"Hullo!" exclaimed a voice that seemed very familiar to me, on my getting down to the mess-deck below with my bag, when I had got my number, and been told off to my watch and division. "Who'd ha' thought o' meeting yer here?" The speaker was a broad-shouldered chap, with a lot of hair all over his face, and I did not recognise him for the moment. "You've got the advantage of me, mate," said I civilly, not wishing to hurt his feelings if he had made a mistake in addressing me, as I believed he had. "I can't place you." "Lor', carn't yer?" replied the chap, with a broad grin stealing over his face. "I fancies, Tom Bowlin', I hed th' adwantage on yer onst, an' placed yer too, that time I cut yer down in yer hammick aboard the _Saint Vincent_, hey, old ship?" It was Larrikins. Needless to say how glad I was to meet him again, or what yarns we had to tell each other of what had happened to us respectively since last we met. He was the same frolicsome, good-tempered chap that he had been on board the training-ship, I found, after a very few minutes' talk; but his love of practical-joking had been sobered down a bit within due bounds, and, on the whole, he was very much improved in every way. "I s'pose ye've never bin aboard a hooker like this afore," he said to me presently, after we had made an end of exchanging reminiscences, noticing that I was all at loggerheads in finding my way below. "It's them bloomin' watertight compartments as does it; but come along o' me, Tom, and I'll show yez the ropes." So saying, he took me over the ship, pointing out how the _Mermaid_ had a steel-protected deck running fore and aft, that sheltered her engines and boilers beneath; the space in beneath this and the bottom of the vessel being subdivided by a series of vertical iron bulkheads, completely shutting off the various `flats,' or lower decks, from each other. An arrangement so complex naturally necessitated a fellow having to climb up one hatchway and go down another before he could speak to his chum in the next flat, thus causing one to go through `sich a getting upstairs' like that mentioned in the celebrated negro ballad. The difference of the deck plan of a modern cruiser, as compared with that of my old ship the _Active_, was not the only thing I had to learn on being drafted to the _Mermaid_; for the drills were quite as strange to me at first as her complicated build inboard. The stokers, of course, had to see to driving her through the water, that being their special duty, under the superintendence of the engineers; so, as this job was taken out of the hands of us bluejackets, and there was nothing for us to do in the way of setting and taking in sail, the executive officers managed to find other work for us to keep our minds from mischief when we were aboard.