For a couple of days longer, we were as busy as bees, taking in our boats and spare spars and other gear, besides filling up our stock of provisions and water and completing with stores of all sorts; until Saturday arrived, the last day of our stay at Spithead, when all our preparations were finished and all hands, likewise, paid their advance of two months' pay, prior to our sailing for China. No one was allowed on shore that afternoon, for fear of desertion; but, to make amends for this stoppage of all leave, the men were granted permission generally to receive their friends on board, so as to get rid of all the loose cash they were debarred from spending in more legitimate fashion on land. The consequence of this licence was, that the ship was crowded from stem to stern with strangers of every description, shape and sex, from dinner-time to dusk; Jew and Gentile, kinsman and creditor, each and all alike in turn, having a final tug at poor Jack's purse-strings, striving to ease him of his superfluous wealth before departure. As may readily be imagined, some queer customers came aboard; and some curious scenes took place, both of the sentimental and comic order. One of these latter I especially noticed; for it occurred under my very eyes, within earshot of where I was standing by the gangway. "Downy," as the men called him, the whilom digger of graves, who had so puzzled Commander Nesbitt on the first day of his joining, by giving his profession so peculiar a designation, had come on board without any sort of an outfit for the voyage. So, at last not being able to go ashore to buy a stock of clothes on receiving his advance pay, the purser at that time not supplying the men, as is the custom nowadays, with what they required, the morose gentleman was obliged to have recourse to Poll Nash, one of the bumboat women, who had brought off a lot of "slop" clothing for those requiring a rig-out, and was selling the same on her own terms to all comers as quickly as she could dispose of her stock. To her, therefore, Master "Downy" now applied, having nothing beyond the rather shabby suit of black in which he stood up, which was certainly somewhat unsuitable, to say the least, for a sailor's wear, particularly a man-o'-war's man, as the once gravedigger had been transformed into. He had well-nigh fully invested, in this way, the entire amount he had just received from the purser, Mr Nipper, on account of his advance pay as an "ordinary seaman," that being his rating; when, I noticed, a dark-faced, long-nosed gentleman come up to him and speak. The two then got into a violent altercation that speedily attracted everyone's attention, a small crowd gathering round the disputants just abaft the mainmast. "I tell you I haven't a ha'penny left," I heard "Downy" say, after a lot of words passing between them the gist of which I could not catch. "No, not a ha'penny left, I swear. I've paid it all to this good lady here for clothes!"