This reminiscence of my cramming experiences, mixed up in hotch-potch fashion with the martial echoes that caught my ear from the banging drum and brazen bugle, at once recalled the gruesome fact that this was the eventful day fixed for my examination on board the _Excellent_; so, dreading lest I should be late, I incontinently jumped out of bed in a jiffy, proceeding; albeit unconsciously, to obey the last gruff order of the sergeant of the guard, relieving the sentries. This, as Dad subsequently explained, was the reason for all the commotion, the sergeant parading his men as he came up to each "post" in turn, with the usual stereotyped formula, "Halt! Front! Dress!" Dear me! I did "dress;" though in rather a different sense to that implied by the sergeant's mandate, huddling on my clothes in my haste so carelessly that I broke the button off my shirt collar and put on my jacket the wrong way! All my hurry, too, was to very little purpose; for, when I reached the coffee-room of the hotel below, after getting confused and losing my proper course amongst the many intricate passages and curving corkscrew staircases that led downwards from the little dormitory I had occupied right under the tiles at the back of the building, I found that neither Dad nor mother had yet put in an appearance for breakfast. I was in such good time, indeed, that old Saint Thomas's clock in High Street was only just chiming Eight; while the ships' bells over the water were repeating the same piece of information in various tones and the shrill steam whistle from the dockyard workshops hard by screeching its confirmation of the story. There was no fear of my being late, therefore; so, consoling myself with this satisfactory reflection, I was making my way to the nearest window of the coffee-room to look out on the harbour beyond as I had done the evening before when, like as then, a big bouncing "Bang!" came from the _Victory_, making me jump back and feel almost as nervous as poor mother was on the previous occasion. "Yezsir, court-martial gun, sir, aboard the flagship, sir," said the wiry little cock-eyed head waiter, who was hopping about the room "like a parched pea on a griddle," as dad expressed it, stopping to flick the dust from the mantelpiece with his napkin as he replied to the mute inquiry he could read in my glance. "Look, sir! They've h'isted the Jack at the peak, sir, yezsir." "Oh, yes, I see," said I, as if I had not observed this before and was perfectly familiar with the signal. "I did not notice it at first." "No, sir? W'y, in course not, sir, or else ye'd ha' known wot it were," answered the sly old fellow, ascribing to me a knowledge of naval matters which he knew as well as myself I did not possess, thus pandering, with the ulterior view, no doubt, of a substantial tip, to a common weakness of human nature to which most of us, man and boy alike, are prone--that of wishing to appear wiser than we really are!