ship?"

It was Larrikins.

Needless to say how glad I was to meet him again, or what yarns we had
to tell each other of what had happened to us respectively since last we
met.

He was the same frolicsome, good-tempered chap that he had been on board
the training-ship, I found, after a very few minutes' talk; but his love
of practical-joking had been sobered down a bit within due bounds, and,
on the whole, he was very much improved in every way.

"I s'pose ye've never bin aboard a hooker like this afore," he said to
me presently, after we had made an end of exchanging reminiscences,
noticing that I was all at loggerheads in finding my way below. "It's
them bloomin' watertight compartments as does it; but come along o' me,
Tom, and I'll show yez the ropes."

So saying, he took me over the ship, pointing out how the _Mermaid_ had
a steel-protected deck running fore and aft, that sheltered her engines
and boilers beneath; the space in beneath this and the bottom of the
vessel being subdivided by a series of vertical iron bulkheads,
completely shutting off the various `flats,' or lower decks, from each
other.

An arrangement so complex naturally necessitated a fellow having to
climb up one hatchway and go down another before he could speak to his
chum in the next flat, thus causing one to go through `sich a getting
upstairs' like that mentioned in the celebrated negro ballad. The
difference of the deck plan of a modern cruiser, as compared with that
of my old ship the _Active_, was not the only thing I had to learn on
being drafted to the _Mermaid_; for the drills were quite as strange to
me at first as her complicated build inboard.

The stokers, of course, had to see to driving her through the water,
that being their special duty, under the superintendence of the
engineers; so, as this job was taken out of the hands of us bluejackets,
and there was nothing for us to do in the way of setting and taking in
sail, the executive officers managed to find other work for us to keep
our minds from mischief when we were aboard.

One of these tasks was `collision mat' drill; when we would be tumbled
up on deck to rig out a roll of oakum that was plaited into the
semblance of a gigantic doormat, right over the side, dragging it by
means of guys and springs under our forefoot, to fill up some imaginary
hole that had been knocked into us by too friendly a craft passing by
and running athwart our hawse!

Another favourite