The master-at-arms of an American war-ship is always a man who has seen many years of service in the navy, and passed through most of the inferior ratings of the enlisted men. He is a man whose blue-jacket experience has taught him every trick of the naval sailor, every phase of forecastle life. Hiram could neither be cajoled nor outwitted. He was stern with evil-doers, but was the most popular man forward, in the _Osprey_. At dawn Jimmy Legs's duties begin, when the men turn out to clean ship. The chief boatswain's mate is nominally the "boss" of the job, but it is Legs who sees that the men do not growl or quarrel at their work, as sleepy men will at such an hour and task. Mess gear for breakfast is piped. The men rush to the tables. A bluejacket with shoes on steps on the foot of the bluejacket who is shoeless. Biff-bang! The Legs may be 'way aft on the poop watching the after-guard sweepers at their work; but he is a man of instinct. In a dozen bounds he is at the scene of the scrap. "Chuck it! The Legs!" is the word there. The scrappers break away, and when the Legs shows up they are seated side by side at their mess table, quietly taking morning coffee. It is the business of Jimmy Legs to make a tour of inspection through the ship just before "morning quarters." The ship is then supposed to be in shape for the commanding officer's approval, and the men's wearing-gear all stowed away in ditty bags. It never is. There is always to be found a shirt hastily thrown here, a shoe lying loose there, a neckerchief and lanyard hanging over a ditty-box. This gear the Legs gathers in impartially, no matter to whom it belongs, and thrusts into the "Lucky Bag" (which is generally known by a far more opprobrious epithet), which he keeps for that purpose. The only way the owner of the gear may get it back is by reporting himself at the mast, that is, to the commanding officer, for remissness in stowing gear, which means, generally, a lopping off of liberty privileges. Every month the contents of the bag of gear thus accumulated are sold aboard at auction to the highest bidder among the jackies. Finally, there is hardly a day in port that the Legs is not sent ashore along toward noon to hunt up derelicts. These are liberty-breakers carousing in town regardless of the fact that their services aboard are needed, and that punishment awaits them when they return for overstaying their leaves. Jimmy Legs is called for by the commander and gets a list of the men to be returned. Into the steam-cutter hops Legs, and away he goes after the derelicts. He generally returns with them. He may be gone for some hours, or for a day, but when he comes off to the ship, in shore boat or cutter, he has the men he went after along with him. So much for Jimmy Legs, whose never-ending and varied duties Hiram Deering, a grizzled old man-o'-warsman, performed most admirably on the _Osprey_.