A month of preliminary training on the receiving ship follows. Here he is put through the well-known "setting-up drill," which is designed to give the full use of the muscles and feet and to develop the agility and endurance necessary to the performance of ship duty. This exercise is of daily occurrence while the recruit is in the early stage of his enlistment and is practiced frequently during the entire period of service, being part of the drill of every ship's company. The recruit is also given practice in what is known as "the boat drill," and when opportunity offers in the manning and manipulation of the guns. At the end of his first month comes the newly enlisted man's assignment to a vessel in active cruising service. Here, with a goodly batch of other landsmen, he is taken in hand by the master-at-arms, gets a ship's number and a mess kit, learns where to stow his clothing and hammock, and is part and parcel of the life on a man-of-war. The recruit's first days on shipboard are apt to put his nerves and temper to the test, for the old-timers among the ship's company are sure to let pass no opportunity to bedevil and confound him. Calking mat is the name given to the piece of matting which the bluejacket spreads upon the deck when he wants to take a nap and which protects his uniform from being soiled. He buys it himself, but never a landsman went aboard his first ship that he was not told to go to the master-at-arms for a calking mat. Now, the average master-at-arms on a man-of-war is a man who, having been in the navy for half a lifetime, has ceased to find amusement in the calking-mat request preferred to him by several thousand recruits, and as a consequence the reception the newcomer gets when he approaches Jimmy Legs on this matter is liable to be a badly mixed affair of boots and language. Again, recruits are often sent to the officer of the deck to prefer absurd questions or questions on matters in which they have no concern. When one of these recruits walks up to the officer of the deck and, after a bow, innocently asks when the ship is to sail he is in for a speedy if disgraceful scramble forward. Or on his first day aboard a man-of-war the recruit is often told that in order to go below to his locker he must first get permission from the officer of the deck. "To my locker below, sir, may I go, sir?" he is told to say when he goes to the mast to ask for the desired permission. If the officer of the deck happens to be in good humor he will turn away to preserve his dignity by not smiling, but if his temper is on edge the recruit is in for a lesson in directness of language that will make him wish he had not thrown over his job ashore. Trials of this sort, however, soon have an ending. The average recruit quickly masters the marine ropes, and instances are not uncommon of clever landsmen who have finished their first three years' cruise as chief petty officers, drawing from $50 to $75 a month.