"Boys," cried the instructor in a louder key, pointing as he spoke, "you
see the mainmast there?"

We signified assent as well as we were able to do without losing our
rigidity or speaking, which latter is strictly against rules when an
officer is giving any order, except when an answer is specially
demanded.

Noticing, however, that we all looked in the right direction, the
seaman-instructor was satisfied with this reply; but really there was no
reason why he should not be so, for if we had not seen the tall spar
that he pointed out we must all have been blind!

At all events, he was satisfied; and that is all that concerns us at
present.

"Now, boys," he continued, "you've got to go over the top of that there
masthead, climbing right up the rigging on the port side, and coming
down to starboard. Let me see which of you will be first to get over
the crosstrees, and woe betide the last! Away you go, now, the lot o'
ye! 'Way aloft!"

It was child's play to me; for, as I told Larrikins the first day I was
on board, when he was trying to `pull my leg' with his yarns of the
mountainous seas he met in the Channel cruising in the _Martin_,
`shinning up the rigging' was no novelty to me.

Before you could say `Jack Robinson' I had quickly sprung into the lee
rigging; and, clambering up the ratlines and then outward by the futtock
shrouds, I gained the top long ere half the rest had started.

"Well done, my lad; I see you have been on board a ship before!" cried
out the instructor, as I at once proceeded now to climb up to the
crosstrees and over the head of the mast. "Look alive, you other chaps!
That boy there will have done the job while you are thinking about it.
Stir your stumps!"

`Ugly' was the last of the lot; and, as I came down on the weather or
starboard side of the ship, the wind then blowing from the nor'ard and
eastward, he was just trying to creep through `the lubber's hole' into
the top.

"No you don't," shouted up the instructor after him. "You must climb
out by the futtock shrouds, as every proper sailor does."

Seeing, however, that poor `Ugly' was quite in a fog, he turned to me as
I stepped down from the chains and stood up in front of him, touching my
cap to report myself as having accomplished my task.

"I say, my boy," said he, "what's your name?"

Of course I had to reply to this, and so I told him--

"Tom Bowling, sir."

"Ha!" he exclaimed, apparently surprised. "Any relation of