en
Snatchblock was especially active. Ben a few days afterwards received,
to his satisfaction, his warrant as boatswain, his zeal being
considerably enlivened thereby. He, before long, managed to pick up a
number of prime hands from among his old shipmates, on whom he could
thoroughly depend. The gunner and carpenter joined the same day he got
his warrant. The former, Timothy Ebbs, was a little man, but he had a
big voice and a prodigious pair of black whiskers, which, sticking out
on either side of his face, gave him a sufficiently ferocious aspect to
inspire ship-boys and other young members of the crew with the necessary
amount of awe; while the able seamen respected him for his tried courage
and undoubted nautical experience. Adair was very glad to find that Jos
Green was appointed as master, as he had known him well when he was
second master of the _Tudor_, in the West Indies, and a more merry,
kind-hearted, better-disposed fellow never stepped. Jos, it was said,
never went anywhere without finding friends, or came away without having
made fresh ones. Adair, Archie, and Gerald, with all the officers who
had as yet been appointed to the corvette, took up their quarters on
board, and the work of fitting out made rapid progress.

"I wonder whom we shall have for our second lieutenant?" said Gerald, as
they were sitting in the berth; "an old shipmate or a new one? I hope
we may get a good sort of a fellow. I should like to have old Higson.
What a good-natured chap he was!"

"That was when he was first promoted; he may have grown rusty by this
time, at not getting another step," observed Archie. "He is older than
the captain, and yet junior to Mr Adair."

On going on deck soon afterwards, an officer came up the side, who
introduced himself to Terence as Lieutenant Frank Mildmay, come to join
the _Opal_ as second lieutenant. No two persons could be more
dissimilar than the first and second lieutenants of the corvette. He
had a smooth face with pink cheeks, whiskers curled to a nicety, and
hair carefully brushed. His figure was slight and refined, and he wore
lilac kid gloves, his appearance being certainly somewhat effeminate;
indeed, he looked as if he had just come out of a bandbox.

"He'll never set the Thames on fire," observed Paddy Desmond to Archie.
"Faith, the men will be after calling him Mr _Mildman_, unless he
condescends to dip those delicate paws of his into the tar-bucket."

The men probab