In addition to these details of 'boardship life, we were also instructed in practical seamanship by one of the boatswain's mates. He was an old hand who had been at sea so long that he seemed to smell of salt water and tar; while his face was like a piece of pickled beef covered with a quantity of hair that resembled spunyarn more than anything else, being as stiff and wiry as an untwisted rope. Old Oakum, however, was a thorough sailor, every inch of him, and he taught me much more than I had learned on board the _Illustrious_, not only in "knotting and splicing" and other things. Under this worthy's guidance I practised the "goose step" of going aloft, as it might be described by a drill sergeant, the mizzenmast being placed at our disposal every fine afternoon, and it was pretty nearly good weather all the time of our passage southwards, to learn the art of reefing and furling sails and to send down or cross upper yards; so that we became in the end almost as expert as our tutor, the old salt one day telling Tommy Mills and myself that we took in a royal "as good and better as any two able seamen could a done it, blow me!" It was not "all work and no play," either, for we had plenty of fun and skylarking down in the gunroom; making the oldsters there, like Mr Stormcock and the assistant-paymaster, Mr Fortescue Jones, frequently wish they, or rather that we, had never been born to come to sea to torment them. The very duty of the ship itself was an endless source of occupation and amusement to us, the commander keeping the men "at it" continually from sunrise to sunset, until he had so licked us all into shape that we were the smartest ship's company afloat, I think; for the discipline was such that the old _Candahar_ might have been four years in commission instead of the brief three months that had elapsed from our hoisting the pen'ant to our casting anchor in Simon's Bay, a port to the eastward of the "Stormy Cape," where our men-of-war usually moor. Here, we remained for ten days to refit, setting up our lower rigging, which had got very slack through the heat of the Tropics, and taking in fresh provisions and water, besides all of us having a run ashore to shake the reefs out of our legs. All the men, too, were allowed leave by watches each day of our stay, and few took advantage of the licence to misbehave themselves although temptation enough was thrown in their way by the hospitable inhabitants. Amongst these few, I am sorry to say, Corporal Macan distinguished himself, falling a victim to his "ould complaint," by coming aboard on the second day after our arrival in a state of glorious intoxication, despite his solemn promise to Dr Nettleby, through whom the commander had given him permission to land, that he "wouldn't touch a dhrop ov the craythur, not if Ould Nick axed him."