"That one flying the red flag, eh?" "Yes, my dear Squaretoes; but we don't call a burgee a flag aboard ships." "I wish you would not call me Squaretoes, Larkyns," said I, peevishly, for he hurt me, squeezing my neck in his tight grip, holding me out of the port as if I were a kitten, so that I could not turn my head round. "I hate nicknames. Do leave me alone, please!" "Ah, would you, now!" he exclaimed in reply, as I tried to wrench myself free. "Don't cry, my little pet, you haven't got your mammy here to mollycoddle you!" "Let me go, Larkyns, you're choking me," I gasped out, wriggling violently and kicking out behind. "I'll hurt you if you don't loose me; I will, indeed!" He wouldn't release me yet, however, seeing I was out of temper; and, some of the other middies not on duty gathering round, it being their watch below, egged Larkyns on, suggesting that as I seemed to think myself such a "big gun," I ought to be sponged and loaded and run out. This humorous advice was immediately acted upon, a couple of the gang laying hold of my legs in spite of my kicks, while another assisted Larkyns, my tormenter; and the mischievous lot swung me backwards and forwards in and out of the port, until nearly all my clothes were pulled off my back and I hadn't a sound button left to my jacket. I felt hot all over; and was in a fine rage, "I tell you," as the gunner used to say. Mr Triggs, meanwhile, had gone up the hatchway to see about getting on board his ammunition, the vermilion-painted powder hoys I had observed in the distance at the mouth of the harbour being now nearly alongside the ship; and, all of a sudden, as my reckless shipmates were pulling me almost to pieces between them in their mad prank, there came a cry from the deck above, "Stand clear, below there!" At the same instant, a coil of rope whizzed by the port-hole out of which my body projected, the bight of it narrowly escaping my head in its downward descent, wetting my face with the spray it threw up as it splashed into the water right under me. I could not restrain a shriek of alarm; and, wriggling more violently than before in the hands of those holding me as I tried to release myself, I managed somehow or other to jerk away from their grasp, sending them all sprawling backward on the deck inboard, while I shot out of the port like a catapult, tumbling headlong into the sea as if taking a header after the rope! CHAPTER NINE. MY DIP GAINS ME A DINNER. Fortunately, though, as I fell, my outstretched hands, clutching wildly in the air, came in contact with the identical rope whose sudden descent from the gangway above had been the unwitting cause of the disaster, the tail end of the "whip" Mr Triggs had ordered to be rigged up from the lee yardarm, in readiness to hoist in the powder when the hoy bringing the same was made fast alongside.