We used to work our way from the lower yards to the dignity of the upper by rotation more than through any special smartness and activity; and I know I was as pleased as Punch when it came to my turn to be an `upper- yard boy.' I was never so happy as when aloft; and many a time up there of a morning have I gazed out to seaward, looking over Southsea beach and the boats clustered in the fairway, that seemed but little dots from the height where I was, to the open stretch of water beyond Spithead and Saint Helens, that seemed to draw my heart to it like a magnet, making me long to leave my present stay at home surroundings and sail away and away on the boundless deep. This desire of mine was gratified in part after I had been serving for nine months as a second-class boy, and passed satisfactorily through all my drills and instructions; when Mick and I got promoted. Strangely enough, my chum the Irish lad proved himself, landsman though he had been before and never having even smelt the sea prior to his coming to Portsmouth, quite as expert as myself after a short stay aboard the training-ship; though I had been associated with ships and seafaring folk from the time I drew my first breath, and indeed, like all the Bowlings, as I told you at the beginning of my yarn, was born with the taste for `the briny,' the feeling being inherent to my blood. It strikes me, though, that my sister Jenny had something to do with this. Mick heard her say the first day when I first took him home with me to visit father and mother at Bonfire Corner, that she loved sailors, and wondered how any young fellow could possibly care for anything else, when he had a chance of going afloat and serving his Queen and country, and fighting the battles of Old England. The remark was a chance one; but, though Mick must have heard Jenny say a good many other things, for he was often at our house afterwards, being generally in the habit of accompanying me home when I had leave to go, he never forgot those words and somehow or other seemed to strive his best to reach Jenny's ideal. So, you see, smart seaman though I fancied myself to be even at that early age, I had to look out lest I should be supplanted by my own chum; for no sooner did I get the start of him in one thing than he would fetch alongside of me and be working ahead before I well knew where I was, the `owdacious young beggar,' as father dubbed him, becoming actually a `royal-yard boy' the following week to myself, while both of us, as I have said, were made first-class boys together.