his hands with
much satisfaction. "Topmen, aloft and loose the topsails! Let go your
topsail halliards! Man the head sheets!"

While these directions were being carried out, the port bower was
weighed; when the jib being hoisted and the topsails dropped and sheeted
home, the brig paid off on the starboard tack, picking up the kedge and
stream anchor as soon as we fetched over them in rounding-to.

The cutter, which had remained alongside ready for further use if
required, was then hoisted up to the davits; and the _Martin_, spreading
her wings again properly, made off towards Cowes just as one of the
Government tugs, which had been despatched to our assistance from the
dockyard on the receipt of a telegraphic message from Hurst Castle
telling of our mishap, came round the corner of Stokes Bay, puffing away
at a fine rate, and throwing up a cloud of black smoke that spoilt the
beauty of the landscape, and shut out everything to leeward from view.

"Begorrah!" said Mick, from whom the fine fuss and fright and flurry had
banished all traces of his previous illness, making him as right as
ninepence again, "they're jist in toime to be too late, sure!"

Our commander exchanged signals with the people on the tug, however,
telling them that their services were not required, though thanking them
for the help they would have rendered us; and the wind, which had been
shifting about to all parts of the compass while we had been ashore on
the sand ledge, now veering to the south'ard and west'ard, we bore away
before it with squared yards up the Solent towards Spithead, where we
anchored for the night, almost in the fairway, abreast of Southsea
Castle.

Next morning we came into harbour, when a dockyard diver was sent down
to see if the brig had sustained any damage from her pranks of the
previous day; but, all being found staunch and sound below, only the
copper on her keel having received a little extra polish, we were
ordered to go out again into the Channel and continue our cruise.

The most noteworthy feature of this, excepting, of course, the setting
and reefing and taking in sail on board a moving vessel, instead of
practising all these merely in dumb-show as had been our wont in a
stationary ship like the _Saint Vincent_, was the exercise we had with
the old-fashioned little muzzle-loading truck guns, which were mounted
on wooden carriages of the sort only seen in the old _Victory_ nowadays,
with which the _Martin_