After dinner, which, by the way, my friend Mick Donovan appeared to enjoy mightily, not having had a decent meal for more than a month past, as he confessed to me afterwards, the bugle loudly sounded the `assembly,' when all the boys below came rushing up the hatchway near us, trooping onwards by the ladder above to the upper deck. They jostled and shoved past each other, I thought, as if Old Nick were after them, none wishing to occupy the unenviable position of last man, or rather boy. There wore eight other new boys in addition to us three, the latest of the novices, who had joined the ship that morning; and, although we all rose up from the mess-table, where we had very satisfactorily polished off our dinners in company, the lot of us hung together about the spot, not knowing what to do, or where we should go. We were, besides, pretty well confused with all the bustle and hurry, and scurry catch-me-who-can business, going on around us. It seemed, indeed, to bewilder even `Ugly,' free and easy chap as he appeared to be. Our friend the master-at-arms, however, solved the difficulty for us before we were many minutes older, as you will see. "Ha, my lads!" said he, advancing towards us from the office with the glass windows, through which he could overhaul all that was going on on deck, and where he probably had been enjoying his own meal on the quiet; "got through your dinners, eh?" "Yes, sir," we shouted in chorus, Mick Donovan adding a very appropriate grace, which most of us had forgotten. "Thanks be to God, yer 'anner!" "Ah, I needn't have asked the question," said the `Jaunty' to this, glancing meaningly at the empty plates that littered the table, not a scrap or a crumb being left by any of us. "But now, my lads, you must set to work to pay for your grub. Here, look sharp and clear up! We always have things shipshape aboard here, and the sooner you learn your duties the better." The same first-class boy who had previously got our dinners for us from the cook's galley, and who, you may remember, had tried a `barney' on me when he brought them, happening to be passing by at the time again, the master-at-arms hailed him. "Where are you going, my joker?" said he. "You seem to be having a good time of it!" "Jist goin' a message fur the bosun," stammered he. "He sent me to ax the gunner, sir, fur a copy o' the mornin' paper." "That's a bouncer," rejoined the `Jaunty,' who, no doubt, was up to such tricks. "Why, you're going away from the gunner's cabin and not towards it, as you very well know. You just stop here and show these new boys how to clean up the mess-table." "Yes, sir," replied the boy very humbly; and then a grin came over his face as he looked at the empty plates, like as the master-at-arms had done previously, asking demurely, "Shall I show 'em where to chuck the scraps, sir?"