Church being over, the pipe went for breakfast, and various presents received from friends on shore were duly paraded in the messes. One old quarter-master produced a plum-pudding large and heavy enough to give an elephant a fit of indigestion; while another served out red herrings to all his less fortunate messmates who were unprovided with wives to send them off such delicacies. Some paraded fat pork sausages or handkerchiefs full of apples, while many a sly nip of grog, sent on board in skins secreted in the food, was swigged by the knowing ones, who imagined the nasty stuff to be nectar, because it was surreptitiously obtained. Every one was in good humour, and, taking it altogether, considered the admiralty order to stop their leave was a wise precaution. About a quarter before eight o'clock all those who claimed to be the wives or relatives of the Stingers were let into the dockyard, and a mob of clamorous expectants swarmed upon the wharf, all eager to see their friends or to make friends with those they saw on board. "Vy, Shack," screamed one gentleman, whose every-day occupation consisted in selling sham jewellery or ready-made clothes to half-intoxicated sailors. "Vy, Shack, ma poy, how are you?" "Not much better for seeing of you, Peter," replied the man thus addressed. "I don't want no more of your tin watches and baggy trowsers this voyage;" hearing which, Peter turned his attention to another sailor. A number of policemen now arrived, and having forced their way through the crowd, formed a half circle round the top of the gangway ladder, in order to keep the unruly among the mob from pouring on board the ship _en masse_. Precisely as the dockyard bell struck eight the first lady was passed on board, and being rather short-sighted, she, much to her husband's annoyance, saluted the wrong sailor, which caused no little merriment among the others, and made her partner growl out, "I say, Peggy, when you've done with George Town perhaps you'll give me a buss." "Ladies first," cried the sergeant of marines, who, with the ship's corporal, kept the girls from thrusting each other off the gangway into the water. "Just ease a little, mum, or you'll squeeze that ere infant's life out," he added, as one brazen-faced woman, who declared she was the wife of Mister Stebbings, A. B., pushed herself past him, and drove her way down the ladder. Unfortunately for the creature, the sergeant laid hold of the child, and finding it wad a dummy, rudely snatched it from her arms, whereupon the ladies on the wharf set up a howl of indignation. "You brute!" cried one, "to serve a baby in that manner." "The wretch!" shrieked another. "Murder!" screamed the lady who was thus abruptly deprived of her _infant_.