"Mo--ses," drawled out `Ugly' slowly, the poor beggar having a difficulty in speaking, caused by the blow I first gave him on the mouth, which accentuated his provincial pronunciation, "Re--eeks, zur." "Oh!" ejaculated ship's corporal Brown. "Then, Mr Moses Reeks, you'd better go to the sick-bay and see the doctor." `Ugly' backed down the hatchway to comply with this order, as we were just then ascending from the middle deck; and, from his withdrawing his intervening figure, I became disclosed to view. My arm, which had swollen up, and necessitated my putting it in a sling, at once attracted the observation of the corporal. "I say, youngster," he said, arresting my footsteps in like fashion, "why are you bandaged up? What the--ah, what does this hanky-panky mean?" "I--I--I," I stammered, not knowing what to reply to this, as I did not like to tell him a barefaced lie in cold blood offhand-- "I've hurt my arm, sir." "A-ah!" breathed out Mr Brown significantly; adding, after a pause, "You're Tom Bowling, ain't you?" "Yes, sir," I said; "that's my name." "Well, it strikes me, Thomas Bowling," said he drily, in the chaffy sort of way he adopted sometimes when hauling any of us `over the coals' for some offence, performing his duty ever of guardian of the peace as lightly as he could make it, "there's some sort o' circumbendibus between this here arm of yourn and the spoilt face of that there joker I've jist sent to the sick-bay. Thomas Bowling, Esquire, I fancy you'd better foller him there, my boy." Of course, I obeyed this command, a ship corporal's word, whether jocular or not, being as good as an order and regarded as law on board the training-ship. Nothing was said, though, to either of us regarding our recent fight, nor any embarrassing questions asked, when we reached the sick-bay. Trimmens, the sick-berth steward, on the contrary, never moved a muscle of his mahogany face when `Ugly' said that he had knocked his head against the hatchway, and I told a `banger' by volunteering the statement that I had broken a plate on the mess-table, and one of the pieces had run into my arm. The wound in my side, which was really only a scratch, I never mentioned to any one, not even to Mick, who thought, and to this day knows nothing to the contrary, I believe, that I had guarded off `Ugly's' thrust, and had been only stabbed in the arm. Our injuries not being sufficiently serious to put either of us in the sick-list, `Ugly' and I were sent back, after being lotioned and `dressed' by Trimmens, to rejoin our division, then at their `instruction drill' on the lower deck, and engaged making what are known to those learned in the arts of the sea as `bends and hitches.'