For several nights I was on the look-out for the cutting-down process that must be practised on me. I had not long to wait. “Cutting down,” I may explain, means that when you are fast asleep your hammock, either at one end or the other, is let down by the run. If it were let down by the head, your neck might be broken. To be suddenly aroused from sleep by finding yourself balancing by the head on a hard deck is not an enviable position. It was ordained only if the boy was obnoxious; but the alternative, as I found to my chagrin, is not pleasant. Luckily, a marine sentry came to my rescue. He helped to get my hammock up again, and condoled with me. Those marines were fine fellows. They were always considered the special safeguard of the officers in a man-of-war. In case of mutiny or other trouble, they stood by the officers of the ship. In the _Princess Royal_ I had, on joining, an excellent old soldier told off to look after me and be my servant. For many months after joining I was too small to swing myself into my hammock (I could not reach anything handy even by jumping), and he invariably came at the appointed time to give me a leg-up. I was much attached to him. Many a time, when some bigger midshipman took it into his head to take some of my washing water away for his own selfish use, my marine came to the rescue in support of his small master. Seven shillings a month were his wages, and on washing days, I think, he received an extra _douceur_. Poor man: he got into trouble later, and had to leave me. I recollect well going to visit him in irons, under charge of a sentry; he was then under sentence of four dozen lashes for having been drunk on board; and some years afterwards, while I was fitting out in a ship at Portsmouth, in passing along the road I heard the voice of this dear old Joey calling me by name; but so drunk was he that he could not follow me, and I escaped. Sometimes, when half-starved in the gun-room mess, I went into my marine’s mess and got some ship’s biscuits, which, with pickled gerkins, I supped off. We certainly were shockingly fed in those days. Growing youths, much imbued with sea air, used to fare very badly; but when it is considered how little was paid in the shape of mess money it is no wonder. On joining you found £10 as an entrance fee; and the mess subscription was one shilling a day, with your rations thrown in. The rations were the same as those allowed to the ship’s company: a pound of very bad salt junk (beef), or of pork as salt as Mrs. Lot, execrable tea, sugar, and biscuit that was generally full of weevils, or well overrun with rats, or (in the hot climates) a choice retreat for the detestable cockroach. In one ship--I think it was the _Nankin_ frigate--cockroaches swarmed. Sugar or any other sweet matter was their attraction; and at night, when they were on the move, I have seen strings of the creatures an inch and a half long making a route over you in your hammock.