ighteen and nineteen or thereabout; and,
behind them again, the last of the file, slowly stepped out on to the
deck a lanky boy of about the same age as myself--which I forgot to
mention before was just fifteen, although I looked older from my build
and height.

"You're a nice lot of lazy fellows to leave in charge of the work of the
ship!" cried Mr Mackay on the three presenting themselves before him,
slowly mounting the companion stairs, one after the other, as if the
exertion was almost too great for them, poor fellows, after their
dinner! "Here, you Matthews, look sharp and stir your stumps a bit--one
would think you were walking in your sleep. I want you to see to that
spring forwards as we unmoor!"

The boatswain had already descended from the poop and gone to his
station in the fore part of the ship; and now, with the first mate's
words, all was stir and action on board.

The tallest of the two youths immediately dashed off towards the bows of
the ship with an alacrity that proved his slow movements previously had
been merely put on for effect, and were not due to any constitutional
weakness; for, he seemed to reach the forecastle in two bounds, and I
could see him, from a coign of vantage to which he nimbly mounted on top
of the knightheads, giving orders to a number of men on the wharf, who
had gathered about the ship in the meantime, and directing them to pass
along the end of the fore hawser round a bollard on the jetty, near the
end of the lock-gates by which entrance was gained from the adjacent
river to the basin in which the vessel was lying.

Tom Jerrold, the second youth--I heard him called by that name--was sent
to look after another hawser passed over the bows of the ship on the
starboard side, the end of the rope being bent round a capstan in the
centre of the wharf.

Then, on Mr Mackay's word of command, the great wire cables mooring the
ship to the jetty were cast off; and, a gang of the dock labourers
manning the capstan, with their broad chests and sinewy arms pressed
against the bars, as they marched round it singing some monotonous
chorus ending in a "Yo, heave, ho!" the ship began to move--at first
slowly inch by inch, and then with increased way upon her as the _vis
inertiae_ of her hull was overcome--towards the lock at the mouth of the
basin, the gates of which had been opened, or rather the caisson floated
out shortly before, as the tide grew to the flood.

Dear me! What with the