"After I cleared oot o' Motherwell I went to the Clydeside. I was a fair enough mechanic by this time, but I had tak'n a sort o' skunner at machinery--no wi'oot some reason--and I tried for to get taken on as a dock-hand. I had no luck there, and I was fair starvin' when yin day I met a freend o' min' on the Dumbarton Road, and he asked me would I like tae wash dishes and peel potaties on a passenger steamer. I would hae been pleased tae soop the lums o' muckle Hell by that time, gin it was for a wage, I was that thrawn wi' hunger; so I jist said, ''Deed ay!' "For a hale summer I sat peelin' potaties and washin' dishes on board the Electra, her that has done a trip doon the watter, roond about Arran and Bute, and hame by Skelmorlie ilka day o' the summer season for twenty-twa years. When the winter cam' on I dooted I would be oot o' a job again; but bein' nowadays permanently on the teetotal, and varra dependable, I was shifted tae the auld Stornoway, o' the same line, carryin' goods, cattle, and passengers tae the West Highlands--Coll, Tiree, Barra, Uist, Ullapool, and a wheen places in and oot o' sea-lochs up and doon that coast. She loused frae the Broomielaw every Thursday at three o'clock in the afternoon, and she was back there, week in week out, summer and winter, by eleven in the forenoon o' the following Wednesday. The folk along by Largs, where her cap'n lived, used tae set their watches by her. She was a fine auld boat, the Stornoway: she piled herself up on the rocks below the Scuir of Eig, where she had no call tae be, in a snowstorm seven winters syne. I was a cabin steward nowadays, ye'll unnerstand; and once we were roond the Mull and the passengers had thrawn up what they'd had tae their tea off Gourock and tak'n a dander ashore at Oban, appetites was big and I was busy. It was the first time I had seen the gentry at their meals, and it improved my mainners considerable. Never since then have I skailed ma tea intil ma saucer: I jist gie a bit blow on it noo. Yon's Mr. Allerton roarin' for to be relieved at the wheel." On another occasion Goble explained how he came to forsake the fleshpots of the Stornoway and take to the high seas. "I was aye hankerin', hankerin' after the machinery," he explained. "A body canna serve tables all his life. So after twa years on the Stornoway I shippit as a fireman on a passenger steamer outward bound frae Glasgow tae Bilbao. There I left her, tae be second engineer on a wee tramp carrying iron-ore tae the Mediterranean. That was nigh twenty years ago, and I've never set fit in Scotland since. Weel, weel! Aha! Mphm!" (_Ad lib._ and _da capo_.) So he would discourse, in a manner which passed many a weary hour for both, and added considerably to Hughie's stock of human knowledge.