"I can only send one new hand in each smack. The others will go to the Home, till the smacks are ready. I will send a man with them, at once. They can have a day to run about the town. I shall find plenty of work for them, afterwards. "You, Gale, will stop on the smack. I will take you on board, in half an hour, when I have finished my letter." The three lads said goodbye to their comrades and to Sam Dickson. A sailor was called up, and took two off to the Smack Boys' Home; and Will Gale sat down on a coil of rope, to wait till his employer was ready to take him down to the craft to which he was, henceforth, to belong. Chapter 3: Life On A Smack. "Now come along, Gale," Mr. Eastrey said, at last, "the Kitty is close by." Following his master, the lad went out from the store and along the wharf and, presently, stepped upon a smack on which several men, and a boy, were at work. "Harvey," Mr. Eastrey said, "I have brought you a new lad. He will sail with you, tomorrow. I have a very good account of him, and I think you will find him quick, and ready." "So as he's not up to tricks, I shall do very well with him, I don't doubt," the skipper said; "but boys are an awful trouble, the first voyage or two. However, I will do my best for him. "Are you ready to begin work at once, young 'un? What is your name?" "William Gale, and I am quite ready." "Very well, Bill, chuck off your jacket, then, and pass those bags along from the wharf." The boy was soon hard at work. He was a little disappointed at finding that the skipper was, in dress and manner, in no way superior to the rest of the crew. The Kitty was a yawl of forty-five tons, deep in the water and broad in the beam. Her deck was dirty and, at present, in disorder; and she did not come up to the perfection of neatness and cleanliness which William Gale had read of, in the pages of his favorite author. However--as he told himself--there must, of course, be a good deal of difference between a man of war, where the crew have little to do but to keep things neat and bright, and a fishing smack. The work upon which he was, at present, engaged was the transferring of the provisions for the voyage from the quay to the hold. These consisted principally of barrels of salt meat, and bags of biscuits; but there were a large tin of tea, a keg of sugar, a small barrel of molasses--or treacle--two or three sacks of potatoes, pepper and salt. Then there was a barrel of oil for the lamps, coils of spare rope of different sizes, and a number of articles of whose use William Gale had not the most remote idea. After two hours' work, the skipper looked at his watch. "Time to knock off work," he said, "and we've got pretty near everything on board. Now, be sure you are all here by six in the morning. Tide will begin to run out at eight, and I don't want to lose any of it. "Bill, you are to come home with me, for the night."