I really thought the nor'-east wind had brought up a great haul with the flood-tide, and that innumerable costers were calling out some strange fish in the streets round Bonfire Corner; while our white cockatoo, `Ally Sloper,' was having a bit of fun with himself and mother by imitating the cry! Presently, though, a rough shake of my hammock and the hail of one of the boatswain's mates close by me told a different tale. "Here, out of this, my lad!" said he, giving a twist to the swinging concern that landed me on the deck in a twinkling. "You can't stop there snoozing any longer! Don't you see the sun is scorching your eyes out?" He had a good deal of imagination, had that man; for it would have puzzled the `Philadelphia lawyer,' whom father was so fond of quoting, to have discovered the ghost of a ray of sunlight this cold, foggy, February morning at Four Bells! The rest of the novices--there being, as you know, ten other `unclothed' boys besides myself--had been roughly aroused in like fashion; and to a by-stander all of us must have looked a forlorn lot of shivering creatures, adrift there on the cheerless deck in the half light of early day, not knowing what to do with ourselves until somebody told us what to do and bearing, I fancy, a strikingly strong resemblance to a flock of lambs in some strange pasture deserted by their dams! I make a mistake there, however, for the muttered growling exclamations I heard uttered by one of the warrant-officers, who came past where we stood clustered together, certainly sounded uncommonly like the name of the lambs' mothers I have just mentioned, showing that its `eidolon' remained. The observation made by this officer, who, to my surprise, I subsequently found was the boatswain, brought our old police friend, the master-at-arms, on the scene. "Here, boys," said he to us, "you must bestir yourselves, and not stand star-gazing there, like so many country bumpkins at a fair! Tom Bowling, if you're the son of your father, you ought to know that you've got to unsling your hammock when the `lash up and stow' is sounded! And you, too, my Irish-Italian friend over there, roll up your hammock, my lad!" "Sure, an' is it manin' me yez afther?" inquired Mick Donovan, unhitching the lanyard of his hammock from the hook above in a brace of shakes. "Faith, it's makin' a rowly-powly puddin' of it I will, sor, entirely!" The `Jaunty' grinned at Mick's naive remark, but soon mastered the difficulty of teaching us by passing the job on to other hands.