I pass it over, and come to March 1860, when I went up to be examined for my Lieutenantcy. The first ordeal was a Seamanship examination on board the _Victory_. Three old salts sat on me--two of them brig Commanders, the other a Post Captain. The ball was opened by one of these setting me questions, which I was expected to answer _vivâ voce_. I was to take command of his old brig, to find her alongside the jetty in Portsmouth Harbour, dismantled; to fit her out, get my guns in, and stores, and take her out to Spithead, mooring her at that anchorage; I was to let them know when I was ready to begin the ordeal. In the meantime they left the cabin and disappeared--I suppose in the hope that I should be better able to make out my programme and so save their time. This question was a hot one. I gave myself a clear ten minutes over it. I made some pencil notes to assist me in my answers. These notes I consistently followed, and at the end of my ten minutes’ grace I sent a message by the sentry to say that I was ready. It always struck me on such occasions that there was a chuckle of delight dimly visible in your examiner’s countenance at the thought that he had got you dead-beat. When all three reappeared smiling and joking I wondered whether their merriment was levelled at me. For a moment it put my back up, and I felt inclined to sulk. However, “Go on, my boy,” put me straight again, and I thought there was a wee bit of solicitude in the tone of the speaker’s voice. I went steadily on for some time: until first one began to yawn, another got up and walked about, and the third looked out of a port. Evidently bored, thought I to myself, and my story getting prosy. Reader, I never got to Spithead in my brig. I had stowed my hold so nicely--the peas placed carefully in one corner, the biscuit in another, and the rum properly stowed “bung up” in the spirit room--that the examiners had had quite enough of my capabilities, and (beyond shifting a topsail in a gale of wind and some other such detail) I was asked no more. “That will do, sir,” I was told, though for the life of me I could not tell the extent of my knowledge: until the Post Captain, on walking out quietly, whispered into my ear, “You are all right! But say nothing about it.--Sentry, tell them to make a signal for our galleys.” “Thank God,” said I to myself; and down below I went to refresh the inner man, my lips parched with thirst. “Well, old chap,” says one, “how did you get on?” “Pretty well, I think,” said I; “but, of course, I don’t know.” Soon appeared my sheet of foolscap duly signed, and I was a free man, as having passed my Seamanship examination. The next step was the Gunnery examination, on board the _Excellent_; and finally I had to be put through my facings at the Royal Naval College examination in the Dockyard.