new boy, I'm afther manin'--
pull away wid a will! Tom, why, sure, don't ye make thet chap alongside
ye put his shoulder to it properly? He ain't workin' at all, at all,
bad cess to him, who ivver he is, fur I can't say him at all, at all!"

"Whoi, I be a-shuvvin' and a-shuvvin' all the time," rejoined a voice
whose accents were strangely familiar to me. "You pull yerself,
maister, and stop hollerin' at Oi!"

I turned; and there, much to my astonishment, at the foot of the ladder
was `Ugly,' of whose being on board the same ship I was ignorant up to
that moment, he being in the starboard watch and I in the port, and the
necessities of the service not having brought us together before, though
how I'd never seen him even casually at Portsmouth or at Portland I
can't account for.

Unfortunately, the curiosity that made me turn round brought about the
mishap to which I have alluded, nearly making Tom Bowling, junior, your
present informant, lose the number of his mess.

`Ugly,' as much surprised as myself at our strange meeting, started back
on seeing me.

He had really, in spite of all that Mick said, been doing his part to
assist me; and now, from his loosing his hold of the tub, which he had
been trying to shove upwards on the one side the same as I did on the
other, while the other two fellows above us pulled, the beastly thing
came sliding back a step on me; and, as I was not holding on to
anything, and the ship lurched at the moment, making Mick and Finlayson
both let go at the same time, I tumbled incontinently backwards on to
the lower deck, with the gashing-tub on top of me!

My good providence, however, still watched over me; for, as I fell, a
big wave, coming splosh right over the side into the waist, poured down
bodily through the hatchway, floating away the tub and flooding the
lower deck.

This probably saved my life, as had the heavy tub fallen really on top
of me I should have been squashed into a jelly.

"Faith, I belaive ye've ez many loives ez a cat," cried Mick, making
little, in proper sailor fashion, of my peril; and then, dropping his
voice so that the others shouldn't hear him, he added, "Whisht, Tom--
faith it's thet nasty baste `Ugly' thet done it; an', sure, he's done it
a-purpos!"

"No, Mick, I don't believe that," I whispered, in my turn, picking
myself up with the aid of my suspicious chum, who proceeded to help me
in clearing away the remains of the garbage from the tub which had