Terriss and my brother, therefore, had my sympathy in deciding not to stick to the sea, but in my own case there was no alternative. I had insisted upon going to sea, so had to stick to it, and after six weeks’ holiday rejoined my ship in the London Docks. They had replaced the sprung mainmast, and the ship was again loading for Adelaide. Without any doubt it is wrong to make boys live on board a ship in dock without any effective control. There were always three of us and sometimes four on board, and night watchmen looking after lights were easily hoodwinked. We had gorgeous and surreptitious feasts, and the seals of custom house officers on excisable goods were tampered with quite easily. I can recall on more than one occasion the mystified looks of officers who found seals intact and contents considerably shortened of what they should have been; and, generally speaking, there is scarcely any problem of food supply that boys on board ship will not find a way of solving. Very wrong indeed, many people will say; what became of your moral principle? I reply in the words of the Eton dame who, asked as to the moral qualities of the boys: said, “There was never a moral amongst them,” and, after all, it wasn’t much worse than orchard robbing! This is a digression, but it is a little difficult to sit down late in life to recount one’s juvenile villainies without at least a half-hearted attempt to palliate them--knowing also at the time that even then you do not mean your confession to be a complete one. In due course the ship was loaded and the crew signed on. We had a new second mate, who we quickly discovered was of a different make to the last one. In fact, I think it was hinted to him that the rope’s-end régime was not to our liking, and that we had begun to discover that unity was strength, but this was only possibly because he messed with us. For the “old man,” having started by turning King out of the cabin, thought fit to continue the innovation, and kind-hearted Geordie Roshwell was not the type of man to assert himself. A good seaman he was, but more sailmaker than second mate. Both mate and captain bullied him unmercifully, and destroyed the little authority he was capable of wielding.