Derval knew well that the sooner he mastered all this kind of work the better for himself. He had climbed many a tall elm when seeking rooks' eggs at Finglecombe, and many a taller cliff when after those of the cormorants, choughs, and gannets; but this was very different work, even though the ship, moored beside the quay, was motionless as St. Pauls; and he thought of what this task would be at sea, in a storm perhaps, when the ship became the fulcrum of the swaying masts, and his heart stood still at the terrible anticipation; yet he mounted bravely up, step for step with young Titford, encouraged by the latter's voice, and the clapping of hard horny palms below. But now they had reached the top of the long shrouds, to where the futtock-shrouds come down from the top and are bound to the mast by a hoop of iron. "Up you go now--if you go through the lubber's hole, I'll be the death of you!" cried Bitts from below, for as the captain and other two mates were still on shore, he was in all the plenitude of his power. "Hold on fast and follow me," cried little Titford, and active as a squirrel, with his body bent backward at an angle of forty-five from the mast, he continued mounting until he found himself in the maintop--_i.e._ the platform placed over the head of the lower must. Panting, and perspiring at every pore, with agitation, exertion, and an emotion of no small dismay to see the deck and the men thereon seem so small and so far down below, Derval, with tingling fingers, while a prayer rose to his lips, grasped the futtock-shrouds, surmounted them as one in a dream, and found himself safe beside Titford. There came a time when this task was as easy to him as sitting down to table, but the novelty of it filled him with great alarm then, and when the descent began, despite his terror of Mr. Paul Bitts, he deliberately left the top through the lubber's hole--an aperture in the top grating--as an easier mode of progression while Titford went down by the futtock-shrouds. On seeing this Paul Bitts grinned with delight, and produced from his pocket a colt--a piece of rope eighteen inches long, knotted at one end and whipped at the other--which he was wont to carry for the benefit of the ship-boys. Derval perceived this; a spirit of mischief, caused by revulsion of feeling, rose within him, and the moment he reached the deck, all encumbered as it was by boxes, barrels, bales, and gangways, dock labourers and porters, he gave Mr. Bitts a chase that excited the laughter of all and roused the fury of that personage, by darting hither and thither, with all a boy's agility, round the masts and hatchways till he reached the quarter-deck, at a part of which the side-netting was being repaired; consequently a portion of it was open and the moulded plankshere (a plank which runs all round the timber heads) was hinged up.