"You'll do," said Mr Blockley, laughing again as he went away to attend to his duties, in seeing the chain cables got up from below, and ranged along the lower deck in preparation for our anchoring anon. "Let alone an Irishman for having the last word!" Having a good breeze with us from the southward and westward, we soon rounded Saint Helen's point, off the east end of the island; and making a wide reach in towards the Warner lightship, we brought up at Spithead at Four Bells, comfortably. Just before we anchored, Mr Osborne, the first lieutenant, sent for Mick and myself, the marine who passed the word forward for us, saying that `Number One' wanted to see us in the wardroom. Wondering what was up, my chum and I proceeded aft, where we found Mr Osborne seated at the table, having just had lunch, as the cloth showed. `Number One,' who had evidently enjoyed his meal, being in a genial mood, as indeed, to give him his due, he usually was, did not keep us long in suspense. "Ha, my lads," he said, on the sentry ushering us up to where he sat, "you've given in your names, I believe, to pass for ordinary seamen, eh?" The cat was out of the bag at once, and mightily we felt relieved at that. I could not help smiling as I answered Mr Osborne in the affirmative; while, as for Mick, his "Yis, sor," was rolled out with an emphasis that made `Number One' laugh outright. "I hear very good reports of both of you, my lads--of you Bowling in particular," he said, looking at some papers before him, which he signed and handed over to the marine sentry, telling him to send them on to the ship's office; "and, as you are now both eighteen, the proper age to be entered on the books as `ordinary seamen,' and have shown your aptitude for the service during the six months you have been aboard this ship, I pass you, my lads, so you may now look upon yourselves as `boys' no longer!" Thanking the lieutenant, we left the wardroom, as may be supposed, decorously enough; but we had no sooner got out on the dock without than Mick executed a wild caper, which made the sentry grin. "Bedad, Tom," he said, loud enough for the marine to hear, "me fayther allers s'id Oi'd be a man afore me moother; an', faith, Oi'm thet now, plaize the pigs!" It was certainly a most unexpected denouement to the ordeal we had expected when sending in our names, both of us thinking we would have had to pass some stiff grind in seamanship and other naval acquirements, similar to the examinations we used to undergo on board the old _Saint Vincent_; and as we now were rated really as seamen, with the pay of one shilling and threepence a day, instead of sevenpence, besides having all the dirty work of the ship taken off our hands, Mick and I considered ourselves in clover, as you may readily imagine!