A very `dewy' eve it was, too, if dampness made it so; but if one did feel wet and miserable, as I confess I was, the remembrance it brought back to my mind of my mother's house-cleaning at home being almost too vivid to be pleasant, still, everybody on board had the satisfaction of knowing that the ship was as smart as holystone and sand could make her, from upper deck to keelson, I verily believe! I was none the less miserable, either, the following morning, when all the boys were rigged out in their best and inspected by the captain; for the tailor, true to the character of all `snips' since the days when Adam started in that line with his fig-leaf costume, never sent on board, as he promised, the uniforms of us unfortunate novices, so we could neither make a decent appearance with the rest of our comrades, nor have permission to go ashore--`unclothed' scarecrows, as some of us were, would have seemed queer fish to come from a well-ordered ship. On Monday, however, all things were made right in this respect; and, having satisfactorily passed `bag and hammock drill,' the test of our novitiate, I and my fellow-unfortunates became not only clad like our fellows, but were enrolled amongst the rest of the second-class boys, and appointed to our proper place in the ship. My number being 2799, through some occult system of nautical numeration, I was detailed to the `Third,' or second starboard, division of the ship's company; so I joined mess Number 38, which was on the port side on the lower deck, the first one aft of the schoolroom. I also proceeded a day or two after, being thenceforth regarded as a neophyte no longer, to take part in all the regular drills of the ship, and one morning, subsequent to breakfast, underwent that rudimentary stage of seamanship styled `boxing the compass'--though I might have really told the painstaking instructor, who painfully and ploddingly laboured to instil the cardinal points into my head as if I were an ignoramus, that I not only knew the `lubber's point' probably as well as he did, but could, on a pinch, have conned the ship in and out of Portsmouth Harbour! This `boxing the compass' business, though, brought me to loggerheads with that brute `Ugly' somehow or other, strangely enough. I don't know how it was, but from the moment, I believe, I first cast eyes on his singularly unprepossessing face, Moses Reeks had been my special antipathy! It was not so much that he said anything to me or of me, as from the fact of his always `putting it on' poor Mick Donovan, for whom I entertained as great a liking as I disliked the other. `Ugly' was always snarling at my chum, and ever giving him a chance kick or blow, should he be able to do so unobserved and without being directly taxed with it; though, of course, he would deny it if observed by any of the other boys, being an unmitigated liar, in addition to having a sour and vindictive disposition.