor that I was ready to go wherever he liked to take
me. This seemed to please him. After I had wished the neighbours, who
had been so kind to me, good-bye, he took me by the hand, and led me
rapidly along in the direction of the docks. Before reaching them, we
entered a house where some old gentlemen were sitting at a table. One
of them asked me if I wished to go to sea and become an admiral. I
replied, "Yes, surely," though I did not know what being an admiral
meant; and on this the other old gentlemen laughed, and the first wrote
something on a paper, which he handed across the table.

On this a sunburnt fine-looking man stepped forward and wrote on the
paper, and I was then told that I was bound apprentice to Captain
Helfrich, of the _Rainbow_ brig. The fine-looking man was, I found,
Captain Helfrich. "Well, that matter is squared now!" exclaimed the
tall sailor; "so, youngster, we'll aboard at once, before either you or
I get into mischief."

On our way to the brig, we stopped at a slop clothes-shop. "Here, Mr
Levi! I want an outfit for this youngster," said my friend, taking me
in. "Let his duds be big enough, that he may have room to grow in them.
Good food and sea air will soon make him sprout like a young cabbage."

The order was literally fulfilled, and I speedily found myself the
possessor of a new suit of sailors' clothes, of two spare shirts, and
sundry other articles of dress. My friend made me put them on at once.

"Now, do the old ones up in that handkerchief," said he; "we'll find a
use for them before long."

The spare new things he did up into a bundle, and carried it himself.

"I did not want the Jew to get your old clothes, for which he would have
allowed nothing," said he, as we left the shop. "We shall soon fall in
with a little ragged fellow, to whom they'll be a rich prize."

As we went along, two or three boys begged of us, and pointed to their
rags as a plea for their begging. "They'll not do," said he; "the
better clothes would ruin them."

At last, passing along the quays, we saw a little fellow sitting on the
stock of an anchor, and looking very miserable. He had no shoes on his
feet; his trousers were almost legless, and fastened up over one
shoulder by a piece of string, while his arms were thrust into the
sleeves of an old coat, much too large for him, and patched and torn
again in