for it happens to be a holiday with him, and he dotes on harbours and
dockyards. His whole being is wrapped up in them.

And this is natural enough. Most boys delight to gaze on
incomprehensible and stupendous works. Let us--you and I, reader--
follow this urchin's example, keeping our mouths shut, however, save
when we mean to speak, and our eyes open.

There are ships here of every shape and size--from the little
coasting-vessel to the great East Indiaman, which, in its unfinished
condition, looks like the skeleton of some dire megatherium of the
antediluvian world. Some of these infant ships have an enormous shed
over them to protect them from the weather; others are destitute of such
protection: for ships, like men, it would seem, are liable to
vicissitudes of fortune. While the "great ones" of the dockyard world
are comfortably housed, the small ones are not unfrequently exposed to
the fitful buffeting of the rude elements even from their birth.

There are ships here, too, in every state of progression. There, just
beside you, is a "little one" that was born yesterday. The keel has
just been laid on the blocks; and it will take many a long day of
clinching and sawing and hammering ere that infant assumes the bristling
appearance of an antediluvian skeleton. Yonder is the hull of a ship
almost completed. It is a gigantic infant, and has the aspect of a very
thriving child. It evidently has a robust constitution and a sturdy
frame. Perhaps we may re-visit the dockyard to-morrow, and see this
vessel launched.

Besides these two, there are ships with their ribs partially up, and
ships with their planking partially on; and in a more distant part of
the yard there are one or two old ships hauled up, high and dry, to have
their bottoms repaired and their seams re-pitched, after many a rough
and bravely-fought battle with the ocean waves.

Now that we have gazed our fill at the general aspect of the dockyard,
let us descend a little more to particulars. We shall first tell of
the:--

NATURE AND USE OF DOCKS.

There are two kinds of docks--dry and wet. A dry-dock is usually
constructed with gates, to admit or shut out the tide. When a ship
arrives from a long voyage, and needs repair to the lower part of her
hull, she must be got out of the water somehow or other.

This object is frequently attained in regard to small vessels by simply
running them gently on the flat sand or mud beach of a bay or har